30

“The general has four more of them,” Matt said.

In CROSSWIND’s stark white conference room, Burton Hirst, Caparelli, and Arlo stayed silent, their faces shuttered, guarded. Norma Chu’s empty chair was an accusing absence. Someone was to blame, and Matt could feel who they had chosen.

“And one of them…” He grimaced. It was so difficult recalling the experience, catching only glimpses like a half-remembered dream. “One of them, I think, is the general’s son.”

Hirst looked up in surprise but said nothing.

“A berserker?” Arlo asked. “You sure?”

“Yeah. Real name, Misha. Code name, ODIN.”

“Makes sense,” Caparelli said quietly. “Emotional connection. It’s what drives the phenomenon.” He sounded exhausted. “I imagine we’ll discover he was one of the first. Could explain why everything the NSA has on Borodin has no mention of family connections.” He turned to Arlo. “Get records to run a new search, this time for a Misha. See if there’s any connection the Russians forgot to expunge.”

“I know I’m the outsider,” Matt said. “But aren’t there other priorities to look into first?”

“There are,” Caparelli said. “And we will. And you’re not an outsider. Not anymore. Burton?”

Hirst picked up a red pen, smoothed the pad of paper before him. “You were in a campground, Mr. Caidin?”

“Yes. But I don’t know where.”

“Look, this isn’t some drive-by murder investigation after the fact. We’re trying to prevent any more deaths that could happen at any time. So…” Hirst cleared his throat, as if embarrassed he had revealed his emotions. “So just give me whatever impressions you recall. Don’t try to make them make sense. The kind of vegetation. Bodies of water. In any order.”

Matt thought back to Chu’s instructions, to go blank and let impressions come to him, rather than struggle to recall step by step what he’d seen. “Cedar … a strong scent of cedar.… That’s the first thing. And cigarette smoke. Paint. They were painting something.…”

Matt was surprised by how easily the next words slipped from him. “He was … the general … was pleased with the progress, but worried they were breathing fumes.”

“Emotional connection,” Caparelli murmured again.

“What else?” Hirst asked.

“Laura knew what to do.” Matt was aware of Caparelli’s gaze, but spoke to Hirst. “I saw her first, and … I don’t know where we were. A beach, I think. She said she liked it there. But … I needed to get to the general so, that’s where we were. She took me there.”

“You spoke to Laura?” Caparelli asked.

“Yeah. She was very real. She took my hand. It all felt real.” Another flash of memory came to him. “Borodin could see her.”

“Mutual awareness,” Arlo said. “Wow. It sometimes develops between perceivers and their targets. But usually takes years.”

“Laura has been tracking him for years,” Caparelli said. “Mutual awareness was inevitable after all that time.”

“But he could see me, too,” Matt added. “And one of his men saw both of us. A man with a scar. Korolev. Captain Korolev.”

“I know that name,” Caparelli said. “Arlo?”

“Got to be Konstantin Korolev. Army captain. Heads up VEKTOR’s security unit.” He looked at Caparelli. “Could Korolev be sensitive?”

Caparelli didn’t care. There was no time for side trips. “Did you get any other names?” he asked Matt.

Matt recited the names he remembered for the general’s men, and the berserkers.

“Okay,” Arlo said. “All of those are from VEKTOR’s security unit. We’ll have full dossiers on all of them.”

“So this is a sanctioned operation?” Caparelli asked.

Hirst disagreed. “No. It can’t be. No reason for it. This berserker technology is like nothing else we’ve seen. Why bring it here where one tactical error means we get our hands on it? What could the Russians possibly hope to gain from committing an act of terrorism on American soil that can so easily be linked back to them? It’s beyond senseless. It’s … insane.”

“Insane,” Caparelli repeated. “Cold War days, we always used to fear the one mad Soviet general with access to launch codes. The Russians probably feared the same about us. Both sides installing all kinds of fail-safes to be certain the authority to launch went through a chain of command. Checks and counterbalances. But VEKTOR … it’s one small research unit. Borodin is its chain of command.…” Caparelli’s face blanched.

