“Like a major launch?” asked Bunny.
“Like a major launch.”
“Shit.”
“Which puts us exactly where, Cap’n?” asked Top. “Do we recommend to the entire United States military that they flush a few billion dollars and pull the software out of every plane, tank, and warship? They would burn us at the damn stake.”
“In a heartbeat,” said Bunny.
“Got to file a recommendation of caution,” I said. “And we have to hope that Eglin wasn’t part of this.”
From the looks on their faces, I knew they didn’t buy that any more than I did.
“Other questions?” I asked.
“Drones in general,” said Bunny. “Aside from being able to hack other people’s drones, the Kings have access to their own. The one at the Resort. Two different kinds of drones in Philly. And the one that killed Bug’s mom. Where are they getting them?”
It was a good question with, unfortunately, a disappointing answer. UAVs are everywhere now. More than 320 companies based in the United States manufacture drones or drone parts. Thousands of stores sell kits to build them. Plus, there are imports. Canada and Mexico have factories, and everyone in Southeast Asia who could retool a plant are turning them out.
I called Doctor Hu to see if he had anything, but he transferred me to Yoda without actually responding to my question. He does that sort of thing. Hu’s a dick.
When Yoda came on the line, I explained what I wanted.
“Hmmmm. Well, the, ummmm, drone from the ballpark isn’t standard. It’s, ummm, a variation on a design used by the Russians. Though, ummmm, we’ve seen an almost identical model in North Korea. Built to look like a regular pigeon. I think, mmmm, Nikki told you that it had some kind of radical QC CPU. Mmmmm-hmmmm, that’s kind of delicious, and we’re picking it apart to see, ummm, how it works. Or why it works, because it’s so small. Nothing like it anywhere. I, ummmm, dream about tech like this.”
“Okay,” I said, and damn near followed it with an “mmmm.” “Does it tell us anything? Does it lead us anywhere?”
“Ummmm, no. Not really. Just, mmmm, tells us that they’re smarter than us.”
“Not really what I want to hear, Yoda.”
“Not really what I, ummmm, ever want to admit.”
I ended the call. Then I thought about it and called Nikki. She didn’t hum, and she worked in a different part of Bug’s group. She was a superstar in research and hacking.
“Nikki,” I said, putting the call on speaker, “I want to describe something to you, and I want your reaction. Okay? Let me outline it without commentary.”
“Sure, Joe. Go for it.”
I told her what Top, Bunny, and I had come up with. The yearlong pattern of what appeared to be field tests of the ability to hack and subvert autonomous driving systems and commercial drones. When I was finished, I could almost hear her frown.
“This can’t be right,” she said.
“Tell me why.”
“What you’re describing is a pretty clear pattern, Joe. I mean, sure, they hid it pretty well by spreading it around and making it look like either random accidents or, in the case of the TV drone, some kind of domestic terrorism.”
“Right, but…?”
“But if this pattern actually exists, then we should already know about it. I mean … that’s what MindReader does. It’s what I do. We look for patterns in the big jumble of events, news stories, incident reports, police reports, and everything filed by the FBI, Homeland … It’s just that this has to be wrong.”
I took a breath. “Or … what’s the alternative, kid?”
She didn’t want to say it, and—let’s face it—we didn’t want to hear it.
She said it anyway.
“Or they kept this from us. They hid it. Which means someone’s learned how to block MindReader.”
Bam. There it was.
Nikki put a button on it, though. “Setting aside how they did it, if they have something like this … what else are they hiding?”
Chapter Ninety
Fox Island
Hale Passage, Puget Sound
Pierce County, Washington
March 31, 6:01 P.M.
Aaron Davidovich washed ashore like a piece of trash. Rumpled, broken, filthy, and cold.
So cold.
His clothes were soaked. He’d kicked off his shoes in the water, and his feet were bruised and cut. Every muscle he owned ached like he’d been beaten. He lay on the beach, half covered by muddy sand, chest down, face turned sideways so he could breath through the little gap between the bunched fabric at the shoulder of his torn and sodden suit and the angle of his forearm. His cheek rested on his hand, but the hand was like a block of ice that didn’t seem to belong to him anymore.
“God,” he gasped. “God…”
Davidovich felt like he was welded into the sand. Part of a desolate landscape. Maybe he would die here and truly become part of this place. The sand fleas and worms would consume his skin and organs. His blood would drain away into the sluggish surf. If no one found him, his bones would dissolve beneath the relentless assault of parasites and bacteria. He would cease to be. He would fade into nothingness.
All that would be left was the memory of him.
A hated man. Despised. Reviled.
Maybe damned.
Damned.
He believed that Matthew would continue to love him for a little while, but after the full extent of his crimes were known and endlessly dissected in the press, that would change. A son’s love for his father would change into bitter hate and disappointment. And that would pollute the life of a child who should have been allowed to grow up with no emotional scarring, no trauma that might twist him into some ugly adult shape.
A father who was a traitor, a terrorist, and a mass murderer?
Yes. That was going to ruin the boy.
