She gaped at him. “The SEC and the IRS?”
“And the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and about fifty other organizations. We have thousands of employees in place. Not just investigators but the people they report to, and the people those people report to, all the way up to administration. Some of it is bribery. Some of it is manipulating idealism. Some of it is sculpting the careers of certain people. And with that is oversight. We have watchers watching the watchers to about ten removes. We have records on everyone. We know what everyone likes and doesn’t like, who they vote for, what they buy, who they fuck, what gets them high, what they’re afraid of losing, what they hunger for. We come at them from all directions, and we make sure that if they get spooked and want to tell someone, then the people or departments that would take that call are owned by us, too. Our operating capital is close to two billion dollars per year. And the funny thing is, most of the people we own think they’re working for clandestine agencies within their own organizations. They think they’re in quality control or a reporting agency or something like that. Ninety percent of them think they’re the good guys. But all of them work for us. So when we gamed the market the people who would raise red flags and write out arrest warrants belonged to us.”
Zephyr drank down the last gulp of whiskey without even tasting it. Hugo smiled and sipped his.
“So,” he said, “if you really want to create some kind of new world order you’d better start now, and you’d better be ready to invest the time and the attention to detail necessary to set it up right. You have the money. John and I are overseeing everything your lawyers do, so you know you’ll be protected. You have the operating capital and you have the plan. You talk about this singularity stuff so much, you almost have me believing in it.”
“It’s the only way to—”
“—save the world from itself. Yeah, I know. I’ve heard the sales pitch. What I’m asking, kiddo,” said Hugo, “is do you have the patience and do you have the nerve?”
She turned and looked out at the boats. The sun was low now, and it made everything—the sails, the trees, even the water—look as if they were on fire. It looked as if the whole world was burning.
“Yes,” she said.
Hugo finished his drink, studying her over the rim of his glass. His eyes were filled with a dark light, and when he lowered the glass he was smiling.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
HOME OF JACK LEDGER
NEAR ROBINWOOD, MARYLAND
MONDAY, MAY 1, 5:36 PM
They say war is hell. It is. Waiting, though, is its own kind of hell.
Sean, Rudy, and I were caught in that bubble of time between the end of that call and the arrival of the medics and our team coming to deliver the case file. Every second felt like an hour. And not a happy hour. Like an hour under torture by someone who makes Thomas of Torquemada and the fun kids of the Spanish Inquisition seem like supporting characters in Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Like that.
Ghost moved slowly around the yard, sniffing at the picnic table, at Lefty’s hat, at Em’s stuffed tree sloth, at the smashed remains of Ali’s phone, at Uncle Jack’s torn apron. He whined every now and then. Sean got up and began to follow him, picking up each item one at a time. Holding them. No, clutching them. I could see the white of the knuckles on his clenched fists. Rudy tried to say something, to comfort him, but I don’t think Sean could actually hear or understand human speech. His body language changed from robotic stiffness as he walked from one relic to another, and then to scarecrow slackness as he stood and stared with unblinking eyes at the things Ghost found. All I could do was watch. I pretty much think I’d rather be taking live fire than to have to sit there with my brother while we waited to find out if his wife and kids were even still alive.
So I forced myself to work the scene. To decode it.
The attack had to have happened quickly. The food on the grill was still there, though the steaks and the corn were burned to smoky cinders.Things had been dropped: a couple of ball gloves next to an old softball that looked like the one Sean and I used to play with once upon a time, an overturned beer bottle, a glass of iced tea with all the cubes melted, a pair of sunglasses that had been stepped on, Ali’s purse. And there was blood. Here and there, little splashes and drops.
I found something that I couldn’t immediately identify, a piece of thin plastic about eight inches long. Smooth, with a sloping angle to it, and a sharper angle where it had clearly broken off from something else. Making sure not to smudge any possible prints, I picked it up by the edges and immediately winced and dropped it, and stared in surprise as blood welled from microthin cuts on the pads of my thumb and forefinger. It was razor-sharp. Some kind of blade, I reckoned, but not a standard knife or sword configuration. I squatted on my heels and thought about the vanes of the helicopter we’d come in. They had almost the same angle, except their edges were blunt.
I got up and crossed quickly to where Rudy was still working on the Pool Boys, and stood there looking at the patterns of their injuries. Cuts on their hands and arms, on their upper chests and shoulders and faces. A chill swept up my spine and made the wiry hair on my scalp stand up, because I thought I understood what had happened.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, which caused Rudy to glance up.
“What?”
“I read a report a couple months ago about a new kind of combat drone called a thresher. Designed for field combat rather than aerial strikes. About the size of a bald eagle, with rotors for lift, a new kind of gyroscope for ultra-sophisticated maneuverability, and, instead of guns, it used long, flexible blades. They called them whip blades, and they’re based on the old Chinese straight sword. The whip effect maximizes the speed and severity of each cut. They were designed to be introduced to a fixed enemy position, to do as much damage as possible to personnel while leaving the weapons and equipment intact. I think that’s what happened to these poor bastards.”
