by John Whitman
“Of course,” Talia continued, “knowing his original name means nothing. Sometime in the late 1990s he managed to disappear, and I mean completely. The fortune in his bank accounts vanished. They found his car and identification on the side of the road in Central California. No one has ever heard from Marquez again.”
“How do we know it’s the same person?” Jack asked.
“Truth is, we don’t,” she admitted. “But again, it doesn’t matter. The Marquez identity is a dead end anyway.”
8:39 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Tony continued, “No one’s come close to catching him. He never follows any patterns, and he isn’t attached to any cause. Totally unpredictable. Conventional wisdom says that the usual policing techniques won’t work.”
8:40 A.M. PST Talia Gerwehr’s House
“. so they recruited you to apply chaos theory to tracking him,” Jack finished for her. “It’s an interesting idea. And it almost worked. I was one room away, but he escaped.”
“He’s smart,” Talia said. “Maybe one of the most brilliant minds on the planet, at least in his field. If his computer work is any indication — and pretty much it’s all we have — he has an incredible aptitude for deduction; he takes small bits of data and extrapolates them, reaching fairly huge conclusions that are usually right. At least, we assume they’re right because he keeps succeeding in his plots, and no one catches him. That’s what his computer programs did, you know. He wrote them for Internet search engines. You type in one or two words and, based on those hints, the search engines find what you need. The same technique feeds right into voice recognition systems, deep space exploration satellites, and pretty much, if we ever develop real artificial intelligence, some of his work is going to be at the foundation of it.”
“You sound like you like him,” Jack said. “He blows people up.”
Talia had clearly heard this criticism before. “My job has been to get to know him. There’s no sense letting my ethics get in the way of that, because he doesn’t. I don’t approve of him at all. But if you ignore his intelligence, you’ll never catch him.”
“So where does chaos theory come in?” Jack asked.
Talia smiled, and her skin actually seemed to glow. “Ah, now that’s the interesting part. The working theory on Zapata is that he uses his ability to recognize patterns in order to avoid them himself. If there are no patterns, any leads you get don’t matter, because there’s no path to follow. It’s all random.”
“Anarchy,” Jack said. “Chaos.”
Talia held up her finger. “That’s just it. There’s no such thing as chaos.”
It occurred to Jack that Talia Gerwehr had never stood in the middle of a rioting mob, but he let it slide. She continued. “Anarchy is not chaos. Anarchy literally means ‘without leaders.’ That’s definitely what Zapata is after. He seems intent on breaking down structures, all structures of any kind. But chaos, well, chaos doesn’t exist.”
“So what’s chaos theory?”
“A cool-sounding name for exactly its opposite,” Talia said. “To make a long story short, chaos theory says that events that seem chaotic are really the result of a huge series of small events that, happening one after another, make the outcome seem like chaos. The popular example is this: a butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing and you get a storm in Los Angeles. The butterfly makes a tiny puff of air, which contributes to another tiny event, et cetera, et cetera, and then you have a big event.”
Jack may not have been a Mensa member, but he could follow this. “You’re suggesting that there’s a pattern somewhere in Zapata.”
“Somewhere,” she agreed. “It’s just too complex for us to find it yet. Nature does not abide chaos, Agent Bauer. All things fall into some sense of order. Frankly, he does have one obvious pattern: he follows no patterns.”
Jack said, “Well, I’ve got one lead to follow, whether it fits into your theory or not. I need you to help me get information on a gang tattoo. Zapata’s guy had one, and it’s the second one that I’ve seen since last night. Can you access confidential records?”
Talia said, “Yeah, but not here. My office computer can.” “Let’s go.”
8:55 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Henderson, for some reason, was the lone holdout in the room, and since he was Director of Field Operations, his opinion held sway. “I get all this interest in Zapata,” he was saying. “But there’s still no direct evidence that this Ramirez was involved with him. None of the victims at the Biltmore have any connections to him. For all we know, it was an arms deal gone bad, and that’s that.”
