Brilliance (The Brilliance Trilogy Book 1)

by Marcus Sakey

  His partner moved to the end of the bar. With his off hand, he reached around his back and came out with a pair of handcuffs. Slid them to Cooper. “Keep your right hand on the bar. Use your left to lock it to the rail.”

  “Come on, Bobby—”

  The gun came up. “Do it.”

  Cooper sighed. He picked up the cuffs, careful to move slowly. Snapped them around his right wrist.

  You do this, you’re helpless. If you’re wrong about Quinn, then it’s all over.

  He fastened the other end to the brass rail. Gave an experimental tug. A clang and a bite. “Better?”

  Quinn holstered his weapon. Walked closer. His face was unreadable, too many things happening at once. “I’ll give you your half hour, because I said I would. But when time is up, I’m going to call a team to bring you in.”

  “Like I said on the phone, if you do, I won’t resist.” He tried for a grin. “Much.”

  “You resist at all, and I’ll kill you.” It was a simple statement of fact, and all the more jarring coming from Bobby Quinn, to whom sarcasm and irony were akin to oxygen. “Start talking.”

  Cooper took a breath. “I’ve been in deep cover for six months. Since March 12th, when you and I almost stopped the bombing of the Exchange. I was inside. No idea how I survived, but I woke up in a triage tent. When I could walk again, I hitched a ride with a bunch of Marines and went to see Drew Peters. I pitched him a crazy plan: I’d go rogue. Everyone would blame me for the explosion. I’d become a bad guy. Be hunted.”

  He talked fast, didn’t waste time on embellishments, just laid out the facts. His time on the run. Building a reputation as a thief. His coming-out party on the El platform. The trip to Wyoming. Meeting Epstein.

  “Why? Why do all this?”

  “I told you, so that I could get to John Smith and kill him.”

  Quinn shook his head. “That’s the goal. I asked why.”

  “Oh. My daughter.”

  “Kate?”

  “She was about to be tested. She would have been sent to an academy. Peters promised to keep her out.” His stomach soured. I’ll take care of your family. “Everything I’ve done, I did for her.”

  “Did you find Smith?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Ah-so.”

  Cooper started to lean back, stopped when the cuff bit his wrist. He said, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “No. And in twenty minutes, I’m going to bring you in.”

  “Jesus, Bobby. I’ve been a DAR agent for the last six months. I mean, teams came after me four times. Four. And in that time, I never killed one agent. Never even hurt one, more than his pride. Why do you think that is?”

  “You just killed one.” Quinn’s eyes hard. “In the cemetery.”

  “Yeah,” Cooper said. “Well, I’m not an agent anymore. And once you take a look at that”—he jerked his head toward the datapad—“I don’t think you will be either.”

  “What is it?”

  “Drew Peters’s dirtiest secret. It’s what I was picking up in the cemetery.”

  “I thought you were after Smith.”

  “So did I. Turns out, I was wrong.”

  Quinn wanted to pick up the datapad. Cooper could see it, could read it on him clear as morning sunlight. “Go ahead.”

  Bobby looked at him, and Cooper said, “Jesus, man, I’m handcuffed to the bar. What do you think I’m going to do, turn into a bat and fly away?”

  A muscle twitched in Quinn’s cheek, and Cooper realized his partner had been about to make a joke. He didn’t, but Cooper knew the man, had sat alongside him for hours, days, years. You’re getting through to him. “Okay, look, I’ll do it. Okay?”

  “Slowly.”

  Slowly, Cooper picked up his d-pad. Propped it on the rail so they both could see. Clumsy with his left hand, he activated it. Then started the video.

  The same room he’d seen before, a hotel or a safe house. Matching furniture with no sense of style, walls painted putty. There was a window, and through it trees.

  Director Drew Peters paced. He was younger here. The man’s hair and style hadn’t changed in the whole of the time Cooper had known him, but the lines on his forehead, the sagging beneath his eyes, those had deepened with time.

  “When is this?” Quinn asked.

  “Five years and between eight and nine months ago.”

  “How can you be so—”

  “Watch.”

  On the screen, Peters walked to the table, picked up a glass of water, sipped at it. There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Two men in plain suits entered. The kind of men who looked like they were wearing sunglasses even when they weren’t. They nodded at Peters, then checked the room. Finally, one spoke into a middle distance. “We’re clear, Mr. Secretary.”

  A man walked into the room. Average height, good smile, conservative suit.

  “Hey,” Quinn said. “That’s—”

  “Yes.”

  That had been Cooper’s first clue as to the age of the video. It had to be at least five years old, because the man who walked through the doors was, at the time, the secretary of defense. A connected man, a savvy politician, the kind people treated respectfully not only because he knew where the bodies were buried, but because he’d put his fair share in the ground himself. Secretary Henry Walker.

