by Mark Alpert
The professor opened and closed his mouth, but no words came out. It took him several seconds to find his voice. “What? Who are you?”
“That’s not important right now. The important thing is finding your friends. David Swift and Monique Reynolds, remember? You were with them last night in the cabin. And then they left you behind, bleeding on the floor. That wasn’t very considerate of them, was it?”
Gupta furrowed his brow. This was a good sign—his memory was coming back. Simon tightened his grip on the old man’s shoulder. “Yes, you remember. And I think you also remember where they were headed. You would’ve gone with them if you hadn’t been shot, correct?”
After a few seconds the old man narrowed his eyes and frowned. This wasn’t such a good sign. Now that he had his memory back, Gupta was turning defiant. “Who are you?” he repeated.
“I told you, that’s not important. I need to know where Swift and Reynolds have gone. Tell me now, or things will get very unpleasant for you, Professor.”
Gupta’s eyes darted to the left and for the first time he took in his surroundings: the mahogany table, the chandelier, the red-and-yellow wallpaper of the Jenkins dining room. He took a labored breath. “You’re not FBI,” he whispered.
Simon kept one hand on Gupta’s shoulder and moved the other toward his injured thigh. “No, I have more leeway, fortunately. The Americans have a few tricks, of course—the water boarding, the sleep deprivation, the German shepherds. But I don’t waste time with half measures.” When his hand reached the bullet wound he grasped the gauze dressing and tore it off.
Gupta arched his back and let out another scream. But when Simon studied the man’s face he didn’t see the frozen look of terror that usually accompanied the frenzied contortions. The professor bared his teeth instead. “Imbecile!” he hissed. “You’re just as stupid as that agent!”
Irritated, Simon dug two fingers into the wound, using his nails to wriggle between the sutures. Blood flowed again from the loose flaps of skin. “Enough of this. Where are Swift and Reynolds?”
“Imbecile! Idiot!” Gupta shouted, slamming his fist against the table.
Simon dug deeper into the wound. The blood pooled around his fingers and trickled down Gupta’s thigh. “If you don’t tell me where they are, I’ll rip out these sutures. Then I’ll peel the skin off your leg, strip by strip.”
The professor lurched forward and glared at him with maniacal eyes. “You brainless Russian pig! I’m Henry Cobb!”
Chapter Ten
MONIQUE GAVE HIM A DISGUSTED LOOK. “THIS IS CRAZY. We’re wasting our time.”
They were in the station wagon again, but now they were arguing instead of kissing. The car was parked at a gas station on Victory Drive, about a quarter mile south of the Night Maneuvers Lounge, and Elizabeth Gupta was making a call at the station’s pay phone. Graddick stood guard nearby, holding a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, while David, Monique, and Michael waited in the car.
“It’s not crazy,” David insisted. “It makes perfect sense.”
Monique shook her head. “If Kleinman wanted to keep the theory away from the government, why would he put it on a computer belonging to the U.S. Army?”
“Military computers are the most secure systems in the world. And he hid the equations in a piece of war-gaming software that no one uses anymore.”
“But the army still has access to it! What if some captain or colonel in the Virtual Combat office gets bored one day and decides to play Warfighter?”
“First of all, you can’t get to the theory unless you reach the highest expertise level. That’s probably not so easy, unless you play the game all the time like Michael.” David pointed at the teenager, who was crouched over his Game Boy in the backseat. “And second, even if you mastered the game and found the equations, you wouldn’t understand what they meant unless you were a physicist. You’d just assume it was nonsense and ignore it.”
She didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know, David. You have to admit, it’s a pretty wild guess. Are you sure you—”
Before she could finish the thought, Elizabeth stepped away from the pay phone and came striding back to the station wagon. She wore spandex tights and a T-shirt now, but she still looked very much like a hooker. “There’s no answer,” she told David through the car window. “Sheila probably went away for the weekend.”
David frowned. He’d hoped that Sheila—a friend of Elizabeth’s who still worked as a secretary in the Virtual Combat Simulation office—could help them get into Fort Benning. “Do you know anyone else who still works there?”
