A Better World (The Brilliance Trilogy Book 2)

by Marcus Sakey

  “Whatever.” The guy set the bottle back on the shelf, wandered away.

  “Yeah, whatever.” His old partner tapped the cigarette, toyed with it. “Funny world. John Smith gets fat checks to speak at college campuses, but a guy who wants a cigarette can be killed and eaten.”

  “You don’t even like smoking them. You just like thinking about smoking them.”

  “That’s true. Delayed gratification, like tantric sex.”

  Cooper laughed. It felt good to be here, talking to someone who lived in the same world he did. But thinking that reminded him of why he was here, the fear that had been plaguing him. “Okay, full disclosure, this isn’t strictly a social call.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “What do you guys have on the Children of Darwin?”

  Quinn shrugged. “No record of them until about six weeks ago, then suddenly, poof, there they are, sneezing in everyone’s sandwich.”

  “Any idea how they’re being run?”

  “We assume discrete cells, fluid command structure. Terrorist SOP. But with Equitable Services mothballed, nobody’s been able to draw a bead on them.”

  “How is that possible? How can we know nothing?”

  Quinn leaned back. “Is this the White House asking?”

  “No,” Cooper said. “I’m not fact-finding. I’m trying to work it out, and I need your help. You’re my planner.”

  “Flattery works.” Quinn sipped his beer. “Okay, between you and me? The whole idea they sprang up out of nowhere, it doesn’t play. No one gets this organized this fast, not even brilliants.”

  “So you’re saying they’ve been around awhile.”

  “Well, they know exactly how to hurt us, right? Before, most terrorists were planting bombs in post offices, assassinating minor officials, derailing trains. Bad, but essentially a nuisance. But these guys, they’ve got their shit together. Instead of attacking buildings, they hijack a couple of trucks and kill the drivers, knowing that insurance companies will pull their policies. Boom, they’ve starved the city.”

  “Same thing with the power,” Cooper said. “I think they took down the grid hoping that we would react by enforcing a quarantine.”

  “Yeah, that was a terrible play.” Quinn shook his head. “All it did was create chaos. We essentially just gave them those cities. How did you let that happen, man?”

  “Wasn’t my call.”

  “And the cover story, that we’re locking down the city to capture the terrorists? Who is that supposed to fool, a ten-year-old with a head injury?”

  “I know, I know. Honestly, I think Leahy believes you guys are going to come up with target coordinates for a missile launch.”

  Quinn shook his head. “No way. I’d guess the COD have no more than ten or fifteen operatives in each city. Discrete, no centralized command. And the grid probably got hacked by some teenaged twist in a Poughkeepsie basement.”

  “Why so few people?”

  “That’s all you need to hijack trucks and burn a depot. By keeping it that small, they’re nearly impossible to find. Especially now.”

  “If that’s true, then this was all planned in advance.” Cooper chose his words carefully. He thought he was right but wanted to see if Quinn came to the same conclusion. “Not weeks ago. Years ago. Someone organized this, got people in place, funded them, and left them as sleepers for a time when the DAR was in chaos.”

  Quinn gave him a curious look. “You’re saying John Smith.”

  “A plan like this would take an incredible strategic mind.”

  “You once told me that John Smith was the strategic equivalent of Einstein.” Quinn sipped at his beer. “But . . . wait a second.”

  “A plan years in the making. A small, dedicated group who uses our systems against us. More than that, action timed at precisely the worst moment, when a strong if immoral president is impeached and facing trial, and the organization that would normally have protected the country is in shambles.”

  “If that’s true, then it means—are you saying—” Quinn stared at him. “You realize what that means?”

  “That’s what’s been keeping me up nights, Bobby. I just keep thinking it through and landing at the same place.”

