by David Klass
“The ones you’ve been asking her lately.”
Julie looked at him. “You mean about how when she neared thirty she got fed up with men disappointing her so she went to a clinic in LA to get pregnant?”
He nodded.
“By some donor named James, who I don’t know hardly anything about?”
“Those kinds of questions.”
Her voice trembled. “Do you know more about him than I do?”
“All I know is how much Ellen loves you and that you should leave it there, and not press her—”
“Quiet,” Julie said. “When my mom first told me about James, she was crying and she got really emotional. She said it was because she had lied and told me she didn’t know anything about him.” She was silent for a moment, studying Green Man carefully. “But was the lie she was crying about really the one she was about to tell me?” Julie was staring at Green Man very closely now, studying his face and the lines of his cheekbones and forehead. When she spoke, it was barely a whisper, but it somehow seemed very loud. “Are you fast?”
“What?”
She was sitting perfectly still, frozen, as if she didn’t dare move so much as a finger or it might snap off. “Are you a fast runner?”
“I wouldn’t say that. . . .”
“I saw you running alongside the bus, before you got on. You were really moving. You passed us.”
Green Man found it almost painful to look back at her, but he also couldn’t look away. “I guess I can run okay for a man my age. Julie, I need to go. . . .”
Her lower lip quivered, but when she spoke, her voice was steady: “When you were young, I bet you were super fast.”
“Maybe.”
And then, so softly it almost wasn’t asked at all: “Are you my father?”
There was a long and silent moment, and then Green Man said gently and very carefully, “Your mother told me what she told you. That she got pregnant from an anonymous donor at a clinic in Los Angeles, and she’s never lied to me. . . .”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I can give you.”
“So if you were my father, you wouldn’t tell me the truth even now?”
He couldn’t say anything.
She exhaled a long breath and stood up, hands on her hips, looking down at him, and her voice swelled with anger. “Because if you are my father, giving me some sort of lame goodbye speech before you disappear forever, I want you to know that I hate you. I really do. I hate you for not being there and for your silence, which was really a lie, and for missing out on my childhood and then showing up suddenly like I should just accept it and listen to your advice and platitudes, and for all your weakness and the fucking cowardice. . . .”
He stood also and surprised her by putting his hands on her shoulders. “And what if there was a good reason your father couldn’t tell you the truth?”
“That’s total bullshit. What good reason could there possibly be for a lie like that? It’s just another excuse—”
“But what if it’s not? What if the truth was something you couldn’t possibly handle? What if it was unfair to ask you to handle it?”
“You don’t know me,” Julie told him fiercely. “I can handle anything. You’re just a coward, and I don’t want to hear any more of this. . . .”
He knew he couldn’t explain, and it would be beyond crazy to even try. Anything further he revealed would only endanger her and himself, and he had been so incredibly careful for many years. So he was absolutely shocked to hear himself ask, “What if the truth would put the weight of the world on your shoulders?”
The scale of the question took her by surprise. She was thinking wildly—furious but also excited and baffled. “What do you mean? Who are you?”
He looked deep into her eyes, and for a long moment they were both silent as the stiffening evening wind from the river gusted around them, and then he whispered the words that she had ended her speech with a few minutes earlier: “There are causes bigger than ourselves. There are struggles that require us to give up our own identities to take on something larger.”
She didn’t understand at first, but then her eyes narrowed as she recognized the words from the manifesto and a glimmering of comprehension and terror flooded her face, and she broke away from him, and turned and ran into Riverside Park.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“It was developed to debunk Shakespeare?” Brennan said doubtfully, and took a big gulp of Guinness. This was the first time he had been away from the taskforce’s war room or FBI headquarters in almost a week, and while he was clearly exhausted, he also looked determined to try to enjoy this hour in an Irish pub in Georgetown. The Clancy Brothers’ “Wild Colonial Boy” blared from the sound system, and in a corner four men were throwing darts.
“Well, not exactly to debunk him,” Tom explained, and to be polite he took a small sip of his own beer. “But it’s pretty conclusively shown that he didn’t solely write all of the plays that have been attributed to him. And it’s not limited to Shakespeare. Stylometrics has been used on lots of other texts, from the Old Testament to the Book of Mormon. But I happen to know about it because I studied with a brilliant and slightly nutty Shakespeare professor at Stanford who also has a background in statistics and computer modeling, and he was at the forefront of what’s going on with style analysis and artificial intelligence.”
“Only at Stanford,” Brennan muttered, shaking his head. “Why don’t they just let old Shakespeare alone?” The taskforce commander had a linen napkin tucked over his white shirt and a heaping plate of corned beef and cabbage in front of him. With the clear joy of a big man who liked to eat, he dug in, and Tom took a forkful of his lamb stew. “So, does it actually work?” Brennan asked as he chewed. He swallowed, washed down the meat with some stout, and demanded, “And why do you think this can help us catch Green Man? Because I’d put my money on a thousand law enforcement officers going door to door in Michigan looking for black vans and honey badger bumper stickers.”
