Brilliance. Part 38

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE.

"Wake up."

Cold. It was cold. He heard the words through a haze, far away. Ignored them, grabbed at the covers and found- "Wake up, Cooper."

-a clump of something like pine needles in his hands, and the bed hard. Cooper's eyes snapped open. He wasn't in a bed, and there weren't covers, just half-discarded clothing piled atop them. A pine grove, and the trickle of a stream, and Shannon making sleepy murmurs. A shape above him, a man.

John Smith said, "Come on. I want to show you something." He turned and started walking.

Cooper blinked. Rubbed at his eyes. His body had gone stiff and sore.

Beside him, Shannon stirred. "What is it?"

"We fell asleep."

She sat up suddenly, and the jacket they'd been using as a blanket slipped down, revealing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, small and firm, the nipples dark. "What's going on?"

"He wants me to go with him." He gestured after the figure. The sky had lightened enough to bring faint color to the trees.

"Oh," she said. Still coming round. "Okay."

"I can stay."

"No." She rocked her neck to one side, the vertebrae cracking. Winced. "This is twice we've woken up badly. We're going to have to work on that."

"I'm willing to practice if you are."

She smiled. "You better go."

Smith had kept walking, wasn't looking back to see if he would follow. Because he knows I will. Cooper looked at her, saw that she knew it, too.

"It's okay," she said. "Really."

He stood creakily. Remembering the way they'd moved, like partners who had been dancing a long time. Her riding him under the moonlight, her head thrown back, hair flying free, Mediterranean skin gone pale against the spill of stars, the Milky Way. Both of them delaying, taking their time, slow fast slow, going until they were exhausted, and when they were spent, her collapsing against his chest. The feel of her sweet and warm, they wouldn't fall asleep, they'd just take a minute...

"Well, that was a first."

She quirked her sideways grin and said, "Imagine the second. Now, go."

He found his pants, pulled them on. She said, "Hold on." Reached a hand up and grabbed his shirt. The kiss was deep and sweet. His eyes were mostly closed, and when he'd opened them, briefly, he saw that hers were, too.

"Okay," she said. "I'm done with you."

He barked a laugh and stumbled after John Smith, b.u.t.toning his shirt as he went.

It was maybe four thirty, five in the morning. A thin mist hung low, and the sky had softened enough to hide the stars. His breath was fog. His head, too. He didn't push it, focused on motion, working out the cramps in his legs, getting some blood flowing. He knew the thoughts would come, and the memories, and they wouldn't all be of s.e.xual abandon.

And by the time he'd caught up to Smith, he was...what? Not himself. He wasn't sure what that meant anymore. The self-a.s.sured agent? The idealist willing to kill for his country? The father who taught his children to hate bullies?

The most wanted man in America had his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the peaks Cooper had noticed the day before, the spires rising from the ridge like fingers. "How's your balance?"

Cooper looked at him, auditioned a dozen smart-a.s.s remarks. Then he started moving, heading for the base of the tallest spire. Smith joined him. They didn't speak, just walked, the ground rapidly growing steep, tree cover falling away. At first Cooper's mind ran in a loop, replaying everything he'd learned the night before, looking for holes, desperate for them. Within half an hour, though, the incline had grown intense enough that thought was replaced with action, step step step breathe, step step step breathe. Soon he was using hands as often as feet, the rock rough against his fingers. The base of the towers was a scree field, loose flat stone that skittered and slipped beneath his feet. It was noisy and treacherous, every step holding the risk of picking the wrong rock and surfing it down, a sure ticket to a broken leg at the least. They were both panting now, Cooper's shirt soaked with sweat.

The fingers turned out to be towers of blocky boulders fifty yards high. Smith started on one side; Cooper pulled himself up the other. The grips were solid and broad, and he climbed with confidence as the ground fell away. There was a heart-stopping moment when a foothold crumbled, but his arms held, and he jammed his toes in a narrow crack and continued up. After a few minutes Cooper tilted his head back and saw that the top was only twenty feet above. Energy surged through him, and he pushed into motion. No way was Smith beating him there.

If it had been a race, they'd have needed a replay to confirm the winner. Cooper thought it had been him by a nose, pretty much literally, hauling himself face-first onto the rocky peak. And then they were sitting on top of the world, and for just an instant, grinning at each other, no thought behind it, no promises, just two men recognizing the essential stupidity and joy of what they had done together.

The summit was about eight feet wide. Cooper crawled to the other side and looked over, felt vertigo twitch in his belly for the first time. On this edge the ridge fell away dramatically, a sheer drop of four hundred feet. He pushed back and sat cross-legged. Dawn now, the sky bright though the sun still played coy. "Nice view."

"Thought you'd like it," Smith said, looking at his hands. There was blood on them, a sc.r.a.pe, and he wiped them on his pants. "You okay?"

Cooper heard the multiple meanings in the question, had a flicker of insight into the man. There would never be just one thing happening here. Always levels. He couldn't turn off his gift for tactical thinking any more than Cooper could turn off his patterning.

Even now, patterning the man. "I just got it."

"Got what?"

