Joe Ledger: Code Zero Part 25

Surf Shop 24-Hour Cyber Cafe Corner of Fifth Avenue and Garfield Street Park Slope, Brooklyn Sunday, August 31, 12:49 p.m.

"Tell me about the girl," I said.

Caleb Sykes, the nerdy kid who ran the cyber cafe, was sweating bullets. He was seated on a backless stool with the three of us ringed around him and Ghost sitting like a hungry wolf ten feet away. It wasn't exactly thumbscrews and the rack, but that's how he was taking it. I think if I'd yelled "Boo!" he'd have fainted dead away.

"I already t-told y-you," said Sykes. Nerves were bringing out a repressed stutter. I felt bad for the kid and believed that he really had nothing to do with anything. Had to go through the motions, though.

"You said she was Korean," I prompted.

"Yeah. I th-think so."

"Not Chinese? Not j.a.panese?" asked Top. "You're sure?"

"I used to date a Korean girl. They don't look Chinese or j.a.panese. They look Korean. But later, on TV ... she looked Chinese. I d-don't th-think it w-was the s-s-s-same g-g-g-"

He couldn't get it out. I told him it was okay, we understood.

"Did she touch anything in the store?" asked Top.

"Like wh-wh-what?"

"Like anything. Can you remember any specific surface she might have touched with her hands, her fingers."

Caleb suddenly brightened. "Oh! You m-mean f-f-for fingerprints."

"Exactly. Take a second, son, and think about it."

"Um ... just the c-counter and the m-money she handed me."

"Did she bring her own laptop in?" I asked. "Was she just using your wi-fi, or did she-?"

"She r-r-rented an hour on D-D-Dell Three."

"Show us," said Top.

We stepped back to allow Sykes to rise, but the kid did it carefully as if expecting us to swat him back down in the chair. We didn't. Instead we followed him from the small office we'd been using for the interrogation and into the store. A CLOSED sign was hung in the window. Sykes led us to the table on which was the laptop used by the Korean girl who claimed to be Mother Night.

"This is it?" asked Top.

He nodded.

"You're sure?"

"S-sure I'm sure. It w-w-was on the r-receipt."

Top fished through the receipts and found the right one, read it, and handed it to me. "Station eleven."

Sykes nodded again.

He reached out to touch the closed lid of the laptop for emphasis, but Top caught his wrist.

"Don't do that," he said. "Fingerprints."

"Oh ... r-right..."

We all stood there and considered the laptop. A two-year-old Dell. It was open but turned off.

"How many other people used this computer after the girl?" I asked.

Sykes thought about it. "S-six...?" he suggested.

Top bent over it and grunted. As he straightened he nodded to the machine. "See that?"

I did. It was small, but it was there. And it looked to have been carved into the tabletop with a pin. A capital A surrounded by an O.

I waved Bunny over. "Dust it and bag it."

Bunny produced a device that looked like a department store pricing gun. When he aimed it at the laptop it produced a cold blue laser light.

"What's th-that?" asked Sykes.

"Digital fingerprint scanner," explained Bunny. "Uses a laser to take microfine pictures of fingerprints. There's special software to separate overlapping prints. Does it by determining the orientation, finger pad size, and so on, then it a.s.sembles the pieces into as clear a whole as possible."

Sykes said, "W-wow. I watch suh-suh-CSI all the t-time and I never saw anything like th-that."

Top smiled at him. "Our boss has a friend in the industry."

My cell phone buzzed again and I nearly tore my pants s.n.a.t.c.hing it out of my pocket. I wanted to smash the d.a.m.n thing. The message this time was NO ONE LIVES FOREVER.

Ghost suddenly whuffed, and I glanced over my shoulder as a shadow fell across the front window. There were two people standing outside, peering in through the big plate gla.s.s.

They were both young. They were both wearing black hoodies and black sungla.s.ses. They were smiling.

They each held a machine gun.

Sykes had played enough video games to know what AK-47s were.

He said, "Wh-what...?"

Then the world exploded into a terrible storm of shattered gla.s.s, bullets, screams, and blood.

Chapter Thirty-six.

FreeTech 800 Fifth Avenue New York City Sunday, August 31, 12:51 p.m.

