The Archimedes Effect (28 page)

Kent grinned at that thought. “Be guarding a warehouse of rancid seal blubber up above the Arctic Circle the rest of your career, if you did.”

“If you were lucky. The thing is, the way I heard it, that’s what your immediate supervisor Mister—ah, I mean
General
—Thorn did. Not in so many words, but pretty much that’s what he meant.”

“Man’s got balls, got to give him that.”

“So do we, and I’d like to keep mine, thank you very much. I know and you know there’s nothing you can do to hurry things along, but I will now be able to report to General Hadden that I have leaned on you. If there is anything you can think of, anything at all that will be part of the solution, I want you to effect it at the earliest.”

Kent nodded. “I understand.” And he did. He had been in the service of his country for a long time, and he knew how the chain of command worked—or, sometimes, didn’t work. He knew he couldn’t do anything substantial. Ellis and Hadden both knew
they
couldn’t, either, but that didn’t stop the effort down the line. Sometimes, the pressure added some incentive. It wouldn’t here, since the man running the search on the computer end, Jay Gridley, wasn’t really amenable to that kind of impetus. Push him too hard, he’d give you the finger and walk away, because he could. Even if they could draft him and keep his ass in the chair, they couldn’t compel his best effort, and with a man like Gridley, he could look like he was working his tail off 24/7 and be doing exactly nothing useful. How would anybody outside know? It would take somebody as good as he was to keep tabs on him, and the truth was, they didn’t
have
anybody as good as he was. He knew, they knew, and that was how that song went.

Kent smiled again at the idea of a musical metaphor. It reminded him of his date with Jen. Now that had been a major event. Neither one of them was a dewy-eyed adolescent, and although the magic had certainly been there for him, there was a certain no-nonsense air about her that came from experience. She liked him, he liked her, and the dinner had progressed to something he hadn’t really expected—certainly not on a first date.

It had been a long, long time for him before that.

Did anybody even use that term anymore? Dating?

“Abe?”

He pulled his attention back to Ellis. “Sir. Sorry. I was wool-gathering.”

“Yeah, well, go home, take a nap. If you can light a fire under anybody, even a tiny one, it would help.”

“I’ll do what I can. Either way, I’m sure the eventual result will come back up the chain.” Which meant at the least he could probably get Gridley to confirm that some impetus had come from Ellis’s office to speed him along, and that datum would eventually find its way to Hadden’s desk. It wouldn’t mean an awful lot, but every little bit helped.

Ellis gave him a tired smile. “I appreciate it.”

As Kent left, following the Marine sergeant escort toward the exit, he considered the best way to approach Gridley. Straight on, he decided. Drop by his office, lay it out that Thorn’s boss had leaned on Thorn, then on him, and allow as how he knew it wouldn’t make Gridley go any faster than the flat-out speed at which he was already going, but that this was how the military mind worked. Gridley wouldn’t get his jockey shorts in a wad about it, if Kent presented it that way.

He wasn’t too worried about it; besides, he had a guitar lesson this evening, and however that turned out, given his new connection with Jen, it was going to be much more interesting than the rest of his day.

When they reached the exit, the sergeant said, “Congratulations on your promotion, General Kent.”

“Thank you, son.”

He still hadn’t gotten used to that rank, but he didn’t mind hearing his name with it attached.

“Semper fi, sir.”

“Always, Sergeant. Always.”

The escort gave him a crisp and perfect salute, and Kent returned it with one almost as good. He gave the man his ID badge and exited the building.

Outside, the day was cool, but sunny. It felt almost like an early spring day. Of course, this was Washington, D.C. If you didn’t like the weather, all you had to do was wait—it would change soon enough.

When Jay logged into Lewis’s scenario, he was surprised to find himself walking down the hall of a hospital. It was a well-built visualization—there was that too-clean antiseptic smell, and that soft echo-stopping sound of carpeted floors and thick walls. Jay looked around, saw mothers walking with tiny babies, or in wheelchairs, holding infants on their laps. The maternity floor.

He saw Lewis up ahead, standing with her arms crossed, staring through a wall of glass into a large room marked NURSERY.

Jay approached, not speaking.

“Well-baby nursery,” Lewis said.

There were rows of plastic cribs with babies in them, all kinds, and it made Jay smile to see them. He remembered going to see his son in just such a place.

Not looking at him, Lewis said, “The road partially taken.”

Jay didn’t say anything.

“I was engaged once. My fiancé and I got started a little early on our family. I got pregnant, and we decided to wait until after the baby was born before we had the wedding.”

She kept watching the infants behind the glass.

“Sean was a seven-pound, healthy, pink boy. Or so we thought.”

Jay blinked. She had never mentioned having a child before.

“He had a rare condition, he was born with an aneurysm. A congenital defect. His aorta just . . . burst when he was two days old. He died in a few minutes. Right in the RW version of there.”

Jay was stunned by this news. “I’m so sorry.”

She shrugged. “Wasn’t anything that could be done. No way to tell until it was too late. Well. I found out later that this had happened several times in my fiancé’s family—apparently it was a genetic thing. One baby in four or five had it.”

“How awful.”

“What was awful was that the son of a bitch didn’t
tell
me about it. If I had known, I never would have allowed myself to become pregnant—I wouldn’t have risked my baby’s life with those kinds of odds.”

Jay stared at the floor.

“I come here from time to time,” she said. She looked grave for a second. Then she gave him a sad smile. “Well. No point in us standing here being morose. It was a long time ago. I can’t change it.”