"Helen Epeus. Epeus built the Trojan horse. And Helen, she was the reason for the war. There was no woman waiting for you. It was a joke."

Smith smiled. Layers of meaning. Who knew how deep they ran.

"So we're here," Cooper said, "for symbolic reasons, right? Two guys waiting for the sunrise. No baggage up here. Can't climb with it."

"Something like that, yeah."

"What you told me last night. It's true?"

"Yes."

"That's how we're going to do this. I want truth. No agendas, no goals, no manipulation. No underlying reasons, no rationalization. Just truth."

"Okay."

"Because, John, I'm in a ragged place, emotionally speaking. And it's entirely within the realm of possibility that I decide to throw your a.s.s off this rock."

He saw the words. .h.i.t, saw that Smith believed him. To his credit-whatever else he was, he wasn't a coward-Smith said, "Okay. But it goes both ways. You ask a question, I ask a question. Deal?"

"Fine. Did you blow up the Exchange?"

"No. But I was going to."

"You planted the bombs."

"Yes. I also had Alex Vasquez set to cripple military response at the same moment, and a few other strikes that I aborted."

"Why?"

"Because I got beaten." Smith scowled, and G.o.dd.a.m.n if there wasn't embarra.s.sment behind it. "I hate to say it, but it's true. I underestimated the ruthlessness of my opponent. Fatal mistake."

"Explain."

"The Exchange had no tactical value, didn't hurt me per se. Destroying it was a symbolic stroke. But sometimes those are the most effective. I wanted to refocus the country on the idea that if there's going to be a future together, then we need to start thinking of it that way." Smith raised his arms up, stretching them out. "So I planned to blow it up. But when it was empty."

"That's easy to claim."

"It's not a claim, Cooper. It was the point. If we're going to coexist, the normal world has to stop trying to find ways to exclude us. Destroying the building was a way of saying that. But butchering a bunch of innocent people, what good would that do me? That would only hurt our cause. As, in fact, it did."

Shannon had said the same thing. Of course, she would have heard it from him. Cooper said, "You had to know that targeting it put innocent people at risk."

"A calculated risk. I wasn't hoping it would be empty. I planned for it to be."

"Nice work."

"As I said, I got beaten."

"What was the plan?"

"To release a video to every major media organization announcing that I planned to blow up the Exchange at two o'clock the following day. In it I'd say that any effort to disarm the bombs would result in me triggering them early. That they had until then to clear everyone out and evacuate the area."

"So why didn't you release it?"

"I did."

"You-what?" Cooper had been jumping ahead, old interrogation habits, and the answer threw him.

"I did release it. Sent it to seven media outlets. The networks, CNN, MSNBC, even Fox."

"But-"

"But you didn't see it." Smith nodded. "Yeah. That was where I got beat."

"You're saying that you sent the warning, and that none of the networks-"

"None of them aired it. Not one. Not before, and not after. Seven allegedly independent media organizations knew that I intended to blow up the building. They knew that it would happen around two o'clock. They knew that if they didn't broadcast it, people would die. Eleven hundred and forty-three people, as it turned out."

Vertigo strobed through Cooper again, though he sat nowhere near the edge. "You're saying someone blocked that story?"

"Yes. Spiked it seven times. My turn. Who has the power to do that?"

Cooper hesitated.

"Who can convince, or force, seven independent networks to bury a story? Could a rogue group do it? A terrorist?"

"No."

"No. Only someone in the system. Only the system itself."

"Drew Peters again."

"Maybe." Smith shrugged. "I don't know exactly. All I know is, when they didn't air that video, when I saw that the government wasn't evacuating, I realized what would happen if those bombs went off. And so I activated my contingency plan."

"Shannon."

"Shannon."

Cooper thought back to that moment six month ago, him running down the hall at her, Shannon looking up, telling him to wait, that he didn't understand. Jesus.

Would she have succeeded in stopping the bombs if he hadn't caught her? Was this one more load on his creaking conscience?

"So who benefits from something like this, Cooper? Who benefits from the Exchange blowing up?"

"You asked your question."

"Call this a follow-up."

He knew the answer, both the one Smith wanted to hear and the larger truth behind it. Yesterday, he couldn't have imagined admitting it. But this morning, as the first sharp rays of the sun split the horizon, he just said what his gift told him. "People who want a war."

"That's right. People who want a war. People who believe that it will make them richer, or more powerful. A few, even, who might truly believe that a war is necessary. But while there have been a handful of times in history when war truly was necessary, never, not once, has a war against our own children been justified. No, the people who want to start this war, they want to benefit from it."

"How did the bombs go off if you didn't trigger them?"

"Is that your question?"

"Call it a follow-up."

Smith laughed. "All five had a radio trigger with a specific code frequency. No one but me knew the code."

"So how-"

"Because I warned them."

He stopped talking, let Cooper work it out. "Your message gave someone enough time to find the bombs and break the code."

"Again, I didn't realize just how ruthless my enemy was. I knew they hated me, knew they wanted a war. But even I never believed they would blow up their own building, kill a thousand people, just to foster it."

"But...why?"

"Men will always find a reason."

Cooper thought about that. Thought that it was probably true. "Next question. What about the rest?"