  It was a place Cooper had never imagined ending up. When he’d gone undercover to hunt John Smith, he’d had no doubts about the man’s guilt. But the journey to reach him had opened his eyes to certain facts he couldn’t ignore. Facts like Shannon’s abnorm friend, Samantha, whose gift for empathy could have made her a healer or a teacher, but who had instead been turned into a prostitute. Facts like a DAR tactical team arresting a family that had helped him, imprisoning the parents and putting the eight-year-old girl in an academy. Facts like the tenuous beauty of the New Canaan Holdfast in Wyoming, where a generation of optimistic dreamers were building something new and better.

  By the time he’d finally found Smith, Cooper’s faith had been strained. And when Cooper learned the truth about the massacre at the Monocle restaurant, his faith had snapped.

  In a way, he had snapped.

  Cooper remembered sitting on top of a peak in Wyoming, a thin finger of stone fifty yards high, watching the dawn. He and Smith had climbed it together, and as a bloody sun rose over the dusty landscape, they had talked. More than talked; traded truths. It had been a terribly surreal experience, conversing with his sworn enemy. It was that morning that Smith told him about the existence of the video showing Drew Peters and President Walker plotting the Monocle. Smith had claimed that they were the ones who wanted a war, that only people already in power would benefit from one.

  While he hadn’t bought everything Smith was selling, Cooper had believed enough of it to move forward. To find the video and kill Drew Peters and bring down a president.

  And now he wondered if that had been Smith’s purpose all along.

  “Bobby,” Cooper said, “I need you tell me the truth. Am I crazy? Or is it possible?”

  His friend set down the pint glass. Picked up the cigarette, put it in his mouth, and then tapped at the bar with his fingers, his eyes down. Cooper let him think. Hoped against hope that Quinn would tell him that it was a paranoid fantasy. Cooper’s gift for pattern recognition gave him huge advantages, but they were more tactical than strategic, more about the next moment than ten moves down the line. Quinn was the planner.

  “It’s possible.” All the jocularity was drained from his friend’s voice. “It is.”

  Cooper leaned back. His stomach went sour, and the back of his throat burned with bile. Possible was as good as certainty, if John Smith was the X factor. “He played us.”

  “But you realize what that means? All of it, everything we did, it was all part of his plan. When Smith told you about the video, sent us after Peters, it had nothing to do with his innocence or the truth. He did it because—”

  “Because he knew that if I found that video, I would release it. And that would bring down the president and paralyze the DAR. He knew I would do the right thing, and he used that to make the situation worse.” Cooper hesitated, tried to swallow the next words, found they tore his throat like razors. “It means that this is my fault, Bobby.”

  “Bull. You can’t take that on.”

  “I have to. Sure, I was trying my best, but I played right into his hands. We all did. I thought he was using me to get exonerated and come out of hiding. But those were just fringe benefits. Crippling our response to the COD was the real goal.”

  “But why? I mean, if everything he did to bring you in and set you up was just step one, and he was already thinking of step ten, then what’s the endgame?”

  “War,” Cooper said. “The endgame is war. I think that John Smith is no longer interested in equal rights for abnorms. I think he wants to start a civil war.”

  “And do what? Kill all the normals?”

  Cooper said nothing.

  “Jesus.” Quinn rubbed at his eyes. “Wait. How does this get him what he wants? Things are worse now
for abnorms than ever before. The microchipping, the hate crimes, hell, every third congressman holding press conferences to say we need to lock you all up.”

  “Exactly. Remember, it’s not like abnorms are united. He can’t just send us an e-mail. Most people, straight or twist, wouldn’t have anything to do with him. They’re just trying to live their lives. If Smith wants to take power, he needs an army. And since he can’t start recruiting—”

  Quinn’s eyes widened as he got the whole scope of it. “He gets the government to do it for him. He goads them into getting repressive. People go from worrying about abnorms to fearing them. From there, it’s a baby step to attacking them. Lynchings, riots. His army forms itself. After all, if everyone is trying to kill your people, you better get together and defend yourselves.”

  “And you’ll need a leader to do it. A man of bold vision, one who promises you a world where you’re not only safe—you’re in charge. Not equal rights. Superiority for the superior.”