“Nah, nobody,” Elizabeth replied. “Most of the guys in that office were computer geeks. The whole time I was there, they never once said hello.”
Shit, David thought. There was no way they could get through Benning’s security gate, much less into the VCS office, without a little help from someone who worked at the base.
“It’s funny,” Elizabeth continued, “I’ve never seen any of those geeks at the club either. They must get off on Internet porn.”
An idea occurred to him. “Beth, do you have any steady customers who work at the base? Guys you see on a regular basis?”
“Fuck yes.” Her voice turned defensive, as if he’d just challenged her. “I got some once-a-week guys. Plenty of ’em.”
“Are any of them military police?”
She thought it over for a few seconds. “Yeah, I know a sergeant in the MPs, Sergeant Mannheimer. I’ve known him for years, ever since I started working at the club.”
“Do you know his phone number?”
Instead of answering, she reached into the car and snapped her fingers in front of Michael’s nose. The teenager’s head shot up from his Game Boy. Elizabeth looked at him sternly. “Columbus directory,” she said. “Mannheimer, Richard.”
“706-555-1329,” Michael recited. Then he lowered his head and returned to his game.
Elizabeth smiled. “Ain’t that something? He memorized the Columbus phone book when he lived with me. The Macon phone book, too.”
David wrote the number on a scrap of paper. He wasn’t particularly surprised by Michael’s memory feat; he knew that many autistic children had amazing powers of recall, and he remembered the telephone directories that were stored in the computer at Carnegie’s Retreat. What unsettled him was how Elizabeth used her son’s skill. She’d obviously done the finger-snapping trick before. It must’ve been a convenient way to keep track of her johns.
He handed her the scrap of paper. “Call the sergeant and ask him for a favor. Tell him you’ve got some friends in town who need passes to get on the base. Tell him we want to go to the barracks to visit our little brother, but we left our IDs at home by mistake.”
She squinted at the phone number, then shook her head. “Mannheimer ain’t gonna do this for nothing, you know. He’s gonna want me to give him a freebie. Maybe two.”
David had expected this. He took his wallet out of his pocket and removed five twenties from the billfold. “Don’t worry, I’ll cover it. A hundred now, two hundred when we’re done. Deal?”
Elizabeth stared at the twenty-dollar bills. She opened her mouth and licked her lips, probably tasting the crystal meth already. Then she snatched the money out of David’s hand and headed back to the pay phone.
David looked at Monique, but she turned away from him. She was pissed, no question about it, but she didn’t say a word, and that was worse than any amount of yelling. They watched in silence as Elizabeth placed the call at the pay phone and started talking. Finally, David stretched his arm across the seat and touched Monique’s shoulder. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
She shrugged his hand off. “You know what’s wrong. You’re pimping her.”
“No, I’m not! I’m just—”
“What do you think she’s gonna do with that money? She’s gonna spend it all on meth and go on a binge. And then it’s back to the strip club, back to the motel room.”
“Look, we need her
help to find the theory. If you have a better idea, why don’t you—”
Monique suddenly clutched David’s arm. “Something’s wrong,” she said, pointing at the pay phone. Graddick stood beside Elizabeth, shouting at her. She ignored him and kept talking into the receiver. A moment later Graddick grabbed her by the waist and started dragging her toward the station wagon. David was confused until he looked down Victory Drive and saw half a dozen black SUVs parked in front of the Night Maneuvers Lounge. A swarm of men in gray suits were leaping out of the vehicles and surrounding the strip club.
Graddick opened the wagon’s rear door and pushed Elizabeth inside. “Start the engine, brother! Satan’s on our tail!”
KAREN STOOD IN THE LIVING ROOM of Gloria Mitchell’s apartment, peering through the window blinds at the traffic on East Twenty-seventh Street. Two burly men in sweatshirts loitered on the sidewalk next to a delivery truck that hadn’t moved in the past twelve hours. Every few minutes or so, one of the men cupped his hand over his mouth and pretended to cough. He was speaking into a microphone that ran down his sleeve.
