Brilliance. Part 32

The man was thick around the waist, the beginnings of a second chin sprouting off the bulwark of the first. His skin was pallid and vaguely shiny, hair a rat's nest. He ran a hand through it with the jerky speed of a regular twitch. Cooper stared at him, the pattern beginning to come together, the truth of it huge and shattering and suddenly obvious.

"Hi," the man said. "I'm Erik Epstein."

Cooper opened his mouth, closed it. The truth slamming home, obvious. The structure of the face, the shape of the eyes, the breadth of the shoulders. It was like looking at the pudgy, nervous double of the handsome, a.s.sured billionaire he'd just left.

"The hologram," Cooper said. "It's a fake. It's all you."

"What? No. Huh-uh. Reasonable intuitional leap based on limited data, but incorrect. The hologram is real. I mean, the man is real. But he's not me. He plays me. He's been me for a long time now."

"An...actor?"

"A doppelganger. My face and voice."

"I-I don't-"

"I don't like people. I mean, I like people, people don't like me. I'm not good at people. In person. They're clearer as data."

"But. Your...doppelganger, he's been on the news. He eats dinner at the White House."

Epstein stared at him as if waiting for him to say something else.

"Why?"

"For a while I could just be in the data, but we knew people would want to see me. People are funny that way, they want to see, even when seeing isn't the point. Astronomy. The important information scientists get from telescopes isn't visible. Radiation spectra, red-line shift, radio waves. Data. That's what matters. That's what tells us something. But people want to see pictures. Supernova in vivid color. Even though scientifically it's useless."

Cooper nodded, getting it. "He's your color photo. What was he, someone who looked a lot like your high school yearbook?"

"My brother. Older."

That couldn't be. Epstein had had an older brother, a normal, but he'd died a dozen years ago in a car crash. "Wait. You faked his death?"

"Yes."

"But that was before anyone knew about you. Before you made your fortune."

"Yes."

"Are you telling me you two planned this twelve years ago?"

"Together we are Erik Epstein. I live in the data. And he is what people want to see. Better at talking to them." Epstein twitched his hands through his hair again. "Here." He gestured, and a vivid image appeared. The office upstairs, but from a different angle. Shannon in the chair, saying something. The lawyer, Kobb, shaking his head. Millicent hunch-shouldered, lost in her game. A security camera?

No; the angle was wrong. It was the view from behind the desk. The room as viewed by the hologram. By the other Erik Epstein.

"Do you see? We share eyes."

The enormity of it. For more than a decade, the world had watched one Erik Epstein, heard him talk on CNN, followed his political maneuverings to establish New Canaan, tracked his corporate takeovers, seen him board private jets. All the while, the real Erik Epstein had been out of sight. Living in this bas.e.m.e.nt, this dark cave of wonders.

He wondered if anyone in the DAR knew it. If the president knew it.

"But...why? Why not just stay out of sight?"

"Too hard. Too many questions. People want to see." He said it nervously. "I like people. I understand them. But it would have been too hard. I didn't want press conferences. I wanted to work in the data. Do you know what Michelangelo said?"

Cooper blinked, thrown by the change in topic. "Umm."

"'In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in att.i.tude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.'" The words running together. When he finished, again Epstein fell silent, waiting.

Whatever this is, it's important. One of the most powerful men on the planet is showing you a secret that at best a handful of people know. There's a reason.

Cooper paused and then said, "The way Michelangelo saw marble, that's how you saw the stock market."

"Yes. No. Not just that. Everything. Data." He turned and waved his arms in an intricate series of gestures. The whole room reacted, shimmering and twisting, a psychedelic light show of charts and numbers and moving graphs. A new set of data appeared. "Here. You see?"

Cooper stared, tracked from chart to chart. Tried to make sense of what he was looking at. Do what you do. Find the patterns the way you can a.s.semble a picture of someone's life from their apartment.

Population figures. Resource usage. A time-lapse of Wyoming from above, taken over years, the brown wasteland sprouting a neat geometric pattern of cities and roads. A three-dimensional chart of the incidents of violence in Northern Ireland mapped against the number of British pubs and the average attendance figures of churches. "New Canaan."

