Chapter 20

Later that day they checked in at Svalbard. They’d landed and made the ride to the vault. Astrid greeted them as soon as they stepped inside and unzipped their heavy jackets.

With the introductions out of the way and Astrid thinking Gaige was a security specialist, they walked through the cold hallway. Ice formed on cinder blocks and lights hung down from the high ceiling. Pipes ran above their heads and cameras followed every step.

None of it fazed Astrid. She moved with a steady confidence. Her blond hair was tucked into a ponytail that made her look far younger than forty-five. Watching her now, listening to the running verbal tour she provided to Gaige, Alec liked her as much as he had when they first met. Her enthusiasm for the project never waned.

They turned a corner and entered what looked like a large metal tube. It stretched out in front of them, taking them more than three hundred feet deeper into the mountain.

“Thanks for the unscheduled tour,” Alec said from behind her.

She stopped and turned to face him with her usual welcoming smile. “For you? Anything.”

“You are a charmer.” And he meant that. His bullshit meter kept scanning, looking for any sign that she’d been using him all this time. Nothing ticked. She wasn’t nervous about his unscheduled trip or the strange request that he be able to check boxes.

Gaige suggested the excuse. He wanted to plant just enough of a question in case anyone was watching. Let any interested party know that Drummond questioned the earlier unscheduled seed deliveries, but maybe for reasons that had to do with problems at Drummond and not the vault.

“And you worked with us to streamline our process for checking in seed boxes without causing an international incident.” She cleared her throat. “Well, you did after your dad…” Her smile faded. “I’m sorry.”

Alec wondered how many years would pass before this kind of thing stopped happening. “It’s okay.”

She bit on her bottom lip. “He meant well.”

He actually didn’t but Alec didn’t point that out. He didn’t look at Gaige either because he didn’t want to see the question there. “Diplomacy is tricky. Let’s just say it wasn’t his strongest asset.”

“I prefer international wrangling to some of the other requests I get,” she said.

Gaige looked at her. “Like what?”

“You’d be amazed how many men contact us about storing their seed.”

The ventilation system continued to hum and the lights buzzed, but neither Gaige nor Alec said a word. Alec wasn’t sure what to say other than to point out some men were idiots.

“Wait.” Gaige seemed to give himself a little shake. “You mean sperm?”

Now that it was out there, Alec had to say something because damn. “Talk about having an inflated sense of self.”

Astrid laughed and the sound echoed off the walls. “Exactly. Some are quite insistent that humanity will need to have access for future procreation.”

“I don’t even know what to say to that,” Alec said.

Gaige snorted. “I do. You don’t get paid enough.”

“Very true.” Astrid patted Gaige on the arm. The gesture was motherly, which fit her since she had three kids at home that she was raising by herself.

They started walking again. Alec paid more attention than usual to the doors they walked through, the security watching their steps. That was Gaige’s job, but a second look couldn’t hurt. They’d walked through the cold tunnels and two doors and emptied out into a large space that was literally an ice cavern. The white walls had been carved out of the inside of the ice mountain. The cold outside helped to maintain the temperature inside.

Here, in the main chamber, there were pipes running through the ceiling and a wide space where the seed trolleys traveled. And three sets of doors.

Since this wasn’t really a tour, Alec jumped to the topic that brought him here. “About the favor you did for me.”

She waved him off. “For Drummond, and you have been an active supporter, so it was no trouble to reopen the vault to accommodate your distribution issues.”

That’s not exactly what he wanted her to say, but still. “Thank you.”

“Did you figure out who did it?” Astrid looked from Gaige to Alec as she asked the question. “The attacks on your transportation routes, I mean.”

There was the excuse, the reason someone used to get those unscheduled Drummond shipments in the vault. It made sense. Distribution problems, attacks on transportation convoys happened all the time. But this time it was all made up, and Alec wanted to know why.

“That’s part of why we’re here.” Gaige took over. “We’re working on it.”

Alec followed Gaige’s lead. “But, as you would imagine, we need to ensure none of the deposits have been compromised.”