“Then why would Jack go to the hospital to get information from Chappelle?” Nina replied, her neck turning red.
Tony agreed. “We need to put the word out that Jack isn’t a suspect. He didn’t kill anyone, so there’s no crime. We need to reel him in so we can help him.”
“Absolutely not!” rasped a thin, wraithlike voice.
They all turned to see Ryan Chappelle standing in the doorway looking like a harbinger of death. He slumped against the wall weakly, but his eyes stared defiantly out of his bloodless face. “No one contacts Bauer. No one!”
14. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 9 A.M. AND 10 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
9:00 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Chappelle limped forward, and someone vacated a seat so he could sit. It was a measure of his popularity that, although they would move out of his way, no one offered to help him sit down. He slumped back in the chair, gasping for breath. He did not speak.
Finally Tony couldn’t wait any longer. “Chappelle, we have to get him in. The police are hunting him. He’s got no resources. He’s—”
Chappelle nodded. “Right. That’s it. That’s what we need.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Surprised questions popped up from several agents.
Chappelle gathered his breath again and they waited like so many impatient children attending an old man. “He needs to be. outside the system. It’s the only way we’ll catch Zapata. If we work with the usual methods, we’ll get made. It’s happened every time.”
“It happened this time, too,” Henderson pointed out.
Chappelle managed a weak smile. “Close. Arm’s reach, what I heard.”
Henderson was caving at last, but he looked unhappy about it. “I still don’t get it. You hate Bauer. Why were the two of you running this and not any of us?”
Chappelle’s chest jumped up and down slightly. He was laughing, but didn’t have enough breath to make noise. Finally the tremors subsided. “Hate Bauer. Yes. Goddamned loose cannon. Doesn’t follow orders. Rules. Right guy for this job.”
And they all saw the logic of it without further explanation. If Zapata was a genius for seeing patterns and predicting the actions of his opponents, who better to send after him than Jack Bauer, who infuriated his superiors with his habit of playing outside the lines?
“How’d you know that this Ramirez was working with Zapata?” Tony asked.
Chappelle heaved a huge sigh. The deep breath seemed to lend him more strength. “Didn’t. Not really. Some minor intelligence that Ramirez had worked with a middleman named Vanowen. We had hints that Vanowen had done a job for Zapata, planning something here in the U.S. Water, please.”
Someone opened a bottle of water. Chappelle wet his lips and continued. “Truth is, Zapata never seems to work with the same people for long. We figured Ramirez and Vanowen would be out of the loop by the time we got to them. I figured the case would dead end, but the worst-case scenario was that Jack Bauer spends a few weeks in jail, and that was all right with me, too.”
A few people chuckled at that.
“And the jailbreak?” Nina asked.
Chappelle threw up his hands feebly. “That’s all Bauer. Only that guy would take an undercover investigation and turn the city upside down.”
9:17 A.M. PST RAND Corporation
The
name RAND was simply a contraction of “Research and Development.” RAND itself was a massive nonprofit project dedicated to improving public policy through research. RAND had its hands in every aspect of government consultation, from environmental issues to broad-based discussions of the “new” military to endorsements or criticisms of specific pieces of hardware.
RAND had several restricted areas, but the office space required little more than an employee badge and a guest signature. The security guard gave Talia a familiar wave and asked Jack to enter his name on a sign-in sheet. Bauer made up a name and scribbled “A. Predolin” on the sheet in sloppy writing, then they were through.
Talia’s office was on the second floor of a quiet building where Jack imagined dozens of brilliant minds behind closed doors, brooding and contemplating.
“That’s what it’s like,” Talia quipped. “Lots of us just sitting around thinking brilliant thoughts.”
“Where I work, too,” Jack added.
Talia laughed. “Actually, there are a lot of meetings. Informational meetings given to us by intelligence agencies; we give presentations to them. There’s a lot of dialogue. Here.”
