JEREMY SWALLOWS, COUGHS, throat dry to the point where he feels like he might choke, presses his ear to the door. He hears at least three sounds: the television and two voices.
Then just the television. Is he imagining things, more than one voice?
He looks next to him on the cool, smooth stone floor, finds his iPad, fingers the screen. It is 4:25. He’s been asleep, he calculates, a little more than three hours.
He looks at the map. Red, red, red. The countdown clock: 14:10:07.
14:10:06.
14:10:05.
He shakes his head. Where did the hours go?
14:10:04.
And there, in the upper right-hand corner, a notification. The results have come back from the test he programmed before he fell asleep. His finger hovers over it, poised to click, even as he tries to make out what’s going on in the bedroom. He can’t make out what’s being discussed on the TV. The tenor and vibe sound like news, maybe the CNN early report.
There’s a knock, knock on his door. A hard rap, not the work of a hand, but a book, an object intended to make a lot of noise. It startles him and he almost topples forward. It must’ve been what woke him. He pictures the dream, his mother, frail but unyielding, Kent, boyish in his pajamas, then unyielding too with his mustache. The puzzle.
“Are you listening?”
Jeremy recognizes Andrea’s voice. He clears his throat. Craves water. “I fell asleep.”
From the other side of the door, Andrea says:
“Harry W. Ives, a renowned professor of conflict studies, was found dead last night from multiple stab wounds. Police said the esteemed scholar was discovered in his office on the Berkeley campus by a student. They have identified and are seeking a suspect described as a white male in his early thirties believed to be an acquaintance of Dr. Ives.”
Jeremy leans his head against the wall. He looks up at the ceiling, sees the air duct. Thinks: I need a trampoline to get into it and a tiny stunt double to slither through the canals to my escape.
“I told you,” he said.
“You didn’t tell me he’d been murdered. Get out here, we need to talk. I know. I can help you.”
“I need to wash up. Give me a second, please.”
He opens his phone, turns it on. While waiting for it to power up, he clicks on the iPad for results from his test. An hourglass appears. In seconds, he’ll know which of the variables is most important in predicting the impending conflict. Or, he thinks, as words begin to materialize, he’ll know the variable or variables most material in predicting the alleged conflict.
On the screen, a header: 362,880 results.
Damn it, Jeremy thinks. His chin falls. Why didn’t I think of it before? This is nine factorial. I’m going to get an endless stream of results, combining and mixing and matching all the different influences. How am I going to wade through the different permutations to determine which is the most telling? It will take a veritable infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of screens to go through all this shit.
Punctuating his concerns, the results begin to scroll. The first few look like:
| CHANGED PARAMETER(S) | COUNTDOWN CLOCK | MAGNITUDE DELTA |
| Mexico rhetoric constant | 28 hours, 55 minutes | 0% |
| Mexico/Russia constant | 28 hours, 55 minutes | −9% |
| Mexico/Russia/Tantalum | 28 hours, 55 minutes | 1% |
The list scrolls and scrolls and scrolls. At first, he’s able to see only the swirl, the unfurling of the data, a ghost whir of returning results.
“Jeremy, do I need to call the front desk to tell them that my husband has locked himself in the bathroom?”
“One sec.”
He forces himself to focus on the first three results to remind himself what he’s looking at. The first column describes which combination of parameters has been held artificially constant by the computer. In other words, in the test represented in the first line, the world is precisely as it is today except that the conflict rhetoric in Mexico was not intensified. Under such a scenario, the countdown clock is unchanged—as represented in column two—and the magnitude of the conflict is unchanged, the number of people projected to die, as represented in column three.
It tells Jeremy that Mexico alone, the rising conflict rhetoric there, is not where he should be focusing his investigations.
But the second line offers a different insight. It says that if the conflict rhetoric is held constant in both Mexico and Russia, then the attack still happens but its magnitude falls. And measurably. The projected deaths drop 9 percent.
What does Mexico have to do with Russia?
In the third line, the shipments of tantalum are kept constant. The countdown clock remains unchanged. The projected deaths rise 1 percent.
He begins scrolling down the list, even as it continues to grow and grow. One permutation after the next. One catches his eye:
| CHANGED PARAMETER(S) | COUNTDOWN CLOCK | MAGNITUDE DELTA |
| Mexico/Russia/Tantalum/Fertile Cresc/Arrest | N/A | −100% |
Jeremy feels himself stop breathing. A delta of 100 percent.
Meaning: under the scenario in which the computer artificially holds constant the conflict rhetoric in Mexico, Russia, and the Fertile Crescent, and also holds constant shipments of tantalum and the arrest of the arms dealer, there is a 100 percent change in the prediction.
There is no attack.
A clue. Way more than that. The key. It’s in here. Somewhere in here.
“That’s it,” he mumbles.
There’s a vigorous knock on the door.
Jeremy feels the perspiration on his hands, hears a veritable echo inside his head. He’s so tired, can’t tell if he’s understanding her.
“What?”
“I just need to clean myself up.”
The computer was right.
“Lavelle. The lieutenant colonel . . .” Her voice trails off.
