—Book of Revelation
Chapter 21, Verse 1
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
BALTIMORE/WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL THURGOOD MARSHALL AIRPORT
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
SUNDAY, APRIL 29, 9:08 AM
We touched down, got our bags, collected Ghost—who gave me an evil glare that promised retribution—and went out to the curb. Sean was there, parked in the no-parking zone, leaning against the door of a gray Toyota SUV, ankles crossed, arms crossed, sunglasses on his face, head cocked to one side. He wore jeans and a dress shirt under a sports coat with old-fashioned leather elbow pads that made him look more like a hipster history teacher than a cop. Ghost bounded forward and nearly sprained his furry ass wagging. Sean squatted down and hugged the dog. Sean had always been a dog person; I came to it later in my life, but I’m now fully invested. Ghost sniffed Sean and made a soft whuff sound, which meant that he probably smelled Sean’s dog, Barkley, a retired K-9 who was a venerable nine years old.
Sean is a few years younger than me. Happily married and a father of two, a superb homicide detective, better-looking than me, and, arguably, nicer. We look like brothers but not twins. His features are less battered, his hair darker, his eyes brown instead of blue, and he’s an inch shorter than my six-two. His smile is less complicated than mine, or so I’ve been told. Rudy says that Sean looks like a man who’s happy to be who and what he is. Even though we’re brothers, he doesn’t have the same damage I do. He wasn’t there when that gang attacked my girlfriend and me when we were fifteen. He didn’t live through a horror show, and you can look into his eyes and tell. That said, he’s a cop in a city where a lot of people get hurt and a lot of people do very bad things. He’s seen people at their worst. He may not be as wrecked as me, but there is still hurt and an awareness of hurt in his eyes.
Sean ruffled Ghost’s fur and then stood to shake Rudy’s hand.
“Good to see you,” said Sean. “But a little surprised.”
“Not unpleasantly so, I trust,” said Rudy, returning the handshake.
“Never. Just glad to see you up and around.”
Sean turned to me and we did this awkward little dance where we started to offer hands at the same time that we half-ass moved in for a hug. Sean and I were never touchy-feely with each other. I finally pulled him in for a bear hug, and we did the manly backslapping thing to keep it from any possible appearance of being weird. Then we stepped back and nodded to each other. Not sure what that nod was about, but we always did it.
I looked past him at the SUV. “New?”
“Rental,” he said, and I nodded again. “Didn’t trust mine. Ever since—”
I stopped him with a raised hand and a small head shake. He became quiet, attentive, and visibly nervous as I opened a zippered compartment in my roller bag and removed a small case, undid the Velcro, and withdrew a device about the size of a Zippo lighter. Without speaking, I showed Sean how it works. A button on the side activated a touch screen and the display showed a meter that measured the presence of electronics—active or passive—and indicated their proximity. Trade name is Anteater. I waved it past his pocket and it binged. Sean removed his cell phone, and I took it and handed it to Rudy. Then I moved the Anteater up and down Sean from hair to shoes, not giving much of a crap if people passing by thought what we were doing looked deeply weird. Besides, Ghost had shifted into fierce-dog mode and was giving his lethal glare to rubberneckers, which encouraged them to hustle their asses away.
I went through the rental car and the doohickey binged twice more, once when I was searching the glove box and again when I ran it around the back seat. The surveillance bugs were small and very well made, and it took me a few minutes to find them. The one in the back seat was fitted into the underside of the front-seat headrest. It was dark gray, pea-size, round on one side, flat and adhesive on the other. The one in the glove box was the same design and had been attached out of sight under the roof of the compartment.
While I searched, Sean and Rudy stood watching. Sean became increasingly more alarmed, more afraid, and more furious. When I was done with the car, I opened his cell phone to remove another of the bugs. Sean’s face was now a violent brick red, and his fists were balled at his sides. I touched my finger to my lips again and removed another item from my suitcase, a heavy ten-by-twelve-inch black plastic bag into which I put all the bugs before sealing it. There was a tiny sensor on the seal, and I punched the button on it. It flashed red and then green.
I tucked the Anteater into my jeans pocket. “We’re cool now.”