It would definitely kill Davidovich’s mother. She was holding on by a thread as it was. This would snap that slender filament and send her plunging down into the pit.
He wished he would die, too.
Right here, right now.
He prayed that there was no god, and he was aware of the absurdity of that. He wanted death to be a big black doorway that led nowhere. If there was nothing, there was no shame. There would be no memory of the harm he’d done—and would continue to do—to his son.
A wave broke over him, pushing stinking seawater up to his shoulders. He turned his face to keep it from filling his slack mouth. The action was too slow, and he gagged on a mouthful of brackish water and fish excrement.
Davidovich tried to spit it out, failed to do it the right way, and gasped in half a pint of water. Into his throat, into his lungs.
The coughing fit was immediate, and it was terrible. His lungs felt like they were exploding as he coughed and spat and choked. His body convulsed, tearing itself loose of the sand until he was a tiny ball on elbows and knees, his chest pulsing with the deep, braying coughs. Pain detonated in his chest, in his lungs. The world fragmented into fireworks of pure white and midnight black, with a fringe of red around the edges.
“Please,” he gasped between fits.
That word was worse than the pain of the spasms. It tasted more disgusting than the seawater in his mouth.
Please.
It was what he had said to Boy years ago. When she’d first come to him and beaten him, and humiliated him. It had been the thing he’d said when she made him watch the degradation and evisceration of the man Boy had killed on that day she made him her slave. It was what he had whispered in the nights when she came to him and touched him and drew him to the top of a swaying tower.
Please.
Such a weak word.
Such a terrible word.
He said it again. Meaning so much.
“Please…” he said.
The coughing fit faded. Slowly and reluctantly, as if his body would have preferred to continue punishing him. He remained on elbows and kn
ees.
For a long time.
And then he gathered together everything that he had and everything that he was. Scientist, father, husband, son, man, traitor, murderer, monster.
Each of those aspects had a part in making him get up off his knees. Get to his feet. Orient himself. Take a step.
And another.
Walking up the sandy slope toward the lights.
Across the water was the dark bulk of the hotel on Tanglewood Island.
Beyond the trees in front of him, rising like the promise of heavenly retribution, was the snowcapped bulk of Mount Rainier.
For reasons he could never explain to himself, not even in that moment, Davidovich spat toward the mountain and muttered, “Fuck you.”
He kept moving up the beach, angling toward the Fox Island Bridge. Limping on his battered feet. Leaving smudges of blood behind him with every footfall.
Walking away from the edge of the abyss, one trembling step at a time.
Chapter Ninety-one
UC San Diego Medical Center
200 West Arbor Drive
San Diego, California
March 31, 6:02 P.M.
“The prognosis is encouraging,” said Mr. Church. He had his briefcase open on the wheeled table beside Rudy Sanchez’s bed. An open package of Nilla Wafers sat atop a stack of folders. Church selected a cookie, tapped crumbs from it, bit a piece, and chewed quietly. Rudy watched him. “The concussion was mild. There are no fractures.”
“You’re ignoring what I said.”
Church studied the cookie for a moment, then set it down. “Ignoring? No, doctor, I am not.”
“Aren’t you going to say something?” asked Rudy.
“What would you expect me to say? You’re in great distress. Understandably so, given your devotion to Circe and concerns for your baby. You were attacked and have sustained injuries. The nation is under attack, and you likely feel torn between wanting to be here and needing to be out there doing what you can.”
“No,” said Rudy.
“No—what?”
“That’s not it.”
Church nodded and settled back in his chair. “Then tell me what it is.”
“The man who attacked me…” Rudy’s words trickled down, and for several long minutes he lay there, not looking at Church. Not really looking at anything in the room. His gaze drifted upward to the acoustic tiles fitted into their aluminum frame in the ceiling. He stared at them as if they were windows into his own thoughts. Church said nothing. He ate the rest of his cookie. Drank some water from a bottle of Arrowhead. Ate another cookie. Waited.
The room was very still, very quiet.
Finally, Rudy took a ragged breath. It was loud, like a drowning man breaking the surface to drink in his first lungful. His body trembled, and he dabbed at fresh tears in his eye.
“I—I’m afraid,” he began slowly, “that you won’t believe me. That you’ll think the details of my attack are the product of cranial trauma.”
“Would you allow me to be the governor of my own credulity, Doctor Sanchez?”
Rudy glanced at him. “What I have to say won’t seem rational. You won’t be able to believe it.”
Mr. Church gave him a small, weary smile. “Doctor, over the last six years, we’ve come to know each other very well. I believe I can accurately state that the understanding we share exceeds the bounds of what has actually been spoken between us. You possess insight, and I’ve been more candid with you than with most. Do you honestly believe that I would sit in close-minded judgment of anything you would have to tell me?”
“I don’t know.
“Doctor…”
“I don’t think so, but this is difficult for me to even think about, let alone say. I don’t know if I believe it.”
“Then,” continued Church, “perhaps we can help each other come to a level of understanding and acceptance.”
Rudy almost smiled. “You say that like you’ve been in this situation before. With ordinarily reliable witnesses who have extraordinary things to say.”