Her shiny disposition disappeared. “If you thought that was an issue you should have warned me earlier.”

“I didn’t know it was a possibility until now.” Alec rushed to reassure her. This could be a crack in her cover but he suspected this was really about being afraid and furious that he might have put the vault at risk. “I promise that as soon as I knew of the potential problem I came here, and the packets are sealed. It’s about potentially imperfect seeds. Nothing more.”

Astrid was a smart woman. She came to the vault with two advanced degrees in science and an unshakeable belief that she was the best person to run this place. Alec agreed. Hell, when the position came open two years ago, he supported her promotion behind the scenes, pushed for it. There was no way she would just accept Alec’s word and be fine. She’d demand answers and assurances…unless she was behind whatever was happening here. In that case, Alec had no idea what she would do.

“You say it’s fine but you brought Mr. Owens with you.”

“You can call me Gaige.” With a smooth tone and calm demeanor, Gaige slid into security manager mode. “My job is to check for compromises in security and revamp existing protocols to prevent any future issues on Drummond’s end. This is about our failures and procedure, not yours.”

The fake job description seemed to satisfy her, at least temporarily. Alec didn’t like having his company take the hit for looking unprepared but once this was resolved he could tell her the truth. Probably.

“Are you worried about the vault’s security?” she asked.

“Not at all. I’m actually fascinated by the redundant protections.” Gaige leaned closer to Astrid as if they were sharing a big secret. “I’d like to implement something similar at Drummond.”

“I’m happy we can help.” She stepped over to the middle set of doors. “The vault.”

Gaige looked around, scanning the walls and ceiling before he frowned. “I expected…”

Astrid’s smile returned. “What?”

“Big locks and armed guards? I don’t know. With all the security in the structure, I figured the seeds themselves would be more protected.” He held up both hands. “You know, like the equivalent of a bank vault. But this is just an ordinary set of double doors. Steel, sure, but still doors with a handle and lock.”

“As you pointed out, there are redundancies. The vault is locked. The doors throughout the structure are locked. We watch everything on security video. Entries and exits are logged and checked, and every deposit into the vault has to be pre-approved. Really, not that many people have access to anything in here.”

“Is it possible to meet with the person in charge of security?” Gaige shifted his weight from foot to foot and blew on his hands through his gloves. “You know, just in case I need to bounce ideas off someone later.”

“Absolutely.” Astrid punched in a code on the security panel next to the door. The green light flicked on and there was a click. She slipped the key into the lock on the door, and a second later she opened it and ushered them inside.

Racks of boxes were lined up in rows. The setup wasn’t that different from what a very organized, and freezing, garage might look like.

While she walked them through the lettered and numbered aisles, Alec looked around. Even though the temperature dipped lower, the video surveillance continued in here.

She slipped into row R, section four and stopped. “Here is the box from your last delivery.”

Alec didn’t wait for more. He grabbed it off the shelf and set it on the floor. All of the markings on the outside were right. Even the label looked as if it had been printed on company letterhead.

He broke the seal and opened the top. Inside were vials and piles of sealed foil packages labeled GENE BANK. When he turned one over he could see the seeds through the panel. These were genetically modified seeds. Under Svalbard’s rules, food hybrids designed for a specific purpose were forbidden in the vault.

He forced his smile to stay in place as he glanced up at Astrid. “Excellent service, as always.”

She helped him close and reseal the box, then guided it back to its space on the shelf. “You two look cold.”

“I can’t feel my hands.” Gaige rubbed them together again.

It sounded like a joke but Alec was pretty sure Gaige was serious. Alec guessed it would take days back in Munich before they thawed out again.

“You should be here when it’s really cold.” Astrid laughed at her own joke as she gestured for them to leave the aisle. “Do you want to see anything else in here?”

“We’ll check every pack sent in those special deliveries and do a video conference with the scientists back in our lab tomorrow. Then we’ll know for sure that everything is in order with the seeds.” That was the cover story they’d come up with for needing to be in the vault. The subterfuge would allow Gaige some time and the opportunity to crack Svalbard’s security and see what was really happening in those other vaults. At least Alec hoped that was true.

