by Eric Bernt
The technical whiz looked pleased that he was ahead of the others. “Oh, I thought we’d discussed this. Now that we have the algorithms to rebuild the decayed sound waves produced in enclosed spaces, it’s only a matter of time before we can refine the process to where we can re-create waves produced anywhere.”
“Even outside?” Greers asked.
“Yes, even outdoors.”
Greers practically gripped the table. “No. Way.”
Trotter nodded. “Well, technically speaking, it makes sense.”
“There are plenty of molecules in the air for the decaying energy waves to bounce off of, whether there are walls or no walls,” Harwood explained. He was clearly intent on demonstrating his value beyond technical forgery.
Greers grinned slyly. “In other words, we will know everything. I mean, absolutely everything.”
The computer scientist nodded. “That is precisely what I’m saying.”
“Enough conjecture,” Stenson said. “It’s time to focus on the here and now.”
Harwood took a deep breath. “Well, sir, I think I’m just about ready. What echoes from the Oval Office would you like to hear first?”
CHAPTER 47
DAVID’S PLACE
WOODSDALE, MARYLAND
June 1, 11:16 p.m.
The lights in the room were dim. Butler and Skylar sat quietly as Eddie slept soundly. “You really care about him a lot, don’t you?”
“No, I do this kind of thing for all my patients.” She smiled warmly.
“The way you look at him, if he was younger, I swear I’d think he was your son.”
“You mean if he was a lot younger, right? Like an infant?”
“Yes, exactly. A newborn.”
She paused, answering sincerely. “Eddie reminds me of my little brother, Christopher. He was also on the spectrum. A really special kid. He had the most wonderful laugh.”
“What happened to him?” Butler asked.
It was the last week of March during her senior year of high school. Most of Skylar’s friends were on pins and needles, waiting to see whether the college envelopes they received were thick or thin. Thick was good, thin bad. Skylar, however, had been spared the anxiety courtesy of the lacrosse scholarship she had already accepted from the University of Virginia. Combined with the academic grants she had also been awarded, she would be attending that fine institution of higher learning without paying a dime.
This explained her carefree attitude as she arrived home after practice and yelled down their basement stairs. “Christopher?”
“Who else would I be?” He laughed at his own joke as she made her way down the wooden stairs toward him. It was an infectious laugh and never failed to make Skylar smile. Christopher was fifteen but had the face of a child. He was sitting at a workbench, surrounded by hundreds of drawings he had made with crayons and colored paper.
“How was school today?”
“I need more physics. Especially quantum physics. I can’t finish designing my time-travel machine until I understand more about black holes.”
“You will soon enough. I know you will.” She glanced at his drawings, particularly the newest ones. “I bet you could sell some of these as art if you wanted to.”
“I don’t want to, Skylar. They are not art. They are technical drawings of a machine that is going to revolutionize the travel industry.”
“Okay, okay, I was just saying.”
“I don’t like when you say things like that.”
“I promise, I will never say that again.” She realized he was staring down at her Tretorns. “Hey, what’s going on? Is something wrong?”
“No, nothing is wrong.”
“I know you, peckerhead. Something’s bugging you.”
He fumbled with his crayons. “Are you really leaving next September, for college, I mean?”
She answered softly. “We’ve already talked about this. September is a long way off.”
“No, it’s not. It’s 157 days away. That’s less than half a year.”
“Then I think we should make this the best 157 days either one of us has ever had. What do you say?”
“I don’t want you to go away to college, Skylar. I want you to stay here with me.”
She sat down next to him. “You know how you’ve told me that working on your invention is something you have to do? I would never ask you not to do it. Well, going to college is like that for me. It’s something I have to do.”
“But why? Why do you have to do it?”
“So I can become a doctor and help people like you.”
He nodded, but not with understanding. With profound, heartbreaking sadness.
Butler waved his hand in front of Skylar’s face, prompting her to snap out of her reverie. “I was the only person in the world Christopher would talk to. My dad never had any interest. When I left for UVA, Christopher couldn’t handle it. Before my dad could put him in a home, he hanged himself in our basement.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” Changing the subject, she asked, “You mentioned that Caitlin knew things about you that were supposed to be classified. What kind of things?”
“When I was a Ranger, I developed a reputation for being the guy who would do things the other guys wouldn’t. You know, dumb shit. Dangerous shit. Off-book shit. Which is how I got involved with black ops toward the end. Looking back on it, some very questionable stuff. But at the time, you know, I thought I was just being a good little soldier, doing whatever was asked of me. As it turns out, it wasn’t even the government who was asking me. It was the same people who kidnapped you and Eddie. And you know what the most fucked-up thing is? I still have no idea who these bastards are.”
Gently, she asked, “Is that why you’re doing this? To get some answers?”
“Hell yes. After all this time, what I would like is some clarity. I want to know if the things I did that still haunt me were at least done for the right reasons, or if I was just a pawn in a much bigger game where everyone was dirty.”