  Only now, his title was different. It had been for five years. Since 2008…when he’d won his first presidential election. The first of two. Cooper had voted for him in both.

  Even watching it again, knowing what was coming, how much worse things got, Cooper felt like he couldn’t breathe. The president’s famous March 12th speech echoed in his inner ear.

  Let us face this adversity not as a divided nation, not as norm and abnorm, but as Americans. Let us work together to build a better future for our children.

  A cry for tolerance, for humanity. A call to all people to work together.

  A lie.

  On the screen, the two men shook hands, exchanged pleasantries. Walker dismissed his security. Quinn said, “Okay, Cooper, other than the fact that I feel a little dirty watching this, what’s the point?”

  “I’ll show you.” With his left hand, he scrubbed forward to 10:36.

  Walker:

  It’s the liberal hand-wringing that drives me batshit. Don’t people understand that civil rights are a privilege? That when it comes to defending our way of life, sometimes they’re a luxury we cannot afford?

  Peters:

  The public doesn’t want to believe a war is coming.

  Walker:

  God willing, they’re right. But I was always taught that God helps those who help themselves.

  Peters:

  My feelings exactly, sir.

  To 12:09:

  Walker:

  It’s not that I hate the gifted. I don’t. But only a fool doesn’t fear them. It’s a lovely sentiment to say that all men are brothers. But when your brother is better than you in every way, when he can out-plan, out-engineer, out-play you…well, it’s hard to be the little brother.

  Peters:

  Normal people need a wake-up call. They need to remember that our very way of life is at stake.

  To 13:35:

  Peters:

  Sir, I understand your desire to choose your words with care. So let me be the blunt one. If we don’t do something, in thirty years, normal humans will have become irrelevant. At best.

  Walker:

  And at worst?

  Peters:

  Slaves.

  To 17:56:

  Walker:

  The thing is, there’s two ways to go into a fight. You can do it wearing body armor and slinging a rifle, or you can show up in your skivvies. Not only that, but the guy who looks like he can fight rarely has to.

  Peters:

  That’s it exactly. I don’t want genocide. But we need to prepare ourselve
s. We have the right to fight for our own survival. And this is not a war that can be fought with tanks and jets.

  Walker:

  You’ve heard rumors about the congressional investigation into Equitable Services.

  Peters:

  Yes. But that’s not why—

  Walker:

  Don’t soil yourself. I’m not threatening you. But I do wonder whether this plan of yours is patriotism or self-preservation.

  Peters:

  Mr. Secretary—

  Walker:

  What’s the target?

  Peters:

  Are you sure you want to know the operational details, sir?

  Walker:

  All right. You’re right.

  To 19:12:

  Walker:

  How many dead are you thinking?

  Peters:

  Somewhere between fifty and a hundred.

  Walker:

  That many?

  Peters:

  A small price to defend hundreds of millions.

  Walker:

  And these will be civilians.

  Peters:

  Yes.

  Walker:

  All?

  Peters:

  Yes, sir.

  Walker:

  No. No, that won’t do.

  Peters:

  To ensure they’re seen as terrorists, it has to be civilians. An attack against the military frames them as a military power. It defeats—

  Walker:

  I understand. But we need a symbol of the government there as well. Otherwise, it will seem random and unfocused.

  Peters:

  What about an attack on your office?

  Walker:

  Let’s not get carried away. No, I was thinking a senator, or a Supreme Court judge. Someone respected, symbolic. And we’ll need a patsy, too. A capable one who won’t get caught right away. Someone to become the bogeyman.

  Peters:

  I have one in mind, sir. An activist named John Smith.

  Walker:

  I know of him.

  Peters:

  He’s already made a pest of himself; it’s only a matter of time before he would resort to violence anyway. And he’s very capable. Once we tip him over, he’ll play the part. Any, ah, symbolic target in particular?

  Walker:

  I can think of a few.

  To 24:11:

  Walker:

  The key is to not let this get out of hand. We need an incident that unites the country, that justifies your work. Not something that kicks off a holy war.

  Peters:

  I understand, and I agree. Frankly, the gifted are too valuable to risk.

  Walker:

  Amen. But they need to be kept in their place.

  Peters:

  Sometimes war is the only route to peace.

  Walker:

  I think we understand one another.

  To 28:04:

  Peters:

  I’ve already chosen a target. A restaurant. I’ve got teams ready.

  Walker:

  This is a hard assignment. Some of your shooters might flinch.

  Peters:

  Not these men.

  Walker:

  And afterward? Can you depend on their discretion?

  Peters:

  Depend on it? No. But I can assure it.