“More times than I care to recall, doctor. Before and after Captain Ledger came to work for me.”
Rudy closed his eyes for a moment and repeatedly licked his lips. Then he opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Not at Church.
“There was a priest in the chapel,” he said. His tone was soft, almost hushed. “Even though Agent Cowpers had cleared the room, he was there.”
“This man was not a total stranger to you?” asked Church. “Was he?”
“I don’t…”
“Doctor, now is not the time to be coy. If you have some suspicion, then please share it. This man is a threat to you and to Circe.”
Rudy thought Church almost said “to my daughter.” There was the slightest hitch in his words, but Church was too skilled to let himself make that kind of error. The truth—and the urgency of it—hung in the air, though.
So, Rudy took one more breath and blurted it out. “I think I know who it was.”
“Who was it?” Church asked.
“You won’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
Rudy paused. “I think it was Nicodemus.”
“Ah.”
“You … don’t seem surprised. Why? Do you know something?”
Church nodded. “You were overheard speaking that name when the staff brought you up here.”
“Then, you already heard? Good, but know this … he doesn’t look the same.”
“Meaning what? Was he in disguise?”
“No. I saw him at Graterford Prison several years ago. I sat with the man, spoke with him. And although the man who attacked me looks a bit like him, speaks like him, knows what he knows, he’s also different. It’s almost like he was in another body. Like he was wearing someone else’s skin.” Rudy paused again. “I am aware of how this sounds, and I’ll accept that blunt-force trauma is a factor here. However…”
“Go on.”
Rudy’s hands were shaking as he reached up to run fingers through his hair. “Dear God and the Virgin Mary protect me,” he said in a small and frightened voice, “I think the thing I met in the chapel wasn’t human. I think it was a monster.”
Chapter Ninety-two
UC San Diego Medical Center
200 West Arbor Drive
San Diego, California
March 31, 6:11 P.M.
Toys wondered if Junie Flynn knew about Church’s connection to Circe. She seemed to be on the inside track of a lot of things, but that secret was huge—and she was, after all, a civilian. Toys knew about Circe from Hugo, and he’d had one very uncomfortable conversation with Church about it after finding out.
Church had said, “You understand that very few people in the world know that Circe is my daughter. It complicates things that you know it, that Hugo told you. It would be easier for me, and safer for Circe, if I put a bullet in you now. Do you understand that?”
“I do,” Toys had said. “And if you need to do that, then go ahead.”
Church had been a long time considering his next comment, and it had taken Toys off guard. “In my life,” he said, “I’ve met several people with complicated histories who claimed to be on the road to redemption. Some of them, in fact, made their journeys. A few—a very few—of those people are friends of mine. The majority of them are not. And a fair percentage of those who are not are now dead.”
“You really think you need to threaten me?” asked Toys.
“That’s not what I’m doing,” Church replied. “Should I ever feel the need to threaten you, there will be little doubt as to what’s happening. What I’m doing is establishing the parameters of our shared understanding. Protecting the connection between Circe and myself matters more to me than almost anything else.”
Toys remembered that Church had said “almost.” The man had interesting priorities. Then again, the scary old bastard was saving the world. Pretty often, too. So there was that.
That conversation had
happened years ago, and for the most part Toys had shoved the knowledge that Circe was Church’s daughter into the very back of his mental closet. Even now, he could hardly connect the woman he’d worked with so often at FreeTech with this hard, unemotional, dangerous man. They barely seemed like they belonged to the same species, let alone the same family.
After more than half an hour, Church pulled back the curtains and opened the door. For once, his legendary cool seemed shaken. He was pale and looked much older than the sixty-something Toys figured him for. Church walked past him without comment and spoke quietly with a trio of doctors. He shook their hands and then went and consulted with his agents. Toys waited him out. He had nowhere else to be.
Finally, Church glanced at him, nodded briefly, and walked toward an empty corner of the ICU. Toys dutifully followed.
“Junie told me about what happened to Aunt Sallie,” said Toys. “How bad is it?”
“Bad enough.”
“Pity. I mean that, really. I mean, sure, she hates my sodding guts, but she’s a character. She’s an interesting woman. Hugo was afraid of her.”
“That’s not an unreasonable feeling. They sent a team of Kingsmen after her, and they’re all dead,” said Church, then switched the subject. “Per our earlier conversation, is there anything else you wanted to tell me?”
“No. Nothing of use other than to warn you to be careful of that psychotic son of a bitch Nicodemus. Sebastian and Hugo all but worshipped him, and everyone else was terrified of him. I know I was. I…”
“What?”
“No, you’ll think I’m daft.”
“Try me.”
“I … I don’t think Nicodemus is exactly what he appears to be.”
“And what does he appear to be?”
“Human.”
Chapter Ninety-three
Fox Island
Hale Passage, Puget Sound
Pierce County, Washington
March 31, 6:19 P.M.
Aaron Davidovich knew that hitchhiking was out of the question. He had no money, no shoes, no chance of being seen as anything except a vagrant or a threat. By now, the Kings would have people out looking for him. They would be driving the roads, listening to police reports.