Brilliance. Part 8

"A cell phone, probably," she continued. "Cheap, dependable, won't arouse suspicion if you're caught with it. Just dial the-" She broke off, her eyes going wide. "Bobby, move."

"Huh?"

"Move." She pushed the man out of his chair, then took it herself. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. The big screen flickered, and the frozen video of the explosion vanished, replaced by columns of numbers.

Cooper said, "If you can access the local cell towers and isolate calls made within a few seconds of the explosion-"

"I'm on it, boss."

A voice from behind said, "We need to talk."

d.i.c.kinson. d.a.m.n, but he walks softly for a big man. Cooper turned, met the agent's eyes. Saw the anger crackling there. Not rage, nothing so out of control. More like anger was the fuel his engine burned.

To his team Cooper said, "Keep on it. This won't take long." He started away, jerking his head for d.i.c.kinson to follow without waiting to see if the man would. Alpha dog posturing, stupid but necessary. He led the way to a dead s.p.a.ce beside the stairs, put on a smile because he just couldn't resist, and said, "What's on your mind?"

"What's on my mind? How about what's on your collar?" d.i.c.kinson gestured. "That wouldn't be a little Bryan Vasquez, would it?"

Cooper glanced down. "No. That blood belonged to a woman I pulled away from the fire."

"Are you actually proud of yourself?"

"That's not the word I'd choose, no. You got a point?"

"I found Bryan Vasquez. I brought him in. We had one lead, one, and I brought him in. And you just let him get blown up."

"Yeah, none of us really liked him. We took a vote, decided what the h.e.l.l-"

"Is this a joke to you?"

"Tell me, Roger. What would you have done differently?"

"I wouldn't have put him on that street corner in the first place."

"Oh yeah? Just lock up his twist-loving a.s.s and throw away the key?"

"No. Handcuff his twist-loving a.s.s to a chair and go to work."

"A little recreational enhanced interrogation?" Cooper snorted, shook his head. "You could waterboard him till he grew gills, and it wouldn't change the fact that he didn't know anything."

"You don't know that. And now we never will."

"We're agents of the United States government, not some Third-World dictator's private security force. That is not the way we work. We don't have a torture chamber in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"Yeah, well." d.i.c.kinson stared at him, his gaze level, eyes unblinking. "Maybe we should."

Yikes.

"Roger, I don't know what your problem is. I don't know if it's a personal grudge, or ambition, or if you just need to get laid. But we have a fundamental difference of opinion on what our mission is. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go do my actual, legal job." He started away.

"You want to know what my problem with you is? Seriously, do you want to know?"

"I already do." Cooper turned. "I'm an abnorm."

"No. It's got nothing to do with that. I'm not a bigot. The problem," d.i.c.kinson said, stepping forward, "is that you're weak. You're in charge, and you're weak. And Equitable Services needs strong people. Believers." He held the glare for a moment longer, and then he brushed past.

Cooper watched him go. Shook his head. I'm going to go with needs to get laid.

"Everything copacetic?" Bobby Quinn asked as he returned to the workstation.

"Sure. What have we got?"

Valerie West said, "The nearest cell tower reports a dozen calls within ten seconds. Eight of them local. When you triangulate the location, only one set of GPS coordinates makes sense: 38.898327 by -77.027775."

"Which is..."

"Right about..." She zoomed on the map. As she did, Cooper felt that intuitive tingle, like a tickle in his brain, his gift jumping ahead to tell him what he was about to see. "There." The screen showed G Street, half a block east of 12th. The entryway to a bank. He recognized it.

He'd been standing right beside it.

Cooper closed his eyes, thought back. The movement of the moment, so many things he'd been taking in. The faded yellow blur of a taxi. The smell of auto exhaust, cooking grease from a fast-food restaurant. The muted rumble of the Metro and the rot smell of the sewer grate and the squeal of brakes two blocks down and the very, very pretty girl talking on the cell phone.

You gotta be kidding me. He turned to Quinn. "Do we have video of that spot?"

"My cams were all pointing across the street." His partner looked at the screen, pinched his lips, then snapped his fingers. "The bank. It would have security cameras."

"Get in touch. See if you can find a picture of our bomber."

Quinn s.n.a.t.c.hed his suit coat from the back of the chair. "On it."

Cooper turned back to the two women. "We need to get out ahead of this thing. Valerie, we have Alex's and Bryan's cell phones, right?"

She nodded. "SOP would be to dupe his when we arrested him. And a.n.a.lysts are probably already working her phone, pattern building based on the contact info."

"Good. Initiate a search. I want digital taps on every number in their cell phone. To two degrees of separation."

Luisa's mouth fell open. "Jesus," she whispered.

Valerie was doing that thing with her hands again, only without the napkin to shred this time. "Two degrees?"

"Yeah. I want taps on every contact in both phones. Then, any number that has connected with any of those contacts? I want them tapped too. Going back...six months."

"Christ on a chorus line." Luisa stared. "That'll be hundreds of people."