Jay nodded. The thought of his little boy dying was beyond painful. His own experience when the baby had developed pneumonia and had to be rushed to the hospital would be with him until, he was sure, he died, even if he lived to be a hundred. He had thought he was smart and powerful—that incident had made him realize just how helpless he was when it came to such things. He couldn’t imagine how Rachel Lewis must feel. How terrible it must be. . . .

“So, what is the scenario you have on tap for us today?”

Distracted by his own thoughts, Jay said, “Uh, well, I thought we might take a run at the cowboy.”

“Cowboy?”

“Um, yeah, I didn’t have a chance to tell you about that yet. FBI came up with a ballistics match. The gun that killed the G.I. on the Kentucky base is the same one that was used to kill two Metro cops. A great big piece, shoots elephant-stopper bullets. There aren’t that many of them around, and I think I’ve got it narrowed down to the right guy.”

She looked surprised. “Really? That—that’s great.”

“Maybe. It might be a dead end—might be that the terrorist they found in the burning truck after Kentucky, Stark, is the guy who bought the gun, but it’s a place to start. The cowboy image is one I came up with once I got it winnowed.”

“Let’s go find him,” she said. “Lead on. The scenario is yours.”

Jay nodded.

Lewis was furious. The stupid son of a bitch Carruth had shot two Metro policemen and never said squat about it—she could understand that, because she would have dumped his ass in a hurry had she known that. But he had kept the fucking gun he used to do it, and shot somebody else! And between the FBI and Gridley, they were about to run the bastard down.

This was bad.

She didn’t know how stand-up Carruth would be if they pulled him in for murder. The District didn’t have the death penalty, though life without parole wasn’t a walk in the park. Kentucky still fried people, though, and if they caught Carruth, he’d have to answer for the soldier killed on the base there as well as the ones in the chase car he’d blown up, and it would be in a civilian court, not the Army’s. She couldn’t remember if they used lethal injection or the electric chair down there. Not that it would matter much.

If he knew he was going to be sent to ride ole Sparky or dance with the Needle, would Carruth give her up to save himself?

Maybe not, but she couldn’t take that chance.

Carruth was, all of a sudden, a liability. Maybe a fatal one.

She couldn’t let the authorities get to him.

And she definitely couldn’t let Jay here find him.

How lucky was it that he had come to her with this instead of nailing it on his own? It was his construct, but she had some control, since she was allowed into it. If she had to, she would use it.

Next to her, Jay said, “I could get you a costume, if you want.”

“I’ll pass. What are we looking for?”

 

Jay always like to have his basic research clean, so the displays in the sci-fi art show were taken from the real thing. He had also learned that true fans hated the term “sci-fi,” too, but that was too bad, ’cuz that’s what people in the real world called it.

Pieces ranged from pencil drawings to oil paintings to sculptures, some of the last kinetic or motorized. Much of it was first-class and professional work—book covers, trading cards, game or magazine illustrations. There was what appeared to be the skeleton of a gargoyle, cast in plaster or some kind of plastic that looked like old bone, and from what Jay could tell it certainly looked as if it could have been real. Next to that crouched a giant robotic frog that was amazing.

He saw Rachel taking it all in, and while she didn’t laugh or sneer, he didn’t get the impression she was all that hot on the scenario. She looked distracted. Probably remembering her baby son. He was still thinking about her revelation. So sad. It made him want to put his arm around her and comfort her. At the least.

But—they had work to do.

They cruised through the art show.

Jay saw an oil painting of a centaur with glowing red eyes that looked so creepy Jay couldn’t imagine living in the same house with it—those eyes did seem to watch every move you made. He stood next to the painting and watched people as they came upon it, and that was interesting in itself.

If it bothered Rachel, it didn’t show.

There was a quarter-size bronze sculpture of a gorgeous black woman in spandex who had some kind of high-tech guns mounted on the backs of her hands, the barrels extending in a line with her index fingers. It was a beautiful piece of work, and the ten-thousand-dollar price reflected that.

There were some funny drawings—covers for Stephen King books that he never wrote, with titles like
Big Hairy Monsters!
or
Huge Yellow Fangs!

There were altogether too many unicorns and cute fantasy animals—tigers with butterfly wings, winged horses, even flying dogs—and a whole bunch of badly rendered fairies, sprites, Hobbits, and characters from
Star Trek
and
Star Wars
, some of them sans clothes. Some of the artists had great imaginations and talent, and some were obviously not folks you’d want to find yourself trapped with in close quarters. . . .

Some of the paintings, collages, assemblages, and sculptures were, in Jay’s view, flat-out, turn-away-and-make-a-face
ugly
.

What was amazing about many of these awful artworks was the bid-lists under them, with ten or twelve names and escalating offers.

Rachel did notice this and remarked on it: “Somebody would pay two thousand dollars in real money for
that
?”

Jay laughed. Apparently, it was true: Beauty was in the eye of the beholder. If he’d had time, Jay would have checked out the faces that matched the names of the bidders on some of the more hideous pictures. . . .

But not now. Now, he had spotted his quarry—at least he thought so. A tall man with red makeup, but dressed in neo-cowboy clothes—kind of a futuristic version—and with a big, low-slung holstered gun strapped to his hip. The gun had a multicolored ribbon tied around it and the holster—a “peace bond,” Jay had been told. The convention runners frowned on the idea of fans waving guns, knives, or swords around—and the hotel staff
really
didn’t like it. What better setup for a robbery? A bunch of armed people wearing disguises? You could just walk up to the front desk, point a gun at the clerk, and rob the place, and nobody’d have a clue who you were. Jay could imagine the interview with the local police: