by Glenn Cooper
"Hi!" one of the hairdressers said, surprised. She had severely short blond hair and a micro-mini stretched over strawberry tights. "Didn't see you."
"You do walk-ins?" Will asked.
"Not usually," the girl said, but she liked his looks and wondered if he might be famous. "Do I know you?" she asked.
"Not yet, but if you give me a haircut you will," he teased. "You do men?"
She was smitten. "I'll do you myself," she gushed. "I had a cancellation anyway."
"I don't want to sit near the window and I want you to take your time. I'm not in a rush."
"You've got a lot of demands, don't you?" She laughed. "Well, I will take good care of you, Mr. Bossy Man! You sit right there and I'll get you a cup of coffee or tea."
An hour later Will had four things: a good haircut, a manicure, the girl's phone number, and his freedom. He asked for a cab and when he saw it standing on Canon, he gave her a big tip, sprang into the backseat and sank low. As it pulled away, he felt he'd made a clean escape. He ripped up the slip with the phone number and let the fragments flutter out the window. He'd have to tell Nancy about this act, certifiable proof of his commitment.
Bungalow 7 had a peach-colored door. Will rang the bell. There was a Do Not Disturb tag on the handle and a fresh Saturday paper. He'd slipped his Glock into his waistband for fast access and let his right hand brush against its rough grip.
The peephole darkened for a second then the handle moved. The door opened and the two men looked at each other.
"Hello, Will. You found my message."
Will was shocked at how haggard and old Mark appeared, almost unrecognizable. He stepped back to let his visitor in. The door closed on its own, leaving them in the semidarkness of the shade-drawn room.
"Hello, Mark."
Mark saw the butt of Will's pistol between his parted jacket. "You don't need a gun."
"Don't I?"
Mark sank onto an armchair by the fireplace, too weak to stand. Will went for the sofa. He was tired too.
"The coffee shop was staked out."
Mark's eyes bulged. "They didn't follow you, did they?"
"I think we're good. For now."
"They must've tapped my call to your daughter. I knew you'd be mad and I'm sorry. It was the only way."
"Who are they?"
"The people I work for."
"First tell me this: what if I hadn't seen your card?"
Mark shrugged. "When you're in my business you rely on fate."
"What business is that, Mark? Tell me what business you're in."
"The library business."
Frazier was inconsolable. The operation was blown to hell and he couldn't think of one thing to do except shriek like a banshee. When his throat became too raw to continue, he hoarsely ordered his men to hold their positions and continue their apparently futile search until he told them otherwise. If he'd been there, this wouldn't have happened, he brooded. He thought he had professionals. DeCorso was a good operative but clearly a failure as a field leader, and who would take the blame for that? He kept his headset glued to his skull and slowly walked through the empty corridors of Area 51, muttering, "Failure is not a fucking option," then rode the elevator topside so he could feel hot sun on his body.
Mark was hushed and confessional at times, alternatively tearful, boastful, and arrogant, occasionally irritated by questions he considered repetitive or naive. Will maintained an even, professional tone though he struggled at times to retain his composure in the face of what he was hearing.
Will set things in motion with a simple question: "Did you send the Doomsday postcards?"
"Yes."
"But you didn't kill the victims."
"I never left Nevada. I'm not a killer. I know why you think there was a killer. That's what I wanted you and everyone else to think."
"Then how did these people die?"
"Murders, accidents, suicides, natural causes-the same things that kill any random group of people."
"You're saying there was no single killer?"
"That's what I'm saying. That's the truth."
"You didn't hire or induce anyone to commit these murders?"
"No! Some of them were murders, I'm sure, but you know in your heart that not all of them were. Don't you?"
"A few of them have problems," Will admitted. He thought of Milos Covic and his window plunge, Marco Napolitano and the needle in his arm, Clive Robertson and his nosedive. Will's eyes narrowed. "If you're telling me the truth, then how in hell did you know in advance these people were going to die?"
