“Anything like what?”
“You name it. It could design an engine with perfect efficiency, or create the protein-folding scheme for a drug that will completely block cancer-cell metastasis. There’s honestly no limit.”
Danny raised his eyebrows. He looked simultaneously impressed and skeptical. “Very sci-fi,” he said diplomatically. “What’s a singularity got to do with it?”
“That’s just shorthand. A singularity is another name for a black hole, and there’s no way to see what happens past the event horizon of a black hole. Computer scientists look at this NP threshold basically the same way. You can’t see what’s going to happen until you get there. Until you’re past it.”
“Okay, let’s continue this conversation at the bar with everyone else.” He got up from the table, beckoning Kevin to come along.
Kevin smiled again, glad to have been invited a second time. Danny’s tactics were the nicest kind. But he stayed put. “I’m a new teacher,” Kevin said. “Remember? I’ve got lesson plans that need preparing.”
A lie, but there really was too much Kevin needed to do.
Too many questions still to be asked.
Danny shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, and turned to go. “Can I send Ms. Beck your regrets?”
“Give her a big hug for me instead.”
“I can do that.”
Kevin waited ten minutes in the lounge, and then he was out on the sidewalk by the main entrance. He took a breath before setting out. There was a uniformed policeman a little way down the block; he had stopped to talk to some painters who were loading supplies into two large white vans at the curb. The cop was motioning with his hand, gesturing toward the school.
Kevin turned away, toward Park Avenue.
Then he headed south.
Stalking A Target
Gun Two sat in the Ford F-150 pickup near the corner of Third Avenue and 72nd street, the big engine idling underneath him. He was dressed in dark blue coveralls with a matching blue hat pulled down low over his eyes.
“Is he still there?”
He spoke under his breath, barely moving his lips. The tiny microphone in his collar picked up every sound. He waited. His nose was bandaged and splinted, and there were dark circles under both his eyes.
Still no response.
After another minute the information came back to him through his earpiece. He nodded slowly. “Turning right on Lexington or still heading east?”
He closed his eyes and took another long breath through his mouth. He had not been able to breath at all through his nose since being corrected by Gun One.
The second response came, and he opened his eyes.
“Any other units in the area?” he asked. A pause. “No. Just give me a five block radius.”
He put the pickup into reverse and backed out of the parking space he was in. Then he pulled gently forward until he was fifteen feet from the intersection. He double-parked and put on his hazard lights.
“Okay. E.T.A. to my position?”
After a moment he nodded again, and then he reached up and tapped a contact behind his ear, ending the call. He pulled his hat another inch down on his head, shifted the pickup into drive, and waited with his foot on the break.
The truck’s engine was making a higher sound now. It was ready. Eager.
The Target
Officer Hulse tucked his notebook back into his pocket and continued along his route. There had been nothing particularly interesting or suspicious about that painting crew between Lexington and Park, but he had been told to stay on alert for his special detail on 74th – never mind that he didn’t know what he was supposed to be on alert for – and to Officer Hulse, being alert simply meant taking an extra minute. You stopped, you talked, you wrote things down. He had seen these painters the day before, bringing ladders and buckets from one van to another, and now here they were again. Not that Officer Hulse really gave a damn, but he hadn’t noticed any scaffolding on any of the buildings on this street. No drop cloths or work permits or anything. So he stopped and asked.
Their answers were good enough. Bored and lazy enough, and none of Hulse’s interior alarm bells so much as pinged. It was all interior work, they said. It was those buildings right across the street, the owners weren’t in at the moment, but Officer Hulse was told he should feel free to go in and talk to them about it tomorrow morning, and here’s their number, you can call them yourself. The painters seemed almost eager at the prospect of the cop talking to their employers.
Maybe they were hoping it would be an excuse to slow the whole job down by a day or two.
Either way, Hulse wanted to be thorough. So he took down the information, took down their names, their company number, and the number of the apartment owners. And then he went on his way. He had been alert. He had collected information. It was useless, tedious information, but that was the job.
He crossed Lexington and headed east.
Behind him, inside the van, one of the men in blue painting coveralls whispered something into a small microphone embedded in his collar.
The Cop Almost Made It
Gun Two saw the cop coming out of the corner of his eye. From his left. The blue uniform made him stand out. He was not a fat cop, Gun Two decided, but he was not especially fit either. He might be able to move fast if you gave him some time, sure. But he was not a man who looked as if he could change directions quickly.