"Probably more like fifteen or twenty thousand." Cooper glanced at his watch. "Get the academy coders on board. Pull them off the Echelon II scans we're running for John Smith if you have to. If anyone out there says anything, anything that sounds related to this attack, I want a.n.a.lysts digging in fifteen seconds later. You get me?"

"I get you." Valerie's face showed the early traces of excitement. It was a dream for someone like her. The keys to the kingdom. He had essentially made this the single biggest investigative priority in the country and then put her in charge of it.

"Boss," Luisa said. "I don't mean to second-guess. But twenty thousand NatSec taps, all initiated without a judge? Not to mention pulling the resources, what a monster b.i.t.c.h of a bill this will come with? Are you sure? I mean, you know what they'll do to you if it doesn't work, right?"

"I'll be sent to bed without supper." Cooper shrugged. "Make sure it works out. If it doesn't, we have bigger things to worry about than my career."

CHAPTER NINE.

The Monocle on Capitol Hill was an inst.i.tution. Located just a few blocks from the Senate offices, for fifty years the place had hosted DC's powerbrokers. The walls were covered with autographed eight by tens of every politician of influence for five decades, every president since Kennedy. It was busy even on a Monday evening.

A Monday evening like the one when John Smith strolled in.

He was broad shouldered but lithe, a quarterback's body wrapped in a decent suit, with a white shirt open-collared beneath. Three men followed him, their movements almost synchronized, as though they had practiced the act of stepping into a restaurant.

Smith ignored them. He paused in the entrance, looking around as if to memorize the scene. When a pretty hostess touched his arm and asked if he was meeting someone, he smiled as he nodded, and she smiled back.

The restaurant was split between bar and dining area. The former was boisterous, a deluge of laughter and conversation. Half a dozen flatscreens ran the Wizards game; three minutes to the end, and they were down ten points. The patrons were mostly men, ties tucked between the third and fourth b.u.t.tons of their shirts. Smith walked through, past the stools holding lawyers and tourists and clerks and strategists. The three men followed.

The restaurant portion was mood lighting and high-backed booths, patrician, with the feel of a previous era. An appellate judge clinked c.o.c.ktail gla.s.ses with a woman not his daughter. A family from Indiana took in the scene, mom and dad chatting around mouthfuls of steak while junior used the sc.r.a.ps of his hamburger to b.u.t.tress the walls of Fort French Fry. A corporate headhunter put the recruitment moves on a twentysomething in nerd gla.s.ses.

John Smith walked past them all to a booth on the right-hand side. The upholstery was dimpled and worn with use, and the table had the polish of decades. On the wall, Jimmy Carter beamed down, the words "Best crab cakes around!" slanting above his signature.

The man in the booth wore hair gel and pinstripes. His moustache was more salt than pepper, and the nose that had delighted caricaturists was crisscrossed with broken capillaries. But when he turned to look at John Smith, his eyes were bright and alert, and there was in that movement more than an echo of the figure he had cut, the once-feared and still-respected senator from Ohio, onetime chair of Finance, former presidential hopeful with a strong chance until the Panamanian thing.

For a moment the two men looked at one another. Senator Hemner smiled.

John Smith shot him in the face.

The three bodyguards shrugged out of their coats, revealing cross-slung Heckler & Koch tactical submachine guns. Each took the time to extend the retractable metal stock and brace the weapon against his shoulder. The red light of an exit sign fell like blood against their backs. Their shots were precise and cl.u.s.tered. There was no spraying, no wide sweeps. They double-tapped a target and moved to the next. Most of the victims hadn't even risen from their chairs. A few tried to run. A man made it halfway to the entry before his throat exploded. A woman in a dress rose, c.o.c.ktail gla.s.s shattering in her hand as the bullet pa.s.sed through it to her heart. Screaming and more shots came from the bar, where a second team had entered. A third team had broken through the back door and were shooting immigrants in chef whites. The mother from Indiana slid beneath the table and yanked her son with her, clutching him in her arms.

When the guns were empty, the men reloaded and began firing again.

Cooper touched the screen of his datapad, and the image froze. The security camera had been mounted near the stairs to the conference rooms, and the angle was at once disjointed and horrifying, the violence more real because of the lack of Hollywood techniques. The pause had caught a teardrop of white fire exploding from a submachine gun barrel. Behind the three, John Smith stood with his pistol at his side, his face attentive but not involved, a man watching a play. The body of Senator Max "Hammer" Hemner had fallen back against the booth, a neat hole punched in his forehead.

Cooper sighed, rubbed at his eyes. Almost two in the morning, but though he was tired and sore, sleep hadn't come. After lying in bed for forty-five useless minutes, he'd decided if he was just going to stare at something, better it was the case file than the ceiling.

He put a finger on the touchscreen and moved it slowly. The video scrubbed in response. Forward: A shooter released the magazine on his gun, let it fall to the ground as he slotted a replacement and aimed again. Backward: A shooter pulled the magazine from his gun as another leaped up from the floor and inserted itself into the weapon. The whole thing was Zen, smooth and clean and practiced. Almost the same forward or reverse.

