The Grid

by Nick Cook

  Nick Cook

  * * *

  THE GRID

  Contents

  Book One: What you seek is seeking you Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Book Two: The wound is in the place where the light enters you Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Book Three: Become the sky Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Dramatis Personae

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Nick Cook is a bestselling author, documentary filmmaker, and a former senior editor for Jane’s Defence Weekly. His groundbreaking The Hunt for Zero Point detailed his ten-year investigation into efforts to crack the Holy Grail of aerospace propulsion: anti-gravity.

  His TV credits include Billion Dollar Secret, a two-hour documentary that he wrote and presented for the Discovery Channel and Channel 5, and An Alien History of Planet Earth, for The History Channel and Channel 4.

  Also by Nick Cook

  The Hunt for Zero Point

  To my forever guide star

  Ali

  and to

  J & A and F & B.

  Thank you.

  THE GRID is a work of fiction but it is based on three facts:

  The President of the United States receives an average of 3,000 death threats a year.

  Each year, America’s spy agencies and Department of Defense spend in excess of $100 billion on ‘black’ budget programs – projects so secret they do not officially exist.

  Fifty years ago, the US intelligence community began experimenting with a surveillance system involving psychic ability.

  Although you appear in earthly form, your essence is pure Consciousness. You are the fearless guardian of divine light.

  Mawlana Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

  Book One

  * * *

  WHAT YOU SEEK IS SEEKING YOU

  1

  WE ARE HALFWAY UP THE TOWER WHEN I HEAR THE JUMPER’S VOICE.

  ‘M-Mister Cain? Is that you down there?’

  Forensic Services reckon the accent is Tennessee, West Virginia or Kentucky. The stutter points to a bunch of other things too.

  I cup my hands and call back up into the darkness. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Alone?’

  I look at Hart – ‘Hetta’, she’d announced as we were introduced ten minutes ago, and then gone the extra mile by spelling it. She holds me back with one outstretched hand. The other is wrapped around her automatic. A bare bulb swings from the ceiling on a length of frayed cable and does odd things to our shadows as she shakes her head.

  ‘No,’ I yell back. ‘I have an agent here for my protection. She has relieved the Metropolitan Police Department negotiator.’

  There’s a pause.

  All I can make out above us is the larger of the church’s two bells and the bottom half of the ladder leading to the uppermost level, from which the jumper is threatening to throw himself.

  We wait as the wind whistles around the chamber, whipping up enough dust and bird shit to make my eyes water and sting my throat. Then:

  ‘Mister Cain? I told the negotiator and I’m telling you. What I have to say is for your ears only. Your colleague needs to s-stay on the level below.’

  ‘Sir,’ Hetta calls out. ‘You up there. My name is Hetta Hart and I’m a Special Agent with the United States Secret Service. Doctor Cain is under my protection. You are to stay in a position where I can see you at all times. If I cannot see you, I will not be responsible for your safety. Do I make myself clear?’

  I have no idea she’s planned this speech. I would have advised against it. But what’s done is done. We listen for a second or two.

  ‘Perfectly clear, Agent Hart. P-perfectly.’

  He invites us to take up position on the next floor and for Hart to remain at the base of the ladder. From there she will have an unrestricted view of us both.

  ‘But I trust, Agent Hart, that you understand m-me when I repeat to you that I mean no harm – and that if there is any cheatin’, I will not hesitate to jump. Do I make m-myself clear, ma’am?’

  Hetta is momentarily taken aback. I am too. It’s a display of respect for authority neither of us expected.

  ‘Perfectly.’

  She signals that it’s OK to make my way on up.

  I edge my way around the bell. It is old and big – at its base, the width of a small car, maybe – and so cold to the touch that it drives the remaining feeling from my fingertips.

  A half-formed memory comes to me from my childhood: of a preacher at my father’s funeral, talking about Jesus or God coming ‘like a thief in the night’. I didn’t understand it then and I’m not sure I do now, but it makes me think about the church. Why here?

  The guy had been here for twenty-four hours, according to Lefortz. Maybe longer.

  He’d avoided detection during three packed services, the last on a busy afternoon with two senators and their families in the congregation. Security must have already done at least one sweep.

  As I place my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, I get the strangest feeling. Like I’ve been here before.

  Hetta looks at me. ‘You OK?’ she whispers.

  I nod.

  As I start to climb, the silence is replaced by the sound of sleet and freezing rain driven against the cupola above us. The wind brings with it the thud of helicopter blades and the crackle of police radios. Through the hatch above my head I see a searchlight playing across the wall.

