Gladstone stared at the map. “Okay, but we’re not looking for Flight 370. We’re looking for the place where a hundred feet were dumped into the ocean.”
“It’s the same problem, really.” Lam sighed again, this time with impatience. “Let me try to explain.”
“If it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition.”
“I’m a glutton for punishment. Anyway, you know the story of the missing plane. On March eighth, 2014, Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur, headed for Beijing. Over the Gulf of Thailand it made a sudden turn and headed southwest, eventually flying far out over the Indian Ocean. About seven and a half hours after it took off, a satellite signal, the last contact with the plane, indicated it was somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean—and then whammo! It disappeared.”
Gladstone nodded. She knew the story well.
“Investigators calculated how far it could have flown, given the fuel it carried and the speed and altitude, and estimated it ran out of fuel and went down somewhere along this arc.” He gestured at the thick black line on the screen. “Which became the main search area.”
“Right.”
“But then!” Lam held up his finger. “On July twenty-ninth, a six-foot piece of the plane, a flaperon, washed up on Réunion Island. And that’s when this reverse-drift study was done, backtracking to March eighth to approximate where that flaperon might have originated.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”
“Patience, boss lady, is a virtue. Now, shut up and listen—please. You can’t just throw a virtual flaperon into the ocean off Réunion Island and then run the clock back to see where it was five months earlier. So what they did was throw five million virtual flaperons into the ocean and run them all back in time to see where they were on March eighth.”
“Using what data?”
“They made a model of the flaperon, put it into a tank, and ran tests on it. They took into account the sail effect—how much wind might affect the floating object. They calculated wave action. They allowed for surface currents, tidal currents, and deeper ocean currents. And finally, they took into account the flaperon’s permeability—how much it became waterlogged and degraded over the months it spent floating at sea. All that went into the model. As more debris washed up on various islands and the African mainland, they added that to the model, as well.”
“So each of those colorful little kinky threads on the screen is one possible backtrail?”
“Right the first time.”
Gladstone stared at countless squiggly lines. “Judging from this map, those virtual flaperons could have come from anywhere in a million square miles. This analysis didn’t work at all.”
“But at least it showed that some areas were more likely than others. They shifted their search after that.”
“But still didn’t find Flight 370.”
“No.”
“Like I said, their model was a failure. A total, balls-up failure.”
“But like I said—”
“And now you want us to replicate their failure?”
“Not the failure.” Lam rolled his eyes. “You see—”
“You want us to dump five million virtual feet into the sea off Turner Beach and backtrack them in time, to see where they started?”
This time, Lam waited until he was sure no more questions were forthcoming before he answered. “Yes, I do.”
“And why will that work for us when it didn’t for them?”
“We have more data on the gulf than they had about the Indian Ocean. And we only have to backtrack twenty-five or so days, not five months. But most important, I had a new idea about a way to analyze their data. I applied it to Flight 370—and when I did, all the floating debris models from the flight converged in one approximate area on the date of the crash. Instead of a thousand.”
Gladstone stared at the map. “So what’s your new idea?”
“I figured if I applied Feynman sum-over-histories diagrams to the possibilities, I might be able to eliminate the least likely pathways. Not every one of these squiggly drift patterns is equally probable: some are more likely than others. So you eliminate the unlikely ones—using Feynman diagrams.”
“What’s a Feynman diagram?”
“I’m tired now. How much will you pay me to explain?”
Gladstone frowned. Money and mathematics were all that Lam seemed to appreciate, even though he rarely had any of the former. “I’ll order extra cheese on our next pizza night. And onion. Okay?”
“Okay. It’s a mathematical and geometric way of diagramming the probability of particle interactions. Like in a particle collider? I just adapted the process to the ocean, treating it mathematically like a sea of interacting particles and forces. The math is terrifying and you need a supercomputer. But when it was done, this is what happened.”