He would not be much of a dodger, and that was all Gun Two cared about.
The cop stopped walking at the corner of the intersection, waiting for the light, and Gun Two shifted the F-150’s automatic transmission out of drive and into second gear. The engine’s soft, idling whine went up another notch.
The light changed, and Officer Hulse proceeded across the intersection.
There was no one else crossing the street – an unlikely event in Manhattan, and one that Gun Two considered unfortunate – but there was nothing to be done. He would have preferred to kill the cop and a pedestrian or two, so that the hit and run could plausibly be called random. An accident. He gave a little shrug, and then he floored the accelerator.
The pickup jumped forward with a startled roar, its engine forced into high-RPM torque output by the low gear setting on the transmission. The Ford traveled the 15 feet to the intersection in less than three seconds, picking up speed all the way.
Officer Hulse saw the truck coming at the last second, and he did move. He was in better shape than the Gun thought, and he lunged with surprising agility. But Gun Two had been expecting a lunge of some sort – if not one quite so acrobatic – and he was already turning the wheel when Hulse tried to get out of the way.
Still, the cop almost made it.
The pickup’s right fender caught him on one side. It shattered his hip and sent a bolt of such blinding pain through Hulse’s body that he felt as if the very air around him had been ignited. But his hip was the least of his problems, and in any case the pain would end soon. The impact laid him out and spun him, and his head hit the side of the truck hard, cracking his skull. Then he was on the pavement, and Gun Two was still turning the wheel, still moving the pickup in the direction the officer had tried to dodge. The Ford moved a critical half foot to the right as the main chassis passed over Hulse, the wheels still accelerating, so that in another moment the rear tires were there, and when they met his head the darkness came all at once.
Gun Two kept his foot all the way down. He drove for just one block before slamming on the breaks and swinging left on 75th, heading west. When he reached the intersection at Lexington, he brought the pickup to a quick stop, jumped out of the cab, and then stepped quickly into a little coffee shop on the corner. He strode into the bathroom without looking around.
He emerged thirty seconds later wearing only the well-tailored gray suit and tie he had been wearing under his blue coveralls. His blue hat was gone too, replaced by an old-fashioned bowler hat that effectively obscured his black eyes and bandaged no
se. He stepped out of the coffee shop and then walked across the street, sparing a curious glance for the pickup truck that seemed to have been abandoned there at the corner. Already there was a yellow taxi behind it, honking its horn.
Gun Two turned smartly on his heels and headed west.
He was breathing easier now.
He had redeemed himself.
Numb With Fear
Two minutes after Officer Hulse’s death, Kevin Brooks reached his apartment. He let himself in and headed for the living room.
Straight for the bookshelf.
“Good day at school?”
Kevin stopped himself from jumping this time, though Andrew’s approach had been no less stealthy than the day before. He waited before answering.
Good day? Well, that kid with the bad hair cut would say no. On account of all the blood coming out of his forehead. Then again, he did end up in Emily Beck’s lap.
“So-so,” Kevin said finally.
“I’ll be in the kitchen.”
Kevin nodded and turned his attention back to the bookshelf.
I saw it here yesterday.
Over here near the middle, with all the non-fiction stuff he couldn’t remember owning.
There.
Spanish.
It was a huge textbook, and it didn’t look like something a student would use; there were no comforting scenes of the Barcelona countryside on the cover, and the pages were thin, too delicate for repeated use at the hands of school children. He brought it with him to the study and put it on the desk. It had been a while since he could remember trying to learn something completely new, and he hadn’t worked on a language since 6th grade French.
He wondered if he should take notes.
He was on the point of pulling out a sheet of paper when something occurred to him. It was an image, the moment in class earlier in the day when he had recalled the exact page – and the exact example – he had needed to answer one of his student’s questions.
Maybe notes aren’t part of my routine anymore.
“Andrew, what time is it?”
From far away in the kitchen: “Five past three.”
Kevin nodded to himself. The entire concept of time was frightening to him now, and the more he could involve Andrew, the better. He opened the Spanish book, adjusted himself in his chair, and got to work.
The room grew gray and silent around him.
Nothing moved.
He looked up and sat back quickly, taking in a very sudden, very deep breath. He felt as if someone had just shaken him from a daydream. As if he had not been paying attention. He experienced a quick surge of that anxiety, that get-ready feeling in his head, but just as quickly it was gone. His breathing returned to normal.
He looked back down at the book.
Page 190.
Wait, when did I – ?