Gaige stopped and then raised his hand as if he’d thought of one more thing. “This has nothing to do with us, but I’m curious. There were three doors in the hallway.”

“There are two other vaults. Those are empty now but will be used in the future as we collect more seeds.” She shooed them into the hall then locked the vault door behind them.

“Do you check them?” Gaige asked.

She stilled with her fingers still locked on the door handle. “For what?”

“Leaks? Ice?”

She started moving again, this time faster. “The temperature is regulated and a camera highlights the inside.”

She said all the right things. Her security speeches matched the party line, matched everything Alec had ever been told about security here. Whether she was right was the question.

She was a tall woman, probably close to six feet. That meant long legs. She practically had them sprinting across the main chamber again. They kept going until they reached a door marked SECURITY.

She hit a button on the security panel and the camera above their heads swung around to face them. After a small wave she typed in a code and turned another key and pushed the door.

Gaige’s eyes lit up when they stepped inside. One whole wall consisted of monitors. Another set lined the area where one man sat and another hovered over him. The place was a high-tech dream inside a mountain, with panels of lights and buttons.

Images flashed across the screens. The security photos weren’t static. The cameras moved and the angles changed. Only a few showed any human movement. Most focused on a piece of equipment or the racks of seed boxes.

The man who was standing straightened up when they entered. He walked over to greet them, and Astrid immediately broke into introductions. “You remember Daniel Berg, our head of security.” She pointed past him to the man seated at the long desk. “This is his assistant, Einar Hagen.”

Daniel nodded. “Mr. Drummond.”

Alec did a quick once-over. He took in the gun and the confidence. Daniel was about fifty and tall. Very trim with an athletic build. There was nothing soft about him.

“He’s here to double-check the seeds that came in the last delivery.” Astrid looked at Gaige. “Gaige Owens is in charge of restructuring Drummond’s security.”

Daniel whistled. “That sounds like a significant undertaking.”

“And it better be done right,” Alec added, because if any of this had been real that was the sort of thing he would say.

Gaige shook Daniel’s hand, then dropped it. “I think you can understand the pressure I’m under.”

Alec decided to try another test. He could see security personnel walking around on the monitors but the man standing in front of him was the one in the know. Daniel handled every seed delivery personally, including the fake ones. “Thank you for your help in November.”

Daniel frowned. “Is that why you’re checking the security?”

“Part of it. You know how it is. You find a hole and it leads to a full recheck,” Gaige said as he stepped to the side of the group and watched the monitors. He kept moving until he stood right behind Einar. “Damn, this is impressive.”

“We think so,” Einar said.

Gaige leaned in and put his palms flat against the table next to Einar’s keyboard. “I was just in there.”

“I know.” Einar was younger, maybe in his late twenties, blond and clearly didn’t know that he was being used.

Through the approach and now as Einar and Gaige stood so close, Alec watched. He looked for any evidence Gaige was lying. For any sign that he was right now stealing data, or attempting to, from this locked-down facility.

The fact that Alec couldn’t pick anything out both impressed and scared the hell out of him. The idea that the man he was sleeping with could lie without any outward signs wasn’t exactly the kind of news that helped Alec sleep better at night.

“Fascinating.” Gaige stood up again and shoved his hands in the pockets of his down coat.

There it was. All done.

Now it was Alec’s turn to plant one last piece of information that someone with something to hide might jump on. “We’ll be back tomorrow to video the recent shipments so that our scientists can confirm the deviation didn’t damage anything.”

Daniel frowned. “Video?”

“I’ve approved the request,” Astrid said. “In the meantime, you should enjoy the area.”

Einar turned around in his chair to face them. “There’s not much up here but snow.”

“We’re easy to please,” Gaige said with a smile. “And Alec promised me dinner, so we’re off to find it.”

For once Alec didn’t hate hearing Gaige talk about food.