Mariposa

by Greg Bear

  Rebecca nodded. "You wouldn't have called me here unless you thought I had some sort of useful expertise. Other than the wit to use tweezers."

  "Being shot hurts, but this hurts more. Edward was a brave man and a friend. This administration—my administration—is going to do everything it can to get beyond this and get his story off the front pages. But I want to make sure we know the whole story. If we missed something awful during the vetting process, I need to know. News tells me you're the best agent he ever worked with. I've read the reports on Mecca. As much as I can trust anyone, Rebecca, I'm going to trust you."

  The sun cut through the ripple glass, lovely shades on the room's custom red and gray and beige carpet.

  They sat for a few seconds, like two cats across a room.

  "I'll need everything, Madam President."

  "Thank you," Larsen said in some relief, but under her breath.

  "I'd like to start with the internal White House research—the VP vetting papers—then the DOJ and FBI reports and whatever the beltway sleuths dug up for your election team."

  "They're setting up a secure room in the Eisenhower building, an executive assistant, however many gofers you want—plus a security detail. White House counsel will escort the drives and files."

  "I want security under my control."

  "They've heard you might be a special target," Larsen said. "The Saudi exiles."

  "Doesn't make sense. I was a much easier target before I went to COPES," Rebecca said. "I'll need to talk to Quinn's staff—and his daughter."

  "The children have their own attorney, of course. She might not let that happen."

  "Most important, I need to talk to Quinn."

  "Difficult. No one is allowed to see him now except DOJ people and his attorney. Separation of powers is really mucking things up."

  "I need to hear him answer my questions in person, Madam President."

  "We'll do our best. Time's short, Rebecca. We're turning on a spit. We have less than a week before we cook through."

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  FBI Academy

  Quantico, Virginia

  "I don't like it down here," Alicia Kunsler said. William walked beside her down the long hallway that had once led to the old forensic training lab. The lights had been removed from every other fixture, creating a faster, rhythmic shadow vs. brightness as Kunsler increased her pace. "This is where I saw my first dead crime victim. They used to do that—until it became politically incorrect to make agent trainees puke."

  "I didn't know."

  "Nobody will admit to it. One particular instructor seemed to really enjoy it—a total hard ass. Best instructor I ever had. He's no longer with us. He'd bring in unclaimed corpses—indigents, drug smugglers, prostitutes. They'd lay out on a steel autopsy table, meat under a sheet—of course they'd been autopsied and cleaned up a little—and the instructor would pull back the sheet and give the agent trainees the person's stats, where he or she or he/she was found, the circumstances of death, and the one central truth of the entire day—that the killer or killers would never be identified or prosecuted. The resources did not exist. Back then, Mexico was having a pretty fierce drug war—worse than now, even. Thousands were being killed. Mules and dealers in the U.S. were being taken down.

  "Our special corpse had been photographed crossing the border into El Paso in the company of a trucker who claimed she was his daughter. She was sixteen, a U.S. citizen—born in Los Angeles—and so on. The details don't matter."

  "They're always interesting," William said.

  "Do you dream of crime scenes, Agent Griffin?"

  "Of course."

  "Last night?"

  "Yeah. I can never get the evidence to stay in one place, or collect it fast enough—it evaporates or someone walks out with it and I can't stop them. It never comes together, even if the clues are laid out like a board game. They keep skittering away. I wake up feeling groggy and stupid."

  Kunsler smiled and pointed. "Left up ahead, through the double glass doors."

  "What about the girl?"

  "The trucker had beaten her to death, snipped off her fingers with garden shears, and cut off her head with a hacksaw. He was never seen again. Maybe he's down in the bone desert south of Juarez somewhere—the least he deserved."

  "How'd you identify her?"

  "Tattoo on her left shoulder. Eagle holding a snake." She snapped her fingers and looked relieved. "That's the connection. It's been bothering me. El Paso and snakes."

