Gideon’s Sword gc-1

by Douglas Preston

  O’Brien took it and felt his face light up. “Oh. That’s easy.”

  Gideon pointed at the music player with a pained expression. “Before we get started, mind turning that off? If any music could be carcinogenic, that’s it.”

  O’Brien glanced at him in mock horror. “You don’t like blackened death metal?”

  “Not even when it’s the blue plate special.” Gideon looked around for a place to sit, but there was only one chair in the tiny, impossibly crowded office and O’Brien was already in it. “I’ve never seen so much junk crammed into so little space. When are you going to clear some of this crap out?”

  “Junk? Crap?” O’Brien sniffed as he turned down the volume of his player. “Everything in here is absolutely necessary to my work. For instance.” And wheeling his chair around, he plucked a gray metal device the size of a shoe box from its precarious perch atop an ancient UNIX terminal, placed it on his desk, plugged it in, and attached it to his PC.

  “What’s that?” Gideon asked.

  “It’s a VDT.”

  “I repeat: what’s that?”

  “A virtual digital telecine. Normally used to transfer different kinds of video stock from one format to another. But this particular model is very useful for forensic video work.” Turning it on, he pressed a few buttons on the tiny LED screen, then slid Gideon’s DVD into the slot. As the machine whirred, he took a huge bite of his sandwich, double-clicked an icon on the computer desktop. “I’m firing up the VDT’s host application.”

  A large window appeared on the screen, surrounded by several smaller windows that included fine-grained transport controls, gamma correction, and utilities for image manipulation. “Where is it?”

  “Just start playback. I’ll tell you when you reach the target image.”

  O’Brien clicked the forward button in the transport control window, and an image appeared on the screen. “An airport,” O’Brien said. “Shit. It’s a security tape.”

  “So?”

  “Their quality sucks. Heavily compressed, too.”

  They watched in silence for a minute as a worried-looking Asian man crossed the screen and made his way through a tangle of passengers.

  “It’s been hard-telecined,” O’Brien said, staring at the monitor. “A hair under thirty fps—”

  “There.” Gideon pointed at the screen. “Back up just a bit, then go forward, frame by frame.”

  O’Brien returned playback to the moment the man encountered the group of passengers, then moved forward again.

  “Slower, please.”

  O’Brien took a lengthy pull of the Dr Pepper, worked the transport controls. “One frame per second.”

  They watched together as a boy in the crowd dropped a teddy bear, a woman beside him picked it up, handed it back.

  “Pause,” said Gideon. “Now, you see the satchel that boy is carrying?”

  “Yup,” O’Brien said, peering at the flickering screen.

  “I want you to find the clearest frame of that satchel, then enhance it. It’s got a blurry logo of some kind. I want to know what it is.”

  “Sure thing.” O’Brien went backward through the frames, then forward, until he found the clearest shot of the satchel.

  “Blurry as hell,” he muttered. “Whoever demultiplexed this for you did a lousy job.”

  “They were in a hurry.”

  “I’ll have to de-interlace the image or the combing will kill us.” O’Brien’s fingers ran over the keyboard. The image in the main window faded, grew larger.

  “What are those bars across the image?” Gideon asked.

  “That’s 2:3 pulldown. I’m trying to compensate.” Again he typed a rapid-fire series of commands. The image brightened, stabilized. “That’s better. Let me apply some unsharp masking.” O’Brien moused through a series of sub-menus.

  “It’s a shield with a motto,” Gideon said, staring.

  O’Brien worked the machine, further refining the image.

  “Pectus Est Quod Disertos Facit,” Gideon read from the screen.

  “What the hell’s that? Latin?”

  “It is the heart that makes men eloquent,” said Gideon.

  “What a crock,” said O’Brien, shaking his head sadly at the supreme idiocy of the sentiment. “Who the hell said that?”

  “It’s from Quintilian’s Orations. But it’s just pompous and vacuous enough that it might be a private school motto.” He stood up. “Thanks, Tom.”

