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He shook his head. “I’ve never been to Boston. The other places…I was there. But I was ISR. Strictly ISR.”
Gentry said, “I was there. In Tulum. Those were not surveillance robots.”
The Mexican blinked pain from his eyes. “I was not in control of the LAWs.”
“LAWs?”
“Lethal autonomous weapons.”
Zoya stepped in quickly. “Wait. How do you know they were autonomous?”
The man rolled his eyes after a moment. “I know, but I can’t explain it to you.”
For a third time, Court sparked the lighter. “How about you give it a whirl?”
“Okay! Okay! The platforms in Tulum…the ground bots, the kamikaze bots, and the surveillance bots. They were all working together. That wasn’t a bunch of pilots operating them. It was a single intelligent agent. Plus, the dexterity of the machines inside the house…I am one of the best pilots in the world, and I couldn’t fly drones half that fast around obstacles. No one could. It took advanced AI, high-speed mapping, obstacle recognition, and avoidance algorithms.”
Court asked, “Do you know what was on that ship in the harbor?”
“Wipe my face and I’ll tell you.”
Zoya did so with a towel, and now the man could open his eyes even more.
“No. I didn’t even know what James Pace was looking at in the harbor. I was only looking at him.”
“Well,” Zoya said, “I’ll tell you. More autonomous kill bots. What are they doing here in Cuba?”
Contreras showed genuine surprise at this. “I have no idea. Here in Havana I just operated a fleet of small quadcopters with cameras on them. Just cameras. That’s all I was asked to do.”
Court said, “Why do you think the robots came to Cuba?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Are they here to kill Hinton?”
Contreras cocked his head, a look of surprise on his face. “Hinton?”
Neither of his two questioners spoke, they just stared at him.
The Mexican said, “You mean…you mean Anton Hinton…? He’s here? In Cuba?”
“He is,” Zoya said. “There have been two attempts on his life already. One in the UK, one here. We thought maybe Cyrus sent the robots here to target him.”
Contreras froze. Court got the idea that the Mexican had been holding back the name Cyrus to use as a bargaining chip, unaware that he and Zoya already knew about him. He decided to use this as an opportunity. “Yes, we know about Cyrus. We know a lot, so don’t lie to us.”
The man looked at the ground. “You are just going to kill me anyway.”
To this, Zoya said, “If you don’t tell us what we need, then of course we will torch you right here and now. But if you give us good information, I promise you, you will be on your way to Miami within hours. You’ll be questioned for days, weeks, maybe, but you won’t be tortured or killed.”
Contreras looked like a man with no options. Finally he just said, “Cyrus only used the robots in Mexico because he didn’t trust Gama.”
Court and Zoya spoke at the same time. “Who’s Gama?”
The prisoner looked surprised. “You know about Cyrus but don’t know about Gama? Gama is the operations center. Cyrus thought Jack Tudor’s person on the inside of the operations center, the woman Tudor told you about, was compromising the mission.”
Court and Zoya had already assumed this from their conversation with Tudor.
Court pulled a wooden chair closer, sat down in front of Contreras, and said, “Well, would you look at that? You know all sorts of interesting stuff. Tell me more about Cyrus.”