  They passed left through the doors and found three men in blue windbreakers and khaki pants standing in front of a steel autopsy table, blocking most of the view.

  Kunsler introduced them quickly. "Agent William Griffin, this is Johnny Walker."

  The man on the left smiled and held out his hand. He had a high narrow brow, a long jaw, a trim young head of brown hair.

  "The rest will please introduce themselves," Kunsler said. "I'm not a drinking woman. I get you confused."

  "I am Wild Turkey," said the second man, shorter, balding, plumper. "My friends call me Turk."

  The third—slight and skinny, long-nosed, with thick glasses, not spex—stepped up to shake hands.

  "I am usually Captain Morgan. But today, you can call me Q."

  William caught a glimpse of something small and tan, coiled in the middle of the steel table like a rope or a whip. "Star Trek Q, or Bond Q?" he asked.

  The others chuckled.

  "Take your choice," Q said. "What we do is weirdly godlike."

  "These gentlemen do not wish to be remembered," Kunsler said. "Their services are on loan, along with their equipment. Mr. Q, proceed."

  William knew better than to blurt out some smart-ass guess as to where the three were from. Spider/Argus had over the years partnered regularly with DARPA—the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency. And DARPA had funded quite a few projects involving robotics.

  "We assume you both signed our NDA," Q said.

  Kunsler passed them the sealed envelope.

  The men parted like a human curtain.

  The coil on the table appeared to be a snake—tan and brown with black specks and a spade-shaped head. It did not look alive and it did not look dead.

  "This is not a toy," Q said. "It's not exactly top secret, but close. We're still working on a clever acronym. Agent Griffin, you'll take away our lovely sidewinder and three of its brothers in a custom-made suitcase. Use as instructed—they'll be preprogrammed and ready to go. We would like them back. They're rare and they cost about a million dollars apiece."

  Q bent to remove the black plastic case from under the table. He opened the case and took out a small cardboard box, from which he withdrew a plastic tube about half an inch wide and two inches long, with a screw top. The tube had a small reservoir at one end.

  Within the tube was a small steel lancet.

  "We were not informed what that is for," he said. "But it all fits in here." He reached down and partially uncoiled the snake, then squeezed its middle. A small hatch popped open, giving a glimpse of gleaming steel ribs and wires. He placed the tube inside the snake, then closed the hatch.

  "The snake has hi-res terrain mapping tied in with augmented GPS, and in this model, face and voice recognition. Pretty good software, if I say so," Q boasted.

  "We all say so," Johnny Walker affirmed.

  "Within sight of a targeted individual—I mean, the intended individual—it will make an audible announcement and open its hatch. There is no self-destruct mechanism—we're delivering on short notice. If its mission is not completed, there's a risk that some one smarter than us will draw some or other conclusion by examining its payload—though we ourselves have yet to come up with a believable hypothesis."

  "Thank you," Kunsler said. "Tell your secret masters we're appreciative, and will provide all the relevant details, should our mission prove a success."

  "One more thing," Johnny Walker said. He pulled a cable from the box. "Keep this plugged int
o a cigarette lighter for half an hour before you release."

  "The fuel cell option has been delayed," Wild Turkey said, with a hangdog expression. "My bad. It turns on like this . . ."

  He demonstrated. The snake twitched and coiled, then raised its head with a hiss and shake of its tail. Kunsler leaped back about a foot and gave a convulsive shudder.

  "Very convincing," she said as the snake performed an S-curve crawl around the table. "But sidewinders are Sonoran desert, not west Texas."

  "As I said, short notice," Q said.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Washington D.C.

  The Eisenhower Executive Office Building was by any definition a stately pile, a great angular staggered front rising to an elaborate Mansard roof. With marble floors, cast-iron columns, and brass details, the EEOB looked Baroque to Rebecca, who knew from architecture, but the Marine guard—a short, muscular woman with the most beautiful, sympathetic eyes—proudly told her it was actually French Second Empire. Whatever, it was crammed with over five hundred and fifty rooms and two miles of hallways—a warren of office spaces woven around restored ceremonial rooms and spacious executive suites.