She nodded. “You know, even if you get the answers you want, it won’t be enough.”
“Why not?”
“What I think you want more than clarity is relief.”
“Is that your professional opinion, Doctor?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. Whatever you did, you did. That won’t change. What can change is how you live with it. What you need to do more than anything is forgive yourself.”
“Can I kill them all first?” he said with a smirk.
“As long as you take ownership of whatever actions you take, and can live with the consequences, you do what you need to do.”
“So you give me permission to kill them all.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Oh, I think you did.”
“Good night, Butler.”
“What, is our time up already? But this was turning out to be such a productive session. I think I was really making some progress.”
She leaned back in her chair, preparing to go to sleep. “You know why I prefer to work with patients on the spectrum? They’re not so full of shit.”
He smiled. “Good night, Skylar.”
CHAPTER 48
AMERICAN HERITAGE FOUNDATION
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
June 1, 11:23 p.m.
Stenson looked across the conference table to Harwood. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Start with this morning. I want to hear the president’s voice loud and clear before I start believing the damn thing truly works.”
Harwood studied the timeline of wave history for the Oval Office. He moved the designator to the end of the timeline: the present, specifically this morning. The timeline could be expanded and contracted in the same way video editors can look at an entire movie in overview or zoom into one shot of one scene to study a particular sequence frame by frame. In a two-hour movie filmed at twenty-four frames per second, there are 172,
800 frames; at sixty frames per second, there are 432,000 frames. It’s no wonder postproduction on films can take months or even years.
In the Oval Office earlier that morning, there were only a few thousand sound waves produced, all of which occurred between 7:03 a.m. and 9:34 a.m., which was the time the president had embarked on his current fund-raising trip to Arizona. The first waves were a single set of footsteps. Whoever it was moved quickly, as if scurrying about from the hardwood floor around the perimeter of the room to the thick carpeting in the main area, and back again. The footsteps sounded light. Probably female. It definitely wasn’t the president. Most likely, it was one of the nine maids who maintained the Oval Office and the other rooms in the West Wing, part of the ninety-six-person staff that maintained the 132-room White House.
These footsteps were followed by repeated brushing sounds—the kind of light “swooshing” sounds produced by a feather duster. Yes, it was definitely one of the maids. She was prepping the office for the president’s arrival. Upon completing her duties, she exited quickly.
Another single set of footsteps followed a moment later, this one accompanied by the tinkling of china being carried on a silver serving tray, which was then carefully placed on either a coffee table or the president’s desk.
Stenson grew impatient. “Fast-forward until he enters.” Harwood slid the time designator several minutes later, when a number of new waves first appeared.
PRESIDENT: Is this trip really necessary?
CHIEF OF STAFF: You haven’t been to Nebraska in almost a year.
PRESIDENT: There’s a reason for that.
CHIEF OF STAFF: Some of our most important friends live there. It’s home to an electronics manufacturer you are going to owe quite a debt of gratitude come next election.
There was a slight pause, indicating the president now realized whom he was talking about.
PRESIDENT: EVS?
CHIEF OF STAFF: In fact, the two brothers who own it are underwriting tonight’s event, although not officially, of course.
“You can stop now,” Stenson instructed Harwood, who paused the echo playback.
Trotter had listened with his mouth agape. “I can’t believe how clear these echoes are. It’s like they’re having the conversation right in front of us.”
“That is what impresses you most about what you just heard?” Greers asked.
“Well, it’s not that the owners of Electronic Voting Systems are rigging the next election. They own and operate seventy-eight percent of the machines used in the last presidential election. They’ll control even more in the next one. Given their increasing ties with the president, I took it as a given that they’ll be at least part of predetermining the outcome.”
Greers turned to their superior. “Did you know?”
Stenson paused, clearly offended by the question. “I’m still surprised when you ask me a really dumb question.”
Harwood was curious. “Do you think the vote count has already been determined?” For all he knew about computers, he knew surprisingly little about game theory.
“Of course not,” Trotter replied abruptly. “If you want a basketball team to throw a game, you don’t want them to miss every shot. You only want them to miss one. The one you need them to. In politics, it’s the same thing. For the outcome to look legitimate, you change as little as possible. You wait until the day before the election, analyze the polling data, then modify as few precincts as necessary to achieve the desired result.”
Stenson flipped through a small leather-bound notepad he kept in his pocket. Without looking up, he said, “The revelation here is not that the upcoming election is going to be manipulated. What’s important is who this administration is trusting to do it for them. Namely, not us.” The other three looked around at each other as Stenson continued perusing his notepad. Finding what he was searching for, he turned to Harwood. “I want to hear July twenty-third of last year. Eleven thirty in the morning.”
