Brilliance. Part 43

Peters: Somewhere between fifty and a hundred.

Walker: That many?

Peters: A small price to defend hundreds of millions.

Walker: And these will be civilians.

Peters: Yes.

Walker: All?

Peters: Yes, sir.

Walker: No. No, that won't do.

Peters: To ensure they're seen as terrorists, it has to be civilians. An attack against the military frames them as a military power. It defeats- Walker: I understand. But we need a symbol of the government there as well. Otherwise, it will seem random and unfocused.

Peters: What about an attack on your office?

Walker: Let's not get carried away. No, I was thinking a senator, or a Supreme Court judge. Someone respected, symbolic. And we'll need a patsy, too. A capable one who won't get caught right away. Someone to become the boogeyman.

Peters: I have one in mind, sir. An activist named John Smith.

Walker: I know of him.

Peters: He's already made a pest of himself; it's only a matter of time before he would resort to violence anyway. And he's very capable. Once we tip him over, he'll play the part. Any, ah, symbolic target in particular?

Walker: I can think of a few.

To 24:11: Walker: The key is to not let this get out of hand. We need an incident that unites the country, that justifies your work. Not something that kicks off a holy war.

Peters: I understand, and I agree. Frankly, the gifted are too valuable to risk.

Walker: Amen. But they need to be kept in their place.

Peters: Sometimes war is the only route to peace.

Walker: I think we understand one another.

To 28:04: Peters: I've already chosen a target. A restaurant. I've got teams ready.

Walker: This is a hard a.s.signment. Some of your shooters might flinch.

Peters: Not these men.

Walker: And afterward? Can you depend on their discretion?

Peters: Depend on it? No. But I can a.s.sure it.

Walker: Are you saying- Peters: Operational details.

To 30:11: Peters: Sir, I will handle everything. I will shield the administration in every way. But I need to hear directly from your lips, sir. I can't proceed on an a.s.sumption.

Walker: You're not recording this, are you?

Peters: Don't be ridiculous.

Walker: I'm kidding, Peters. Good lord, if you were recording this we'd both be up a creek.

Peters: True. So. Sir? I need explicit authorization.

Walker: Do it. Orchestrate the attack.

Peters: And you understand that we're talking about civilian casualties, maybe as many as a hundred of them.

Walker: I do. And I'm telling you to do it. As my daddy always said, freedom isn't free.

Cooper tapped the pause b.u.t.ton. A freeze-frame of the two men shaking hands, the director leaning out of his chair to reach across the table.

Bobby Quinn looked like a man desperate to rewind his life. To go back and make a left turn instead of a right. "I don't believe it."

Cooper stared at him. At the topography of his facial musculature, the zygomatic major and minor, the buccinator driving the corners of his mouth. "Yes, you do."

"It's not possible," Quinn said heatedly. "You're saying that Director Peters planned the ma.s.sacre at the Monocle?"

"The murder of seventy-three people, including children. Yes."

"But...why?"

Cooper sighed. "Because all the talk about preventing a war is bulls.h.i.t. What they really want is to control it. They want to generate and maintain war at a low simmer. They want us all wound up and mistrusting each other. Norms and abnorms, left and right, rich and poor, all of it. The more we fear, the more we need them. And the more we need them, the more powerful they get."

"He's the president, Cooper. How much more-"

"That's right. He went from secretary of defense to president of the United States. What does that tell you? And remember Equitable Services before the Monocle? Limping along in an abandoned paper plant, no funding, no support, rumors of congressional investigations that could send us all to jail? Then an activist who had never been violent before all of a sudden walks into a restaurant and murders everyone. And poof, the rest of the country starts seeing things Drew Peters's way."

"But what about the video from the restaurant?"

"The security footage is real. But Peters had an abnorm edit John Smith in later. The shooters work for Peters. Or did. I a.s.sume they're dead now."

"There you go," Quinn said. "If that video is fake, why is this one real?"

"Who could fake it?"

"John Smith-"

"No." Cooper shook his head. "The Monocle could be faked because Smith was relatively unknown, and the footage quality is poor, and especially because it was the DAR that did the investigation. But you can't fake footage of the president. There's too much of it available, too many ways to check it, too many people eager to. And why go to such lengths to hide a fake video?

"Besides. How many meetings have you sat in with Drew Peters? You really going to tell me that wasn't him?"

Quinn said, "So why isn't it encrypted?"

"I wondered that, too. But then I realized-it's an insurance policy. No doubt Peters has some sort of fail-safe that tells people where to find this if he dies mysteriously. If it were encrypted, it would defeat the point.

"This whole thing," Cooper said. "Everything we've done for the last years. All the actions, all the terminations. None of it was about truth, about protecting the public. They were just moves in a game we didn't know about, made by players who don't even want to win. No one wants to kill all the gifted. They just want to control them. And the rest of the country. And you know what? They do."

Quinn said, "The terminations?" Going through the same thing Cooper had the night before, the first nibbles of a horror that would soon sink its fangs deep. "You're saying that some of the people we killed, they-"

"Yeah," Cooper said. He pitied the guy, wanted to give him time to process it, to begin to deal with the enormity of everything. But that risked Quinn freezing up, and there wasn't time for that. "And I'm sorry to say this, but it gets worse."

"How the h.e.l.l can it get-"

"They have my children."

"They-who?"

"Peters."

"Come on, Cooper. That's paranoid."

"It's not. I called home. Roger d.i.c.kinson answered."

"Oh." Quinn stared. "Oh s.h.i.t."

"What?"

His partner played with an imaginary cigarette and looked away. "I couldn't figure out why they'd put me in charge of the faceless at the cemetery. After all, d.i.c.kinson is the one with a hard-on for you. But just before Peters ordered me there, d.i.c.kinson left his office like his a.s.s was on fire. Wouldn't talk to anyone, just bolted out. He must have been-"

"Going to my house. To kidnap my children."

"Yeah." Quinn turned to look at him. "I'm sorry, Coop. I didn't know. I would have stopped him."

"I know."

"So what, they want you to turn yourself in? d.i.c.kinson will kill you."

"If I thought it would save Natalie and the kids, I'd sacrifice myself. But they won't. By going undercover, I've given them too good a hand."

He watched Quinn work it out. "You're thinking that from the beginning, Peters let you do this because he'd win either way. Either you found Smith and killed him, or else..."

"Or else I volunteered to be the fall guy for real. Yeah. Everything I've done the last six months, it looks guilty. And now that I know about this?" Cooper gestured. "No, if I go in, they'll claim my cover story as true. Peters really will blame me for the March 12th explosion. He'll serve up my corpse to the media. A huge win for Equitable Services. Proof that the nation is in good hands. Billions of dollars in additional funding."

"And he can't have your ex going on CNN, saying that it's all a lie. Even if she's not believed, it spoils the PR value." Quinn nodded. "But how can he get rid of them? Kind of convenient if they just disappeared."

"Easy. I came back to kill them. Equitable Services tried to stop me, but they were too late. A tragedy, but at least they took down the bad guy. And perhaps if they had more resources..."

"But why would you kill your own-"

"Because I'm a crazy abnorm terrorist. Who knows how those people think. They're not even people."

Quinn said, "Jay-sus." He blew a long breath. "I don't want to believe this."

"But you do."

"I..." Quinn hesitated. "Yeah. I do."

"I need your help, Bobby. I need to get my children back. And then we have to make sure that this gets out. They can't get away with it. We can't let them."

"Do you know what you're saying? You're talking about taking on the president."

"I'm talking about two terrified children. And I'm talking about telling the truth."

"Coop, I want to help, but..."

"I know. But remember how I said I wasn't a DAR agent anymore? Well, are you? After seeing that? You've only got two choices, Bobby. You can pretend you don't know that everything you've served is a lie. Or you can help me."

It really was as simple as that, and Cooper made himself stop. All he'd wanted, back in the cemetery, was half an hour to make the man understand. Now he'd had it. There was no selling Quinn, no convincing him. No rhetorical flourish would make the difference, no appeal to emotion.

Either Bobby Quinn was a good man, or Cooper and his family were dead.

Quinn jammed the pads of his fingers into his eyes. "s.h.i.t." The words were m.u.f.fled by his hands. Then he straightened and blew a long breath. "So what do we do?"

"Well, to start," Cooper smiled and tugged at his wrist, "do you think you could unlock me?"

His partner laughed. "Sorry." He pulled the cuff key from his belt and tossed it over. "The truth shall set you free, right?"

"Something like that. That's our play, too. We use the video to set a trap for Peters."

"Sounds like you have a plan."

"The beginnings of one."

"Well, that's a relief. Sure, we're facing the most powerful covert organization on the planet, and in possession of stolen information that the president would nuke DC to keep private, but at least you have the beginnings of a plan. I was worried for a second."

"Hey," Cooper said, "the way I see it, the chance of success just doubled. Now it's the whole government against two of us."

"Three," said a voice behind them.

They both whirled. Quinn went for his weapon, but Cooper caught his partner's arm.

She stood with her hip popped, one hand leaning on the other side. A pose, c.o.c.ky and capable, her lips quirked in that sideways grin. "You left without saying good-bye, Nick. A girl might take that wrong."

Quinn said, "Who the h.e.l.l are you, and how did you get here?"

Cooper said, "h.e.l.lo, Shannon." She looked good. d.a.m.n good. He met her gaze, saw all the levels in it, strength, determination, and, beneath it, some hurt. He smiled in a way he hoped was apologetic, then said to Quinn, "She does that." To Shannon, he said, "When did you get here?"

"About an hour after you."

"Smith sent you?"