The Redeye program, playing high-tech doorman, took eighteen minutes to run its scan—an eternity by EPIC’s lightning standards. The final tally was definitive. The condo had been accessed sixty-one times in the last nine months—the point at which the surprisingly lengthy video record ended. All the hits were since July, and on fifty-nine occasions, as verified by facial and somatic recognition, Bryce was identified as the visitor. Claire bull’s-eyed in on the other two.
On July 18th she saw a man arrive. He parked a late-model Ford van in the reserved spot like he owned the place—which he might have. He was thickset, dressed in loose summer clothes. A horseshoe of dark hair ringed his gleaming bald crown. He opened the condo’s door using an app on his phone, then blocked it open. For fifteen minutes he transferred boxes of office supplies and light furniture from the van to the condo. He then closed the door and remained inside. For forty-six hours and ten minutes. In that time, the camera recorded no other visitors, no food delivery. The only activity: a knock on the door from what looked like two weary Jehovah’s Witnesses that went unanswered. Finally, after two days, the man emerged wearing the same clothes he’d arrived in. With thick stubble on his cheeks. He locked up and drove away.
On October 2nd the same man appeared, driving a similar but slightly different van. He was dressed for autumn, light jacket and a Nats baseball cap. This time he carried in a few office supplies: printer paper, light bulbs, a few boxes. He stayed inside three hours, then locked up and left.
Claire was relieved on at least one point: whatever was going on inside, it seemed more business than pleasure. Was it a secondary congressional office? Something to do with Bryce’s campaign? Either would be a happy ending. Neither felt right.
She tried to identify the man, again using EPIC. Unfortunately, even under the best digital filtering and enhancement, the image was not of sufficient quality to attempt a match. She shifted to the two delivery vans, but they proved equally problematic. Not surprisingly, both were rentals. Claire was no detective—not in any conventional sense—yet her instincts told her that tracking down who’d rented the van would be no less a tail-chase than tracing the condo’s ownership.
Try as she might, she could think of no good explanation for what she was seeing. Even the bad ones were few. EPIC chimed a notification, and she saw the results from another search she’d ordered: the system had hacked into Bryce’s office calendar without so much as breaking a cyber-sweat. She cross-referenced its entries to her map from November and December. It was as she feared: the hours Bryce spent at the condo had been blocked out by ill-defined meetings and conferences. None included staff, nor was there any mention of who he was meeting or where. Whatever Bryce was up to, he was being secretive.
Claire went back further, to the summer, matching Bryce’s location data to known visits. And that was when everything fell apart. For the earlier dates, his EPIC-computed location mismatched every appearance at the condo. She stared at the screen, dumbstruck, not knowing what to make of it. Once again, a progress on one front only muddied the greater picture.
When her thoughts finally righted, Claire had a revelation. For all the technology at her fingertips, sometimes there was no substitute for firsthand knowledge. For eyes on a target.
It was time to take a drive.
She was just pushing back from her workstation when she heard the access granted chime at the entrance. Atticus came in riding a knee scooter. He’d texted earlier with the sad story: he had cracked an ankle bone playing ultimate Frisbee that morning, and now his lower right leg was clammed in an orthopedic boot.
“Who gets injured playing Frisbee?” she asked.
“Don’t want to talk about it.” He wheeled toward a workstation, his hopeless beard and dead-leaf-brown bangs framed by a Cal Tech hoodie. Standing one-legged, he circled his gaming chair like a dog about to lay down, then lowered himself gingerly into the seat. “Sorry I’m late,” he said.
Claire checked the only clock in the room that wasn’t on a monitor—an analog Disney item from Frozen mounted over the door. Olaf’s stick-fingers pointed to the two and the twelve. “I’m kidding, Atticus. How’s the ankle?”
“It’s fine—just a little sore. What are you working on?”
Claire kept mostly to the truth. “I’m testing a few of the apps on a particular condo in Georgetown.”
“Everything working as advertised?”
“Mostly, yeah.” She went to the rack by the door and pulled her jacket off a peg. “I’m heading out, but I’ll be back later.”
“Okay.”
Claire swiped her ID and palm-smacked a green mushroom button to unlock the door. She paused at the threshold. “You going to be here for a while?”
“Yeah, I’m seeing a friend for dinner, but not until seven. Need me to do something?”
“Probably not … but if anything does come up, I’ll call the landline.”
Burke was tidying his desk when his phone went off. It showed an unknown number. He picked up all the same. Robocalls were as much a bane to the FBI as anyone, but woe be the special agent who let a hot tip go cold on voice mail.
“Agent Burke.”
“Hello, Agent Burke. Bryce Ridgeway.”
Burke’s attention notched upward. He heard heavy background noise on the line, almost as if Ridgeway was sitting in a call center. “Good to hear from you, Congressman.” He waited, remembering the drill: call me Bryce. It didn’t come this time.
“Glad I was able to reach you. My wife told me you stopped by this afternoon. She forwarded the latest on the case, but it sounds like not much has changed. One Saudi jihadi with no clear links to any organization.”
“Yeah, that’s basically it.” Burke weighed which way to steer things, and after a moment added, “Our techs did nail down one detail.”