Harwood scrolled through the echo timeline of the Oval Office, focusing on the requested day. The three-dimensional rendering of the audible sound waves bouncing around the space that day was dense. There were dozens of overlapping waves. “Looks like it was a busy morning. I’m going to need some time to clean up all the harmonic distortion and sort through all the voices before I can play you anything useful.”
“How much time?”
“Hard to say, sir, but it could be a while. If you could give me a clue about who you want to hear, or the subject matter they discussed, it would make the search go more quickly.”
Stenson stood up, preparing to exit. “It was the first meeting between the brothers who own Electronic Voting Systems and the president. I want to hear what kind of deal they made and who was responsible for bringing them together.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I have something worth listening to.”
Before his boss could exit, Greers quickly asked, “Sir, where would you like our focus?”
Stenson paused in the doorway. “Help the newbies track down Edward Parks. I want him found.”
“What parameters did you give them?”
“By any means necessary. This is their baptism. I threw them in the deep end. I’m still waiting to find out if they’re going to sink or swim.” And then he left.
Trotter turned to Greers. “I’m confused.”
“By what?” asked Greers.
“His instructions. He wants us to help them do their job, but not help them at the same time.”
Greers shook his head. “Watch and learn.” And he turned to go.
CHAPTER 49
NEW EMPLOYEES’ OFFICE
AMERICAN HERITAGE FOUNDATION
June 1, 11:28 p.m.
Enola Meyers and Charlie Johnson each studied their screens, monitoring the five teams they had hired. The two youngest employees had figured it best to be redundant, so both were following all five teams. This way, in case one of them missed something, the other might catch it.
Greers and Trotter entered a moment later. Greers leaned over Enola’s workstation, somewhat encroachingly. “How’s it going?”
She blinked a few times, struggling to be neither intimidated nor annoyed. She recognized the violation of her personal space as a test. He wanted to see how she’d respond, so she answered succinctly and without hesitation. “Five teams have been hired. All are among the best the foundation has ever used.” She handed him a list of the personnel.
“You mean the most expensive,” he corrected her, reviewing the teams.
“We do better due diligence than any firm in the world,” she answered flatly, keeping her eyes on her screen. “We wouldn’t have paid them more if they weren’t better.”
Behind her, where Enola couldn’t see his face, Greers smiled slightly. She had passed the first test. What he didn’t notice was that she could see his expression in the reflection of her screen. She revealed nothing as he leaned back slightly, allowing for a little more breathing room between them.
All the while, Trotter watched with bemused silence. He looked like a business-school student in a leadership-training seminar.
“How have you divided up your supervision?” Greers continued, referring to her partner.
She looked over to Charlie, deferring to him, both to seem less spotlight-grabbing and because she wasn’t entirely confident in her answer.
Charlie seemed to appreciate her giving him a turn. “We’ve divided the search area into sections,” he answered, passing a copy of the search grid that showed five different color-coded regions surrounding the accident location Eddie Parks had been taken from. Their plan was well thought out and logical. “We’re both monitoring all five teams to make sure nothing gets missed.”
Greers nodded. “That would be perfect if this was a casual exercise. Is that what you thought this was?” He waited for a reply, but Charlie knew better and waited for Greers to continue. “Mr. Stenson did explain this was an all-hands-on-deck situation, didn’t he
?”
Charlie made the mistake of trying to answer quickly. “He did, but with five teams—”
Greers cut him off: “With five teams, you could have turned it into seven by both of you operating as independent agents. But you didn’t.” He paused to let their error hang in the air above him like a dangling noose. “You said you hired the best, didn’t you?” He glanced at Enola, who turned her eyes back to her own screen to avoid his glare.
Greers continued, “If you hired the best in their field, what can either of you do to assist them? Sounds kind of arrogant to me. The answer as to what you can offer them is simple: nothing. And by even attempting to, you wasted your own valuable time, and possibly slowed them down in the process, working in direct opposition to the very reason you hired them.”
Charlie immediately took responsibility. “You’re right. It was my oversight.”
Enola knew better than to let him take the responsibility alone. “It was both of ours.”
“That’s a given,” Greers snapped. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You are both going to remain apprised of each team’s whereabouts and progress, but your main effort should be spent working independently. In parallel. Play out the scene of Parks’s departure from the accident. Proceed step-by-step, imagining where you’d take him and why. Take note of every choice you make. When a particular path leads nowhere conclusive, go back to the spot of that initial decision and take a different route, again making note of each new subsequent choice. When you’ve exhausted your options, then and only then should you confer with each other and discuss your conclusions. At that point, if you’ve got anything worth sharing, we’ll be just down the hall.”
“Thank you for the help and guidance,” Charlie said sincerely. He seemed genuinely motivated. “It’s much appreciated.”
Greers and Trotter headed for the door and then paused. “By the way, Daryl and I will be doing the same thing you are. We will be teams eight and nine. It would be rather embarrassing for you if either one of us finds them first after both of you had such a head start, so I’d get cracking.”
