Secret of the Seventh Son (29 page)

Now they were cruising on the Hutch and the Whitestone Bridge was coming up. He reminded her to call his daughter, then fell silent and watched the sun turn the Long Island Sound burnt orange.

Nancy's grandparents' house was on a quiet street of postage-stamp-sized homes in Forest Hills. Her grandfather was in a nursing home with Alzheimer's. Her grandmother was visiting a niece in Florida for a respite. Granddad's old Ford Taurus was in the one-car lock-up garage behind the house; in case they found a cure, Nancy joked darkly. They arrived at dusk and parked out front. The garage keys were under a brick, the car keys in the garage under a paint can. The rest was up to him.

He leaned over and kissed her and they held each other for a long while, like a couple at a drive-in.

"Maybe we should go inside," Will exhaled.

She playfully rapped his forehead with her knuckles. "I'm not sneaking into my grandma's house to have sex!"

"Bad idea?"

"Very bad. Besides, you'll get sleepy."

"That wouldn't be good."

"No it wouldn't. Call me every step of the way, okay?"

"Okay."

"Will you be safe?"

"I'll be safe."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"There's something I didn't tell you about work today," she said, kissing him one last time. "John Mueller was back in for a few hours. Sue's putting us together to work on the Brooklyn bank robberies. I talked to him for a while, and do you know what?"

"What?"

"I think he's an asshole."

He laughed, gave her a thumbs-up, and opened his door. "Then my work here is done."

Mark fretted. Why had he agreed to come in off his vacation?

He wasn't quick enough on his feet or strong enough to stand up for himself--he was always a lapdog for parents, teachers, bosses--always too eager to please, too scared to disappoint. He didn't want to leave the hotel and burst the delicious bubble he and Kerry were inhabiting.

She was in the bathroom, getting ready. They had a superior night planned: dinner at Rubochon's at the MGM Mansion, a little blackjack, then drinks back in the Venetian at the Tao Beach Club. He'd have to leave early and go straight to the airport, and he probably wouldn't feel too brilliant come dawn, but what was he going to do now? If he was a no-show he'd raise all sorts of alarms.

He was already dressed for the night and restless, so he logged onto the Net via the hotel's high-speed service. He shook his head: another e-mail from Elder. The man was sucking him dry, but a deal was a deal. Maybe he'd priced himself too low at $5 million. Maybe he'd just have to hit him up for another five in a few months. What was the guy going to do? Say no?

As Mark was working through Elder's new list, Malcolm Frazier's group was on Alpha Alert: shifts on cots and cold food. Moody sorts to begin with, they were in a despicable state over the prospect of a night away from wives and girlfriends. Frazier had even forced Rebecca Rosenberg to stay overnight, a first. She was beside herself over the whole situation, completely in tatters.

Frazier pointed at his monitor with irritation. "Look. He's on that encrypted portal again. Why the Christ can't you break that? I mean how long is it going to take you to break that? We don't even know who's on the other end."

Rosenberg shot daggers at him. She was following the identical traffic on her screen. "He's one of the best computer security scientists in the country!"

"Well, you're his boss, so break the goddamned code, will you? How's it going to look if we have to farm this out to the NSA? You're supposed to be the best, remember?"

She shrieked with frustration, making the men in the room jump. "Mark Shackleton is the best! I sign his time cards! Just shut up and let me work!"

Mark was almost done with his e-mail when the bathroom door opened a crack and he heard a muffled, "I'll be ready soon!" in her lilting twang.

"I wish I didn't have to go back to work tomorrow," he said over the sound of the TV.

"Me too."

He hit the mute button; she liked to talk from inside the bathroom. "Maybe we can rebook for next weekend."

"That would be great." The faucet ran for a second then stopped. "You know what would also be great?"

He logged off and slipped the computer back in its case. "What would also be great?"

"To go to L.A. next weekend, you and me. I mean, we both want to live there. Now that you've come into all this money, you can quit your stupid UFO job and be a movie writer full-time and I can quit my stupid escort job and my stupid vasectomy job and be an actress, maybe a real one. We can go house hunting next weekend. Whaddya say? I think it'd be fun."

Will Piper's face was plastered all over the plasma screen. Christ, Mark thought, second time in two days! He unmuted the set.

"Did you hear me? Wouldn't it be fun?"

"Hang on a second, Kerry, I'll be right with you!" He watched the news item in horror. It felt like a boa constrictor had wrapped itself around his chest and was squeezing the breath out of him. Yesterday he saw this guy boasting about new leads, and today he was a fugitive? And it was a coincidence he was being called in from vacation? Two hundred IQ points started rowing in the same direction. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck--"

"What'd you say, honey?"