  The EEOB housed the solar plexus of executive government and its proximity to the White House had made it a desirable stack of real estate for almost a hundred and forty years. It also housed the vice president's offices, and a weary-looking quartet of two marines and two Diplomatic Security agents stood guard by the tape-sealed doors.

  All four sets of eyes, sharp as hawks, locked on Rebecca as she walked by.

  Tours had been stopped right after the Quinn murders. Nobody wanted to deal with large and curious crowds or the extra publicity of ghoulish souvenir hounds removing chunks of historical ornament. More than twenty such had already been arrested trying to breach the grounds of the Naval Observatory.

  Rebecca's escort steered her through the quiet, echoing sadness to a small waiting room furnished with ornate wooden benches and a magazine table. The escort sat across from her, biting her thumb and providing more architectural details

  A tall, straight woman with short gray hair and a neat gray pantsuit opened the door, then looked down at her notebook. "You're Rebecca Rose?"

  "Yes, ma'am," Rebecca said.

  "I'm Thalia Ripper. I used to be the president's campaign manager. Now I help with legal and other matters—call it damage control. We have a desk and secure terminal for you in an annex near the vice president's office. The office has been processed and will be made available to you. A lot of boxes are being delivered, more boxes every hour. I have a staff of three waiting to assist, all of the highest integrity and loyalty. If they seem stiff and unhappy, well . . . you understand. Let's start on a first name basis."

  "I understand . . . Thalia."

  "Ripper." Half lidded eyes. "Like a Bond girl."

  Rebecca grinned.

  Ripper cocked her head and threw back her shoulders. "Used to look like one too."

  Rebecca had no difficulty believing that.

  Ripper took Rebecca through nearly empty hallways and down a flight of stairs. They peered into the Indian Treaty Room, fancy digs indeed, one corner stacked six feet high with neat white file boxes on carts with soft rubber wheels, not to mar the flooring.

  Rebecca's space took up a back room beside the deserted vice president's office.

  "This used to be occupied by Quinn's staff," Ripper said. "They handed in their resignations as fast as they could. We all loved Beth-Anne."

  The walls were draped with pale gray fabric. The ceiling was hung with similar fabric. Surrounded by this canopy, a small desk supported a flat screen with a virtual keyboard.

  "I'll need a big, flat worktable," Rebecca said.

  "I'll get one, but I recommend against spreading out documents," Ripper said. "We haven't had time to blind the room. There was a restoration project in the EEOB three years ago. Little things in the paint, you know. A constant problem. Hence the drapes. They're presumed to be effective, but presumption doesn't cut it."

  Rebecca leafed through a small pile of papers sitting under an orange cover on the desk: lists of documents denied to the White House by various agencies and departments. "The Bureau won't give us the FBI's vetting docs for Quinn," she noted.

  "That was Bureau West's call," Ripper said. "You having issues with the deputy director in Alameda?"

  Rebecca shook her head. "No way of knowing."

  "We may have copies," Ripper said. "We're still looking."

  Rebecca set her teeth and pulled out the barely padded, decades-old visitor's chair, then sat and stretched her leg. "I worked with the AG on a political background check eight years ago," she said.

  "The same one who's serving time in Cumberland?"

  Rebecca nodded. "With politically sensitive subjects, Office of Intelligence usually got involved. Back then, the info went straight back to the White house. Not anymore, I assume."

  "Not anymore," Ripper confirmed.

  "OI also exchanged data with CIA. To cover their asses after the torture trials, the CIA liaisons trucked paper dupes of their findings over the river to a warehouse in McLean. They didn't trust the White House not to erase them."

  Ripper smiled. "I'll make an inquiry."

  Another trolley of boxes arrived as Rebecca continued to run down the list. At least 90 percent of the blocked documents, she was sure, would be available somewhere in a cached blog or government web page.