Jeremy doesn’t respond. He’s got an idea. He starts clicking on his keyboard. He’s regrouping all the results, the hundreds of thousands of results. He’s grouping them in terms of which results have the highest “magnitude delta,” in other words, which ones wind up with a set of variables under which there will be no predicted attack.
Within seconds, he’s found what he’s looking for. There are eight such scenarios. He looks down the list of them, looking for the common theme. Until it strikes him.
“Impossible,” Jeremy mutters. He leans in close to the computer. “You’ve got to be lying to me.” He tilts his head. “Or you’re very, very good.”
He stands up, gently pushing the iPad on the floor. He lets pass a lightheaded wave, feels the creases uncrease in the jeans he’s been sitting in, sleeping in, the blood drop back down into his numb feet. He shuffles to the mirror, sees the ragged face looking back at him, can’t help noticing the same pointy chin as his mother, the hawkish eyes, but the nose that came from somewhere else altogether. He thinks of her taunting presence in the dream, purporting to hold all the answers in her hand.
He thinks: Screw you. Screw all of you. I’m holding the answers. He glances at the iPad. Impossible. But possible. The country codes, Evan, the Pentagon, they must fit together some way.
And now this, a powerful message from the computer: the chief parameter leading to the prediction of war is that tensions have cooled in the Middle East.
Jeremy flicks on the cold water, lowers his head to the sink, splashes and splashes.
Out of more than three hundred thousand scenarios, there are eight under which there will be no attack whatsoever. Under all eight scenarios, the conflict rhetoric in the Fertile Crescent doesn’t go down. It remains unchanged or, possibly, goes up.
Meaning: the one variable that Jeremy has dismissed as irrelevant—the Middle East seeming more peaceful—is the one most influential in triggering war. Singularly influential. Makes no sense, none. Things have been getting more peaceful in the Middle East, at least from the standpoint of the language of war.
The language of war has been intensifying in so many other places—up sharply in Mexico, moderately in Russia, North Korea, Congo—but it has been falling in the Fertile Crescent. According to the computer, it’s fallen 12 percent in intensity. The collective hue and cry from Israel, Iran, Syria, Egypt, has taken a turn in a positive direction. This is presumably what the world wants. Right?
There’s another basic pattern, one that completely stands to reason: the magnitude of the projected war rises and falls depending on how many of the other conflict parameters are included in the calculation.
For instance, if the rhetoric in North Korea does not intensify, the magnitude of the conflict gets smaller. Fewer people die.
If the Russian arms dealer is not arrested, the magnitude of the conflict gets smaller. Fewer people die.
Same thing if the Mexican conflict rhetoric is held in check. Or if there is no rise in the Random Event Meter: in other words, if the lions aren’t let loose from the zoos.
And if more than one of those parameters is held in check, the magnitude falls even further. For instance, if the dealer is not arrested and the conflict rhetoric stays constant in Mexico and North Korea and Russia, then the magnitude drops precipitously.
And, in the most extreme case, if all the parameters are held in check except the drop in the conflict language in the Fertile Crescent, the magnitude seems to be limited to a single attack: one projected to take place in mere hours, right here in San Francisco.
The computer is telling him something absolutely essential: the most important parameter is the falling conflict rhetoric in the Fertile Crescent. It alone triggers the attack in San Francisco. Without it, no war. And if it is the only change in the last few weeks, then the conflict gets limited to San Francisco.
Is everything else a red herring? Does the tantalum or the arrest of the Russian arms dealer mean nothing? Jeremy senses otherwise; they’re all connected, somehow. But with varying degrees of significance.
Knock, knock on the door.
He towels off.
On his phone, he looks at the time. Nearly 5 a.m. Sees a text. “How can I help?” From Nik. At two in the morning. He’ll be waiting for a response. Jeremy thinks about his dream. The bridge, the view. The puzzle. Harry’s end-of-life warnings.
Jeremy taps back a message. He tells Nik what to do.
He slips the iPad into his backpack. Puts the backpack on, pulls the straps to tighten his swaddled baby on his back. Pulls open the door. “Let’s play chess,” he says.
No sooner has he cracked the door open than he feels a violent push from the other side. Jeremy begins to fall backward, thrown by the tremendous surge. Instinctively, he pushes back, throwing himself against the door, Jeremy in a nutshell, reacting to a push with a pushback of equal weight, greater, his nature fueled by fear, no, terror.
A reverse tug-of-war, bodies pressing and pushing the heavy wood door. Jeremy losing ground. He sees hands grope inside, not just two, not just Andrea. Another woman’s hand.
“Jeremy, we have to talk to you.”
We.
He pushes, strains, feels his feet slip on the stone. He can’t hold this. He sees hair, a face begin to slip through the widening opening of the door; can’t believe his eyes. Her? He pushes back, a surge from his legs and trunk, a last effort to close himself in. The door begins to yield to his will. It’s closing, closing and, then, he can’t find any more reserve. The momentum begins to turn back.
He suddenly thinks: let them come.
He gives one last grunt, a push, but a feint, waits for the inevitable heave back at him. When it comes, he lets go. The door swings open, the women—two women—fly past him, careening, bowling pins in reverse, spinning, slipping forward toward the bathroom counter.
Jeremy leans down and picks up his backpack. And he runs.