  The door to the bar opened, and a group of twentysomethings strolled in, laughing and joking. An icy draft flowed with them, and Cooper shivered. Quinn pushed his glass away. “Suddenly I’m not thirsty.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The DAR has been watching Smith as best we can. We haven’t seen any sign that he’s in contact with the COD.”

  “He wouldn’t have to be. He could have made this plan two years ago, laid out a very specific set of instructions. Do this, then do this, then do that. Like you said, a small group who knows exactly how to hurt us.”

  “And meanwhile, he runs around the country giving speeches and signing books, going on tri-d, talking about how he’s a victim. Whipping up support while pretending to be the voice of reason.”

  Fix it, Natalie had said. The thought almost made him laugh. Fix it? He’d broken it. True, his intentions had been pure, the kind of choices his father would have approved of. But they had served John Smith’s goals regardless. Right had been warped to do so much wrong.

  “You know,” Quinn said, “some days I hate everybody.” He shook his head. “Things are getting bad, aren’t they? I mean, we’ve always been on the front line, and it always looks like it’s about to go to hell. That’s the game. But this is different.” He looked up, met Cooper’s eyes. “We really may be on the brink. The end of everything.”

  The end of everything. It was such a melodramatic statement, so huge and vaguely silly. The end of everything? Of course not. The cataclysmic never really happened. It just lurked out there. Hurricanes didn’t really destroy cities. Plagues didn’t really ravage populations. People didn’t really commit genocide.

  Except . . . they did.

  “Have you talked to the president?”

  Cooper shook his head. “No one wants to hear it. They’re all too sure that everything will be okay.”

  “You could be wrong about Smith.”

  “Nothing would make me happier. But I don’t think I am. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “So what are we going to do about it?”

  Quinn sucked air through his teeth. “With the situation right now, there’s no way the DAR will take any action against Smith. In the public’s eyes, he’s become a white hat. The victim of a repressive government. We couldn’t arrest him if he was shooting strangers with one hand while jerking off into the American flag with the other.”

  “That’s vivid.”

  “Thank you. What about President Clay?”

  “Nope, no chance,” Cooper said. “John Smith is untouchable.”

  “Completely off-limits.”

  “One hundred percent.” Cooper picked up his napkin, tore a neat strip off of it, and another, and another. He looked up at his friend. “Want to go get him anyway?”

  Quinn smiled. “Oh, hell yes.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Breath blowing white, Ethan sorted cans.

  Their kitchen had a pantry, a fact that still blew him away. A room specifically to store food? What a novelty! What a luxury! In Manhattan, the pantry would have been rented out as an efficiency apartment. He was pretty sure he’d lived in one.

  The power had been out for twenty hours now, and the house was cold. He wore two sweatshirts and fingerless gloves. It was funny how few cans of food had actual food value: tomato paste and pineapple slices and water chestnuts and chicken broth. All things a cook might need, and none of them a meal. He reorganized, putting the most useful on one shelf. Black beans, cannellini beans, lima beans. Soup, especially the heartier varieties. A couple of cans of coconut milk; not exactly haute cuisine, but each one packed almost a thousand calories, and the high fat content would help keep them warm. Below that went the pears and fruit cocktail and green beans. Fewer vitamins than fresh produce, but better than nothing. Pasta and rice. Finally, baking supplies, flour, sugar, cornmeal. Without power they couldn’t bake, but they could mix a cold gruel from them if things got tight.

  “She’s down,” Amy said from behind him. “I’m going to start with the water.”

  Ethan stood, stomped his feet to get some circulation moving. “Okay. Fill everything we’ve got. Glasses, vases, buckets, empty cans—”

  “The bathtub. I got it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ethan spotted a pack of birthday candles and added them to the pile on the counter. A box of tapers, three half-burned pillars from the bedroom, and eleven, no, twelve birthday candles. Three flashlights and a handful of batteries. Best not to waste them; they’d have to start keeping sunlit hours. No reading before bed.

  They’d built a small fire in the fireplace, and he knelt to warm his hands, flexing stiff fingers. Debated tossing on another couple of logs and decided against it. They didn’t have much firewood.

