The Doomsday Equation

by Matt Richtel

  From behind, Jeremy hears a seething whisper: “Next time, I shoot.”

  He turns, sees Andrea and others, scampering up. Among the group, a tall, thin woman in a flak jacket. It’s Andrea’s second, her assistant, hired gun, bloodhound. She catches Jeremy’s eye and locks on to it until Jeremy turns back to Andrea. “Where’s Nik?”

  Andrea looks away.

  The fed looks at the body on the ground, says to Jeremy: “Want to tell us the name of your accomplice?”

  In the time it takes Jeremy not to respond, he gets yanked toward a black police car, no mercy now, and a hand pushes down on his head and shoves him into the backseat.

  The car pulls away, Emily and Kent, standing at the front of the building, entangled, watching in disbelief.

  CHAPTER 53

  YOU HAVE THE right to remain silent.”

  “Shush, Kent.” She looks at the boy, sitting cross-legged on the ground, looking at Jeremy, a mock serious look in his eyes. She looks at Jeremy, swallows.

  Jeremy puts up his hands, surrender. He reaches into his pocket, withdraws it, empty-handed. He pulls his fingers across his lips, as if sealing them, then tosses away the key.

  Emily exhales.

  Kent smiles. “Let’s do this one!” Jeremy twists his body, reaches behind him, picks up a puzzle box. On the cover, a large monster, Godzilla-like, stepping on a city.

  “How about a different one, sweetie?” Emily says it to Kent, but looks at Jeremy.

  He opens his palms, like, whatever, smiles.

  Kent spills the pieces onto the floor. Jeremy feels something around his chest, a sensation that, for an instant, he can’t interpret. Is it the pain, resurfacing? No, not that, it’s smoother, duller, like the coursing of the morning’s first cup of coffee, or tea. It feels like: thanks. He’s struck by an urge to direct his appreciation, to express gratitude, to send it heavenward, thank somebody, or something. He realizes he’s got tears welling, again, a lot of that lately. He drops his eyes and lets them focus on a puzzle piece, with green and a touch of slick gray, maybe Godzilla’s toenail.

  In his periphery, he allows himself to pick up the colors in Emily’s modestly appointed living room, the red throw carpet, the brownish couch, the worn wood of the shelf over the fireplace. He feels the warmth again spread in his chest, such a far cry from the pulsing pain that plagued him until two weeks ago, when the world nearly ended.

  When he removed the key fob from around his neck. When he pulled from his chest the symbol of his burden, his need to be right, his certainty of his righteousness. He didn’t need an MRI. He needed to be relieved, to relieve himself, of his certitude, that singular belief in his own infallibility. Or, rather, he needed to admit to himself what he already knew: He was merely human. Not omniscient. The pain, the excruciating throbbing, was due not to cancer or disease but to a disconnect between the reality of an uncertain, chaotic existence and what he romanticized, idealized, needed.

  “I had a fob, and Nik had a cross.”

  “What?”

  He laughs. “Never mind. I’m waxing idiotic. How we doing this puzzle, Kent?”

  “Let’s put all the green pieces together.”

  He feels Emily’s hand on his back, rubbing in a gentle circle. He takes a deep, appreciative breath. He picks up a puzzle piece with red jags, maybe fire jutting from a window of a building being stomped by Godzilla. He has another new sensation and tries to place it, and does: fear.

  Yes, he’s been temporarily exonerated of the murders of Harry and Evan. There was sufficient doubt he could’ve pulled off such a crime, doubt cast by the conflicting physical evidence, his lack of any violent history, alibis that put him in too many places other than the murder scenes, particularly at the apparent times of death. Jeremy suspects he got some help from Andrea, or even those above her, suggesting to law enforcement that Jeremy was caught up in a larger terrorist-related plot, details missing, sotto voce, stuff that would fall under federal jurisdiction, the military.

  Some suspicion for the murders has fallen on a woman who was consorting with high-tech execs, someone thought to be a prostitute, a woman described by Emily and Kent as radiant but heartless. She’s thought too to have shot Evan. There are rumors that she goes by Janine, among other names, that her fingerprints have traveled the world. That she may have loosed a lion in the San Francisco Zoo. An assassin, a harlot, a zealot, but a practical one, the perfect terrorist. But rumors, ghost trails. The woman has not been further identified, or found.

  Nor has there been any discovery of a bearded man, bomb parts that Jeremy alleges exists, or Nik. Perry. Whatever his name is. Gone, just as mysteriously and silently as he appeared one day those many years ago in the lab in Oxford.

  Regardless, in a way, they’ve won. Not just because they’ve evaporated. But because they managed to head off the plans of the technology consortium to announce a development in the West Bank. Who knows why? Maybe Evan’s death spooked them. Maybe they sensed danger. Maybe they just decided that their business is, plainly, business. No sense messing with efforts outside, as it is said, their core missions.