  I place my fingertips on the lip of the opening and haul myself up.

  He is poised on the ledge by the north window. Office blocks are silhouetted against the black sky behind him, beyond the glare of the lights. He is wearing a black hoodie and Levi’s; the hoodie is pulled tight over the mask, its rictus expression angled toward me. Lefortz had told me about it, but it still manages to catch me unawares. In silhouette the plastic has the texture of real skin.

  The arched eyebrows, knowing smile and goatee have been made infamous by hacktivists, protesters on Wall Street and places where world leaders have gathered to debate climate change, globalization and the war on terror. It’s a Guy Fawkes mask – so-called after a
n anarchist who tried to blow up England’s Houses of Parliament in sixteen hundred something.

  I have read, too, that protesters themselves refer to him – to it – as Guido.

  He has smashed his way through the slats and is clinging to a large rusted nail that’s protruding from the top of the frame.

  They estimated in the command post that he weighs around 140 pounds, is five-ten, maybe a little shorter, and in his mid- to late thirties. From the things he says, and the way he says them, the consensus is he’s military or ex-military. I agree.

  He motions me to sit with my back against the wall.

  The cops weren’t kidding. There is barely room for us both. The floor is around six foot by six, with the open trapdoor in the middle.

  He turns and looks out over the labor union next to the church, toward the office blocks beyond.

  Lefortz briefed me during the thirty minutes it took me to get here. His call had woken me a little after 03.40.

  Guido had used a pick-gun to unlock all the doors from the basement of the church to the roof. A cleaning contractor in an office across the street spotted what she thought was a flashlight moving around inside. The two patrol officers who’d arrived on the scene found all the doors and gates locked – no sign of a break-in.

  When they gained access a half-hour later, they found food and a bottle of water in the janitor’s cupboard, along with a map of Lafayette Square, and plans of the White House and North Grounds.

  Almost every fence jumper who’s ever gotten into the North Grounds – before Jim Lefortz overhauled Presidential Protection operations – has suffered from a depressive illness or psychosis; the kind of condition, whatever, that can make a person believe they’ll get an audience with the leader of the free world by parachuting into his bedroom or the Oval Office.

  I’ve dealt with a lot of unbalanced people in my career; many were military or ex-military. And when you get a soldier or an ex-soldier who’s disturbed and has a grievance, you have a loaded weapon.

  I have devoted the best part of my life to ensuring veterans are treated for the service they have given this country, not vilified.

  So, if this guy says he means nobody any harm, and he’ll come down once he’s said his piece, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  Push comes to shove, there are only three things that matter.

  Who is he?

  What does he want?

  And why did he ask for me?

  I draw my knees to my chest and wait. The sleet has turned to snow, which starts to settle in web-like drifts around my feet and in the folds of my jacket. I can see Hetta at the base of the ladder, but not the weapon I know she’s holding in her right hand.

  A gust of wind threatens Guido’s balance, and I resist the temptation to reach out to him. He appears calm, considering the shit-storm he’s stirred. I’m not taking his ‘normal’ at face value, though; it’s most probably evidence of dissociation – a barrier he’s erected between himself and the world.

  He turns to me and something neither of us can see tugs at his left hand.

  ‘M-Mister Cain, d-do you b-believe in God?’

  The question is followed by a spasm, an exaggerated version of what just grabbed his arm. A myoclonic jerk can be caused by a change in body chemistry – a caffeine-induced leg or arm spasm, for instance, as we drift off to sleep – but Guido’s, if it is a myoclonus, could be down to a surplus of adrenaline, or evidence, alongside the stammer, of some kind of past trauma.

  Whatever it is, I must get on with what I came here to do: convince him that the world he has lost faith in still holds hope – not so easy when I am not sure I believe it myself.

  ‘I don’t know how much you know about me …’

  ‘A lot.’

  This distracts me for a moment. I refocus. ‘But I know remarkably little about you. Can we—?’

  He cuts me off. ‘Please, answer the question.’

  With his free left hand, the one affected by the myoclonus, he makes a minute gesture, something that looks to me like a thumbs-up. His hand is hanging by his side and I am keen for him not to see I’ve noticed it, but it throws me for a second and I force myself back.

  Do I believe in God?

  ‘For all the terrible things we do, there is goodness in each of us, and it may be that that goodness has a source. I don’t know what that source is. I wish I did. But some people call it God.’

  The words sound ludicrous said out loud, because they aren’t mine; they aren’t even my thoughts. They’re a mishmash of someone else’s belief system, someone I once loved more than life itself. It’s better than the truth, though, and seems to satisfy him.