“What’s that?”
“When we last spoke, you mentioned how you held your hand over the bomber’s—you thought it might keep the switch depressed.”
“Right. And you wondered why he didn’t release it right away when I sent him over the rail.”
“Exactly. As it turns out, we believe he did release it the moment you let go of his hand.”
“How could that be?”
“Our techs put together some fragments of circuitry and discovered that the trigger had a built-in delay. That’s why the bomb didn’t go off immediately.”
“How long of a delay?”
“Almost ten seconds. Or from your point of view, just enough.”
“Well … lucky me.”
“Guess you picked the right day to intervene.”
Burke heard someone call Ridgeway’s name, and the congressman put him on hold for nearly a minute. When he came back on, Burke said, “Sounds like you’re busy.”
“You can’t imagine. I’m in Charleston, on my way to another event. I just wanted to give you a call so you’d have this number. The card I gave you previously has my official number, but this is my personal line. Please keep it to yourself, and if anything comes up regarding the investigation, call me direct—no need to involve Sarah as a go-between.”
“Understood. I’ve got the number now and I’ll make sure it stays private.”
More commotion on the South Carolina end.
“Sorry,” Ridgeway said, “gotta run.”
“Good luck with the campaigning.”
Burke had no sooner put his phone down when Alves walked up with a file in her hand. “Who was that?” she asked.
“Bryce Ridgeway.”
Her face flared with surprise. “Really? What did he want?”
Burke looked blankly at his phone, then at Alves. “I’m not really sure.”
The drive to Georgetown went quickly in light holiday traffic. Claire crossed the Arlington Bridge, then passed the city’s most famous riverside monument: Lincoln, seated in his great marble chair, looking forlornly across the seats of power. Claire wasn’t political by nature, but she imagined what he might think if he could see the current state of affairs. No, no, you’ve got it all wrong …
Her next thought came as a natural extension. Could Bryce fix what ailed America? Could one man make things better? She hoped the answer was yes.
Before he got the chance, however, there were questions to be answered.
She veered north toward the K Street exit, skirting Foggy Bottom and bypassing the Watergate complex. The infamous office building loomed with its cruise ship curves, oblivious to the role it had played in bringing down a president. Adjacent to that was its sister building, the wrap-around, C-shaped hotel that might soon be linked with the rise of another president.
Two more turns took her into the heart of Georgetown.
Claire had always thought the borough seemed out of place in the District, as if a piece of suburban Pangea somewhere in Virginia had cracked off and migrated into town. It didn’t have the rough edges of the surrounding neighborhoods, the aura of managed decay.
Things soon began to look familiar—the result of hours spent studying the condo and its surroundings. In the distance she saw Georgetown’s namesake university, its spire towering into a gray-shaded sky. Classic Federal-style homes on one corner gave way to new-build luxury complexes on the next. Cobblestone paths curved through alleys, and trendy bistros and artisanal coffee shops were shoehorned into every gap.
Claire had no trouble finding P Street, and she immediately recognized the auto parts store. It looked frail and dated, a business that had probably gotten its start selling points and plugs for ’58 Chevys, but that now found itself struggling in an age of online parts sales and microchip-managed engines.
The street was quiet and there was virtually no traffic, only a single car a hundred yards back. Soon the angles changed and Claire spotted the condo. The unit in question was the rightmost in a group of four. All were painted different colors, and there were minor architectural distinctions between them. A wrought-iron rail sided one set of steps, while shutters accented the windows next door. The unit marked 4 was the least notable of the bunch, and looked much as it had on her monitor.
Claire brought the car to a crawl as she neared the building. Only the leftmost parking spot was occupied, the space marked 4 being empty—as it had been for most of the last year. One section of the front sidewalk was quaking up, an elm spreading shamelessly. Claire studied the three front windows, all of which were covered by heavy blinds. Windows in the other units popped with light in the sullen afternoon.
As hoped, she saw a few things that hadn’t registered in her cyber-stalking. She noticed a bus stop across the street. An old woman was sweeping leaves from the sidewalk of number 1, a blue-faced unit with Cape Cod trim. Behind, on an acute angle, were the fourplex’s shared dumpster and a stack of mailboxes. She wondered if Bryce had ever used any of them.
She swept past the condo, through an intersection, and looped around the block to make a pass from the opposite direction. On her second approach, Claire was forced to stop, trapped behind a working garbage truck. With the car idling, she checked the rearview mirror. To her surprise, she saw the same car she’d noticed earlier.
Or was it?
Dark blue sedans were common enough.
Claire had been so focused on driving and navigating, she’d paid little attention to what was behind her. The car was well back, paused at the previous side street. Curiously, it sat motionless at the stop sign, despite no oncoming traffic. An eddy of gray vapor coughed from the tailpipe. On the first surveillance mission of her life, Claire wondered if paranoia was getting the better of her.
The garbage truck began moving, turned right at the corner. Claire accelerated and turned left, bypassing the condo a second time. Her eyes flicked between the road and the mirror. The blue sedan made two quick turns and was soon back behind her.
Her heart skittered a beat. Her hands tightened on the wheel. Claire no longer had any doubts.
She was being followed.