“What is it?” Arlo asked.

“What if Borodin is insane? What if there is no objective? There are three potential high-value targets of opportunity in this country in the next seven days. The Capitol. The UN. The Anti-terrorism Conference. What if he’s going after all of them?”

“He has to get within a mile of anything he targets,” Hirst said.

“Run the scenario,” Caparelli countered. “He’s got those containment units in a Winnebago. He could send the berserkers ahead as a ground force, and drive behind them as they tear open any perimeter we have. If we take rationality out of the equation, eliminate any need to hide identity or desire to escape, we have no defense.”

“But in the Projection Room,” Matt said, “you stopped a berserker.”

“Not exactly,” Arlo said. “Quantum fields being sensitive to electromagnetic disturbance, we have electromagnetic-pulse generators in all of our Projection Rooms—in case any rogue perceivers gain access to our facility when we’ve shut down shields for an operation. A one-megawatt micropulse in a contained space destabilizes the perceiver’s projected quantum field, and forces its awareness back to its body.”

Matt read between the lines. “What if it’s just a quantum field like Laura? No perceiver to return to?”

“Then there’s no place to go back to,” Caparelli said. “They’re just gone.”

*   *   *

An hour later, the formal debriefing had ended, and Arlo and Hirst had new orders. Arlo would direct research teams to cross-correlate CROSSWIND’s files on the VEKTOR operatives now known to be with Borodin. The researchers would be looking for hidden connections, anything to suggest Borodin’s mission was something other than a madman’s random act. Hirst’s Tiger Team would redouble its efforts to define the scientific and engineering details of the new berserker technology. They’d be probing for any and all weaknesses that could be exploited. Specifically, was there a defensive system similar to the facility’s EM-pulse generators that could be made portable, and ready within days?

Then it was just Matt and Caparelli, in the facility’s small canteen, each with an untouched cup of coffee.

“How’re you holding up?” Caparelli asked. To Matt, he almost sounded as if he meant it.

“Compared to what?” Matt said. “I have nothing to compare this to.”

“I understand. Every perceiver before you has said the same.”

So I’m a perceiver now? Matt thought.

“But there’s a lot more to it than just seeing, right?”

Matt knew what he meant. “I can still smell the cedars.”

“Ever wonder how you perceived the scent without having a physical nose?”

Matt hadn’t even thought of that.

“It’s a different way of knowing,” Caparelli said. “You can’t hear sounds, yet you understand what people are saying. Not because you hear the words they say, but because you share their thoughts about what they intend to say.

“The truth is, you’re not really there as an independent perceiver. You’re piggybacking on the minds of the people who are physically present. Your awareness somehow flickers along the edges of theirs, picks up their perceptions. But it’s too disorienting to try to make sense of thoughts and sensations coming from so many different sources. Fortunately, your mind already has a mechanism that can bring all that together into a logical context. It’s that sense of proprioception. The one that tells you the shape and position of your body. You understand? You’re picking up sensations and signals from one or two or more people at the remote site, and then creating the illusion that all those sensations are arising in you.

“That’s explains why you seemed to jump back and forth between being inside the camper and then outside by the picnic table. All those people in that area had created an overlapping world of perception, a map of that particular site, and to maintain sanity, you unconsciously choose to see it from one specific vantage point.”

“Like being in virtual reality?”

“Good analogy. Someone creates a complete environment in a computer: castles, caves, endless forests. Yet you, as the user, can select the one part of it you want to see on the screen, or in your 3-D glasses. It’s the same reason why manifestations of people appear with clothes. The form they take is a projection of a person’s own perception of themselves. Sometimes young, sometimes old. In a wedding dress or a uniform or whatever it was they were wearing on the day they died.”

“Okay,” Matt said. He remembered how his grandfather had appeared at the foot of his bed, wearing his treasured flight jacket that had looked brand new. Maybe it hadn’t been a dream. Maybe he was what Arlo called a “sensitive” and—

And then Matt had it.