  ‘And do you believe the President to be a g-good man?’

  ‘Yes, I believe so.’ A truthful response, but, again, not the whole truth. He’s a politician, for Christ’s sake, is what I really want to say.

  He glances at the scene below, and the myoclonus tugs at his arm again. Then, slowly, he extends the index finger of his left hand as well as his thumb.

  ‘I told the negotiator there is a plot to kill the President. There is. It is well planned, advanced, and will be well executed, unless you move to stop it.’

  He raises his head and looks out across the rooftops, which gives me an opportunity to glance down. Hetta cups an ear and shakes her head.

  She can’t hear us.

  Guido turns back to me.

  ‘President T-Thompson is our best hope and I know – because it is in your nature – that you will leave no stone unturned in your efforts to protect him.’

  His eyes continue to watch me, and I think of something I haven’t heard in a long time: the sound of a dial-up modem.

  For the past fifteen minutes, Guido and I have been engaged in the equivalent of all that screeching and squawking, probing each other for compatibility, and suddenly we are hooked up.

  I don’t know why or how, but I feel it: we’re in business.

  I must complete the ‘handshake’ – exchange those last vital bits of diagnostic data – and begin the process that will bring him down safely: invite him to step away from the drop, ask him for his name, get him to remove his mask and lead him to a place of safety; somewhere I can continue to speak with him, work out what it is that he needs, and ensure that he gets help.

  And yet I also know that when he steps into my charge he ceases to be my responsibility.

  He will be arrested, slapped with a count of unlawful entry, grilled about plots against the President and forced to undergo a thirty-day mental health evaluation while charges are prepared against him.

  At the same time, people like Hetta – maybe even Hetta herself – in the Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division, people responsible for gauging threats to the President and the handful of others for whom the Service has responsibility, will probe him for anything that might signify that the peace camps by the North Fence represent a threat to the President so that Director Cabot has the excuse he needs to remove the protesters from Lafayette Square.

  Guido turns in the same direction as before: toward the office blocks beyond the roof of the labor union. The wind drops and I hear the distant wail of a police siren. His words are suddenly clear and unmistakable. Not a hint of a stammer.

  ‘Does the term “ground truth” mean anything to you, Colonel?’

  My screwed-up expression probably tells him everything he needs to know.

  ‘It’s a term we used to use – one that became important to me.’ He takes in a lungful of air. ‘I came here for ground truth.’

  ‘And did you find it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he says quietly. ‘I’m looking at it.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You will, Colonel, you will …’

  Something tells me I need to get to my feet, but Guido suddenly staggers and lurches, his arms spread wide.

  And time does that thing time does in moments of shock: it stretches impossibly.

&
nbsp; It twists, too.

  I hear the report, a muffled crack, far off and distorted by the wind, after he falls. After the blood sprays from his right eye and spatters across my jacket.

  Then he is on me, face down, twitching and convulsing, head on my chest.

  I roll him onto his back and the blood continues to flow, black and viscous in the dim light, from the right eyehole’s enlarged, jagged opening.

  I pull his head onto my shoulder and see the hole in the back of his hoodie. I tear it off and realize that his mask is like the ones wrestlers wear, laced at the rear.

  I fumble at the knot, but it’s slippery with blood and I know I’m not going to get anywhere, so I lower his head and cradle it and see from his eyes and from some spasmodic movement in his arms and hands that he’s still alive.

  I pull back. The blood bubbles up through his mouthpiece and his eyes bore into mine. He’s trying to tell me something.

  He raises his hand till it’s almost in my face and then Hetta’s there, ponytail swinging, knife in hand. She’s cutting at the laces. The mask drops away.

  I look down.

  The bullet has passed through his occipital and temporal lobes and exited his right eye, removing a large part of his face.

  There is nothing anyone can do for him.

  There’s so much blood I can smell and taste the metal in it. It’s a taste and a smell I know well. It takes me right back.

  I do the only thing I can.

  I pull him to me, so close I feel his heart stop.

  Hetta rolls away, touching the crucifix around her neck, like she did every time the jumper got a mention in the mobile command post. When I set his body down and see him fully for the first time, I understand why. It isn’t just that the bullet has removed half his face; what remains has been so badly burned there is really nothing left of it.

  2

  I’VE SHOWERED AND SCRUBBED MYSELF CLEAN IN THE RESTROOM down the hallway, but there are some things I’ll never be able to wash away and I’m struggling to take in some of what’s being said over the white noise.