Jonah sat on the couch, leafing through an astronomy book he’d found in Gloria’s bookcase. Gloria herself was at the other end of the room, talking on her cell phone with her editor at the New York Times. She was a tiny, raven-haired spitfire of a woman, with skinny legs and a pointy chin and dark eyes in constant motion. When she finished the call, she snapped the phone shut and quick-stepped toward Karen. “I have to go,” she reported. “Double homicide in Brooklyn. Just stay here till I get back.”
Karen’s stomach twisted. She pointed at the window. “Those agents are still outside.” She kept her voice low so Jonah wouldn’t overhear. “As soon as they see you leave the building, they’re gonna come up here and grab us.”
Gloria shook her head. “An illegal break-in at a reporter’s apartment? They wouldn’t dare.”
“They’ll break down the door and fix it before you get back. It’ll look like Jonah and I just decided to leave. That’s what the FBI will tell you when you ask them what happened to us.”
“You really think—”
“Can’t you ask your editor to assign someone else?”
She let out a loud Ha. “Forget it. The guy’s a ballbuster.”
Karen glanced at her son, who was poring over a picture of the asteroid belt. No way in hell was she going to let those bastards touch him. “Then we’ll come with you. They won’t arrest us if you’re there to see it.”
Gloria shrugged. “All right, suit yourself.”
IF THIS HAD BEEN AN ordinary job, Simon would’ve shot his client by now. Professor Amil Gupta, aka Henry Cobb, was the most arrogant, infuriating man he’d ever worked for. As soon as the professor revealed his identity he started excoriating Simon in the most unpleasant terms. Although Gupta had some legitimate reasons for being displeased, the fault was really his own: the mix-up wouldn’t have occurred if he hadn’t insisted on that absurd alias. Simon tried to explain this as he rebandaged the man’s bullet wound, but Gupta continued to insult him. Then, once the professor was able to walk, he began shouting orders. He outlined a new plan: he and Simon would take the pickup truck down to Georgia to follow the targets, while Agent Brock drove Dr. Jenkins’s Dodge van to New York. When Simon asked why Brock was going back to New York, Gupta curtly told him to shut up and find the keys to the van. Simon’s hand automatically reached for his Uzi, but he stopped himself from spraying Gupta’s brains across the room. Be patient, he reminded himself. Focus on the goal.
Because Jenkins’s house was a few kilometers outside the cordon that the American forces had set up, Simon encountered no resistance on the back roads of southwestern Virginia. By 11 A.M., they reached the town of Meadowview, where Brock headed north on I-81 and Simon and Gupta went south. The professor reclined in the passenger seat with his injured leg propped on the dashboard, but unfortunately he didn’t doze off. Instead he checked his watch every five minutes and fulminated about the depths of human stupidity. After they crossed the state line into Tennessee, he abruptly leaned toward Simon and pointed at a sign saying EXIT 69 BLOUNTVILLE. “Get off the highway,” he ordered.
“Why? The road’s clear. No military or police.”
Gupta scowled. “We don’t have enough time to get to Georgia. Because of your incompetence, Swift and Reynolds have a ten-hour head start on us. They’ve probably made contact with my daughter already.”
“All the more reason for taking the interstate. The back roads will be slower.”
“There’s another alternative. I’ve done some work with a company in Blountville, a defense contractor called Mid-South Robotics. I built a few prototype machines for them, so they’re hooked into my surveillance network.”
“Surveillance?”
“Yes. If I’m right about where Swift and Reynolds are going, we may able to observe them.”
Simon left the interstate and traveled about two kilometers down Route 394. Mid-South Robotics was located in a sprawling one-story building that covered a fair amount of the Tennessee countryside. Because it was Saturday morning, there was only one car in the parking lot. Simon pulled up next to it and then he and Professor Gupta headed for the security guard’s booth. A gaunt, white-haired man in a blue uniform sat inside, reading the local newspaper. Gupta tapped on the booth’s window to get the man’s attention. “Hello there!” he called. “I’m Dr. Amil Gupta of the Robotics Institute. Do you remember me? I was here for a visit in April.”