“Here you are.” Andrew appeared beside him, and he slid a small plate onto the desk. A turkey and cheese sandwich, lettuce and tomato. “A bit of fuel before you begin,” Andrew said.
Kevin put his hands up, then placed them slowly down on the desk. As though he were worried the polished wood might just float away. “Andrew, what time is it?”
A brief pause, as Andrew took a moment to deliver a precise response. “Eight past three,” he said, and left the room.
Kevin fought the urge to bring Andrew back and call him a liar.
Three minutes. Plenty of time to make a sandwich. Or to read 190 pages of a Spanish textbook. Either one. Take your pick.
Kevin grabbed the sandwich and took a bite. Delicious, of course. Fresh bread, good turkey.
190 in about three minutes. One page per second, give or take. Including the time to actually turn each page. A slow business, that page-turning thing.
He chewed his sandwich methodically, trying to enjoy it.
His body was working normally. His senses were working normally.
But what part of me senses time? Which section of my brain? And by the way, did I actually absorb all 190 pages?
He looked up at the ceiling, as if preparing to recite his social security number or a line from a favorite movie. He had no idea where or how memories were stored, but he did know that everything had its own little trigger. If you tried to say your social security number starting in the middle, or backward, you were done for. But start from the beginning…
“Spanish is a very straightforward language,” he said to the ceiling. “The rules for conjugation, agreement, and pronunciation are consistent, and include relatively few exceptions. Let’s begin with the simple concept of cognates…”
He looked back down at the textbook, his eyes wide.
It’s all there. It’s an unbelievably boring textbook, but it’s all there. Everything up to page 190, anyway.
He shook his head in wonder. In another minute he had finished his sandwich, and he pushed the plate to the side. He centered himself in his chair and leaned forward over the textbook. There were several hundred pages remaining.
“All right, you son of a bitch,” he whispered. “What else?”
He focused.
Again the room went gray around him.
When he was done, Kevin stood up from the desk. He felt light-headed. He blinked several times, glanced around him as if to get his bearings, and then looked back down at the Spanish textbook.
It was closed.
He turned and left the room, then headed straight back toward the main entryway. He heard Andrew’s soft footsteps behind him in the study as the empty sandwich plate was collected, and Kevin spoke over his shoulder as he was letting himself out the front door. “What do we have? 3:13?”
“Quarter past on the nose,” Andrew replied.
Kevin nodded with satisfaction as he walked out to the elevator.
Another 310 pages in 8 minutes. Slower than before, but still pretty good. Maybe my page-turning hand was getting tired.
He left the building and headed downtown again.
Toward the testing center. Time to have a real conversation.
He didn’t bother trying the 20th floor this time. Kevin knew there was nothing up there but a new dentist’s office and an overly conversational receptionist, so he stepped into the elevator and pushed the button marked 14. He didn’t like the thought of being in that empty, ghost-cubicle place again, but he wanted to find that cleaning lady from the day before.
She had been there three months ago, when all of this had started. She knew him. Maybe she could help.
He stepped out of the elevator and onto the 14th floor, and for the second time he was startled by the spooky feel of the place. It was as if there had been a fire drill, and then for some reason everyone had spontaneously decided not to come back into the building. Studying the office more carefully now, he saw that the work areas, while colorless and abandoned-looking, were not actually cleaned out. They were definitely clean – there were no obvious collections of dust or litter anywhere – but the cubicles were by no means empty. They had chairs and lamps. And most of them still had workstations: computer screens and phones, all of which looked hooked up and ready to go. The 14th floor seemed almost functional, which added to the eerie quality of the place. It had everything a normal business would have.
Except for the people, he reminded himself. The workers with their coffee cups and their family portraits on the desk or tacked up on the cubicle wall, their lazy chatter over the partitions, their banter and their never-ending quest to waste time.
People.
With a rising sense of dread and wonder, Kevin realized that he was not really looking at an office. This was nothing but a temporary space. A mockup.
The testing center didn’t go out of business. They were never in business to begin with.
“What do you need?”
Kevin might have jumped, but his capacity for being scared had reached some kind of maximum level. He was numb with fear. He turned around calmly, took a second to register the woman standing there, and then he spo
ke without thinking. “A good night’s sleep.”
The woman studied him suspiciously. She was not the same one from the day before, Kevin saw. But she did have cleaning supplies. And she was pushing the same kind of big yellow cleaning cart. After another moment, her expression changed slowly from caution to concern. “You okay?”
Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) Page 11