  There’s always the furniture.

  Next up, the fridge. They were both foodies and usually had it well-stocked. But it had been six days since the stores were cleaned out, and they’d run through most of their fresh food already. The crisper had a couple of apples, a grapefruit, and half a bag of arugula, the bottom leaves already slimy. Normally he’d have tossed it all out; now he just picked through it, keeping all but the worst pieces. There was some leftover pad thai, two inches of orange juice, and a whole lot of condiments.

  The freezer had already lost most of its chill, the ice sloshing in the trays, packages of hamburger and chicken softening around the edges. A couple of no-longer-frozen pizzas. Ethan sighed, started pulling it all out.

  Filling glasses at the sink, Amy said, “We could put the food outside.”

  “How cold you figure it is?”

  “Maybe forty-five?”

  Hmm. That was probably about the temperature of a working refrigerator. Putting the meat outside would buy them a couple of days at best. “It’d last longer if we could cook it.”

  “I told you we should have gone for a gas stove.” She smiled, then said, “Hey, wait. The grill.”

  Ethan laughed, then swept her into a hug. “Good thinking.”

  He was a purist when it came to grilling, charcoal or nothing. It was an easy argument to make when life was normal, but now he really wished he’d gone for propane. He dug around in the garage, found half a bag of Kingsford. He poured it all in the chimney, packed the bottom with newspaper, and set it aflame. A chilly wind blew from the west, sending white smoke in his face, but the charcoal caught.

  Back in the kitchen, he cut open the packages of meat. Two pounds of flank steak, four chicken breasts, a pound of hamburger. He formed the ground beef into patties, then started to cut the steak into quarter-inch strips.

  “Stir-fry?”

  “Jerky,” he said. “I’ll boil water for the pasta, then cook the chicken and burgers, and finally do the pizzas. That’ll about finish the charcoal, but if we hang these strips on the rack, they’ll still dry out in a couple of hours. And jerky lasts for weeks.”

  “Nice.” Amy straightened, put her hands on her lower back, and leaned, the vertebrae popping. “Man, what I’d gi
ve for a hot shower.”

  “Don’t even,” he said. Out the window, the afternoon was fading. Clouds hung low and oppressive, and wind tossed the trees.

  Inventoried, the food seemed like plenty to keep them going. But he knew that if they ate normally, it would be gone in no time. He thought of the grocery runs they used to make, the cart filled to the brim, a dozen bags to unpack, and yet they’d visited the store almost weekly.

  We’ll have to start rationing. Stretch it out, drink a lot of water. Ladies and gentlemen, the American way has been temporarily suspended.

  Which was fine. One of the benefits of living in the richest country in the world, there was a wide margin between normalcy and starvation. But still, what happened when they ran out? Could things go on that long?

  And what about the people who don’t have even this much? Somehow he didn’t think they would quietly starve.

  “I don’t believe them,” Amy said.

  “Huh? Who?”

  “The soldiers. You said they were locking down the city so the terrorists couldn’t get out. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “No.”

  “There’s something they’re not telling us.”

  Before he could reply, there was a knock at the door. The sound made them both jump. He’d never realized how noisy American silence was until all the gadgets died.

  “Stay here,” he said, then walked to the front door. Ethan put a hand on the knob, then caught himself. It’s a new world. He glanced through the peephole.

  Jack Ford stood on the porch, along with two guys from the neighborhood watch meeting. The engineer, Kurt, and Lou, the guy who had asked what his problem was.

  He opened the door. “Hey.”

  “Hi, Ethan.” Jack smiled, held out his hand, and they shook. “How are you?”

  “Oh, we’re taking stock.”

  He meant it with multiple layers, but Jack heard it literally. “Smart. Important to know how your provisions hold up. Hey, did I see you packing the truck last night?”

  “Yes.” An image popped in his head, Jack walking window to window, a shotgun in one hand as he peered through the blinds. Keeping an eye out for bad characters. “We were headed to Chicago to stay with Amy’s mom. National Guard turned us back.”