"Be right with you!" His hands were shaking like he had malaria as he reached back into his case for his laptop.

He never wanted to do this; a lot of Area 51 people were tempted--that's what the watchers were for, that's what his algorithms were for--but he wasn't like the others. He was an it-is-what-it-is kind of guy. Now he desperately needed to know. He entered his password and logged onto the pirated U.S. database stored on his hard drive. He had to work fast. If he stopped to think about what he was doing, he was going to balk.

He started entering names.

Kerry came out of the bathroom, dressed to the nines in a slinky red dress with her new watch gleaming on her wrist. "Mark! What's the matter?" His computer was snapped shut on his lap but he was bawling like an infant, big chest-sucking sobs and torrents of tears. She knelt down and threw her arms around him. "Are you okay, honey?"

He shook his head.

"What happened?"

He had to think fast. "I got an e-mail. My aunt died."

"Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry!" He stood up, wobbly--no, more than wobbly, in a near faint. She rose with him and gave him a giant hug, which prevented him from falling back down. "Was it unexpected?"

He nodded and tried to wipe his face dry with his hand. She got him a tissue, rushed back to his side and daubed him dry like a mother tending a helpless child. "Look, I've got an idea," he said robotically. "Let's go to L.A. tonight. Right now. We'll drive. My car's overheating. We'll take yours. We'll buy a house tomorrow, okay? In the Hollywood Hills. A lot of writers and actors live there. Okay? Can you pack?"

She stared at him, worried and perplexed. "Are you sure you want to go right now, Mark? You've just had a shock. Maybe we should wait till the morning."

He stamped his foot and shouted in a juvenile fit. "No! I don't want to wait! I want to go now!"

She backed away a step. "Why the big rush, honey?" He was scaring her.

He almost started crying again but was able to stop himself. Sniffing hard through blocked nostrils, he packed up his laptop and turned his cell phone off. "'Cause life's too short, Kerry. It's too fucking short."

T
heir room overlooked Rodeo Drive. Mark stood at the window in a hotel bathrobe and through parted curtains mournfully watched luxury cars take the turn off Wilshire onto Rodeo. The sun wasn't high enough to burn off the morning haze, but it looked like it was going to be a perfect day. The suite on the fourteenth floor of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel cost $2,500 for the night, paid for in cash to make it a little harder for the watchers. But who was he kidding? He looked into her handbag to check Kerry's mobile phone. He had switched it off while she was driving and it was still off. She would be on their radar already, but he was playing for time. Precious time.

They arrived late, after a long drive through the desert during which neither of them spoke much. There wasn't time to plan things but he wanted everything to be perfect. His mind drifted back to when he was seven, waking up before his parents and rushing to make them breakfast for the first time in his life, pouring out cereal, slicing a banana, and carefully balancing the bowls and cutlery and little glasses of OJ on a tray that he proudly presented to them in bed. He'd wanted everything to be perfect that day, and when he succeeded, he solicited their praise for weeks. If he kept his wits, he could succeed today too.

They had champagne and steaks when they arrived. More champagne was on its way for brunch, with crepes and strawberries. A Realtor would meet them in the lobby in an hour for an afternoon of house-hunting. He wanted her to be happy.

"Kerry?"

She moved under the sheets and he called her name again, a bit louder.

"Hi," she answered into the pillow.

"Brunch is coming, with mimosas."

"Didn't we just eat?"

"Ages ago. Want to get up now?"

"Okay. Did you tell them you weren't going into work?"

"They know."

"Mark?"

"Uh-huh?"

"You were acting kind of weird last night."

"I know."

"Will you act normal today?"

"I will."

"Are we really going to buy a house today?"

"If you see one you like."

She propped herself up and showed her face, which was brightly illuminated by her smile. "Well, my day's starting pretty nice. Come over here and I'll start yours off nice too."

Will drove all night and now was cruising on flat land through Ohio, going for broke, driving fast into the dawn and hoping he'd skip through unscathed, avoiding speed traps and unmarked staties. He knew he couldn't make it all the way without sleeping. He'd have to pick his spots, Motel 6 kinds of places near the highway, where he'd pay cash and pick up four hours here, six there--no more than that. He wanted to be in Vegas by Friday night and ruin this motherfucker's weekend.

He couldn't recall the last time he'd pulled an all-nighter, especially an alcohol-free one, and it didn't feel good. He had cravings for booze, for sleep, and for something to squelch his anger and indignation. His hands were cramped from gripping the wheel too hard, his right ankle sore because the old Taurus didn't have cruise control. His eyes were red and dry. His bladder ached from the last large coffee. The only thing giving him any solace was the red Lipinski rosebud, succulent and healthy, stuck into a plastic water bottle in the cup holder.

