Her voice was unperturbed. “Get in the left lane and merge onto the Ten East.”
He tried the engine again, and it started right up. He accelerated into the left lane and then took the eastbound highway entrance ramp. The car accelerated smoothly and with impressive power. But his hands were still shaking, the adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream. He had no desire to go back to Highland.
Her voice came over the eight speakers. “If you disobey me again, I will activate the satellite anti-theft system in this car. It will alert local law enforcement and give its precise location.”
“Okay, Jane, I fucked up. Won’t happen again.”
“Keep driving. Stay within five miles of the speed limit, and signal all lane changes. If you deviate from my instructions, I will return you to Warmonk, Inc., and bear in mind, Mr. Moze-ly: if I can erase your prison record, I can just as easily expand it. Life without the possibility of parole. Child molesters are the lowest in the prison social order, are they not?”
This chilled him to the core. Going back to prison was one thing. Going back as a pederast was quite something else. Death was preferable.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.” No flippant responses this time. She had his full attention.
Mosely kept the car aimed at the distant horizon. A passing sign told him Houston lay 102 miles ahead.
Chapter 26:// Judgment
Agent Roy Merritt stood stiffly-eyes straight ahead-one hand resting on his cane for support. Burn scars traced across his neck and chin above his suit collar. More scars were visible on the back of his hand as he straightened his tie. Agent Roy Merritt. No one called him Tripwire anymore. The men who had were long gone. He’d led them to their deaths.
Merritt focused his eyes on a frieze of workers building a glorious tomorrow. The image was set into the wall, done in the 1930s, art deco style-a WPA project. Master craftsmen had built this entire building, dispossessed workers in the throes of the Great Depression. The ornamental ceiling. The paneled walls and the inlaid granite floor. This room was a masterpiece. Their own dreams lay in ruins, and they built this temple to democracy. His forebears were tougher than he ever thought he could be.
Merritt stood before a narrow table, placed in the center of the room. Arrayed in front of him were congressional committee members, sitting high in judgment behind a richly carved oak judges’ bench. Microphones jutted up before each of them. They shuffled through papers, reading with their bifocals low on their noses.
The committee chairman looked up and pulled the microphone toward him. “You may be seated, Agent Merritt.” The words echoed flatly in the empty gallery. It was a confidential committee hearing. No one but Merritt and the committee members were present.
“Sir.” Merritt limped to the chair and sat rigidly.
The chairman regarded him. “Agent Merritt, it is the responsibility of this committee to investigate the tactical failures that led to a record loss of federal officers in October of last year at the estate of the late Matthew Sobol. We have already heard relevant testimony from all bureau personnel and local law enforcement officers who were at the scene, and now that you have sufficiently recovered from your injuries, we would like to close out our investigation with your testimony on this matter.”
He paused and lowered his sheaf of papers. “Before we begin, let me state for the record, Mr. Merritt, that this committee is aware of the many personal sacrifices you have made for this country, both here and overseas following September 11th. We have the highest regard for both your personal courage and your patriotism.”
Merritt stared at the floor in front of him. He said nothing.
The chairman picked up the papers and turned to the senator on his right. “Senator Tilly, you may proceed.”
Tilly was a white-haired, loose-jowled man-like most of the legislators in attendance. He glanced at his notes and then stared at Merritt. He spoke in a Southern drawl that seemed strangely in keeping with the proceedings. “Agent Merritt. We have reviewed both your written repoats — the first dated ten March and the second from three April-and these documents do not shed any light on one crucial question: why did you force entry into Sobol’s mansion after being ordered to abort your mission?”
Merritt barely looked up at Tilly. He took a breath. “I have no explanation, Senator.”
The senators exchanged looks. The chairman leaned in to his mic.
“Mr. Merritt, it is your duty to provide-”
“My team was dead. Because of me. I was injured and angry, and I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Tilly responded immediately. “You weren’t thinking clearly? Because of your injuries or because of your anger?”
He looked down at the floor again. “Because of my anger.”
“So you were angry. Do you feel this released you from your duty?”
“No, I do not, sir.”
“And you were angry at Matthew Sobol?”
Merritt nodded.
The chairman leaned in again. “Agent Merritt, please state your response.”
Merritt looked up. “I was angry at Sobol, correct. I wanted to shut him down.”
Tilly resumed. “So this was before you learned that the so-called ‘Daemon’ did not exist?”
“That’s correct.” He paused. “I know it’s my fault the house burned down, Senator.”
The chairman motioned for Tilly to hold off, then turned to Merritt. “The committee will judge who’s at fault-if fault is to be found. Please just answer the questions.”
Tilly pressed on. “To be clear: did you not enter the house to take refuge from the fire on the lawn?”
Were they giving him an out? He thought of the dead faces of his men. Their fatherless children. He wouldn’t take the easy way out. “No. I meant to destroy the Daemon.”
Tilly glanced at the chairman with some exasperation, then turned back to Merritt. “This was your sole reason for entering the mansion?”
Merritt looked up. “Yes.”
Tilly flipped through the pages of Merritt’s reports.
There was silence for a moment.
