Brilliance. Part 31

"Certainly."

"What's it like helping to build New Canaan when you're not gifted?"

By the window, Shannon swallowed a laugh. The lawyer's smile curdled slightly. "A privilege. Why?"

"Call me curious."

Kobb nodded, made an unconvincing it's-nothing gesture. "What we're doing here matters. It's an incredible opportunity. Never in history has there been an initiative like this. A chance to build a new world."

"Especially with someone else's money. Sounds like a no-lose."

Millicent smiled into her game.

"Hmm." The phone at the lawyer's belt vibrated, and he unclipped it, read the message. "Ahh. Erik is about to arrive. He's in Manhattan."

"He flew in for this?"

"No," Kobb said, the smugness back. "He's in Manhattan now."

"Then-"

Before he could finish the question, Erik Epstein appeared behind the desk.

Cooper was halfway out of his chair with realizing he'd moved, his body on full combat alert. His mind spinning, a.n.a.lyzing the situation- A gift like Shannon's? Had he been here all the time, somehow?

No, Epstein's gift is for data.

Some unheard of piece of newtech? Cloaking? Teleportation? Ridiculous.

But there he is. Live and in the flesh...

Got it.

-and realizing what he was looking at. "Wow. That is something."

Erik Epstein smiled. "Sorry to startle you."

Now that he'd had a moment, Cooper could see the faint gauziness at the man's edges, as if he'd been smeared. The shadows were off, too; wherever Epstein was, the lighting was different from here. He looked like a special effect from a movie in the eighties, completely convincing until you really looked.

"One of our newest developments," Kobb said. "Fundamentally similar to the technology in a tri-d set, only significantly amplified."

"A hologram."

"Yes," Epstein said. He grinned. "Not bad, huh?"

"Not bad at all." That's a decade past the best the DAR has ever managed. Even with the academy graduates.

In person-well, sort of-Erik Epstein looked a little less polished than he did in broadcasts. He still had the boyish good looks, the raffish hair, but he seemed less stiff. Dressed in a summer-weight suit with no tie, he'd have been at home in an expensive country club. "I'd shake your hand, but-" He lifted one arm, flexing the fingers. "One of the limitations. Still, it beats a speakerphone."

"Thank you for meeting us on short notice," Shannon said. She was somehow beside him, settling into a chair.

"Your message made sure of that, Ms. Azzi. I don't like being connected to John Smith that way."

"I understand," she said. "Forgive me for imposing. It was the only way I knew to get your attention."

"You have it," Epstein said. He laid his hands on the desk. The fingertips penetrated the surface, ruining the illusion a bit. "You must be Cooper."

"Agent Nicholas Cooper," Kobb said. "Born March, 1981, second year of the gifted. Joined the army at seventeen with father's consent. Detailed as a military liaison to what would become the Department of a.n.a.lysis and Response, 2000. Joined full-time in 2002. Entered Equitable Services with its foundation in 2004. Made full agent in 2005, senior agent in 2008. Generally considered the best of the so-called 'gas men,' sporting an unmatched clearance rate, including thirteen terminations."

"Thir-teen?" Shannon raised an eyebrow.

"Yes," Cooper said, "that's me. On paper."

"Went rogue following the March 12th attack on the Leon Walras Exchange." Kobb looked up from his datapad. "Now the lead suspect in that bombing."

He shouldn't have been surprised. Though part of the agreement with Director Peters was that they wouldn't publicly reveal his ident.i.ty-a fanatic might have gone after Natalie and the children-most of the DAR would know he'd been designated a target. And the world's richest man would have access to pretty much any information he wanted. Still. It jarred him. He glared at the lawyer, but spoke to Epstein. "I had nothing to do with that."

"Did you, Ms. Azzi?" Kobb asked.

"No," she said. "Not the way it happened."

"But it was John Smith's organization that planted the bombs."

"Yes. But we didn't trigger them."

"How do we know that?"

"Enough, Bob." Epstein spoke with easy command. "They're telling the truth."

"But sir, we don't-"

"Yes, we do. Millie?"

The girl looked up. "They're both lying. They're lying to each other, too. But they're telling the truth about that."

"Thank you, sweetheart."

The lawyer opened his mouth, shut it. Cooper could see the man simmering, his frustration. A leader in his field, no doubt a powerful political player, overruled by a child.

Kobb's not the only one. Cooper felt like a tennis ball, hammered back and forth across a net. Lying to each other? What did that mean? If nothing else, the girl had clearly made him for what he was, and the nakedness came with fear. She couldn't read his mind, wouldn't know about his mission, but picking up on the subcutaneous cues of his loyalty response to the agency, that would be simple for her. No telling how much deeper that could go.

To make it this far and be at the mercy of a ten-year-old girl...

Lock it down.

"So." Erik Epstein smiled, holding out his hands. "With that out of the way. What are you doing here?"

"Shannon and I had a deal. There was an incident in Chicago, a few days ago, and she needed help. I got her home, and she got me a chance to meet you."

"I see. Why?"

"As you know, my former agency is hunting me." Stick to the facts as much as possible. "I'm not safe anywhere."

"Mr. Epstein," Kobb said, "you should know that we're on tenuous legal ground. Now that Mr. Cooper's ident.i.ty is out in the open, we can't claim plausible deniability. This is verging dangerously close to harboring a fugitive."

"Thank you, Bob," the billionaire said dryly. "We can take the risk for a few more moments. I don't think Agent Cooper is here to entrap us."