In the middle of the night, Malcolm Frazier left his Operations Center and took a walk to clear his head. The last piece of news was unbelievable, he thought. Un-fucking-believable. This abomination happened on his watch. If he survived this--if
they
survived this--he'd be testifying at closed Pentagon hearings till he was a hundred.

They'd gone into crisis mode the moment Shackleton switched his cell phone off and the beacon was lost. A team converged on the Venetian but he was gone, his Corvette still in the valet lot, the bill unsettled.

What followed was a very dark hour until they were able to turn things around. He had been with a woman, an attractive brunette whom the concierge recognized as an escort he'd seen around the hotel. They accessed Shackleton's mobile phone records and found dozens of calls to a Kerry Hightower, who fit the woman's description.

Hightower's phone was pinging towers along I-15 westbound until the signal went dead fifteen miles west of Barstow. It looked like L.A. was a likely destination. They fed the description of her car and its tag number to the CHP and local sheriff departments but wouldn't know until an after-action investigation that her Toyota had been in the shop and she was driving a loaner.

Rebecca Rosenberg was eating her third postmidnight candy bar when she suddenly blasted through Shackleton's encryption and almost choked on a gob of caramel. She peeled out of her lab, ran clumsily down the hall to the Operations Center, and burst into the scrum of watchers, her white-girl version of a sixties Afro bouncing on her shoulders.

"He's been passing DOD's to a company!" she gasped.

Frazier was at his terminal. He swiveled toward her and looked like he wanted to throw up. This was as bad as it got. "The fuck you say. You sure?"

"Hundred percent."

"What kind of company?"

It got worse. "Life insurance."

The corridors of the Primary Research Lab were empty, which magnified the echo-chamber effect. To relieve tension, Malcolm Frazier coughed to play with the acoustic bounciness. Shouting or yodeling wouldn't have been dignified even if no one was listening. During the day, as Chief of NTS-51 Operational Security, he roamed the underground with a cocky swagger that intimidated the rank and file. He liked being feared and had no regrets that his watchers were universally hated. That meant they were doing their jobs. Without fear, how was order to be maintained? The temptation to exploit the asset was simply too great for the geeks. He had contempt for them, and always felt a rush of superiority when he saw them in the strip 'n' scan, fat and puffy or thin and weak, never fit and well-muscled like his lot. Shackleton, he recalled, was one of the thin and weak ones, snappable like a plank of balsa wood.

He gravitated to the special elevator and called it up with an access key. The descent was so smooth it was almost imperceptible, and when he emerged he was the only soul on the Vault level. His motion would trigger a monitor and one of his men would be watching, but he was permitted to be there, he knew the entry codes, and he was one of the few authorized to pass through the heavy steel doors.

The power of the Vault was visceral. Frazier felt his back straighten as if an iron rod had been rammed through his spine. His chest swelled and his senses heightened, his depth perception--even in the subdued cool-blue light--so acute he was almost seeing in 3-D. Some men felt tiny in the vastness of the place, but the Vault made him feel large and powerful. Tonight, in the midst of the most serious security breech in the history of Area 51, he needed to be there.

He stepped into the chilled dehumidified atmosphere. Five feet, ten, twenty, a hundred. He wasn't planning to walk its full length; he didn't have the time. He went far enough to fully experience the magnitude of its domed ceiling and stadium dimensions. He let the fingertips of his right hand brush one of the bindings. Strictly speaking, contact was not allowed, but he wasn't exactly pulling it off the shelf--it was just an affirmation.

The leather was smooth and cool, the color of mottled buckskin. Tooled onto the spine was the year: 1863. There were rows of 1863s. The Civil War. And Lord knew what else was going on in the rest of the world. He wasn't a historian.

At one side of the Vault a narrow stairway led to a catwalk where one could take in the full panorama. He went there and climbed to the top. There were thousands of gunmetal-gray bookcases stretching into the distance, nearly 700,000 thick leather books, over 240 billion inscribed names. The only way to get your mind around these numbers, he was convinced, was to stand there and take it in with your own eyes. All the information had long been stored on disks, and if you were one of the geeks, you were impressed with all the terabits of data or some such bullshit, but there was no substitute for actually being in the Library. He grabbed the railing, leaned into it and breathed slow, deep breaths.