Mark's sly smile unnerved him. He'd interviewed a lot of psychotics, and his I-know-something-you-don't-know grin was straight out of a schizophrenic's playbook. But he knew that Mark wasn't crazy. "Area 51."
"What about it? What's the relevance?"
"I work there."
Will was testy now. "Okay, I pretty much got that. Spill it! You said you were in the library business."
"There's a library at Area 51."
He was being forced to drag it out of him, question by question. "Tell me about this library."
"It was built in the late 1940s by Harry Truman. After World War Two, the British found an underground complex near a monastery on the Isle of Wight, Vectis Abbey. It contained hundreds of thousands of books."
"What kind of books?"
"Books dating back to the Middle Ages. They contained names, Will, billions-over two hundred billion names."
"Whose names?"
"Everyone who's ever lived."
Will shook his head. He was treading water, feeling like he was about to go under. "I'm sorry, I'm not following you."
"Since the beginning of time, there've been just under one hundred billion people who've ever lived on the planet. These books started listing every birth and every death since the eighth century. They chronicle over twelve hundred years of human life and death on earth."
"How?" Will was angry. Was this guy a sicko after all?
"Anger is a common reaction. Most people get angry when they're told about the Library because it challenges everything we think we know. Actually, Will, no one has a clue about the how part or the why. There's been sixty-two years of debate and no one knows. It would have taken hundreds of monks at a time, if that's what they were, writing continuously for over five hundred years to physically write down all these names, one for each birth, one for each death. They're listed by date, the earlier ones in the Julian calendar, the later ones in the Gregorian calendar. Each name is written in its native language with a simple notation in Latin-birth or death. That's all there is. No commentary, no explanation. How did they do it? Religious types say they were channeling God. Maybe they were clairvoyants who saw the future. Maybe they were from outer space. Believe me, no one has any idea! All we know is that it was a monumental task. Think about it: the numbers have been accelerating over the centuries, but just today, August 1, 2009, there are 350,000 people who will be born and 150,000 will die. Each name written with pen and ink. Then tomorrow's names and the day after, and the day after that. For twelve hundred years! They must have been like machines."
"You know I can't believe any of this," Will said quietly.
"If you give me a day, I can prove it. I can pull up a list of everyone who's going to die in Los Angeles tomorrow. Or New York, or Miami. Or anywhere."
"I don't have a day." Will got up and started aggressively pacing. "I can't believe I'm even giving you the right time of day." He angrily swore and demanded, "Go online and look up the Panama City, Florida, News Herald. Look at today's obituaries and see if you've got them on your goddamned list."
"The local paper's outside the door? Wouldn't that be easier?"
"Maybe you've already looked at it!"
"You think this is an elaborate setup?"
"Maybe it is."
Mark looked troubled. "I can't go online."
"Okay, this is bullshit!" Will shouted. "I knew this was bullshit."
&
nbsp; "If I log my computer onto the Web, they'll locate us in a few minutes. I won't do it."
Will looked around the room in frustration and spotted a keyboard in the TV cabinet. "What's that?" he asked.
Mark smiled. "Hotel Internet access. I didn't notice that."
"So, you can do it?"
"I'm a computer scientist. I think I can figure it out."
"I thought you said you were a librarian."
Mark ignored him. In a minute he had the newspaper's website on the TV screen.
"Hometown paper, right?" Mark said.
"You know it is."
Mark took out his laptop and booted it up.
While he was logging on, Will pounced on an inconsistency. "Wait a minute! You said these books only had names and dates. But then you said you could sort them by city. How?"
"That's an enormous part of what we do at Area 51. Without geographical correlates, the data is useless. We have access to virtually every digital and analog database in the world, birth records, phone records, bank records, marital records, employment records, utilities, land deeds, taxes, insurance, you name it. There are 6.6 billion people in the world. We have some form of address identifiers, if only the country or province, on ninety-four percent of them. Very nearly a hundred percent in North America and Europe." He looked up. "I've got this encrypted. Just so you know, it needs a password, which I'm not going to give you. I need insurance you'll protect me."