They reached her office, a small but functional space with a desk set against a wall, a computer screen, and shelves full of books. Jack recognized The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene and The Dancing Wu-Li Masters by Gary Zukav, neither of which he’d read. The rest of the books were way over his head. There was a Rubik’s Cube on the desk next to her mouse.
“I don’t have access to LAPD information,” Talia said, sitting down at her computer, “but if it’s in a Federal database, I should be able to find it.” She spoke succinctly, but without enthusiasm.
“You don’t think this is going to work,” Jack said.
“I hope it will,” she corrected, putting a positive spin on his comment. “It just doesn’t fit Zapata. I can’t imagine anyone he worked with having a tattoo that could lead back to him.”
“He wasn’t expecting the guy to get shot twenty yards from his hotel room,” Jack pointed out. “And remember, this was all right when we got close to him.”
She accepted his point with a small shrug. A few quick strokes and two different passwords later, she was inside an enormous government registry. At Jack’s direction, she did a search for “Emese.” Nothing came up.
“Try getting information on MS–13,” Jack requested.
Talia didn’t type anything.
“MS–13,” Jack repeated. “The letters ‘M’ and ‘S,’ and—” “I know what it is,” she said at last. “Zapata was part of that gang.”
“No kidding.” Jack felt a tiny knot form just below his lungs; it was a good feeling, an exciting tension, the feeling the hound gets just before the start of the hunt.
“If Zapata was Marquez, yes, I think Marquez was part of MS–13 in its early days. Not for long. And I don’t know why he left, but. ” Her voice trailed off as she began typing. A moment later, her computer screen altered and they were looking at an image of the tattoo Jack had seen twice before: “Emese” was a conjunction of the Spanish letters “eme” and “ese.” This one had a tiny “WB” connected to the bottom right part of the number three, which a caption explained stood for “West Baltimore,” but otherwise it was identical to the tattoos Jack had seen on Oscar and Aguillar.
“You said the inmates who attacked you had the same tattoo?” Talia asked incredulously.
“Yes.”
“Do you think Zapata is on to you? He tried to kill you in prison?”
Jack shook his head. “Maybe, but it doesn’t make sense. If he knew something was wrong then, he never would have let Ramirez get that close to him. And I have no idea how he could have known what I was up to in the jail. If he knows that, he’s not a genius, he’s a psychic.”
“Zapata has evaded CTU, the CIA, the FBI, the Russian GRU, the Cubans, the Israelis, everyone. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“I’ll be sure and ask him in person. Can you get me a name and address for the top of the food chain with MS–13 in Los Angeles?”
Someone knocked on Talia’s door. She was so engrossed in her research that she simply said, “Come in.”
Jack turned as the door opened and he found himself staring up at the big U.S. Marshal who’d arrested him earlier.
He was fast for a big man, and smart. He didn’t go for his gun. Instead he jabbed Jack in the face with a short left, or tried to. Jack slipped inside it and threw a punch to the big man’s liver. He missed, hitting solid muscle. Pascal was big, but he wasn’t flabby. He grabbed Jack by the hair with his left and punched him in the face with a right fist the size of a soccer ball. Jack heard a ringing in his ears and knew he couldn’t take another one of those. Plus they were making a racket; he didn’t know how much noise they were making which meant they were making too much. He blocked the second punch, then slammed his own hands down on top of the hand holding his hair. Unexpectedly, he took a bow, dropping his shoulders to the ground. Pascal grunted, the leverage on his trapped wrist dropping him down to one knee. Jack kicked, connecting to the Marshal’s groin. Then he kicked him in the face, and Pascal went limp and quiet.
Jack closed the door and listened. No noise, no movement. Maybe no one had noticed.
He turned to check on Talia. Her face was white and her eyes were wide, watching Jack as though he were a wild animal that had stalked into her office.
“I could use that address as soon as possible,” he said.