The chairman looked gravely at Merritt. “Agent Merritt, I can only imagine the horror you’ve been through, but because of your actions the mansion and all the outbuildings burned to the ground-destroying evidence that might have helped to locate and convict Sebeck’s accomplices.”
Merritt knew this all too well. He thought of little else nowadays.
The chairman looked down his glasses. “Let’s bring this fish to the boat, shall we?” He flipped through his papers, then looked up. “You say you have very little recollection of how you survived the fire. You write in your report”-he lifted his glasses and read from the page-“‘my tac-suit must have kept me afloat in the water and turned me upright.’” The chairman lowered the page. “And yet, you were found a hundred feet east of the location you indicated as the mouth of the pit. It might be very hard, Mr. Merritt, but can you recall anything-absolutely anything-of the layout or contents of the cellars before you lost consciousness?”
Merritt stared at the floor. Not a night went by that he didn’t recall fleeting images of terror from that night. The trapdoor above him engulfed in flames. Flaming wood falling down upon him. The air in his gas mask growing warmer-suffocating him slowly. The sudden explosion. The cinderblock wall blasting apart near him, sending fragments into his leg. A rush of water. Falling as it flowed out into a room of fire. The flood of water roiling around him. Scalding steam. Like a scene of hell itself. Crawling. Then the water sweeping him-converging with another stream and sucking him across the center of the inferno as he struggled for air. The rush of water. Tumbling down steps into the wine cellar and landing in the pool gathered there at the lowest spot in the house.
He didn’t regain consciousness until four days later in the burn unit at USC. Months of agony followed. His wife’s loving eyes. The faces of his girls. Faces he thought he’d never see again. Faces that
gave him the courage to face each agonizing day.
He had no recollection of floor plans or equipment or schematics. It was all just a sea of fire.
He shook his head slowly.
The senators looked at each other. The chairman nodded. “Well, Agent Merritt, I must tell you this is not easy. Six men died under your command, and the entire estate was lost-by your own admission-due to your attempts to penetrate the server room-contrary to orders. This committee has no choice but to recommend to Director Bennett that you be put on a disciplinary suspension, pending final judgment in this matter.”
The words fell on Merritt like slabs of rock. It felt like the last ounce of breath had been crushed out of him. He couldn’t speak.
The chairman picked up his gavel and rapped it twice with an echoing clack-clack. “This hearing is adjourned.”
*
Merritt limped down the steps of the Capitol, thinking hard on the changes in his life since that October night. But today was a beautiful spring day. The cherry trees blossomed along the Potomac. He gazed across the National Mall at the monuments built by the valiant generations that came before him.
All he ever wanted was to serve his country.
But he’d failed. And all of the conspirators except Sebeck had escaped, possibly because of Merritt’s foolhardiness. His career was over.
He limped onward, along a landscaped sidewalk beneath budding oak trees. Men and women in uniform or suits scurried this way and that in groups of two or three, clutching briefcases and talking earnestly. Merritt needed time to think. Time to figure out what he was going to say to his wife.
He eased onto a park bench and gazed out at the National Mall. The business of government was carrying on without him.
Merritt was still lost in thought as a nondescript man in a nondescript suit approached and sat down on the far end of the bench. Merritt bristled slightly. All he wanted was to be left alone.
The man spoke without looking at him. “The house didn’t hold any important information, Agent Merritt.”
Merritt stopped short and turned to glare at the man-a federal bureaucrat type, late twenties. The kind of person you forgot even while you were looking at him. Cheap gray suit, unkempt brown hair, lime green shirt with a striped tie, leatherette attach case. Merritt saw a federal ID badge hanging off the man’s lapel:
Littleton, Leonard
General Services Administration
Merritt finally looked up into the man’s eyes, narrowing his own. “What did you say to me?”
“I said: Sobol’s house was a trap. It didn’t hold anything important.”
“Yeah? What the hell do you know about it?”
Littleton’s reaction surprised Merritt. He didn’t shrink back. He didn’t even seem surprised.
“I know a lot. In fact, I know more than any man alive.”
Merritt frowned. There was something about those eyes. The nose. He’d seen this man before. But where?
Littleton sensed that Merritt was trying to place him. “No, you don’t know me, Agent Merritt. But you know ofme.”
Merritt studied Littleton’s face.
Littleton zipped open his ratty attach, producing a small notebook computer about the size of a thin hardcover book. Littleton dropped his attach without concern and flipped open the computer.
It turned out to be a portable DVD player.
“Who are you? A reporter?”
Littleton ignored him and instead hit the PLAY button, then turned the screen to face Merritt.
In a moment Merritt was taken back to that night many months ago. The video screen showed him standing in Sobol’s entertainment room, eyes bloody, face blistered, nose bleeding-a smoking shotgun in his hand. It was an isometric perspective, looking down on him from near the ceiling. A slightly grainy image, as though from a security camera.
On the screen Merritt was reloading. He looked up and shouted, “I’m going to shut you down, Sobol!” And that voice behind him-but the voice didn’t register at all on the video. It was as if the Merritt on the DVD screen was a schizophrenic-hearing voices. Merritt saw himself turn and fire point-blank into the wall behind him.