He gestured at the screen. One by one, the colorful little threads disappeared from the map until nothing was left but the black arc of the airplane’s possible locations when it went down. Then, new threads began appearing on the map, all originating from Réunion Island. Some drifted one way, others jagged off in another—but they all converged, more or less, on a single spot in the ocean—on that black arc.
Gladstone shook her head. Was this another of Lam’s mathematical flights of fancy? “So that’s where Flight 370 is? There?” She pointed to where all the lines converged on the map.
“At the bottom of the ocean, of course.”
Gladstone stared. “Are you sure?”
“Well, obviously I have no proof. But I did run several billion Feynman diagram permutations through the university’s Q machine.” He sniffed again. “And I ran up a rather impressive CPU bill in the process.”
“How much?”
“Four grand.”
Mary, mother of Jesus. “And you didn’t clear it with me?”
He looked at her with an exaggeratedly wounded expression. “I didn’t realize it was going to go so high.”
“And you think you can do the same thing with floating feet?”
“Well, you’ve got tons of data from your floater experiments you’ve gathered over the past five years—much better than what they had for the Indian Ocean. I just need to figure out the floating characteristics of the actual feet to plug into the calculation.”
“What exactly do you need?”
“I’ll need two actual feet, along with a test tank of water with a wave and wind machine—they’ve got one at the oceanography lab at Eckerd.”
“And how much will all this cost, even assuming I can get ahold of some feet?”
He shrugged. “Another grand?”
“Jesus. And where are we going to get the money for that?”
“Why don’t you ask that FBI dude? He looked rich enough to me.”
17
ROGER SMITHBACK DROVE his Subaru along Cypress Lagoon Drive. For the last half hour, he’d been cruising around some neighborhoods south of Fort Myers—supposedly this was the more dangerous part of town, but he had seen mostly well-kept apartment buildings, schools, bodegas, small houses, even a decent-looking country club straddling Whiskey Creek.
This wasn’t what he’d expected at all.
Smithback had done his research. He knew that the tattoo he’d surreptitiously photographed was most likely a gang symbol of some kind. After he’d blown up and sharpened the image, it had become much clearer. It was definitely a cross, with lightning bolts coming out diagonally from the lower intersections of the crossbeam, and what looked like animal claws protruding from the top—although their tips were not visible, thanks to the tearing and nibbling of the torn skin. It was surrounded by two letters: a P on the left and an N on the right, done in the usual blackletter font of gang tattoos. Its color was the blue of prison tats, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything: it could just as well have been done at some Central or South American tattoo parlor. Because his research had indicated crosses done in this particular way—with
a distinctive fleur-de-lis styling at the tips and an unusual method of decorative shading—were a trademark of gangs from south of the border.
But conventional research could tell him nothing further. And there were a shitload of gangs out there. He’d done his share of guessing about what the P and N could mean—Panama? Padre Nuestro?—but if he really wanted to learn more, he’d have to hit the pavement.
As a reporter, he’d heard back in the day about the troubles in Fort Myers—the Latin Kings, Surf 69, and the others: lots of drugs, lots of bad hombres killing other bad hombres. But there had been a concerted effort to clean this up, and the neighborhoods he’d previously heard mentioned, like Dunbar and Pine Manor, felt safe. Now, however, he found himself southwest of those, closer to the Caloosahatchee River. And as the blocks passed by, and he noticed more and more shuttered storefronts and graffiti tags sprayed on the sun-bleached walls, he grew confident he’d found a good place to start sniffing around.
He drove a little farther west, letting things get worse, then pulled over to the curb. He was on a block where old bungalows—the worse for wear—stood cheek by jowl with family businesses. About half the businesses were closed, windows painted white and front doors shuttered. Smashed or dented trash cans lay strewn about. Pickup trucks and a few old boat skeletons sat on cinder blocks in driveways or on front lawns, slowly moldering in the heat. A stray dog wandered by, tongue lolling. The air smelled of burnt rubber and garbage.