"From whom?"
"The same people who're after you. We call them the watchers. Area 51 security. Okay, I'm on. Take the keyboard."
"Go into the bedroom," Will ordered. "I don't want you seeing the dates."
"You don't trust me."
"You're right, I don't."
Will spent several minutes calling out names of the recently deceased in Panama City. He mixed in names from the archives with people who died the day before. To his astonishment, Mark was shouting back the correct date of death every time. Finally, Will called him back in and complained, "Come on! This is like a Vegas lounge act and you're like one of those mentalists. How are you doing this?"
"I told you the truth. If you think I'm pulling a fast one, you'll have to wait till tomorrow. I'll give you ten people in L.A. who're going to die today. You check the obits tomorrow."
Mark then proceeded to dictate ten names, dates, and addresses. Will took them down on a hotel notepad and moodily stuffed the sheet in his pocket. But he immediately pulled it out and said defiantly, "I'm not waiting until tomorrow!" He dug his phone out of his pants and saw it was dead-the battery had gotten dislodged when it fell onto the sidewalk. He reseated it and the phone came alive again. Mark watched with amusement as Will called information to get the phone numbers.
Will swore out loud each time he got voice mail or a no pickup. Someone answered the seventh number on the list. "Hello, this is Larry Jackson returning Ora LeCeille Dunn's call," Will said. He was listening and pacing. "Yes, she called me last week. We have a mutual acquaintance." He was listening again but now he was slumping onto the sofa. "I'm sorry, when was that? This morning? It was unexpected? I'm very sorry to hear the news. My condolences."
Mark opened his arms expansively. "Do you believe me now?"
Frazier's headset got noisy again. "Malcolm, Piper's phone is back on the grid. He's somewhere in the 9600 block of Sunset."
Frazier started sprinting back toward the Ops Center on an upward climb of his personal roller coaster.
Will got up and surveyed the bar. There was a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black. He opened it and poured a measure into a whiskey glass. "Want one?"
"It's too early."
"Is it?" He pounded back a shot and let it work through his system. "How many people know about this?"
"I don't know exactly. Between Nevada and Washington, I'd guess a thousand."
"Who runs it? Who's in charge?"
"It's a navy operation. I'm pretty sure the President and some cabinet members are in the know, some Pentagon and Homeland Security people, but the highest-ranking person I'm positive about is the Secretary of the Navy because I've seen him copied on memos."
"Why the navy?" Will asked, bemused.
"I don't know. It was set up like that from the beginning."
"This has been under wraps for sixty years? The government's not that good."
"They kill leakers," Mark said bitterly.
"What's the point? What do they do with it?"
"Research. Planning. Resource allocation. The CIA and military have used it as a tool since the early fifties. They feel they can't not use it, since it's there. We can predict events, even if we can't alter outcomes, at least fatal outcomes. If you can predict large events you can plan around them, budget for them, set policy, maybe soften their blow. Area 51 predicted the Korean War, the Chinese purges under Mao, the Vietnam War, Pol Pot in Cambodia, the Gulf wars, famines in Africa. We can usually spot big plane crashes, natural disasters like floods and tsunamis. We had 9/11 nailed."
Will was dazed. "But we couldn't do anything about it?"
"Like I said, these outcomes can't be changed. We didn't know how the attacks were going to happen or who was going to be responsible, though rightly or wrongly, we had ideas. I think that's why we were so quick to go into attack mode against Iraq. It was all gamed out in advance."
"Jesus."
"We've got supercomputers grinding data around the clock, looking for worldwide patterns." He leaned in and lowered his voice. "I can tell you with certainty that 200,000 people will die in China on February 9, 2013, but I can't tell you why. People are working on that right now. In 2025-March twenty-fifth, to be precise-over a million people will die in India and Pakistan. That's a paradigm changer but it's too far away for anyone to focus on it."