“How did you know those goddamn things would be here?”
“Call it a useful paranoia,” I said.
Sean poked the bag I held. “You sure they’ll be safe in there?”
“It’s called a Faraday bag,” I said “And yes.”
A Faraday bag was one of Dr. Hu’s most useful devices, heavy plastic with a wire mesh that canceled out all electronic signals into or out of the bag. I mostly used them to disguise my own electronic gizmos when traveling commercial, because they won’t register at all even on a metal detector. But the bag also kept surveillance devices from transmitting signals. Handy. I told Sean as much of this as I could.
Sean looked as if he wanted to shoot someone. “What the fuck is—” he began, but Rudy cut him off. There were people all around us, some giving us weird looks.
“Joe,” said Rudy, “now that the car is clean, maybe we should—”
“Right, let’s bounce,” I said.
Sean gave a single curt nod and stalked around to the driver’s side, opened the door, and climbed in. He hit a button that released the trunk, and I swung my bag and Rudy’s suitcase collection into the back. Ghost bounded in and turned the bay into a throne room for his doggie self. Rudy got into the back and I took shotgun.
As we left the airport via Friendship Road and got onto I-195 West, Sean said, “How did you know that stuff was there?”
“I didn’t, but after what you told me about your phones I figured it was worth checking.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t make sense,” protested Sean. “How could they bug me that fast? I only decided on the rental while killing time to come out to pick you guys up. I never made any calls, didn’t tell anyone I was going to do that, so how’d they know?”
“They were probably following you,” I said. “They got someone to the rental place and bugged the car in the gap between you requesting the vehicle and them walking you out. Everything goes into the computer. That way, they could fall back and track you from a safe distance. You spotted them before, so this is them upping their game.”
His face was flushed with anger and confusion. “Yeah, maybe, but how could they hack the rental-car company computer that fast?”
I shrugged.
“No,” he insisted, his tone fierce, “tell me how? Who can do something like that?”
“These days? A lot of people can do that,” I told him. “I could.”
Sean looked at me for a moment, the muscles in the corner of his jaw working. “Shit!” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
Sean turned from I-195 onto Maryland 295 North and from there onto I-95 as it hooked around and crossed the Patapsco River past Fort McHenry. The muscles at the corners of his jaw flexed and bunched continually.
“Where do you want to go first?” he grumbled. “The morgue or the crime scene?”
“Actually, I have people sweeping everywhere you’ve been,” I told him, “so let’s give them time to collect and analyze anything they find.”
He scowled. “It’s scary that you know about all this stuff.”
“It’s scary that we need to have to,” observed Rudy.
I said, “Sean, you know how to shake a tail?”
“Of course, but—” He stopped and looked into the rearview for a moment. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “But let’s assume, okay? Bugs might not be the only way they�
�ve been tracking you. Someone had to actually put this stuff into the rental car. I don’t see them, but it doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
He opened his mouth, paused, shut it, and spent the next five minutes proving to me that he did know how to shake a tail. He went straight past our exit, 11B, and got off at 12 to go onto Bayview Boulevard, then began making random turns through the residential community of Joseph Lee, running no end of yellow lights, circling, pulling to the curb, and then making a U-turn. We both watched the flow of traffic. If anyone was following us, neither of us could see them.
My cell buzzed to indicate a text, and again it was a call with no ID:
Give Sean my best.
“The hell is this…” I groused. “Thought I turned off the texting app.”
When I checked the app, though, it was on. Weird.
“What about it? What’s up?” asked Sean, and I showed him and Rudy and explained about the other texts.
“I don’t get it,” said Sean. “Is that from Junie?”
“She said it wasn’t.”
“Lydia Rose?” asked Rudy.
“She never met Sean.”
“She booked our flight,” said Rudy.
I tried texting back but got no answer. I debated calling her at home, but it was three hours earlier out there. If this wasn’t her, she’d be pissed at me for waking her up. Good rule, folks, never piss off your secretary. I left it for later. But I also went to the settings on my phone and turned the text app off. Again.
“I think we’re clear,” said Sean, looking in the rearview.
“Good,” I said. “Now let’s go find a diner. I need greasy eggs and a lot of bacon. And we need coffee.”
