Flashing on the screen now was the maddeningly persistent red-triangle symbol and the glowing message.
“It’s locked,” she announced.
“I know that.”
“Why don’t you run it through the Syne?”
“I did. Didn’t take.”
She cast him a surprised over-the-shoulder glance. “Really?”
“Really. I was told the disk was specifically designed to circumvent the Syne.”
She tapped her chin contemplatively. “That’s unusual.”
“Unprecedented,” Kane declared. He managed to turn a hiccup into a throat-clearing sound.
“That, too. Where did it come from?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Brigid shot him a sharp, narrow-eyed glare. “I have a ‘Q’ clearance, you know.”
“And I have a ‘Q Ultra.’ For all I know, the data on the disk may require an ‘X’ clearance.”
“Which neither of us have,” she argued. “And if you take it to someone who does, you’ll be asked the same question. Where did it come from?”
“I found it in a smuggler’s den, a slaghole out in a hellzone. He had a DDC system, too. A current one.”
Her emerald eyes widened. “In a slaghole? Where’d he get it?”
“That,” Kane replied grimly, “is something I intend to find out. And the only clue is that damn disk.”
Nodding, Brigid said cryptically, “If you read it, it may contain something you’ll wish you’d never laid your eyes on.”
Kane considered that for a silent moment. “Maybe,” he admitted. “But I’m willing to take that chance.”
Brigid’s mouth twitched in a wry smile, and she returned her attention to the console. “That symbol rings a faint bell. Something very old. I’ll try some random pass codes.”
Her fingers played over the keyboard. Looking over her shoulder, Kane saw she had typed “Air Force.”
The “Access denied” message continued to glow, unchanged, so she kept trying again and again. Kane stood beside her, hands in his pockets. Her fingers flew over the keys, making a constant clatter. She punctuated each failure with under-the-breath mutters and groans. Some of the key codes she input were unfamiliar and strange, words like “Totality Concept.”
“Cerberus” and “Wyeth.”
“Where are you coming up with those words?” he asked. “They’re pretty obscure.”
“That’s why I’m the archivist and you’re the Magistrate who doesn’t have to knock.”
As Kane stood by and watched, he suddenly realized with a start that he was enjoying himself immensely. He wasn’t sure why, except he felt curiously comfortable with Brigid Baptiste, at ease with her in a way that was similar, yet also markedly different than his relationship with Grant. He found her intelligence, her apparent professionalism and the way she had refused to be intimidated by him bizarrely entertaining. Perhaps it was the shared act of flouting authority, like a pair of naughty children, that forged the bond. He felt rebellious, and he liked it. He knew Brigid did, too.
It was crazy, he argued with himself. The woman was a total stranger, and for all he knew, she was pretending to cooperate because she was scared, or she was part of a complex sting set up by Salvo, and he had walked right into it. Hell, as soon as he left, she could call Salvo and report everything he said or did.
Then he realized something else.
He really didn’t give a shit.
Suddenly Brigid uttered an exclamation of triumph. Kane bent down to peer at the screen. Instead of the “Access denied” message, two words glowed against the dark background. The words were “Dulce” and “Accessing.”
“Dulce?” he muttered. “What the hell is a Dulce?”
“Not a what,” she replied. “A where. A town in predark New Mexico. Not even that, exactlyan old military testing facility, where a lot of scientific experiments were being conducted”
She clamped her lips tight, biting back her words. Her shoulders stiffened in fear. Kane said, “It’s okay, Baptiste. You’re a ‘Q-clearance’ archivist. You’d have access to that sort of information.”
The soothing, reassuring tone of his voice surprised even him.
She threw him a grateful smile and said, “That triangle symbol was the insignia of the Dulce-base personnel.”
Poking a key, she declared, “Let’s see what we have here.”
Words and numbers scrolled down and across the screen with a dizzying rapidity. Brigid gazed at them unblinkingly, occasionally moving her lips.