Toys was winding up his presentation about projects he wanted to fund in the more economically depressed areas of Central and South America, particularly of research into diseases of poverty that were doing incredible damage there. When he realized that Junie Flynn was no longer listening, his words trickled off and stopped.

The others at the table were also studying Junie.

"Is something wrong?" asked Toys.

Without answering, Junie got to her feet and slowly crossed to the big picture window. She stood there, staring out, though it did not appear to Toys as if she was actually looking at anything.

Violin rose, too, and came around the table to stand by Junie. And Toys could see a lot of dangerous potential in the catlike grace with which she moved.

"What is it?" asked Violin.

Junie crossed her arms and hugged herself as if she stood in a cold wind.

"I don't know," she said.

Violin hesitated for a moment, then placed her hand on Junie's shoulder. Junie flinched, then s.h.i.+vered, but she didn't shake off the touch.

"What is it?" Violin repeated. "Is it Joe?"

Junie shook her head. "I don't know," she said softly. "Something's wrong."

Interlude Nine Offices of the Koenig Group Cape May, New Jersey Three and a Half Years Ago He caught her looking at him.

"What?" asked Joe Ledger. His tone was rough, all sharp edges.

"Nothing," said Bliss quickly.

"No, it's not nothing. You've been giving me the stink-eye all afternoon," muttered Ledger. He wore a sling and had small bandages taped to almost every visible inch of skin. There was a haunted look in his eyes. Across the street was the blackened hulk of what had been the offices and labs of the Koenig Group, a billion-dollar think tank linked to DARPA. It had been shut down by the DMS after it was learned that-despite contracts, agreements, and laws-the senior management had buyers outside the U.S. government. Ledger had gone in to investigate possible intruders into the supposedly sealed building. Things had apparently gone badly wrong and now the place was a pile of ashes. Bliss had been sent to see if there was anything that could be salvaged. Computers, records, lab equipment, anything. But it was ashes.

A team from the coroner's office was pulling bodies out of the place.

"I'm not giving you the stink-eye," she said.

"Then what's on your mind?"

"They ... won't let me read your after-action report."

Ledger smiled. A strange and unpleasant smile. "Yeah, well."

"Well ... what?"

"Well, it wouldn't make good reading."

"Come on," she pleaded. She'd known him for months now. Had even been to a barbecue at his father's place in Baltimore. But Bliss didn't know if she understood Ledger. In his time with the DMS he'd risen to equal Colonel Riggs as the go-to guy for impossible jobs. Dr. Hu hated and feared him, but that didn't matter to Bliss. She'd cooled on Hu, realizing that he was in no way a pathway to power.

"The report is sealed for a reason," said Ledger.

"But why?"

His response was a flat stare.

They sat in silence for a while, watching the forensics team pick their way carefully through the still smoking debris. He drank coffee, she sipped from a Diet c.o.ke.

"Joe-?"

"What?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"You did, and I told you I couldn't talk about it."

"No," she said, and she leaned closer to him, dropping her voice, "I want to ask you something else. It's something I've wanted to ask someone for a couple of years but I never knew who to ask."

"I'm probably not the right guy."

"I think you are."

He studied her for a few moments. Then he said, "What's the question?"

"I've read most of your other reports. I've been to a lot of the places you've been to. After you've been there, I mean. You know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, I guess I do."

"What's it like?"

"What do you mean?"

"Joe ... come on. They send you in only when they need something handled. You know what I mean by that." She didn't ask it as a question.

"So?"

"What's it like?

He sighed. "You're asking what it's like to kill people, right?"

She paused, then nodded.

"It's a lame question."

"Sure, and it's probably offensive," she said, "but my hands aren't exactly clean. The science I help create puts weapons in your hands and you use them to kill people. That means I share some of whatever is there. I'm not going to call it guilt because that's not what it is, is it?"

"Not exactly. Not in any textbook way."

"You're a soldier, a special operator," she said. "You were trained for this sort of thing. You had the mental training for killing as well as the physical, which means you're better prepared for it than I am. I'm a scientist, a geek. Until I joined the DMS the only trigger I ever pulled was in first-person shooter games. I guess it still is. But that doesn't change the fact that my science is being used as your weapon. That means when you kill, I'm part of that process. But I don't understand it. And ... and I need to."