“Ay Dios mio,” said Rudy. “That’s appalling.”
“Question is who sent it here. Last I heard, the thresher was only in the design stage.”
Ghost suddenly barked and looked up at the eastern sky, and Rudy and I jerked around, expecting to see a thresher come screaming at us. It wasn’t. It was a muscular and very fast Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, and as it came swooping in the rotors began tilting from their forward position to allow the plane to land like a helicopter. It was Duffy in a DMS bird, and a moment later a voice in my ear said, “Spartan to Cowboy. We’re coming in.”
“You have the package?”
“Wrapped and with a bow on it,” he said. “And we’re set for medical evac. How’re our boys?”
“Moderately poor,” I told him. “There’s a big field west of the barn. Put it down there.”
The Osprey swept over us, looking ungainly and improbable, and then settled down in a field of wildflowers without so much as a bump. Sean, Ghost, and I ran to meet it, ducking low as we approached. The door behind the cockpit was already open, and I saw Duffy and Torres waiting, dressed like EMTs instead of soldiers. Smart. A couple of other guys in tan flight suits scrambled out and began unloading several metal boxes. I pointed to the picnic table, and they carried the boxes over and then retreated to the Osprey.
Duffy and Torres ran over to Rudy, each of them carrying medical bags and equipment. They knelt down, did some additional stabilizing work on the Pool Boys, and then called for the flight crew to come running with stretchers. Everything was done to make it look as if we were following the directions exactly as they had been given. The wounded were transferred to stretchers, belted in for safety, and carried quickly but carefully to the plane and loaded aboard. The flight crew did not reappear.
“Cowboy,” Duffy said, closing on me, “you want me to take your brother and Rudy back?”
Wild horses couldn’t have dragged Sean away, and I knew that Rudy would want to stay to see to the family. I said as much to Duffy. He nodded and handed his medical kit to Rudy. It was a profe
ssional field-trauma set, far superior to the first-aid stuff here at the farm. He shook Rudy’s hand, nodded to Sean, clapped me on the arm, and went running for the transport. The pilot cycled up the engines and the big machine lifted up, turned, and headed off the way it had come. The whole process had taken five minutes.
Sean, Rudy, and I stood in the field, with Ghost stalking slowly around the edge of it. We waited, watching the Osprey disappear.
Time once more slowed to an impossible crawl.
And then a phone began ringing.
INTERLUDE NINETEEN
THE EDUCATION OF ZEPHYR BAIN
MOTEL 6 DES MOINES NORTH
4940 NORTHEAST FOURTEENTH STREET
DES MOINES, IOWA
WHEN ZEPHYR WAS THIRTY-TWO
They met in a motel room.
By arrangement they had each rented a separate unit. Zephyr stood in the doorway of hers for nearly two minutes debating whether to call in the room maids to reclean the room, or just simply set fire to it. There was not a chance in hell that she would touch anything here. Not the bed, not the curtains, not anything. It was no comfort that the woman she was here to meet would have a similarly appalling hovel of a room. She knew that her rich-girl élitism was shading the moment for her, and that practicality was far more important than anything else.
Even so, she called her driver, Campion, and told him to purchase a few items and to deliver them without drawing attention. Half an hour later, the driver tapped discreetly on the door. He had a box of industrial-grade black plastic trash bags, bottles of strong but organic spray cleaner, sponges, and several large bottles of hand sanitizer. While Zephyr stood in a corner, Campion quickly covered every surface with trash bags, wiped down any uncovered surface, and cleaned the bathroom. All the cleaning products he used went into another of the trash bags. A pair of one-gallon bottles of bleach were set on the floor for a final cleanup after the meeting was over. He asked no questions of his employer and left, with an order to park his car close by and to be ready in case Zephyr needed to leave quickly.
Zephyr sat at the desk. Chair and desktop rustled with plastic sheeting. She wore blue polyethylene gloves and paper shoe covers on her sneakers. She stopped short of wearing a surgical mask. The woman coming to meet her might be suspicious.
Zephyr thought that the caution of meeting in a place like this wasn’t necessary. She had tried to assure the other party that her team—led by the detail-oriented Concierge—could have provided any number of secure locations. But the woman had insisted, and, as Zephyr needed something from her, concessions were necessary.
The meeting had been scheduled for 2:30 in the afternoon, but the digital clock on the night table ticked all the way through to 2:51 before there was a firm two-beat knock on the door. Decisive, not hard. Zephyr got up and opened the door, saw a young woman wearing a bulky Hawkeyes warm-up jacket and matching cap, and sunglasses with mirrored orange-tinted lenses.
“John sent me,” said the woman.
It was the appropriate code phrase.
Zephyr stepped back and the woman came in quickly, cutting a quick look over her shoulder.
“The parking lot is clear,” said Zephyr. “The surveillance cameras are fixed, but they’ve been adjusted so that this room isn’t in their video field. I have people in three other rooms, all with good views of this door.”