“I’m the one in control because I have the whole map,” he said. “I can look anywhere.”

“And there you go,” Caparelli said. “It’s all in your mind. You just have to pick out the parts that you think are important.”

“Like Laura,” Matt said, and then wished he hadn’t.

They sat in silence for long moments, both staring into their coffee cups, until, “What did she look like?” Caparelli’s voice was so low, Matt wondered if CROSSWIND’s director had meant to ask the question aloud.

“Same as the first time.” Matt didn’t add that Laura had grotesquely flashed back and forth from the way she’d looked before her accident, and after.

“Was she … happy? Or…”

“She was … restless. Like she needed to get things done. Frustrated. Maybe, even angry.”

Caparelli flushed.

“Sorry,” Matt said.

“Don’t be.”

They had chosen to sit at a small table against a wall. The opposite wall held a sink, cupboards, the coffee machine and supplies, along with signs asking people to clean their mugs after use. An ordinary room for anything but an ordinary situation, Matt thought, wishing he was not having this conversation.

“And … I appreciate the honesty.” Caparelli’s hands gripped his coffee cup tightly. “Norma said you and Laura … There was a particularly intense emotional … something beyond what she expected.”

Matt chose to paraphrase the words that Arlo had given him. “My feelings don’t count here. What you told me about the observed and the observing becoming the same thing … It’s why there’s no way I can separate Laura’s feelings from mine, from yours. Even the general’s. I feel love for his son, too. I share his loss, whatever happened to him. I know you and Laura were close, that you raised her as if she was your own. I experienced an echo of it.”

But Arlo’s words weren’t Matt’s truth, and he could see that somehow Caparelli knew it. Even though it had been the right thing to say to him, the right thing for him to hear.

“It was wrong of me to bring her to CROSSWIND,” Caparelli said. “She could have had a better, safer life.”

“That’s not what she felt,” Matt said.

It was as if Caparelli hadn’t heard him. “I told myself I’d never get caught in a conflict, where I’d have to choose her safety over a mission.” He looked off into a distance only he could see. “Because our missions aren’t dangerous, y’see. No risk.” Then he looked at Matt, hiding nothing. “And because I hesitated, because I didn’t want to lose just her echo, I told Arlo not to fire the pulse and Norma died. As surely as if I had killed her myself.”

Matt said nothing.

“I know you understand,” Caparelli said. “I obtained the Internal Affairs report from Arlington. I know how you’re involved in the investigation into corruption. And what happened to your partner because of that. It’s clear it’s not your fault. But that’s not how you feel.”

Of all the things Matt wanted to talk about with Caparelli, this wasn’t one of them. He didn’t reply.

Caparelli continued. “You feel you basically put the gun in his hand. That by not telling him the truth about why the charges were laid against him—to protect your undercover role—you committed the sin of inaction.”

Matt didn’t know what raced through him at the moment. Relief? Guilt? Anger? Some of each.

Caparelli seemed to understand.

“So what if you had done it differently? What if you had had that conversation with him, and saved his life, but exposed the investigation and ended up endangering a dozen others?”

Matt’s confusion of emotions came into focus as anger, born of frustration.

“None of that’s important. Jack Lowney was my partner.”

Caparelli held up his coffee cup. “To loyalty.”

Matt couldn’t be certain if he was being mocked.

“I mean it,” Caparelli said. “You faced a hard choice. You set a good example.” He put his cup down. “And I should follow it.” He stood up.

“I don’t understand,” Matt said.

But Caparelli wasn’t ready to explain.

*   *   *

“Too little, too late,” Lomax said.

Caparelli had anticipated several possible responses the DHS director might make to his offer. This wasn’t one of them.

“You do understand what I just said?” Caparelli looked past the speakerphone on his desk to see that Arlo and Hirst were as puzzled as he was.