Nelson Elder was having a pretty good morning. He was at his favorite table in the company cafeteria tucking into an egg-white omelet and the morning paper. He was energized from a good run, a good steam shower, and renewed confidence in the future. Of all the things in his life that affected his mood, the single biggest factor was the Desert Life stock quote. In the last month the stock was up 7.2 percent, rising a full 1.5 percent the day before on an analyst upgrade. It was too early for this craziness with Peter Benedict to affect his bottom line, but he could predict with mathematical certainty that denying coverage to life insurance applicants with an impending date of death, and risk-adjusting the premiums for those with an intermediate death horizon, would turn his company into a cash machine.

To top that off, Bert Myers's walk on the wild side with his Connecticut hedge fund was turning the corner, with double-digit yields in July. Elder translated his bullishness into a new, more aggressive tone with investors and research analysts, and the Street was taking notice. The sentiment on Desert Life was shifting.

He didn't care how this odd-duck Benedict had access to his magical database or where it came from or how it was even possible. A moral philosopher, he wasn't. He only cared about Desert Life, and now he had an edge that none of his competitors could ever match. He had paid Benedict $5 million out of his own pocket to avoid his auditors picking up a corporate transaction and asking questions. He already had enough worries about Bert's hedge fund adventure.

But it was money well spent. The value of his personal stock holdings had appreciated by $10 million, a damned good return on investment in one month! He would keep his own counsel on the Benedict business. No one knew, even Bert. It was too bizarre and too dangerous. He had enough trouble explaining to his head of underwriting why he needed to receive a daily nationwide list of all new life insurance applicants.

Bert saw him eating alone and came by grinning and wagging a finger. "I know your secret, Nelson!"

That startled the older man. "What are you talking about?" he asked sternly.

"You're ditching us this afternoon and playing golf."

Elder exhaled and smiled. "How'd you know?"

"I know everything around here," the CFO boasted.

"Not everything. I've got a couple of things up my sleeves."

"You got my bonus up there too?"

"You keep the high yields coming and you'll be buying an island in a couple of years. Want to join me for breakfast?"

"Can't. Budget meeting. Who're you playing with?"

"It's a charity thing over at the Wynn. I don't even know who's in my four."

"Well, enjoy yourself. You deserve it."

Elder winked at him. "You're right. I do."

Nancy couldn't concentrate on the bank robbery file. She turned a page only to realize that none of it registered and she had to go back and read it again. She had a meeting with John Mueller later in the morning, and he was expecting some kind of briefing. Every few minutes she compulsively opened the browser and searched the Web for new articles on Will, but the same AP story was being recycled around the world. Finally, she couldn't wait any longer.

Sue Sanchez saw her in the hall and hailed her from a distance. Sue was among the last people Nancy wanted to see but she couldn't very well pretend she hadn't noticed her.

The strain on Sue's face was remarkable. The corner of her left eye was twitching and there was a quaver in her voice. "Nancy," she said, drawing so close it made her uncomfortable. "Has he tried to contact you?"

Nancy made sure her handbag was closed and zippered. "You asked me last night. The answer's still no."

"I have to ask. He was your partner. Partners get close." The statement made Nancy nervous, and Sue picked up on it and backtracked. "I don't mean close in that way. You know, bonding, friendship."

"He hasn't called or e-mailed. Besides, you'd know if he had," she blurted out.

"I haven't authorized a tap on him or you!" Sue insisted. "If we were doing a tap I'd be aware of it. I'm his superior!"

"Sue, I know a lot less than you do about what's going on, but would you really be shocked if some other agencies were calling the shots?"

Sue looked hurt and defensive. "I don't know what you're talking about." Nancy shrugged, and Sue recovered her composure. "Where are you going?"

"To the drugstore. Need anything?" Nancy said, moving toward the elevator bank.

"No. I'm fine." She didn't sound convincing.

Nancy walked five blocks before reaching into her bag for the prepaid phone. She checked one more time for tags and punched the number.

He picked up on the second ring. "Joe's Tacos."

"Sounds appetizing," she said.

"I'm glad you called." He sounded bone weary. "I was getting lonely."

"Where are you?"

"Someplace as flat as a pool table."

"Can you be more specific?"

"Sign says Indiana."

"You didn't go all night, did you?"

"I believe I did."

"You've got to get some sleep!"

"Uh-huh."

"When?"

"I'm looking for a place as we speak. Did you talk to Laura?"

"I wanted to see how you were first."

"Tell her I'm fine. Tell her not to be worried."

"She'll be worried. I'm worried."

"What's going on in the office?"

"Sue looks like shit. Everyone's got their doors closed."

"I heard about me on the radio all night. They're playing this large."

"If they've got a dragnet out on you, what are they doing with Shackleton?"

"I guess the chances of finding him with his feet up on his porch aren't too high."

"What then?"

"I'm going to use my years of skills and resourcefulness."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I'm going to wing it." He went quiet and then said, "You know, I was thinking."

"About what?"