"Obvious." Impatient.

"Its growth. There," Cooper said, pointing, "that's about the external resources the Holdfast depends on. External resources are weak points, dependencies that could be used against you. And..." He stared, feeling that intuitional leap, almost tasting it, but not grasping it. He strained, knowing as he did that it didn't work that way, any more than an artist could force a masterpiece.

New Canaan. This is about New Canaan. Only, most of it wasn't, at least not explicitly. The historical data. The Sicarii in Judea and the murder of priests in a crowd, the numbers rising, then the intersection of that line and the sudden plummet. Something called the Hashshashin plotted against Shia Muslims in the eleventh century. He didn't know what the words meant, or knew only fragments. Hashshashin. Wasn't that the original term for "a.s.sa.s.sin"? He thought so, but also thought he'd picked that up in a kung-fu movie. He simply didn't know enough history.

Forget what you don't know. Look at the patterns. What do they say?

"Violence. This is about violence." The words came out before the thought had finished forming.

"Yes! More."

"I don't..." He turned to Epstein. "I'm sorry, Erik, I can't see the way you see. What are you showing me? Why?"

"Because I want you to do something for me."

Favors for favors, sure. He'd watched the meeting upstairs. "You want me to do something in order to get your protection here, start a new life."

"No," the man said, his voice thick with scorn. "Not the lie. You don't want a new life here. That's not why you came."

Careful. This could all be a trap. What if he wants you to reveal your real purpose so that he can...

What? This man, this gifted and odd and immensely powerful man, would he really share his secret just to uncover you? Ridiculous. If he cared, he could have had you thrown out of the NCH. Or buried in the desert.

"No," Cooper said, "it's not."

"No. I know what you came for. It's in the data." Another whirl of his hands, and the room was suddenly filled with Cooper's life. A scrolling timeline of every recorded date of importance in his life, from his hospitalization as a teenager to his divorce from Natalie. A geographical chart of the people he had killed. A table marking the frequency his ID had been used to access the DAR bathroom, and at what hours.

A case-file note about Katherine Sandra Cooper, age four: "Subject related details of teacher's personal life suggesting strong abnorm tendencies. Recommend testing ahead of standard."

Cooper's stomach went cold. "You're looking at my child?"

"The data. I look at the data. It tells me the truth. Now you tell me the truth. Why are you here?"

He turned from the screens. Fixed the man with a hard stare. The feeling he had, it was like getting e-mailed a p.o.r.n video that turned out to be his wedding night, as if some shadowy freak had been hiding in the closet with a camera. Epstein looked at him, looked away, shot a hand through his hair again.

"I'm here," Cooper said, slowly, "to find and kill John Smith."

"Yes," Epstein said. "Yes."

"And you're not trying to stop me."

"No." The man tried a smile, his lips wriggling like worms. "I'm trying to help you."

Cooper walked down the hallway without seeing it. Trod the carpet without feeling it. Stepped into the elevator like a man asleep.

Tuned into Epstein's dream.

"It was never money. It was art. The stock market was marble and the billions my sculpture.

"And then the world took it away. My art scared them. Upset the way things worked.

"But it was never the money. The data, you see? It's the data. And so I needed a new project."

"New Canaan."

"Yes. A place for people like me. A place where artists could work together. Make new patterns and new data unlike anything ever. A place for freaks," he'd said, trying that smile again. "But then that upset things, too. Real art does. So I brought that into the pattern. In this new project, integrating with the rest of the world is part of the design. I realized people thought I was taking from them. I never wanted to take. It's not about the having, or the giving, it's about the making."

"What does this have to do with John Smith?"

"Look at the data. It's all there. Look at the Sicarii."

"I don't know what that means."

The man had snorted, a clever teacher with a dull student. "It means 'dagger-men.' In the first century, Judea was occupied by Romans. The Sicarii attacked people in public. Killed Romans, and also Herodians, those Jews who collaborated."

"They were terrorists," Cooper said, understanding beginning to dawn. "Early terrorists."