“You want a joint operation? I agree. But my director’s made the case that you belong under the jurisdiction of Homeland, not the NSA, and the National Security Council’s ready to make that call.

“You want to turn over the keys to me now, fine. But no half measures. I want full access to your whole organization. No conditions. No restrictions.”

Caparelli couldn’t believe the man’s arrogance. “Bringing you into our operation has to be a process. That’ll take time we don’t have. After we’ve dealt with the immediate threat, I’ll need to bring you up to speed on almost forty years of operations.”

“Say again?” Lomax’s surprise sounded genuine.

Caparelli pressed his argument. “We’ve been at this a long time. Operated under many names. And you’ll get them all. But right now, our joint priority has to be stopping the Russian terrorists intent on harming the president.”

“So you say.”

Caparelli momentarily visualized hurling the speakerphone across the room. “You saw the photographs. You know what their weapon can do.”

Lomax’s next words left him speechless. “Right—the magic weapon that you won’t tell us a thing about. Other than you’re building one of your own. Gotta tell you, Caparelli, you don’t have a track record of telling the truth. I’ve done the digging. I know you’ve used the CIA, FBI, even the DIA same as you used us last year in Dallas.

“So, bottom line for all the so-called ‘evidence’ you’ve shared so far—photographs can be faked and so can intel. To be blunt, that is what I believe you’re doing now. You probably have your reasons. From what you’ve just said, I’m guessing they’re leftovers from forty years ago when the world was different. One way or another, it’s time you joined the rest of us in the twenty-first century.”

Caparelli stared at his staff, stunned. Arlo indicated he wanted to join the conversation, and Caparelli motioned for him to go for it.

“Mr. Lomax, Sam Arlo here. I’m manager of research at—”

“I know who you are, Mr. Arlo. I’m looking forward to meeting with you when I review your division.”

Arlo lost his rhythm, started again. “Well, here’s the thing. CROSSWIND’s not the most prolific source of intelligence this country has, but what we do produce is exceptional. We’ve saved thousands of lives, not just American. We’ve stopped wars. We’ve—”

Lomax cut him off. “Here’s my problem, Mr. Arlo: There’s no record of any of your accomplishments.”

“They’re classified.”

“Not to me. And that’s your problem. You guys are all smoke and mirrors. If Homeland can’t pull up any deep background on your operations, there’s only one conclusion I can reach.”

Caparelli cut him off. “That we’re very good at keeping our secrets.”

“That you’re a fraud.”

As much as Caparelli wanted to end this call, he knew he had a higher duty, a higher loyalty. He prepared to go all in. With the president’s life in the balance, the stakes for failure were that high.

“Lomax, for the sake of the country, it’s imperative we work together, starting now. So what do I have to do to get you to accept my offer?”

The silence that followed made Caparelli think that Lomax had his own colleagues clustered around his speakerphone. Then, “The first step’s mighty simple. What is the source of CROSSWIND intel? The line is encrypted and secure. You may speak freely.”

Caparelli couldn’t see how Borodin and five berserkers left him any choice. He looked over at Arlo and Hirst. Their expressions said it all.

If there was no more time to play this game by the rules, then the rules had to change.

Caparelli took a breath. “All right. How do we do it? In layman’s terms? ‘Remote viewing.’”

From the speakerphone, there was a sound like a quickly cutoff laugh from someone sitting just out of range.

“Go on.”

“We have several individuals working with us who have the ability to project their consciousness to a location independent of their physical body.”

“You have proof of this, do you?” It was impossible to tell what Lomax’s reaction to the revelation was.

“We do.”

“You could arrange a demonstration?”

“Of course.”

More seconds of silence, and then, “What color is my tie?”

Before Caparelli could protest, more laughter came from the speakerphone. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said.

“Director Caparelli, I think you’re half right. We’ll be in touch.”

The line went dead.

“That ignorant—”

Caparelli cut off Arlo, though he shared the sentiment.

“It’s all right. We know what has to be done. It’s just that this time, we’re going to have to do it all ourselves.”