The real Merritt shook himself out of his stunned silence and dropped his cane with a clatter onto the sidewalk. He leaned over to Littleton, whispering urgently. “Where did you get this?”
Littleton snapped the DVD player closed. “From the source.”
“What source?”
“The Daemon.”
Littleton leaned down to pick up Merritt’s cane while Merritt groped for words.
It suddenly dawned on Merritt. He pointed a tentative finger. “You’re Jon Ross.”
He extended the cane to Merritt. “I once was, yes. That seems like ages ago now.”
“The FBI’s Most Wanted man.”
“I suppose I’m manna from heaven to you. You could quickly get yourself reinstated if you turned me in. Maybe even decorated-which, on a personal note, I think is overdue.”
Merritt felt reflexively for his shoulder holster-then remembered that he didn’t have a weapon on him. He had come for a congressional committee hearing. It would have created an unnecessary hassle going through the metal detectors with a gun.
Merritt smiled calmly. “What’s to stop me from turning you in?”
“My innocence. And the fact that you’re a man who loves this country.”
Merritt tried to resist the appeal to his wounded patriotism. Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
He got his emotions under control. “What did you do to Mr. Littleton?” He ripped off the Littleton ID badge. “Where is he? Dead?”
Ross laughed. “No, of course not.”
Merritt examined the badge. Plastic. It had Ross’s picture on it. But it was blank on the back, unlike real federal IDs.
“Not Littleton’s fault. He was eating lunch on a park bench. A digital camera with a zoom lens gave me a close-up image of his ID badge. I used a graphics program to paste in my own photo, then a portable card printer. All from the confines of my car.” Ross frowned. “No smart chip inside, though. So I couldn’t actually get into a federal building. But it’s very good for moving around the public spaces without arousing suspicion.”
Merritt pocketed the ID. “You’re under arrest, Mr. Ross.”
“The Daemon exists, Agent Merritt. No living person was running the defenses in that house. You know it’s true. Now imagine the exact same thing loose in the world, and you’ll have some idea what we’re up against.”
Merritt paused, but then shook his head. “No. I don’t know that. I was angry-”
“They didn’t tell you everything they knew. Didn’t you think it strange that they sent a hostage rescue team in to bridge a pit? It’s because they knew they were sending you against a barricaded suspect.”
“Tell your story in court.”
“I’m not an American citizen. I don’t think I get a trial.”
“Either way, you’re coming with me.”
Ross just gave Merritt an impatient look. “Agent Merritt, I watched you go through the metal detectors earlier. I know you’re unarmed.”
Son of a bitch.
“I, on the other hand, am armed-so I suggest you listen to what I have to say. Because after the shooting starts, there will be no more talk-and you may never get the answers to those questions that keep you up at night.”
They said Ross was slippery. Merritt did need answers. He looked beyond Ross at two Capitol Hill police walking in the distance. He knew he wouldn’t call them. Not yet.
He looked back at Ross. “Okay. I do want answers. For one: why on earth should I believe anything you say? If you were the mastermind behind the Daemon hoax, then, of course, you’d have a copy of that video. It doesn’t prove anything.”
“But why would I risk my neck to come down here to show it to you? What would I gain?”
Merritt tumbled it around in his mind, looking for the angle. He couldn’t see one, but tha
t didn’t mean there wasn’t one. “Then where the hell did you get it?”
“It was screened on the secret altar of the Dark Faction in the Kingdom of Cifrain.”
Merritt just stared at him.
Ross noticed the look. “Don’t any cops play online games? Cifrain is the largest kingdom in Sobol’s online computer game The Gate.What you’re looking at here, Agent Merritt, is a recruitment video.”
“A recruitment video.” Merritt said it matter-of-factly.
He recalled the news reports at the time of the estate siege. The Feds had shut down The Gate.CyberStorm relaunched it in China-and the lawsuits were still pending. But the game rocketed in sales after the crisis. The free publicity couldn’t have hurt.
Merritt remembered screen shots. He was thinking of the possibilities for a secret organization-meeting in the dark corners of an imaginary world.
“You’re saying that the Daemon is recruiting people inside a computer game? Recruiting them for what?”
“That’s the big question.”
“And how did you manage to get your hands on this video?”
Ross grinned. “Because I’m leet. I was good enough to attract the notice of the Daemon. And I successfully navigated the Ugran-the death course.”
“If this Daemon existed, why would it care that you were good at a game? So what? It just means you have lots of time on your hands…”
Ross raised his eyebrows and waited.
It suddenly dawned on Merritt.”…which is the case for most misfits.” Merritt was starting to see the devilish logic in it. Wasn’t Sobol famous for devilish logic? Hadn’t Merritt seen it at his estate?
Ross slid the DVD player back into his cheap attach case. “The Daemon tested my knowledge of cryptography and networked systems. I was shown the video to establish the veracity of the Daemon’s claims. The entire estate siege was captured by Sobol’s security cameras. He has a clickable presentation in the inner sanctums of his online world. It shows every moment of the siege, from inside and outside the house. For the typical black-hat hacker, this video establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Daemon is authentic.”
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