Smithback got out of his car and walked up to the first bungalow, which, not uncommonly in older and poorer communities, was half-hidden in overgrown tropical vegetation. The once-bright coat of paint had been reduced to faded and peeling strips. He pushed the doorbell—busted—then knocked. After a few minutes, he heard shuffling inside. Then the door opened halfway.
Hot as it was outside, he could feel even more heat radiating from the house. An old Hispanic woman in a housedress stood, peering at him in curiosity.
“Buenos días,” Smithback said. He explained, in halting Spanish, that he was a student, working on a research project. Then he pulled out the enlarged and sharpened photo of the tattoo.
“¿Ha visto esto antes?” he asked.
The woman squinted in the semidarkness of the front hall, putting her face close to the image.
“¿Qué es esto?” Smithback asked.
Suddenly, the old woman’s eyes widened. The curiosity was replaced with suspicion. “¡Vaya!” she spat at him, abruptly slamming the door in his face.
Smithback rapped again, then again, but there was no response. Finally, he shoved his card under the door, went back to the curb, and looked around. A few houses down, he saw a short, wiry man of about sixty mowing his lawn. Smithback walked toward him.
At his approach, the man cut the motor. He was smoking a small, foul-smelling cheroot and wore a filthy T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a landscaping company.
Smithback nodded at him, and the man nodded back. Encouraged by the logo, the reporter launched into his explanation, in English this time. After a minute, the man interrupted him. “No hablo inglés.”
Smithback showed him the picture. “¿Qué significa eso?”
The man looked at the image—barely a glance, really—then shook his head. His face was a studied blank.
“¿Lo ha visto antes?” Smithback pressed.
The man shrugged. “No hablo inglés.”
Christ, it wasn’t even English. But the man just stood there, shaking his head and shrugging, and eventually Smithback gave him his card anyway, thanked him, and turned away. Immediately, the man fired up his old mower and went back to work.
He glanced around again. A little farther down the block, another woman—slightly younger, slightly better dressed—was approaching the front door of a two-story apartment building, arms full of grocery bags. Instinctively, Smithback trotted forward in time to hold the door open for her.
“Gracias,” she said with a smile.
“De nada.” He dug out the picture of the tattoo. “Por favor—qué es esto?”
The woman looked at the photo. Almost immediately he saw, despite her initial friendliness, the same look the old lady had given him—a combination of suspicion and dread. As she turned to enter the building, Smithback stopped her one more time. “Por favor, por favor. ¿Quién lo lleva?”
From the shelter of the doorway, the woman glanced around nervously. Then she jerked her head westward, indicating a spot farther down the block. And before Smithback could give her his card or say anything more, she scurried into the apartment lobby, shutting the door behind her.
Slowly, Smithback walked back to his car. Christ, it was hot. So far he hadn’t learned anything concrete. Nevertheless, the very silence and agitation of the people spoke volumes. Starting the engine, he pulled away from the curb and began heading down the block, looking for whatever or whoever the woman with the groceries might have been indicating.
He found it at the next intersection. A dilapidated social club stood on the corner, front door open, what sounded like narco-rap filtering out from within. Three young men were lounging outside the door, dressed in T-shirts and old jeans. One sported several tattoos on his arms; the others appeared unmarked. Their expensive sneakers and gold chains looked out of place with the rest of their ratty attire.
Smithback pulled over. He had good street instincts, and at this moment they told him to keep his engine running.
He rolled down the passenger window and gestured to the youths. “¡Hola!” He had to say it again before one of the three pushed himself away from the wall and sauntered over.
Smithback showed him the picture of the tattoo. “¿Qué es esto?”
The youth looked at it for a minute, then turned to the others and muttered something Smithback couldn’t understand. Now they, too, approached the car window. Smithback’s sense of danger spiked dramatically.
“¿Quién lo usa?” he asked as calmly as possible.