9:41 A.M. PST Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu
The Reel Inn was one of those beach dives that looked terrible, smelled terrible, and served great food. It consisted of a weather-stained wooden shack — once painted blue but now faded to a stormy gray — and a neon sign that worked at least half the time.
This early on a Saturday morning it was deserted, except for three men who sat on one of the outdoor benches staring across Pacific Coast Highway toward one hundred yards of sandy beach and then nothing but ocean.
Kyle Risdow, the blond man who had picked up Zapata earlier, lay flat on his back on one of the benches, yawning. This meeting had little to do with him directly, so he spent the time dozing and trying to think of unique concepts for online porn websites.
Next to him, Zapata sat upright, but he was otherwise equally relaxed. He had a new identity now, thanks to the third member of their little group. If anyone asked, he was now Bernard de la Plaz.
The third member of their group was a Ukrainian named Franko. Although it was Saturday morning on the beach, he still wore dark jeans and a black leather jacket. He was fingering a piece of paper with an address.
“I only have one question,” Franko said in precise but heavily accented English.
“A man without a question is a man without a brain,” Zapata said.
Franko held up the piece of paper. “You want to get rid of this person because they worked for you. But now I work for you. Will you want to get rid of me, too?”
Zapata smiled. The sun was growing stronger. It felt good on his bald head. “Lots of people who’ve worked for me are still alive.”
“Hmm,” the Ukrainian pondered. “That is no answer.”
“I like this man, Kyle!” Zapata said. “You’re sharp, sir. But don’t worry, I have no intention of killing ev
eryone. Just do this job, get paid, and have a good life.” Franko nodded, picked up a brown paper bag full of cash, and walked away.
“He’ll do it, right?” Kyle said.
“You’re not seriously asking.”
Kyle laughed, amused and, more likely, impressed by Zapata’s confidence. “Have you ever been wrong?”
Zapata stared out across the beach. It was a fair question, an important question that merited a thoughtful answer. He considered his major decisions since the day he’d walked up into the hills and away from his identity. The tasks he had set for himself in the last few years, from Venezuela to Eastern Europe and the Middle East, appeared in his memory like so man
y bits of a Rubik’s Cube. One by one they had spun into place and yes, now and then he had encountered some difficulty — the Mossad agents who’d sniffed around his activities in Jordan, the national policeman who’d caught on to his alias in Buenos Aires — but always he’d foreseen it several moves ahead and simply shifted the puzzle in a new direction.
At last he said, “No.”
Such a significant statement to be summed up in one small word, Zapata thought without ego — and that was part of his genius, part of his success — that he had no ego. He had never been the victim of any government investigation in part because he’d never been the victim of his own pride. A good plan was a reflection of the realities on the ground, not a reflection of the planner’s genius. Zapata had always succeeded because he was brilliant, but also because he was clear-sighted.
All of this was lost on Kyle. Kyle Risdow was not a terrorist, nor was he an anarchist, and he lacked utterly the perspective and intelligence to appreciate Zapata’s genius. He was a much more common type of villain: a profiteer and opportunist. He had been making money from instability since Hurricane Andrew in Florida back in 1992, when his little grocery store had miraculously survived and he’d jacked his prices up one hundred percent.
“Good,” Risdow said smugly. “Then after today I should be even richer.”
9:51 A.M. PST Staples Center
Mark Kendall jogged around the Staples Center. The huge digital display on the side of the complex read “Professional Reality Fighting Championships Tonight!”
He had hours still before his real warmup began, but he was full of nervous energy. He felt more like a kid in his first fight than a veteran in what the odds said was his last. He wasn’t afraid of his opponent, but he was afraid of failure. He was afraid to hear his baby girl crying in the background on the next telephone call. He was afraid to hear the sadness in his wife’s voice, the pure, undiluted sorrow of a mother who cannot help her child. He couldn’t bear that. He didn’t care about the fight, but he couldn’t bear to let his family down.