“That might work, too,” Tom admitted, “but stylometrics could be a lot faster and cost a lot less. The techniques have been developed for more than a century, and in the last twenty years they’ve taken a giant leap forward. The basic idea is simple—you can use statistics to analyze texts stylistically and tell who wrote them. For example, Shakespeare scholars like my Professor Shaw at Stanford want to know which of his plays he wrote by himself and which he collaborated on. If it was a collaboration, they’re eager to identify which of the speeches Shakespeare wrote himself and which other Jacobean playwrights like Thomas Middleton might have contributed.”
“And can they really tell that?” Brennan asked doubtfully. “Break five-hundred-year-old plays down speech by speech and figure out who wrote which lines?”
“With almost freakish accuracy,” Tom said. “It’s a kind of literary forensics that combines computer modeling and artificial intelligence. The number of syntactical, philological, and lexicological elements they take into account increases year by year, so it keeps getting more sophisticated and accurate. My professor was working with an artificial intelligence expert at Oxford named Leung, who’s world-class.”
Brennan looked back, and it was unclear if the big man was having difficulty trying to swallow a large bite of corned beef or understand the word “lexicological.” “Okay,” he finally said, “but when you’re talking about Shakespeare and who was it . . . ?”
“Middleton.”
“Those are two well-known playwrights, and I get it that an expert might be able to use their bodies of work to compare their styles and word choices in a statistical way to figure out who wrote what lines. But we don’t know who Green Man is, so what would we be comparing his manifesto to?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You don’t need to know that any longer,” Tom explained. “We’ve re
ached the point where experts can use stylometrics to create a statistical stylistic profile of a writer—just like a creative fingerprint. And once they have it, they can do what they do with fingerprints—run it by millions of other documents on the Internet till they get a match with a real person. And that real person will be Green Man.”
Brennan lowered his fork. “Just like that.”
“Well, in theory. There are some variables, like how much Green Man has written in his life that’s out there. Considering his education level, I’m betting it’s a lot, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s published professionally, which would make this even easier. I’ve given the names of the world experts on stylometrics to Hannah Lee, and she’s already following up.”
“Yeah, she’s very gung ho on this,” Brennan acknowledged. “But she wanted to know what I want to know—why don’t you do it yourself?”
“Hannah’s great. You were right about that. She’s as good as or better than I am.”
“Nice of you to say. But this was your idea. You’re bringing us an interesting approach, not to mention one of your old professors in the mix. Why not lead the charge and see where it goes?”
Tom pushed some lamb around with a fork. “I’m not sure I believe in it.”
“This statistical approach to style?”
“No, the manifesto.”
“I had plenty of my own doubts,” Brennan admitted. “But we’re comfortable now that it’s Green Man’s work.”
“Yeah, but in some way that I don’t understand, it’s also not him,” Tom said.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You think he’s fucking with us?”
“He’d never show his hand this way. It goes against everything I understand about him. It must be some kind of smoke screen or misdirection.”
“We know enough about him now so that if he’s misdirecting us, we’ll pick it up almost immediately. We know where he struck, when he struck, and in each case exactly how he struck. And whatever else he’s trying to do with the manifesto, he’s also certainly showing us his hand. You can’t write thirty pages and not reveal very specific and significant things about yourself.”
“No doubt that’s true. I don’t pretend to understand why he’s doing it. But he’s been ahead of us every step of the way.”
The bar was well air-conditioned, but the big man had started to perspire. He drew the back of a hand across his glistening forehead. “You tend to give him too much credit, Tom. Nobody bats a thousand. He wasn’t one step ahead of us when we found the fibers from the glove. And I don’t think he was counting on the Nebraska cop pulling him over for a broken brake light.”
“Those were minor mistakes. Unpredictable accidents.”
“He didn’t make any minor mistakes in his first five attacks. I’ve been doing this a long time, and believe me, he’s feeling the pressure. I haven’t slept well in weeks. I carry this case around with me. And whatever pressure I’m feeling, he’s feeling it times ten. He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t start making mistakes.”
“I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t believe he’d leave a bumper sticker on his van, and I don’t trust the manifesto. I wish I had an answer to why he sent it.”
Brennan dabbed sweat off his cheek with a corner of the napkin, and it slipped off and slid down his chest onto the table. “Suppose his real motive is political? The president is a shrewd political animal—what if everything he fears about the coming election is exactly correct? It’s gonna be close, and the environment will be a crucial issue—a watershed moment in American history. Each time Green Man has struck, he’s given the polls a solid nudge. By politicizing his cause in his manifesto and taking on the president directly, he may have done more to change the course of American history than blowing up five more dams.”
