Page 58 of The Lazarus Protocol

“He convinced us that only he knows.” Adam shrugged. “And he makes the best pad Thai you’ve ever tasted.”

TWENTY

Zürich, Switzerland

Steph knew where they were as soon as they dipped below the clouds and the plane descended to land at an airport an hour outside the city. From the plane they’d split into two groups, Ice and Kai going in one rented Mercedes while she and Adam got in the other. Of course, he insisted on driving.

“Because our insurance covers employees only.”

She clipped her seatbelt and looked up at him. “Sure, it is.”

This guy wasn’t like any special ops, military guys she’d met before—even if he had thrown her over his shoulder. That part was pretty typical. But the rest of Adam, aka Angus Dubkowsky, aka Phoenix, was different.

Of course, the timing was horrible even if she was interested in a relationship, which she wasn’t.

She was more interested in what they’d given the officials at this airport and if she had been claimed as an employee of their company—the one that owned the jet. No wonder the CIA had opted to have these guys be the new Division Zero team. Why waste resources setting up a team of their own when they could farm the work out to people who already had the infrastructure to move between countries? Budget cuts and all that.

They were probably cleaning house, giving work to contractors they could pay less than officers the CIA had recruited and trained. Moving into a new era where intelligence was gathered with computers.

Losing it all could be seen as a blessing, if she focused on the fact she was now free of all of her obligations. Except for one thing.

“It’s a drive to Johannsen’s flat.” Adam started the car. “Wanna tell me about the book?”

Steph didn’t even have a phone to stare at, and her spiraling thoughts weren’t a good place to be right now. “Why not?”

“I appreciate you humoring me.” He pulled out of the airport onto a quiet street in the countryside with trees on a deep-green berm on either side. The two-lane road had a strip of grass and then another asphalt lane beside it, presumably for bikes.

It almost sounded like he was amused.

He wouldn’t be when he found out that Vesper was the one who’d dumped the doctor and abducted her in Germany, because she thought Steph had the book—or knew where to find it. All because she’d been sent to deliver that envelope to the bookseller in Paris.

Another mystery she didn’t have the means to solve.

“The book is a philosophical blueprint for a network. A computer system that will span the globe. Connect everyone. Control everything. The guy who wrote it was way ahead of his time, and everyone thought he was a crackpot.”

The CIA had to have someone going after the book, which would’ve been Steph ordinarily. Maybe she could find out who had been dispatched to retrieve it. At one time she’d believed Dr. Warrington actually had the book—but that would mean Vesper had it weeks ago, when clearly she didn’t.

“So it’s more like a journal, or a notebook?”

“Written over a period between 1937 and 1943 by a German high-ranking officer. Konrad Voss. He was a scientist, not a military guy, so the position was honorary. They kept him tucked away in a research facility in Tarnopol. It was part of Poland back then. When the Russians invaded, he apparently fled and no one knew where the book ended up. Voss was reported to have been killed trying to escape the city, but no one really knows.”

Adam glanced over. “What does this have to do with drones and anti-AI terrorists?”

“Doctor Voss was working on ballistic trajectory computation for automated guidance systems. He dabbled with early cybernetics concepts and pattern recognition programs to predict outcomes for the war.”

“Did they predict defeat?”

She almost smiled. “The guy was brilliant, which means the whole thing is completely terrifying.”

“If it was lost, how does anyone know what’s in the book?”

“Torn pages have surfaced. Copies of pages have been sold on the black market over the years. We know enough to understand what it would mean to have it. But at the same time, it could be best that it’s never discovered.”

Would he and his team be willing to destroy the book?

She’d seen a whole lot of loyalty between the guys on the Division Zero team, and that loyalty might extend to the CIA if they were ordered to find the book and turn it over.

If Steph found the book first, she might be able to trade it back to the CIA in exchange for her life.