  “Hey. What about that other thousand bucks?”

  “Enjoy your sandwich. I’ll be in touch.” He paused just before going out the door. “You haven’t heard from that doctor yet, I suppose?”

  “Oh yeah. I did. I meant to tell you about that.”

  “And?”

  “I hope the guy in those X-rays isn’t really a friend of yours.”

  Gideon looked at him. “Why do you say that?”

  “According to the doc, he’s fucked.”

  41

  Gideon slid onto the vinyl stool of the all-night diner and ordered coffee, poached eggs, hash browns, toast, and marmalade. The waitress, her zaftig figure bursting out of a 1950s uniform, took his order and bawled it into the back.

  “You should sing opera,” he said distractedly.

  She turned to him with a brilliant smile. “I do.”

  Only in New York. He nursed his coffee, feeling numb.

  I hope the guy in those X-rays isn’t really a friend of yours. Maybe O’Brien’s doctor was wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. But this was the third opinion.

  Would he have been happier not knowing? Just enjoying his final year of life in blissful ignorance? But no — this changed everything. Gideon felt a strange sense of dissociation, as if he were already out of his body, away from the living world. Suddenly, very suddenly, his priorities had shifted. No point anymore in meeting someone, raising a family. No point in advancing his career. No point in not smoking or worrying about his cholesterol count. No point, really, in anything.

  He took another sip of coffee, trying to shake the odd feeling of nerveless disbelief. One thing at a time. There’d be plenty of opportunities to think about this later. Right now, he had a job to finish.

  He forced his thoughts back to Throckmorton Academy. He’d been correct about the private school motto. Having perused the school’s website, he’d gleaned some important, if inadvertent, information about the place. It was very exclusive, highly protective of information regarding its students and staff, and sophisticated in the management of such information. But every person and organization had a weakness, and Throckmorton Academy’s was written all over its site: overweening self-​regard. Pectus Est Quod Disertos Facit. Yeah, right.

  The question was how to devise a social engineering plan to exploit that weakness. These were not idiots. He couldn’t go busting in there as a hyper-successful, self-important billionaire hedge fund manager seeking to enroll his son. They would undoubtedly have seen that type before, many times. They would be immune. He couldn’t pose as a celebrity, phony or real: Google had ended that game. Something just the opposite would be required: something that would play more subtly on their hopes, assumptions, and—​perhaps—​prejudices. As he mulled it over, an approach began to take shape in his head. Unfortunately, it would take two to pull it off. Jackson wouldn’t do: she was off trying to scare up her own leads, and besides, she wasn’t the type. No, it would have to be Orchid. Orchid would be perfect. He pushed away the sting of guilt at using her again, telling himself the ends were worth the means. After all, hadn’t she said she wanted him to call her?

  A man slid onto the stool next to his, laying a folded Post down on the counter. Gideon was irritated that, in an empty diner at three o’clock in the morning, some asshole had to sit down right next to him.

  The waitress came out with his plate, laid it down, and turned to the other man. He ordered coffee and Danish.

  She poured it, brought him the Danish, and retired into the kitchen.


  “How’s it going?” the man murmured, opening his paper.

  Gideon glanced sideways in irritation, decided to ignore him.

  “You must be almost out of cash,” the man murmured, perusing the front page.

  Gideon felt something touch his leg and glanced down to see the man proffering a fat roll of cash under the counter. Before Gideon could react, the man had slid it into Gideon’s jacket pocket, all the while reading his paper. Gideon raised his head, got a better look at the face.

  Garza. Eli Glinn’s right-hand man at EES.

  An unpleasant mixture of shock and irritation coursed over him. So much for his facility at staying below the radar.

  “It’s about time!” he said, turning on the man, suddenly snarky in his embarrassment at being caught unawares. “I wondered when Glinn would be sending a messenger boy.”

  Garza frowned, his previous unflappability fading slightly. “That’s how you say thank you?”

  “Thank you? Obviously you people at EES knew a lot more about this situation than what you briefed me on. I feel like I’ve been hung out to dry.”

