Дэвид Балдаччи - The Sixth Man

“Which one? There were five,” replied Roy.

“The first one to speak to you.”

“His nameplate said Gilbert,” replied Roy.

“Badge number?

“Eight-six-nine-three-four. His weapon was a Sig Sauer 9mm with a twelve-round mag. He had an ingrown nail on his right pinky. I can give you the other officers’ names and badge numbers if you want. And since this is a memory test, over the last two hundred and six miles of the trip we passed one hundred and sixty-eight vehicles. Would you like their license plate numbers starting from first to last? There were nineteen from New York, eleven from Tennessee, six from Kentucky, three from Ohio, seventeen from West Virginia, one each from Georgia, South Carolina, D.C., Maryland, Illinois, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, two from Florida, and the rest from Virginia. I can also tell you the number and descriptions of the occupants of each vehicle. I can break it down by state if you want.”

Michelle gaped and said, “I can’t even remember what I was doing last week. How do you keep all that in your head?”

“I can see it in my head. I just have to dial it up.”

“Like index cards in your mind?”

“No, more like a DVD. I can see everything flowing. Then I can hit stop, pause, fast-forward, or reverse.”

Sean still looked skeptical. “Okay, describe the outside of this house, the barn, and the land around it.”

Roy swiftly did so, finishing with “There are one thousand six hundred and fourteen shingles on the east side of the barn’s roof. The fourth shingle over in the second row from the top is missing, as is the sixteenth one on the ninth row counting from the front. And the hinge on the left front door of the barn is new. There are forty-one trees in the field on the east side of the house. Six are dead and four more are dying; the largest of those is a Southern magnolia. My sister obviously is not into landscape maintenance.”

“Last four presidents of Uzbekistan?”

“A trick question, obviously. There has only been one since the office was established in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union. Islam Karimov is the current officeholder.” He gazed at Sean with a knowing look. “You picked Uzbekistan because it was the most obscure one you could think of at the moment?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Roy said, “But it’s not just about memorizing data. You have to do something with it.”

“Give us an example,” said Michelle.

“After analyzing the data on the Wall, I told our government to help the Afghans increase poppy production.”

“Why would you do that? It’s used to make opium, which is the main ingredient in heroin,” said Sean.

“Afghanistan had a blight when I first came on board at the E-Program. It knocked poppy production down thirty percent.”

“But isn’t that a good thing?” asked Michelle.

“Not really. When you have a shortage of something, what happens?”

“The price of the commodity goes up,” answered Sean.

“Right. The Taliban derive ninety-two percent of their revenue from the opium poppy sales. Because of the blight their income went up nearly sixty percent. It gave them a lot more resources to hurt us. It was speculated in the media that NATO had intentionally introduced the blight in an effort to destroy the poppy production. I conjectured that it was the Taliban that actually did so to cause the prices to skyrocket.”

“Why did you think that?” asked Sean.

“On the Wall was an article published in an obscure agricultural journal. It mentioned a scientist whom I recognized as a sympathizer for the Taliban. The article stated that this scientist had traveled to India where it’s believed the blight originated about six months before it appeared in Helmand and Kandahar. He brought the source of the blight back and the Taliban caused the blight to jack up prices. So it was my recommendation for the US to stop the blight from happening again and to allow more land for poppy production. Now the Taliban’s income is projected to fall by half next year. But I also have a little surprise planned for them.”

“Which is?”

“We’ve introduced a hybrid seed into the poppy plant production in Afghanistan. The poppies turn out just fine. However, when you try to use those poppies to make heroin you end up with something far closer to aspirin. So the poppy becomes what it always was supposed to be, a pretty plant.”

“And you proposed that?” asked Michelle. “How?”

“The Wall provides me with everything, but I supplement it with things that I learn on my own. The hybrid at first glance didn’t seem to be anything special when I read about it. It wasn’t even being discussed in the context of poppy production and certainly not in the effort against the Taliban. But when I learned of it and saw that it could be extended to such an effort I proposed it as a tactical maneuver with potentially strategic implications.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sean.

Roy readjusted his glasses. He looked like the absentminded professor addressing a class. “Because now it goes far beyond mere supply and demand and price points. If the criminal element knows it can’t rely on the integrity of Afghan poppy production it won’t buy from them under any circumstances. It also has the added benefit of the drug cartels being very angry with the Taliban for ruining a year’s worth of heroin production. That’s billions of dollars. The cartel will take its revenge with the result that many of the Taliban’s higher-ups will end up dead. With poppy production out of play other crop possibilities become viable, none of which will yield nearly the same amount of money to terrorists fighting us. Farmers will still be able to make a decent living, and the cartel will have to search for another source of heroin ingredients. Win-win for us.”

“Pretty impressive,” said Michelle.

“I can see the forest and every tree in it. It’s an ecosystem of sorts where everything impacts everything else. I can see how things connect to one another, no matter how unconnected they might seem.”

Michelle sat back. “You would absolutely rock on Jeopardy .”

Roy looked alarmed at the thought. “No, I’d be too nervous. I’d get tongue-tied.”

“Nervous?” exclaimed Sean. “That’s just a game show. You’re deciding policy for the United States of America.”

“But I’m not competing with anyone. It’s just me. It’s not the same.”

“If you say so,” replied Sean, who looked thoroughly unconvinced of this.

“We have satellites positioned all around the globe. Much of what I see on the Wall are real-time video of events in every country.” He paused. “It’s a little like being God peering down at his creations, seeing what they’re up to, and then flinging down fire and brimstone to those who most deserve it. I don’t really care for that part of it.”

Michelle stared into the fire. “I bet. And it creeps me out that there are people watching everything you do from hundreds of miles up.”

Sean said, “They’re not watching everybody and everything, Michelle. With over six billion people on the planet that would be impossible.”

She looked at Sean. “Oh yeah? Well, they can keep eyes on whoever they want to. Remember when we went out to Edgar’s house? No one followed us. No one could have seen us from the ground. But those goons still showed up. They knew we were there somehow. I bet they have eyes in the sky on Edgar’s home.”

Roy looked at her and said, “Eyes in the sky on my house?”

She said, “Yep. As far as I can see it’s the only way it could have worked.”

In the firelight Roy’s eyes seemed magnified behind the glasses. “Do you think the satellite was watching my house 24/7?”