Abruptly, one of the three tried to snatch the picture away. Smithback pulled it back just in time, crumpling it and throwing it in the backseat. At the same time, he put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb.
“¡Vaya de aquí!” said the tattooed one. “¡Hijo de puta!”
“¡Pendejo!” yelled another, spitting in the direction of the passenger door.
Smithback drove away, glancing frequently in his rearview mirror. None of the youths followed him, but it was clear they were watching him as closely as he was watching them. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. McGregor Boulevard wasn’t far away, and from there it was half an hour’s drive back to the place he’d rented on Sanibel.
Had he made progress? Very likely.
Had he nearly shit his pants just now? Absolutely.
18
IN THE NEXT scheduled meeting, Chief P. B. Perelman contemplated Commander Baugh with fresh interest. The man had taken a cutter down to Cuba—a gutsy thing to do—and returned having provoked a minor diplomatic incident but with nothing tangible to show for his effort. Yet the man at the front of the briefing room didn’t look chastened. Instead, he was just as self-assured as ever, just as determined, every inch the confident commander. Perelman wondered if that wasn’t the very quality that had allowed him to advance so far.
Since the incident, however, the commander had shifted focus, dropping the Cuban prison idea and working instead from the hypothesis that the feet had been dumped at sea from a ship.
Perelman glanced at the back of the room, where Pendergast was standing in his usual spot, arms crossed, his expression obscured by the Panama hat that had been pulled down over his features.
Baugh cleared his throat, his gravelly voice filling the briefing room. “I would like to introduce Dr. Bob Kendry, who is a specialist in ocean currents, to explain the new line of inquiry. Dr. Kendry?”
A strikingly tall man took the podium. Bald and sixtyish, he had a lean, fit frame and wore a tailored blue suit. There was almost something of the
movie star about him, and when he spoke, it was with a voice to match—deep, smooth, and calm.
“Thank you, Commander Baugh.” He removed some notes from his pocket and placed them on the lectern. “Over the course of three days, one hundred and twelve feet washed up on Captiva Island—or I should say, mostly on Captiva. Two drifted into Sanibel, and two more washed up on North Captiva, one on Cayo Costa, and one on Gasparilla Island. The investigative problem can be simply stated. Can we backtrack twenty-eight, thirty days to where these feet came from? The answer is: we can.”
The lights dimmed and he launched into a discussion of currents, winds, tides, and wave action, with several charts projected on the screen, along with a crude animation of how an array of floating objects the size and buoyancy of the feet would have traveled, ending on Captiva Island. After ten minutes of this, Perelman turned to Morris, who was sitting next to him. “‘Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.’”
Morris rolled his eyes. “I got lost a while ago myself.”
Kendry paused, and Perelman waited with hope that this signified the close.
“And so, to conclude—”
Thank you, Lord, Perelman thought.
“—as you can see, we were able to retrace the route that these feet took on their journey from the dumping point to Captiva. We zeroed in on this area, here.”
An image came up of an elongated dotted oval drawn not in the gulf, but in the Caribbean Sea.
“‘To unpathed waters, undreamed shores,’” Perelman murmured.
“You’ve got a quote for every occasion, don’t you, Chief?”
“I certainly do.”
“He never runs out,” said Towne.
Kendry went on. “This target area is located about two hundred miles due west of the Cayman Islands—an area of approximately six hundred square miles.”
“Thank you, Dr. Kendry,” said Baugh, resuming the podium as the lights came back up. “Our investigation has proceeded using Dr. Kendry’s analysis. Fortunately, the dotted area you see on the map lies outside the major shipping lanes. Which isn’t surprising, since one wouldn’t expect a ship dumping cargo of this sort to choose a well-traveled area. Using transponder AIS data, we’ve determined that four vessels passed through this area during the time frame in question: twenty-eight days, plus or minus three. We’ve also examined satellite imagery of the area and determined there were two other, smaller vessels in the area at the time not using AIS. We’ve managed to identify all six vessels.”
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