  Garza took a sip of coffee, pushed the Danish away, rose, and placed a few dollars on the counter. “You’re doing okay — at least until now. If I were you, instead of complaining I’d be worried as hell that we were able to locate you. If we can find you, so can Nodding Crane.”

  The man slipped back out into the night, leaving the paper unfolded on the counter, its headline displayed.

  MURDER ON MOTT

  Chinatown Resident’s Throat Ripped Out by Assailant

  Below was a picture of Roger Marion.

  42

  The man known as Nodding Crane moved slowly, painfully along the sidewalk outside the diner. Crew was still in there, talking to the fat waitress. The man who had passed him money had come and gone. He wasn’t interested in that man. He was interested in Crew.

  Coming to a halt next to the stoop of an abandoned brownstone, he eased himself onto it, placing the beer can wrapped in a greasy paper bag beside him, and lowered his head. A set of garbage cans, stacked in a row for morning pickup, cast a long shadow, further hiding his face. A group of noisy young people crossed the street at the corner of Avenue C and went on into the night, laughing and hooting. All became silent once again.

  Right hand in the pocket of his old raincoat, he flexed his fingers, the razor-sharp picks clicking lightly against one another. He had been trained in the use of many exotic weapons — double sai, sweepers, flutes, walking canes, fire wheels, tiger forks, moonteeth — but the fingerpicks had been his own innovation. They were, in fact, genuine Dunlops he had modified, sharpened, and polished. As a boy in the training temple back in China, he had been immersed in American culture—​movies, books, video games, music. Especially music, as music was the soul of a people. On his own volition, he had taken up bottleneck guitar and learned the tunes of Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Willie Johnson, and Skip James. “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.” Now, that was real American music.

  If I ever get off this killin’ floor

  I’ll never get down this low no more

  As he hummed the music under his breath, his fingers, hidden in his voluminous coat pocket, picked out the imaginary notes, the sharpened picks making a clicking sound not unlike knitting needles.

  He saw a movement in the diner out of the corner of his eye and, while continuing to hum, shifted his attention. It was Crew. The man exited the diner, crossed the street — walking with that characteristic loping stride of his — and turned, coming along the sidewalk toward Nodding Crane, moving toward Avenue C. Keeping his head down, the low brim of his old cap hiding his face, Nodding Crane waited for Crew to arrive. His humming continued, the fingers clacked.

  Crew passed by and Nodding Crane let him go on, smiling to himself at how easy it would have been. But there were reasons not to kill him now — excellent reasons. As the man reached Avenue C, he held out his hand for a cab, and one almost immediately stopped. Nodding Crane noted the hack number, went back to humming.

  Half an hour later, he stood up, stretched, and shuffled down the street, removing his cell phone. He called the Taxi and Limousine Commission hotline, explained he had left a PDA in the cab he had flagged down on Avenue C and 13th, about three thirty AM, the ride ending at Grand Central Terminal. He waited while the cabbie was contacted. The driver had not seen the lost PDA; but there was confusion over which fare was which, since the trip record indicated that the fare in that hack number had not ended at Grand Central, but instead at Park Avenue and 50th — in front of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Nodding Crane thanked the person, apologized for the confusion, and shut the phone.

  Discarding the shapeless raincoat in one of the garbage cans, Nodding Crane walked over to Avenue C and caught his own cab.

  “The Waldorf,” he said crisply as he settled in.

  43

  Gideon Crew tossed the thick roll of money onto the bed of his suite. Then he pulled out his cell and called Orchid.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  Many derogations, animadversions, and apologies later, she agreed to the elaborate plan he described.

  He hung up and went to the window, which faced Park Avenue, and looked carefully up and down the wide boulevard in front of the hotel. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was being followed, but that was probably due to Garza’s making him paranoid. He’d given the taxi driver special directions to make sure no one was following, and he couldn’t imagine that anyone had. So why did he feel like an ant under a magnifying glass?