  Walker:

  Are you saying—

  Peters:

  Operational details.

  To 30:11:

  Peters:

  Sir, I will handle everything. I will shield the administration in every way. But I need to hear directly from your lips, sir. I can’t proceed on an assumption.

  Walker:

  You’re not recording this, are you?

  Peters:

  Don’t be ridiculous.

  Walker:

  I’m kidding, Peters. Good lord, if you were recording this we’d both be up a creek.

  Peters:

  True. So. Sir? I need explicit authorization.

  Walker:

  Do it. Orchestrate the attack.

  Peters:

  And you understand that we’re talking about civilian casualties, maybe as many as a hundred of them.

  Walker:

  I do. And I’m telling you to do it. As my daddy always said, freedom isn’t free.

  Cooper tapped the pause button. A freeze-frame of the two men shaking hands, the director leaning out of his chair to reach across the table.

  Bobby Quinn looked like a man desperate to rewind his life. To go back and make a left turn instead of a right. “I don’t believe it.”

  Cooper stared at him. At the topography of his facial musculature, the zygomatic major and minor, the buccinator driving the corners of his mouth. “Yes, you do.”

  “It’s not possible,” Quinn said heatedly. “You’re saying that Director Peters planned the massacre at the Monocle?”

  “The murder of seventy-three people, including children. Yes.”

  “But…why?”

  Cooper sighed. “Because all the talk about preventing a war is bullshit. What they really want is to control it. They want to generate and maintain war at a low simmer. They want us all wound up and mistrusting each other. Norms and abnorms, left and right, rich and poor, all of it. The more we fear, the more we need them. And the more we need them, the more powerful they get.”

  “He’s the president, Cooper. How much more—”

  “That’s right. He went from secretary of defense to president of the United States. What does that tell you? And remember Equitable Services before the Monocle? Limping along in an abandoned paper plant, no funding, no support, rumors of congressional investigations that could send us all to jail? Then an activist who had never been violent before all of a sudden walks into a restaurant and murders everyone. And, poof, the rest of the country starts seeing things Drew Peters’s way.”

  “But what about the video from the restaurant?”

  “The security footage is real. But Peters had an abnorm edit John Smith in later. The shooters work for Peters. Or did. I assume they’re dead now.”

  “There you go,” Quinn said. “If that video is fake, why is this one real?”

  “Who could fake it?”

  “John Smith—”

  “No.” Cooper shook his head. “The Monocle could be faked because Smith was relatively unknown, and the footage quality is poor, and especially because it was the DAR that did the investigation. But you can’t fake footage of the president. There’s too much of it available, too many ways to check it, too many people eager to. And why go to such lengths to hide a fake video?

  “Besides. How many meetings have you sat in with Drew Peters? You really going to tell me that wasn’t him?”

  Quinn said, “So why isn’t it encrypted?”

  “I wondered that, too. But then I realized—it’s an insurance policy. No doubt Peters has some sort of fail-safe that tells people where to find this if he dies mysteriously. If it were encrypted, it would defeat the point.

  “This whole thing,” Cooper said. “Everything we’ve done for the last years. All the actions, all the terminations. None of it was about truth, about protecting the public. They were just moves in a game we didn’t know about, made by players who don’t even want to win. No one wants to kill all the gifted. They just want to control them. And the rest of the country. And you know what? They do.”

  Quinn said, “The terminations?” Going through the same thing Cooper had the night before, the first nibbles of a horror that would soon sink its fangs deep. “You’re saying that some of the people we killed, they—”

  “Yeah,” Cooper said. He pitied the guy, wanted to give him time to process it, to begin to deal with the enormity of everything. But that risked Quinn’s freezing up, and there wasn’t time for that. “And I’m sorry to say this, but it gets worse.”

  “How the hell can it get—”

  “They have my children.”

  “They—who?”r />
  “Peters.”

  “Come on, Cooper. That’s paranoid.”

  “It’s not. I called home. Roger Dickinson answered.”

  “Oh.” Quinn stared. “Oh shit.”

  “What?”

  His partner played with an imaginary cigarette and looked away. “I couldn’t figure out why they’d put me in charge of the faceless at the cemetery. After all, Dickinson is the one with a hard-on for you. But just before Peters ordered me there, Dickinson left his office like his ass was on fire. Wouldn’t talk to anyone, just bolted out. He must have been—”

  “Going to my house. To kidnap my children.”

  “Yeah.” Quinn turned to look at him. “I’m sorry, Coop. I didn’t know. I would have stopped him.”

  “I know.”

  “So what, they want you to turn yourself in? Dickinson will kill you.”

  “If I thought it would save Natalie and the kids, I’d sacrifice myself. But they won’t. By going undercover, I’ve given them too good a hand.”