“That political motive at least makes sense,” Tom conceded. He didn’t add that he had a lot of sympathy for Green Man’s politicizing his cause. There were many good reasons for wanting to change the direction of the country’s environmental policies, and very quickly. But sitting across from this taskforce commander he admired, who was wholly committed to catching Green Man, reminded Tom that if they didn’t catch the terrorist quickly, he would strike again, and more innocent people would surely die. “But there’s something about the manifesto that I still just don’t buy. If you and Hannah Lee want to pursue it, I’ve given you my best shot. But since there’s significant time pressure, I think I can be more helpful going off in another direction that I do believe in. And there is significant time pressure, right?”
Brennan nodded, grimaced slightly, and massaged his neck.
“You okay?”
“Just a stiff neck. I’ve been reading too much. Yeah, there’s a loudly ticking clock.”
Tom hesitated and then asked more softly, “If you don’t mind my asking, how long do you think we have?”
Washington, DC, was a small town, and Brennan glanced to either side. No one was within earshot. “Two weeks. Three at the outside . . . and then it’ll be gone.”
“That’s insane. How could they possibly take this case away from you?”
The older man’s face perceptibly hardened. “No one’s gonna take this away from me because we’ll crack it in time. And I trust your instincts. They were spot on about going to Nebraska. . . .”
“I got a little lucky there.”
“I don’t believe in luck,” Brennan told him. “Your father followed his instincts, and I always gave him a long leash. So where do you want to go this time?”
“It’s not so much a place as a different way of looking for him.” Tom met Brennan’s sharp gaze. “I’m not convinced that Green Man’s manifesto will lead us anywhere useful, but I’m absolutely sure his attacks will.”
“So it’s something about the Boon Dam?”
“And the other five, all taken together. He might have had some help along the way, but I think they were mostly his work. I sense one mind behind the attacks, planning, preparing, and executing them. He’s a craftsman, and they all show different sides of his tradecraft. What he’s good at. What he knows how to do. And the way he prefers to do it.”
“You’re talking about his skill set?”
“That’s right. I want to look closely at exactly what techniques he used in each attack. What would he have had to know to sink the yacht or blow up the factory or knock down the dam? Which different areas of science and particularly engineering would he need to be comfortable with? He clearly has a range of interdisciplinary knowledge that’s so broad it’s rare. I think I can create a profile of what he knows on a professional level that will reflect what he’s done and how he trained—and once we have that profile, it should be straightforward to search for matches.”
“You’re gonna need to work with someone,” Brennan said.
“The best would be a mechanical or structural engineer who works across disciplines. I’ve already reached out to some people at Caltech for suggestions. . . .”
“There’s a super sharp mechanical engineer at Carnegie Mellon who’s already helped us. After the second attack we didn’t know yet exactly what we were dealing with, but in a limited way we started to explore the kind of approach you’re now taking, and someone at Defense recommended her for her wide knowledge. She’d just won some massive award. A Dingus. A Dickman?”
“She won a Draper? Are you talking about Dr. Ronningen?”
“Yeah, I met her briefly and was extremely impressed and . . .” Brennan frowned, broke off, and took a few breaths as he rubbed his chest.
“What is it?” Tom asked, alarmed.
“Nothing. I get this sometimes. It’s just indigestion from that corned beef. . . .”
“Bullshit.” Tom already had his cell out.
“What are you doing?”
“C
alling for an ambulance.”
“Don’t be an idiot. I need to get back to work. A doctor will just tell me to lose thirty pounds and give up beer and—”
“Sit back and take deep breaths and shut up,” Tom told him. “I lost my father to a heart attack, and I’m not planning on losing you.” And then, into his cell phone, “I’m at Flanagan’s Pub in Georgetown. I need an ambulance right away. Someone’s having a heart attack except he’s too stupid to know it.”
TWENTY-NINE
Green Man could have flown to Lubbock, and Midland would have been even closer, but those were small airports, and the closer he flew to the oil fields, the more his travel record might come up in a search of possible targets. Flying at all was a risk that he had previously avoided. When he was scouting his six earlier targets, he had driven to them on back roads in his van. It was safer, and it left less of a carbon footprint—few things were as harmful as air travel. But time was pressing on him now—his manifesto was out, the president had furiously vowed in a televised press conference to catch him, and he could feel the FBI manhunt closing in.
The Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport was more than six hours’ drive from the oil fields, so landing there at least gave him some separation. It was also the fourth busiest airport in America, and the greater the volume of travelers passing through and the more destinations it served, the harder it would be to run a search for him. He rented a dark blue Jeep Grand Cherokee, cranked up some kick-ass bluegrass on the radio, and drove off into the Texas sunshine to do some shopping.
At a sprawling army surplus store, he bought light assault boots, Apache binoculars, a boonie hat, hands-free night-vision goggles, and a canvas duffel. His eyes ran over a rack of guns, but he settled on a KA-BAR knife that he could purchase in cash without any ID. “Planning an invasion?” asked the good-natured checkout clerk whose tentlike Semper Fi T-shirt didn’t begin to hide his potbelly.
“Just stocking up,” Green Man said. “They don’t have stores like this in Vermont.”