  He called his Pelican case up from the Waldorf baggage storage room, where he had deposited it before going off to Hong Kong. After laying out his kit, he sorted through the disguises and settled for the Death of a Salesman role — a quietly desperate middle-class suburban persona — assembled it, then stepped into it. Examining himself in the floor-length mirror on the closet door, he found it most satisfactory.

  He checked his watch. A little after four. Still wearing his disguise, he exited the Waldorf through the back door and made his way east down 51st Street, where he spied Orchid loitering outside the vest-pocket Greenacre Park, as per his instructions.

  “Excuse me, miss?” he said, approaching her.

  She turned on him and said, in a voice as cutting as dry ice, “Get lost. I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Yes, but you see that’s just the point, I am lost…”

  She practically spat at him. “Beat it. Now. Or I’ll kick you so hard in the balls I’ll sterilize your whole family.”

  Gideon laughed, pleased at the effectiveness of his deception. “It’s me. Gideon. Nice disguise, eh?”

  She gasped, leaned closer. “God, that’s worse than before.” She dropped her cigarette and angrily ground it into nothing on the sidewalk. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, calling me up like that after the way you acted.”

  “I’m staying at the Waldorf,” he said, hooking her arm and hauling her along the street. “Listen.” He pressed a wad of money into her hand. “I want you to book a room at the Waldorf for Mr. and Mrs. Tell. Go to the room, get into bed, turn off the lights, but leave the door unlocked. I’ll join you in thirty minutes.”

  “Listen, you—”

  But he released her and peeled off down 51st Street, walked into the Metropolitan Hotel, changed out of his disguise in an upper hallway, exited, then reentered the Waldorf as Gideon Crew. He went to his previous room, changed back into his disguise, showed up at the front desk, introduced himself as a Mr. Tell meeting his wife, moved through the empty corridors to the room Orchid had booked, eased open the door, shut and locked it.

  She sat up in bed, the sheet falling partway off her nude body. “I’m not going to take much more of your crap, I can tell you that.”

  He sat on the bed, took her face in his hands. “I know I’ve been a jerk, but bear with me just a little longer. Tomorrow we’re going to dress up as Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class and try to enroll
our brilliant son in Throckmorton Academy. I guarantee you, it’ll be fun. And there’s some good money in it for you.”

  She stared at him. “I don’t like the way you’re treating me. And I’m sure this isn’t more Method acting — that’s bullshit. I want to know what’s really going on.”

  “I know you do, but we’ve got to get some sleep now, because we’ve got a big day ahead of us.”

  She looked at him askance. “Sleep?” She put her arms around him and drew him down on to the bed. “Get rid of that stupid face paint and I’ll show you what kind of ‘sleep’ we’re going to be getting.”

  44

  Nodding Crane sat in front of Saint Bartholomew’s Church, strumming his Beard Road-O-Phonic with the case open in front of him, collecting small change. It was nine o’clock in the morning and most of the sidewalk was full of bankers and brokers on their way to work, rushing past without a second glance.

  I’m looking funny in my eyes

  He plucked the strings, singing in a low, rough voice, a voice he had practiced from years of listening to Bukka White. He felt calm after his near panic earlier that morning, when Crew had almost slipped away from him. That was some trick with the rooms and the sudden appearance of the woman. He had almost been fooled. Almost. If it hadn’t been for Crew’s characteristic loping walk, he would have been fooled.

  And I believe I’m fixing to die

  Crew had gone off with her, and he had decided not to follow them, knowing that they would return. Nodding Crane had learned long ago that it was dangerous and often counterproductive to obsessively follow your prey. And unnecessary: everyone lived by patterns, by loops and returns; better to learn the patterns and anticipate the returns than follow every useless footstep. The time to follow was when the pattern broke and the prey set off on a new path.

  I’m looking funny in my eyes

  The suits hustled by, bent on money matters. He began to resent that nobody was dropping money in his guitar case — these masters of the universe were passing him by without even a glance. And then, out of the blue, someone dropped in a twenty.