"No, sir. In fact, I need your help. I'd like to start over here. In New Canaan." He forced himself not to look at the girl. She would know he was lying, or at least not telling the whole truth. The best he could hope was that she wouldn't interject, that she offered an opinion only when asked.

Epstein steepled his fingers. "I see. And for that you need my help."

"Yes."

"Because you have a lot of enemies."

"Yes. But I could be a good friend to you."

Kobb said, "Mr. Epstein, this is a bad-"

The billionaire silenced him with a look. To Cooper, he said, "Would you give us a moment? I'd like to speak to Ms. Azzi and Mr. Kobb privately." He turned to face the girl. "Millie, would you bring Mr. Cooper to the executive lounge?"

Cooper shot a glance at Shannon, couldn't read her response. They'd formed something of a bond over the last days, but she didn't owe him anything. For a moment he considered refusing. But what would be the point? If he was caught, he was caught.

With exaggerated nonchalance, he stood. "Sure." Millie slid off the couch, her d-pad clutched tight to her chest. She walked to a blank wall. Part of it slid aside as she reached it, a hidden door he hadn't noticed. How much else had he missed?

At least the girl was going with him. Whatever she had figured out, she wouldn't be able to tell. He followed her in and found himself in another elevator. There were no b.u.t.tons, no control panel. The muscles of his lower back tightened. He wondered if "executive lounge" was code for something.

Something like "interrogation cell."

You bought the ticket. Time to take the ride.

The last thing he saw as the door slid shut was Shannon looking over her shoulder at him, something inscrutable in her eyes.

Standing in the tiny box, he had a sudden vision of himself as though from a satellite. A close-up that quickly zoomed out: man in a box in a building in a complex in a city in a state in a nation-and an enemy of all of them. Panic slid slick fingers through his stomach. He took a breath, rolled his shoulders. Only way out was through.

Millie stared at the middle distance, her face hidden by bright green bangs. She looked so lost that for a moment he forgot his own situation. He wondered how many meetings she had sat through, how many billion-dollar deals. How many times her insight had led to someone's death. The weight of it would have been a lot for a soldier to bear. And she was just a child.

"It's okay," she said.

Cooper started. He wondered if she meant his situation or hers. "It is?"

"Yes."

He blew a breath. "All right. If you say so."

Again, he couldn't feel which direction the elevator was going, but it could only be down. And given the length of the ride, lower than the ground floor. Odd. And why a private elevator with a hidden door? What kind of executive lounge was accessed through the boss's office?

Ten more seconds, and the door slid open. Another hallway, but no sunlight or botanical garden here. They were in the bas.e.m.e.nt, huddled beneath the humming power lines that drove the building.

"Go ahead," Millie said.

"You're not coming?"

She shook her head, still staring at the floor. "Go to the end. There's a door."

Cooper looked at her, then down the hallway. Shrugged. "Thanks." He stepped off the elevator.

"You should be careful," Millie said behind him.

"Why?"

For a moment, he thought she wouldn't answer. Then she raised her head, swatted a lock of green hair behind one ear. Took him in with those strange, sad eyes. "Everybody's lying," she said. "Everybody."

The elevator door slid closed.

Cooper stared at it. Slowly, he turned back and faced the dim hallway. He flexed his fingers. Wondered how deep he was right now. At least as far underground as he'd been above it a moment before. Something nagged at his subconscious, that hint of a puzzle piece that hadn't fallen into place yet, a pattern he could sense more than see. A hidden door. A private elevator. A child for an escort. A gifted, troubled child.

What was this place?

If this is the executive lounge, I'd sure hate to see the regular one.

He started down the hall. Thick carpet muted his footsteps. He could hear the rush and whoosh of air, ventilation systems of some sort. The walls were undecorated. He ran a hand down them; carbon fiber weave, very strong, very expensive.

At the end of the hall, a door swung open. There was no one standing there, and the room beyond it was dark.

With the feeling that he was entering some sort of a dream, he walked in.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

Data. Constellations of numbers glowing like stars, neon swipes of sine-curves, charts and graphs in three dimensions, hovering everywhere he looked. It was like walking into a planetarium, that darkened silence and sense of wonder, only instead of the heavens, it was the world hanging in every direction, the world broken down into digits and sweeps and waves.

Cooper blinked, stared, turned slowly on his heel. The room was big, an underground cathedral, and in all directions, three hundred and sixty degrees, luminous figures hung in the air. Things cycled and changed as he watched, the light seemingly alive, the correlations bizarre: population figures graphed against water consumption and the average length of women's skirts. Frequency of traffic accidents on non-rural roads between the hours of eight and eleven. Sunspot activity overlaid on homicide rates. A chronology of deaths in the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union mapped to the price of crude oil. Explosions in post offices from 1901 to 2012.

In the center of this circus of light stood the silhouetted ringmaster. If he was aware of Cooper, he didn't show it. He raised a hand, pointed at a graph, swiped sideways and zoomed to a micro level, red and green dots plotted like a map of the ocean floor.

The air was cold and smelled of...corn chips?

Cooper walked down the ramp in front of him. As he pa.s.sed through a graph, the projections glowed in his peripheral vision, a neat line that swept across his body. "Ummm...h.e.l.lo?"

The figure turned. The ambient light was too dim to make out his features. He gestured to Cooper to come forward. When they were ten feet apart, the man said, "Lights to thirty percent," and soft, shadowless illumination sprang from nowhere and everywhere at once.