  Jeremy glances at Emily and feels a surge of passion, not lust, just a craving to stay connected. He takes her in, pausing momentarily at her ankle, where he sees her blue-tinged Star of David tattoo. He’s struck by her quiet observance of Judaism, how it bolsters her inner peace, how different from Nik’s politicized version of religion. Who has the wisdom to know what’s right?

  Then he turns his attention to the cover of the puzzle box. One of Godzilla’s feet pushes halfway through a building, a car pierced by the monster’s toe. The other massive foot hangs in the air, poised to stomp, the edges of a setting sun peeking out from behind the furious green giant. At the edge of the image, a big white dog appears to sprint from danger.

  “I know where he is.”

  Emily looks at him.

  “You’ve done so well.”

  He takes her meaning: he’s not touched a computer. He’s even conceded that maybe Harry was right; computers, for all their power, might create major problems. Not just because they aren’t human but because they make us less human. They make us less empathic. More computer communications, Harry has posited—or had posited—could mean more conflict. We don’t see who we’re talking to, we flame each other, we bully. We are inured to the responses we engender, just like, Jeremy thinks, I insulate myself from what everyone thought. Maybe, he’s been thinking, he can do a little less of that insulating.

  “It wasn’t the computer that told me,” Jeremy says to Emily.

  It was an intuition, an impulse. And not one nearly so profound.

  He stands up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “An errand. I promise.” He feels too embarrassed to say now what he’s thinking but what he once would’ve said without reservation: I’m going to make the world a little bit safer.

  “Kent, you’re a big guy now, the man of the house. Please take care of your mother.”

  Kent looks up, blinks, something in his eyes, a question.

  “Oh yeah, I’ll be back. This puzzle better be finished when I get here.”

  CHAPTER 54

  THE ANCIENT WALL seems to rise from the ground like a mirage, a chalky brown façade that can’t help lending a terrible and awe-inspiring perspective. They’ve stood so long. They’ve withstood so much. They contain everything.

  “You want here?” The Russian taxi driver’s accent communicates decided impatience. Jeremy swallows a response.

  He looks back over the walls that fortify the Old City. Jerusalem.

  He nods. “Thank you.” He hands the man money.

  He stares at the Damascus Gate, the main entrance to Arab East Jerusalem, located on the city’s northwest side. Arch-shaped, gray bricked, majestic and so fragile. How has it survived? He begins a purposeful march.

  Inside, past security, he sees blue block letters on a white sign: via dolorosa.

  The way of grief,
the way of suffering. The winding walk; Jesus bearing his cross.

  The name of Nik’s dog. Rosa, short for Dolorosa.

  Where else would a Guardian come? A Guardian? The Guardian.

  Jeremy takes in the midday cacophony, the clanging of pots and pans, the merchant shouts and bickers from the hole-in-the-wall trinket sellers, apothecary, the butcher—this, the world’s most ancient mall. A soldier walks by, a young woman, jet-black hair, jet-black rifle. Jews, Muslims, Protestants, Catholics.

  Spitting distance from the Wailing Wall, the Jews’ holy prayer site. Behind it, the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest Muslim shrines. Here, the stations of the cross, the final steps of Jesus Christ.

  Jeremy looks at a grimy-toothed boy, toes poking through sandals, dirt and grime pasted against his legs, smiling. Jeremy can’t help wondering: Is this the portal—for the Messiah? For something? So much energy here. So much danger.

  He sees Nik.

  In a doorway, a face, that cherubic jowl, still visible but facing away, angled in the other direction. In a casual conversation with a man in a black robe. Nik, maybe sensing something, begins to turn toward Jeremy. Jeremy presses himself into a doorway, out of Nik’s sight.

  Jeremy takes a deep breath, pictures himself grabbing the gun from a soldier—trying to—and drilling a million holes into Nik. Instead, from his pocket, Jeremy extracts his phone. He dials. The line picks up.

  “Shalom.”

  “Cute, Atlas.”

  “No.”

  “No, he’s not there?”

  “No, please don’t call me Atlas.” Unspoken: I can’t handle that weight. Added again after a pause: “Please.”

  Andrea doesn’t respond.

  Jeremy says: “Yes, he’s here.”

  There’s a pause. “We’ve got it from here.”

  “You’ve got it from here.” As in: yeah, right.

  “Do you see the candlestick seller?”

  Jeremy places a man along the dusty corridor, just a few feet ahead, sitting cross-legged on a blanket covered with silver candlesticks. The man’s wrapped in a shawl, looking like something from an ancient bazaar. Jeremy grunts into the phone.

  “Look behind him.”

  There’s a doorway, closed on the bottom half, open at the top. Inside, a figure with a dark head covering. The figure pulls back the cover a tad, just enough. It’s a woman, tall and thin, Andrea’s aide-de-camp. A colleague Andrea has told Jeremy she trusts implicitly, brought on initially to help Andrea make sense of all the strange signs, and to help find the missing lieutenant colonel, Lavelle Thomson, their boss, the man behind Surrogate.