"Why Nevada?"
"The Library was taken there after the Air Force flew it from England to Washington. A nuclear-proof vault was built under the desert. It took twenty years to transcribe all the post-1947 material and get it digital. Before they were computerized, the books were precious. Now, they're pretty much ceremonial. It's amazing to see it, but the actual Library doesn't have much of a purpose anymore. As to why Nevada, it was remote and protectable. Truman laid down a smoke screen in 1947 by concocting the Roswell UFO story and letting the public believe that Area 51 was built for UFO research. They couldn't hide the existence of the lab because of all the people who work there, but they hid its purpose. A lot of dumb-asses still believe the UFO crap."
Will was about to take another hit of scotch but realized it was affecting him more than he wanted. Getting sloshed wasn't a good option right now. "What do you do there?" he asked.
"Database security. We have the most secure servers in the world. We're hack proof and leak-proof, from the inside and out, or at least we were."
"You breached your own systems."
"I'm the only one who could have done it," he boasted.
"How?"
"It was pure simplicity. Memory stick up my butt. I beat the watchers, those fuckers. They can't have the public knowing about the Library. Can you imagine what the world would be like? Everyone would be paralyzed if they knew the day they were going to die-or their wife, or parents, or children or friends. Our analysts think that society, as we know it, would be altered permanently. Whole segments of the population might just fuck off and say, 'What's the point?' Criminals might commit more crimes if they knew they weren't going to be killed. You can envision some pretty nasty scenarios. The funny thing is, it's just births and deaths. There's nothing in the data about how people live their lives, nothing about quality. All that's extrapolation."
Will raised his voice. "Then why did you do it? Why the postcards?"
Mark knew the question was coming. Will could see it. His lower lip quivered like a child about to be disciplined. "I wanted to-" He broke down, sobbing and choking.
"You wanted to what?"
"I wanted to make my life better. I wanted to be someone-different.
" He dissolved in tears again.
The man was pathetic, but Will controlled his ire. "Go on, I'm listening."
Mark got a tissue and blew his nose. "I didn't want to be a drone stuck in a lab my whole life. I see rich people at the casinos and I ask myself, why them? I'm a million times smarter. Why not me? But I never catch a break. None of the companies I went to work for after MIT exploded. No Microsofts, no Googles. I made a few bucks on stock options but the whole dot-com thing passed me by. Then I screwed up by going to work for the government. Once the sexiness of Area 51 wears off, it's just a low-paying computer job in an underground bunker. I tried to sell my screenplays-I told you I'm a writer-and they were rejected. So, I decided I could change my life by leaking only a little data."
"So this is about money? Is that it?"
Mark nodded but added, "Not money for the sake of money-for the change that goes along with it."
"How were you going to make money off of Doomsday?"
Mark's frown turned into a triumphant smile. "I already did! Big money!"
"Enlighten me, Mark. I'm not as sharp as you."
Mark didn't pick up on his facetiousness-he took it as a compliment and launched into an explanation, slow and patient at first then increasingly pressured. "Okay, here's how I conceived it-and I've got to say that it played out exactly as I planned. I needed a demonstration of what I could deliver. I needed credibility. I needed to be able to get people's attention. The way to do that is to get the media involved, am I right? And what would satisfy all these criteria? Doomsday! I thought the name was brilliant, by the way. I wanted the world to think there was a serial killer who was warning his victims. So I picked a random group of nine people in New York from the database. Okay, I see the look in your eyes, and maybe this was a crime at some level, but obviously I didn't kill anybody. But once the case really took off in the media, I was able to instantly capture the attention of the man I needed to reach-Nelson Elder." He tripped on Will's expression. "What? You know him?"
Will was shaking his head in amazement. "Yeah, I know him. I hear he's dead."
"They killed him." He whispered, "And Kerry."