Cooper used two fingers to zoom, then panned until Smith's face filled the screen. His features were balanced and even, strong jaw, good eyelashes. The kind of face a woman might find handsome rather than hot, the kind that belonged to a golf pro or a trial lawyer. There was nothing that hinted at barbarism or rage, no hint of giggling madness. As his soldiers killed everyone in the restaurant-every single man, woman, and child, busboy, tourist, and senator, seventy-three in all, seventy-three KIA and not one wounded-John Smith simply watched. Calm and unaffected. When it was done, he walked out. Strolled, really. Cooper had watched the video hundreds of times in the last four years, had grown inured to the obvious horrors, to the spray of blood and the lethal calm of the soldiers. But one thing chilled him still, a thing perhaps especially frightening to a man with his eyes. It was the total lack of impact the ma.s.sacre had on the man who started it. His shoulders were down, his neck was relaxed, his steps light, his fingers loose.

John Smith strolled out of the Monocle as if he'd just popped in for a quiet drink.

Cooper dumped out of the video, tossed the datapad on the table, and took a long swallow of water. Vodka sounded better, but it would make tomorrow morning's jog less pleasant. The ice had mostly melted, and the gla.s.s was slick with cold sweat. He rocked his neck from side to side, then picked the pad back up and began punching through the rest of the file, not looking for anything in particular. The headlines, ranging from dispa.s.sionate (ABNORM ACTIVIST SLAYS 73; SENATOR KILLED IN DC BLOODBATH) to incendiary (A GIFT FOR SAVAGERY; MONSTERS IN OUR MIDST). The stories that accompanied them, and the ones that ran in the weeks to follow. Reports of abnorm children beaten at their schools, a tier two lynched in Alabama. Columnists who appealed for calm and decency, who pointed out that the actions of a single individual should not be held against the group; other pundits who spewed smoke and ash, who whipped the baser demons to howl. The event had dominated headlines. But when John Smith hadn't been caught in months, and then years, the story faded from the foreground of public consciousness.

There was more. Text and video of speeches Smith had made for abnorm rights before the ma.s.sacre. He'd been a terrific speaker, actually, at once inspiring and intimate. Detailed logs of the Echelon II protocols running to find him. Incident reports from half a dozen near-misses. Biographic details, genetic profile, personal data. Lengthy a.n.a.lyses of his gift, a logistical and strategic sense that had made him a chess grand master at eleven. Transcriptions of every ranked chess match he had played. Terabytes of data, and Cooper had read every word, watched every frame.

And still, today.

A few more stabs at the datapad, and the headlines were replaced by the VCS. Virtual Crime Scenes, there was a piece of newtech he wasn't sure he was glad of. A photorealistic, completely manipulatable model of the inside of the Monocle as John Smith had left it, down to every smear of blood and spatter of brain matter. Cooper could pan and twist and tilt to any angle, could view the mess from the height of the ceiling or the intimacy of inches. It was an incredibly useful forensic tool that had been instrumental in solving many cases, but that didn't make it any easier to take when he scrolled down beneath the table where Juliet Lynch had dragged her son Kevin. Being able to see the angle of her body, the star-shaped hole in her face, that was forensically handy. But the ability to see her expression, the remnants of the face of a woman who had without warning watched her husband's head explode, who had in an incomprehensible instant gone from the simple happiness of a family vacation to howling chaos and the abyss, that Cooper didn't need or want. It was one thing to understand she had died knowing-not fearing, knowing-her son would die, too; it was another to see the holes in the hand she had stretched out to protect him, as if a mother's palm could stop bullets.

Screw the jog. Cooper pushed himself up from the couch and walked to the kitchen. The fluorescent light seemed surreal at this hour, and the standard-issue black-and-white floor tile was grim. He dumped the rest of his water in the sink, dropped a couple of ice cubes into the gla.s.s, and poured chilled vodka over them.

Back in the living room, he picked up his phone and dialed. Took a sip, savored the icy bite.

"Hey, Cooper," Quinn said, his voice thick with sleep. "You okay?"

"I was just watching the Monocle."

"Again?"

"Yeah. What are we doing, Bobby?"

"Well, we're not sleeping."

"Sorry about that."

"S'okay. Just busting your b.a.l.l.s. So. The Monocle."

"The VCS. That woman under the table."

"Juliet Lynch."

"Right. I was looking at that again, and it hit me, that could have been Natalie. And the kid, it could have been Todd."

"s.h.i.t. Yeah."

"What are we doing? All of us, I mean. Ever since I visited the academy, I haven't been able to shake it."

"Shake what?"

"The feeling that things are about to get a lot worse. That we're on the brink, and n.o.body seems to want to step away from it. All these horrors we're creating. The academies, the Monocle, they're the same. Flip sides of the same horror. And meanwhile, I've got two kids."

"And mentally you're putting Kate in an academy and Todd at the Monocle."

"Yeah."

"Don't."

"I know."

"All of this stuff, it's a mess. I know. We all know. Not just DAR. The whole country, the whole world knows it. We've been on this collision course for thirty years."

"So why aren't we swerving?"

"Got me, boss. That's above my pay grade."