“I have four teams,” said the woman. “Including a very good sniper who is absolutely bugfuck nuts, but he loves me.”
Zephyr smiled. “Ludo Monk, Room 312. He’s positioned with a Dragunov sniper rifle.”
The other woman smiled. “Nice.”
“Nice,” agreed Zephyr.
They didn’t shake hands. It wasn’t that kind of moment.
“The presumption is,” said the visitor, “that if either of us sneezes half the people in this motel will try to kill the other half.”
“Something like that,” said Zephyr.
“I’m okay with it.”
She looked around the room and walked over to lift a corner of one of the trash bags covering the bed. “You a germophobe or are you a serial killer and this is your murder room?”
“I didn’t bring a saw.”
The woman laughed and snorted in the middle of it, which made her laugh harder. She turned and sat down on the bed hard enough to send ripples through the plastic.
“This is fun,” she said. “You’re a rich-bitch snob with a hygiene phobia, and I’m a self-absorbed narcissist with trust issues.”
“Aren’t we a pair?” said Zephyr. She sat down at the desk.
“We are. A case could be made that we’re two of, say, the five smartest women alive. And an equally strong case could be made that we’re both out of our minds.”
Zephyr held a hand up and waggled it back and forth. “I like to think I’m more of a visionary.”
“Who wants to kill a couple of billion people?”
“I want to remove parasites.”
“So you’re what … the Lysol of social Darwinism?”
Zephyr shrugged. “Something like that. And you’re what? The world’s greatest technology thief?”
“I prefer to think of it as usefully repurposing questionable technologies in order to maximize their design potential.”
“Nice,” said Zephyr.
“Nice,” said the woman.
“John told me that you don’t use your actual name anymore. He said that it’s because the people who would like to see you dead already believe you are.”
“Something like that.”
“Then what do I call you?”
The young woman took off her glasses and folded them, then removed her ball cap and shook out her glossy black hair.
“Call me Mother Night.”
Zephyr Bain studied the face. The young woman was exceptionally beautiful, and the lights that burned in her intelligent eyes burned white-hot. Zephyr wondered what it would take to get this woman into bed. Not this bed, but a bed back at her house.
As if reading her mind, Mother Night said, “Not my scene, honey. Don’t get me wrong. I’m flattered as hell, but I like boys and I’m on the clock. I have some things running right now, and they need some administrative oversight.”
“Anything I need to know about?”
“They’ll be on the news. It won’t affect what you’re doing unless you have plans to visit Atlanta. If so, let me advise against it.”
“Why?”
Mother Night shrugged. “When I talked to your friend John he said that our agendas, though different in structure and rollout, will ultimately complement each other. Time’s short, though, so can we move this along?”
Zephyr nodded. “Okay, cutting right to it. John said that while you were working for the DMS you had the opportunity to obtain extensive records from the ruins of the Jakoby empire. He said that you obtained schematics for the revolutionary computer system designed by a Cold War designer named Bertolini, the blueprints and modified software for which had been included in materials formerly in the possession of Paris Jakoby.”
Mother Night grunted. “My sources tell me that you already have a good computer system. Calpurnia, isn’t it?”
“That’s just a household-governing thing.”
“Bullshit. Couple of people have told me how you downplay what Calpurnia is. You pass it off as AI in the same way most people do, calling it artificial intelligence when it’s actually programming tricks, with you, as the programmer, supplying the intelligence to the system. That’s a nice line, and it works for the rubes, but it doesn’t square with the whole technological singularity your boy John the Revelator has been shouting about. No, don’t look surprised, you’re not the only one who does her homework.”
Zephyr nodded, acknowledging the point, but added, “It’s a curated event we’re working toward.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean Calpurnia is fake AI. I think you actually hit the bull’s-eye. I think you have a real thinking system. Not something tha
t plays a good game of chess because it analyzes the patterns of the other player’s moves. No, I think you have a system that analyzes the other player. And understands him. I’m hearing very cool, very spooky things about Calpurnia. You’re going beyond simulated AI and into … what? Limited consciousness?”
Zephyr hesitated. “Maybe. The system is evolving.”
“I bet.” Mother Night leaned forward, her eyes alight with excitement. “Tell me … does it have its own personality?”
“Yes,” said Zephyr.
“Really?”
“Yes, a unique personality has been emerging for a couple of years.”
“Any conflicts with it? Does it have seamless deference or—?”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Zephyr quickly, “but we should probably stick to the program here.”
“You’re no fun,” said Mother Night, but she nodded. “You called this meet, ball’s in your court.”
Zephyr nodded. “John said you have copies of all testing, practical lab procedures, mapped genomes, and other materials for developing the Berserkers and other transgenic creatures. He said you recovered this from the records of Hecate Jakoby. He said that you secured computer records and actual biological samples of the weaponized ethnic-specific bioweapons developed by their father, Cyrus Jakoby. He said that you have access to samples of bioweapon pathogens in pre- and post-developed states. And he said that you might be willing to sell this material to me.”