“Dear God, yes,” said Rudy. “Baltimore keeps changing. Take us somewhere we’ll still recognize.”
Sean nodded. “Okay. Broadway?”
I smiled and nodded. “Broadway.”
In the back, Rudy sighed. Not sure if it was in dread of what a Broadway Diner breakfast would do to his cholesterol or he was pleased at our choice. Probably a little of both.
INTERLUDE FIVE
BROOKE ARMY MEDICAL CENTER
FORT SAM HOUSTON
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
TWO YEARS AGO
“He seems … different somehow,” said the woman.
“Different in what way, Mrs. Pepper?” asked the nurse.
The woman, Vera Pepper, had her arms crossed so tightly that it was as if she were hugging herself, holding in both pain and need. She stood next to the nurse and watched her son through the glass of the observation deck that ran around the top of the wall above the physical therapy center. Her son, Joe Henry Pepper, walked along a rubber mat, hands lightly touching the safety rails, while a therapist walked backward five feet ahead. The observation room was soundproof, and Joe Henry hadn’t looked up once to see if his mother was still there. He was a tall, good-looking boy of nineteen; or he had been before an IED blew most of his face away. Now he wore what looked like a poorly sculpted red rubber mask that didn’t look like anyone she knew. Darker red lines left over from reconstructive skull surgery and some brain repairs, crisscrossed his shaved scalp. The eyes were the same, though; they hadn’t been damaged by the blast, but the person who looked out of those eyes had.
When Mrs. Pepper looked into her son’s eyes, she didn’t see Joe Henry. She didn’t see much of anything. It was like looking into two globes of blue glass. The only emotion she saw was her own worried face reflected there.
“The implants are helping him,” said the nurse. “Look how much progress he’s made. At this rate, he’ll be walking on his own in less than a month. That’s remarkable.”
“It’s not that, it’s…” began Mrs. Pepper, but she didn’t finish her thought.
The nurse patted her shoulder. “I know, but you have to understand what he’s been through. The surgeons removed eleven separate pieces of shrapnel from his brain. He lost memory, motor function, speech, and so much else. The chips and the nanobots they implanted are restoring all of that. Or most of it. Much more than he could have expected even two years ago. This is brand-new, and it’s working so well. Joe Henry will make a full recovery, believe me.”
Mrs. Pepper smiled and nodded, but she still looked worried. Before he left for the service her son had been smart, funny, kind, and he wanted to serve, as his father and his aunt had served. As Mrs. Pepper herself had served. The Pepper family was devoted to this country, and five members of the family were buried at Arlington. Joe Henry had come close to being the sixth.
And then the people from the Bain Foundation had reached out to her with offers no mother could ever turn down. Cutting-edge science that they promised would bring her son out of the coma in which he’d been languishing for three months. They could bring him back to her, and it would all be paid for by the foundation as long as she signed the papers to allow them to try the radical procedures on Joe Henry.
The doctors had urged her to accept, because they had no real hope of helping him in any other way. She had accepted. Of course she had. Now, weeks later, here he was walking, feeding himself, exercising, talking. He even had his memories back. Most of them, at least. Except that this Joe Henry wasn’t the son she’d raised. There was something different about him.
Something wrong.
She hugged her arms to her body as if she stood in a cold wind and watched the body of her son practice walking. He knew that she was up here, but not once had he looked up to find her, to see her, to smile at her.
Not once.
CHAPTER FORTY
THE HANGAR
FLOYD BENNETT FIELD
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
SUNDAY, APRIL 29, 9:11 AM
“You’re supposed to be working,” said Aunt Sallie.
Bug didn’t move, didn’t look up. His hands rested atop the desk on either side of the keyboard, palms down, fingers slack. Above and around him were dozens of computer screens of all sizes. Data and computer codes scrolled up and down and sideways. Except for the one Bug was facing, which was filled with an image of Beyoncé and six backup dancers in the middle of a very sexy dance while lights flashed and music throbbed. The fingers of his left hand were closed around a stainless-steel travel mug printed with the image of a squat, ugly spaceship and the words I Aim to Misbehave scrolled above it. By his right hand was an open box of Girl Scout cookies. Thin Mints. His T-shirt had BLERD written in Gothic typeface.