The guard put down the newspaper and stared at them for a moment. Then he grinned. “Oh yeah, Dr. Gupta! From Pittsburgh! I was here when you came for your tour of the plant!” He stood up and opened the door to the booth so he could shake the professor’s hand. “It’s mighty nice to see you again!”
Gupta forced a smile. “Yes, it’s good to see you, too. Tell me, is Mr. Compton in the office yet? He asked me to stop by and take a look at one of his prototypes.”
“Oh, I sure am sorry, but Mr. Compton ain’t here. He didn’t say nothing about you coming over today.”
“He’ll probably arrive later, I suppose. In the meantime, could you let me and my assistant into the testing lab? I can only stay for a couple of hours, so I need to get to work right away.”
The guard glanced at Simon, then turned back to Gupta. He was starting to have second thoughts. “I guess I should call Mr. Compton first. Just to let him know you’re here.”
“Please, there’s no need. I don’t want to interrupt his weekend.”
“Just the same, I think I’ll call him.”
He was retreating into his booth when the professor gave the nod. Simon stepped forward with his Uzi and shot the guard between the eyes. The man was dead before his body hit the floor. Simon bent over him and searched his pockets.
Gupta looked down at the corpse. “Fascinating. I lived for seventy-six years without witnessing a murder, and now I’ve seen two in the past twelve hours.”
“You’ll get used to it.” After removing the keys from the guard’s pocket, Simon began disconnecting the building’s alarm system.
The professor shook his head. “It’s like the collapse of a small universe. An infinite array of probabilities reduced to a single dead certainty.”
“If it’s such a tragedy, why did you tell me to kill him?”
“I never said it was a tragedy. Some universes must die so that others can be born.” Gupta lifted his gaze to the sky, bringing his hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun. “Humanity will take a great leap forward once we present the Einheitliche Feldtheorie to the world. We’ll be the midwives to a new era, a golden age of enlightenment.”
Simon frowned. He was a soldier, not a midwife. His mission was death, not birth.
IT WAS EASY TO SEE why Sergeant Mannheimer was one of Elizabeth’s regular customers. Gawky, balding, beak-nosed, and loud-mouthed, he probably couldn’t get a date with anyone but a hooker. He sat in the backseat of the station wagon with his arm around
Elizabeth, squeezing her waist and peeking at her cleavage, but he was also casting lascivious glances at Monique, who sat with Michael in the cargo area. Graddick grumbled as he steered the car toward Fort Benning’s entrance; he obviously disliked the sergeant and wasn’t happy about visiting the army base either. But David had insisted that it was necessary for Elizabeth’s salvation, and that was enough to keep Graddick quiet, at least for the time being.
As they approached the security gate, David noticed a long line of cars ahead. It seemed like a lot of traffic for a Saturday morning. Pointing at the gate, he turned to Mannheimer. “What’s going on?”
The sergeant was toying with the gold chain around Elizabeth’s neck, trying to pull up the locket that hung between her breasts. “Everyone’s coming to see Darth Vader. He’s giving a speech at the base today.”
“Darth Vader?”
“Yeah, the secretary of defense. The man who runs the Benning-to-Baghdad Express.”
David looked again at the security gate and saw half a dozen MPs inspecting the cars at the front of the line. The soldiers were opening the trunks and kneeling beside the fenders to see if any bombs were under the chassis. “Shit. They’ve beefed up security.”
“Chill out, dude.” Mannheimer had successfully fished the locket out of Elizabeth’s shirt and was now dangling it in front of her eyes. “Those are my boys. They won’t hassle us.”
Elizabeth giggled as the sergeant pretended to hypnotize her. She was in a good mood now that she had a hundred dollars in her pocket. Meanwhile, David grew ever more nervous as the car inched to the front of the line. After five minutes they reached the gate and a strapping young corporal with an M-9 pistol in his holster approached the station wagon. He bent over and stuck his face in the driver’s-side window. “License and registration,” he ordered. “And I’m gonna need ID for all the passengers.”