"Yes. Here." Erik had flicked his wrist and one graph expanded to fill the room in front of them. It was one Cooper had noticed before, a rising line marking murders. The line grew steadily...then intersected another line and plummeted. "You see?"

"They killed more and more people," Cooper said, "and then something happened." On intuition, he said, "The Romans decided they'd had enough."

Epstein nodded. "The Sicarii were hunted, pursued to the fortress of Masada, where they were either slaughtered or committed ma.s.s suicide. But look deeper."

"The rest of the Jews." It was coming clear to Cooper. "The Romans punished not just the killers, but the rest of the Jews." He turned to the man. "You want me to kill John Smith because if he keeps doing what he's doing, the government may turn against New Canaan."

"Will turn against. It's in the data. Extrapolating current terrorist activity and charting it against public countermeasures, mapped against similar historical datasets, there's a 53.2 percent chance that the US military will attack New Canaan within the next two years. A 73.6 percent within three."

Cooper had a flash of the briefings he'd seen, the preemptive plans, the missile strikes. One thing the DAR has, he'd thought on the way in, is plans. "So why not kill Smith yourself? You're the big man here. The King of New Canaan."

The abnorm had winced. "No. It's not. It doesn't work like that. Besides. I like people. But people like him."

"You want him dead, but you're afraid that if you kill him, your...artwork...will tear itself apart." Cooper laughed grimly. "Because no matter how smart or rich you are, he's a leader, and you're not."

"I know what I am." There was the faintest hint of sadness in his voice. "I'm not even me."

The whole thing felt vaguely dirty, had the stench of palace politics about it. An odd reaction, Cooper knew, but he couldn't shake it. Still, the arguments made sense. And Epstein was right-if things kept going the way they were, New Canaan would be destroyed. And it might not stop there. Congress had already approved a bill to implant microchips against the carotid artery of every gifted in America. What was to keep those chips from becoming bombs?

He'd never thought of himself as an a.s.sa.s.sin. He'd killed when he had to, but always for the greater good. That was a certainty that fueled him. It was the only thing that kept him apart from John Smith. This, though, felt like crossing a line.

What line? You came here to do this.

Yes. But not for him.

So don't do it for him. Do it for Kate. And then go home.

"You understand?" Epstein seemed nervous on the point, afraid. After all, he had revealed not only his secret, but his agenda. The man might have an unparalleled head for data, but a chess player he was not, Cooper realized.

"Yes, I understand."

"And you'll do it? You'll kill John Smith?"

Cooper had turned, started up the ramp. At the door, he'd turned, taken in the whirling chamber of data dreams, and the man at the center of it. An architect trapped in a palace of his own design, watching a tsunami approach.

"Yeah," he'd said. "Yeah, I'll kill him."

The elevator doors slid open. Cooper shook his head to clear it, then stepped out into the office. The sudden sunlight was bright but not clean, the air beyond the windows thick with dust. Shannon had looked up at him, quirked that grin of hers. The lawyer had twisted his lips. From behind the desk, the handsome hologram of Erik Epstein gestured him in.

It was only Millie who understood, though.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

The lawyer ushered them back the way they'd come, down the sun-smeared hallway and the tiered stacks of plants. Cooper paused at the door of "Epstein's" office, glanced back at the hologram. The thin, handsome doppelganger met his eyes, started a smile, and then canceled it. They stared at one another for a moment. Then, slowly, the faux-Epstein nodded and disappeared.

In the elevator, Kobb said, "I hope you realize what an honor that was. Mr. Epstein is a very busy man."

"Yeah," Cooper said. "It was eye-opening to meet him."

Kobb c.o.c.ked his head at that, didn't respond. Cooper had suspected the lawyer didn't know, felt it confirmed. He wondered how many people did.

The doors slid open on the lobby, the ma.s.sive tri-d tuned now to a nature show, lush jungle green, monkeys perched in the crooks of tree limbs, gauzy light filtering from a faraway sun. Shannon tucked her hands in her pockets, craning her neck. "Funny. After the display upstairs, this isn't quite as impressive."

"That's for sure." He turned to Kobb. "Thanks for the time."