  The woman covers her face again. Jeremy winces; post-traumatic stress disorder.

  “What do you need me for?”

  “No substitute for old-fashioned eyeball confirmation from a target’s intimate.”

  Jeremy absorbs the jab; he was indeed intimate with Nik and yet, Nik was for so long invisible to Jeremy.

  Andrea clears her throat. “Goodbye, Jeremy.”

  Jeremy slips out of the doorway, walking away from Nik. He allows himself a look over his shoulder, sees the Guardian looking in the other direction. He picks up his pace, hustles back toward Damascus Gate. He runs out of the city.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  NETUREI-KARTA IS A real movement and organization but I have taken substantial liberties in how I’ve presented it.

  The name, Neturei-Karta, is the Aramaic term for “Guardians of the City.” As described in the story, the name derives from an ancient story in which Rabbi Judah the Prince sent rabbi emissaries to inspect pastoral towns. In one, the emissaries asked to see the city guardian and they were shown a guard. The emissaries said this was not a guard, but a city destroyer. The townspeople asked who should be considered a guard, and the rabbis said: “The scribes and the scholars.”

  The name ultimately was given to a group of Orthodox Jews who banded together in 1938 to oppose the existence of the state of Israel.

  That much is consistent with the explanation of the group on the web site of Neturei-Karta.

  The web site explains that the group opposes a state of Israel because the concept of a sovereign Jewish state is contrary to Jewish law. Specifically, the group says, that law forbids Jews to return to the land of Palestine (from their exile) before the return of the Messiah.

  And the web site says: “Jews are not allowed to dominate, kill, harm or demean another people and are not allowed to have anything to do with the Zionist enterprise, their political meddling and their wars.”

  But it also states: “The world must know that the Zionists have illegitimately seized the name Israel and have no right to speak in the name of the Jewish people!”

  There have been reports that some members of the group praised then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his anti-Zionist sentiments.

  The idea that Christians and other groups have banded together with Neturei-Karta is pure fabrication. It is a partial fabrication that some fundamentalists in other religious groups—including Christianity—oppose a secular Israel. Some evangelicals fully support a return of Jews to Israel, a fully Jewish land, because they see it as a stepping-stone for the return of a Christian Messiah. It is not at all far-fetched that some of these people want to see Jews return to Israel, but not secular Jews, whose return could be seen not as a stepping-stone but as a misstep.

  This book is not intended in any way as a condemnation of religion or religious heritage, which obviously brings peace and identity to millions. Rather, it is a playing out of views that linger not far beneath the surface for some fundamentalist sects.

  Finally, the idea of a peace machine, a computer that could predict conflict, also is drawn loosely from real events. In my journalistic pursuits, I had the privilege of meeting a brilliant innovator named Sean Gourley. He’s worked on research of “the mathematics of war.” It entails predicting the timing and size of attacks. He cofounded a company called Quid, which uses Big Data—mountains of inputs—to try to predict outcomes in a variety of fields, including conflict and commerce. His technology aimed at predicting conflict is much more embryonic than the program in this story, but nevertheless is extraordinary. Sean, a great and gracious guy (who went to Oxford), is not anything at all like Jeremy Stillwater.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MY HEARTFELT THANKS to a team led by Publisher Liate Stehlik at HarperCollins/William Morrow that is second to none and like family. Thank you for your support, partnership and friendship. A huge thank-you to Tessa Woodward, a terrific, patient editor—of line and ideas. You went the extra mile on this one, and then some. And thanks to Jennifer Hart, Julia Meltzer, Andy Dodds, Alaina Waagner, Peter Hubbard, Nick Amphlett and Doug Jones.

  Thanks to David Liss for, once again, sterling insights freely given. And to Susan Tunis, for crucial last-minute triage.

  And to my parents for the kind of unconditional support I hope I am emulating with my children.

  Thanks to Laurie Liss, a great friend and a great literary agent.

  And, above all, thank you to my wife, Meredith, and our little angels, Milo and Mirabel. All my love.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MATT RICHTEL reports for the New York Times, covering a range of issues, including the impact of technology on our lives. In 2010 he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series of articles that exposed the pervasive risks of distracted driving and its root causes, prompting widespread reform. He is the author of A Deadly Wandering, as well as three novels. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the Columbia Journalism School, he is based in San Francisco, where he lives with his wife Meredith Barad, a neurologist, and their two children.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  ALSO BY MATT RICHTEL

  FICTION

  The Cloud

  The Floodgate: A Short Story

  Devil’s Plaything

  Hooked

  NONFICTION
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  A Deadly Wandering

  CREDITS

  Cover design by Adam Johnson

  Cover photographs: man © by CURAphotography/Shutterstock; code © by Andrey Prokhorov/Getty Images; Earth courtesy of NASA

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  COPYRIGHT

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE DOOMSDAY EQUATION. Copyright © 2015 by Matt Richtel. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-06-220118-8

  EPub Edition February 2015 ISBN 9780062201195

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