“I am working,” said Bug.
Auntie stood with her arms folded beneath her heavy breasts, head cocked to one side, dreadlocks swaying as she tapped her foot, waiting for more. Got nothing. “If the new system works,” she said, “how’s it going to help us?”
Bug swiveled his head around very slowly. It made him look like a praying mantis. He reached behind him and, without looking, pointed to one data stream. “That’s the latest iteration of MindReader. Best supercomputer in the world, with a LINPACK benchmark rating of a hundred and twenty petaflops. It leaves the Chinese Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer in the dust, and that’s the fastest binary digital electronic computer known to the general public. Ours is faster.”
“So? Being faster hasn’t stopped us from getting bent over a barrel time and again. We’ve been hacked, shut down, and blocked. MindReader’s not what it used to be. What’s the new system but a bigger pig with prettier lipstick?”
“O ye of little faith,” said Bug. He used his other hand to point to a different screen on which the data appeared in bursts instead of on a scroll. “That is MindReader Q1 running in tenth-speed test mode. It is a large-scale quantum computer that, theoretically, would be able to solve problems faster than any digital computers that use even the best currently known algorithms, like integer factorization using Shor’s algorithm or the simulation of quantum many-body systems.”
“What’s that mean in earth language?” asked Auntie.
Bug grinned. “If it works, the MindReader Q1 should be able to efficiently solve
problems that no classical computer would be able to solve. It would give us back the edge we’ve lost over the last few years. No … I’m not saying it right. If the MindReader we’ve been using is an apex predator on a par with a grizzly bear, Siberian tiger, hippopotamus, great white or crocodile … the Q1 is a T. rex. Or, maybe it’s Godzilla. We don’t actually know how powerful it’ll be until we finish testing it and put it online at full capacity.”
Auntie walked over and peered at the screen for a moment, then turned to Bug. When she spoke, her voice was soft but emphatic. “We’re losing ground every day, kid. The DMS is made up of fuck-ups, victims, and the walking wounded. We’ve lost our edge, and we’re going to lose this fight.”
His grin faded and he gave his lips a nervous lick. “I know, Auntie. I really do know, but we have to run these diagnostics. If we put this online too soon we could—”
She cut him off. “If this thing is going to save us, boy, then stop fucking around and get it online.”
With that, she turned and stalked out.
Bug watched her go and then turned back to the screens. The Beyoncé video was replaying. He took a sip of the Red Bull–infused coffee in his cup, settled back, rested his hands on the desk again, and stared at the screen. The data on the screens came and went, came and went. Bug didn’t focus on any screen in particular, not even the music video.
His mind settled into a calm, detached place; his breathing slowed.
He sat very still.
Working.
As fast as he could.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
BROADWAY DINER
6501 EASTERN AVENUE
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
SUNDAY, APRIL 29, 9:37 AM
There are a lot of ways of judging a city. By its beer, its pizza, its sports teams, its hot dogs, its music, and its diners. Each of these is important in its own way. With diners I go a level deeper and judge them on being able to make a decent omelet at any time of the day or night. Not a great omelet, and not a fancy one. A decent one. I want three eggs, my choice of cheese, and I want it fluffy but firm. If I want runny, undercooked eggs, I’ll eat my own cooking. I want a lot of bacon, and I do not want it to bend, fold, or sag. I want the option of adding sausages to the order without its resulting in a short count on the bacon. I want the portions generous, and I want the food to arrive quick and hot. I want a bagel on the side, toasted to a golden brown, not burned and not waved in the general direction of the toaster. I want the butter soft enough to spread, not frozen to the consistency of a concrete block. I want potatoes—chopped or diced. I do not want peppers or onions in my potatoes unless I ask for them, and in such an eventuality I want them all fried together. And I want coffee. Lots of coffee. I don’t want to have to send out a search team to get a refill. The level of the cup should never be allowed to get below one-third, and I want it hot and fresh and as dark as the pit. I do not want decaf, because decaf is Satan’s piss in a porcelain cup.
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