  Within a couple of hours, the small room was half filled with boxes, each packed tight with thousands of sheets of paper: folders, binders, briefing booklets.

  Some dated back to 1979.

  "The vice president went into the army in 2004," Ripper said, tapping a flat gray box. "These are his official records—fitness reports, Silver Star and Bronze Star commissions, medical and Purple Heart documentation—that sort of thing. I'll leave you to it."

  Two staffers showed up on the first day, with another promised soon. Rebecca asked these serious young workers to bring her the first three boxes, by date, from the larger room.

  Together, they began working through Quinn's life. Document search and analysis was the sort of labor Rebecca knew was essential, and hated. Worm days, she had called it at the Academy. Bookworm.

  At five, before dawn, she was escorted by her assigned Secret Service agent, Roger Baumann—tall, balding, with an oft-broken nose and calm brown spaniel eyes—from the rear of her hotel, a small, comfortable old establishment, empty but for her. Baumann drove her a block and a half to the EEOB in a massive armored Cadillac, to be set loose in the former office of the vice president, rapidly filling with millions of cold, impenetrable words and images describing a life effectively over.

  She now had four assistants, each with hill staff or Library of Congress experience. This morning, they were guided through metal detectors and whiffers and inspected by a row of small but intrusive imaging machines. One staffer—Judith, the oldest at thirty-four—bragged she now knew more about her intestinal tract than she ever wanted to.

  Rebecca put Judith in charge of the team. She did this despite her instinct that Judith was a spy for Thalia Ripper. Ripper was providing cover for Rebecca's work. It was only natural for her to want to know the details, day by day.

  Each staffer was accompanied into a small restroom and provided with special clothing. Rebecca was allowed to wear her own clothes.

  To put a cap on the strangeness, at the end of the day, they all submitted to blood tests. No one explained why.

  Rebecca joked that someone must have found a new way to smuggle information. "I've got a copy machine in my tummy."

  The doctor drawing her sample avoided her eyes and did not smile.

  So far, the research was routine. Quinn had been vetted by the FBI before being chosen as running mate, and by the CIA before the election—the latter investigation conducted in strict secrecy and without the campaign's knowledge. Other divisions—the far-flung branches of Homeland Security and the De
partment of Defense—had conducted their own investigations, in greater or lesser degrees of internal secrecy, just to know what to expect if these folks ever happened to move into the White House.

  This morning, Rebecca's entourage passed a group of trim men and women in black suits, escorting a man she recognized from online photos and videos: William Raphkind, the solemn young governor of New Jersey. Raphkind was on the short list to be appointed vice president once Quinn was formally removed, which would be any day. No doubt he was being vetted even more thoroughly than Quinn.

  There was a lot about candidate vetting that the public was ignorant of. Bureaucrats—the behind-the-scenes power brokers in Washington—looked on elected and appointed officials much as the servants of a castle looked on newly resident royalty, but with considerably less respect. Jobs were at stake, but also legacies. Quinn had probably been investigated on the sly a dozen times by private beltway security firms. Most of those documents had been deep-sixed on the night of the election. No one knew if any still existed, because they had never existed in the first place.

  For all of that, nobody had found much in Quinn's life beyond the usual youthful embarrassments and middle-aged fluctuations of emotion. A good husband and father. Quick temper, some said; others, a strong command presence that brooked no nonsense. The usual executive-level male forcefulness, which Rebecca, personally, could take or leave. She had known worse offenders in that regard who had also been excellent agents.

  For a man severely wounded, Quinn had glided back into civilian life in a relatively smooth slope and with a soft landing—welcome return to loving family, wife pregnant with their first child—and then selection, nomination, election, and transition into major public office.

  Party recruiters had apparently been grooming Quinn's image even while he was in Iraq, and there was considerable press coverage of his exploits—but less information about the violent 2007 incident in Fallujah that had left him with scars and medals.