Douglas Preston - Gideon’s Sword

It seemed logical that the man would have kept the plans on his person — or, more exotically, perhaps embedded within his body. Shuddering slightly, Gideon decided he would deal with the “inside” question later — first he would carefully search all of Wu’s few possessions.

From a group of shopping bags dumped by the door, he removed an electronic device he had just purchased—​amazing how in Manhattan you could get anything at any time of the night or day, from bombs to blow jobs—​opened the box, and began setting it up. Called the MAG 55W05 Advanced Countermeasures Sweep Kit, it was a device used by private investigators, CEOs, and other paranoid people to sweep areas for bugs. Completing the assembly, he perused the manual quickly, then fired it up.

With painstaking slowness, he moved the device’s sweeping wand over the clothing spread out on the bed. No hits. The wallet and its contents—​money, business cards, family photos—​were also negative, except for the magnetic stripe on the single credit card Wu carried. When the sweeping wand went over the magnetic stripe, the MAG 55 bleeped and blinked and bars went flickering up and down the LED screen. It seemed there was data on the stripe, but exactly how much he couldn’t be sure: all the MAG 55 told him was that it was less than 64K. He’d have to find some way of downloading and examining it.

Wu’s Chinese passport also contained an embedded magnetic stripe along the outer edge of the front cover, just as US passports did. Using the integrated reader of the device, he was able to determine that this stripe held data, and that it, too, was less than 64K. He scratched his head thoughtfully. That seemed too small to credibly detail the workings of a secret weapon. Advanced technology could compress data a great deal, but he wasn’t sure just how much.

The passport and credit card would have to be further analyzed.

He threw himself in a wing chair, closing his eyes. He hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours. He listened to the rich chord progressions of “Very Early,” letting his mind wander through the swirling colors and rhythms. His father had been a jazz aficionado and he remembered him every evening in his easy chair, head bent over the hi-fi, listening to Charlie Parker and Fats Waller, his foot tapping to the music, his bald head nodding. It was the only music Gideon listened to, and he knew it well, very well…

The next thing he knew, he was waking up, the closing bars of “If You Could See Me Now” fading on the player.

He got up, went into the bathroom, stuck his head under the faucet, and turned on the cold water. Toweling his head dry, he emerged with a new spring in his step. Gideon had an ability to get by on very little sleep, and to wake from catnaps feeling completely refreshed. It was now almost nine AM, and he could hear the maids talking in the hall.

Packing away the sweep kit, he began a painstaking visual examination of Wu’s clothing with a jewelry loupe, using an X-Acto knife to open up seams and double layers. The clothing was stiff, soaked with blood in places, with bits and pieces of metal, glass, and plastic stuck to it. He removed each piece with tweezers, laying it on a paper towel for further examination. The trousers in particular were bloody and shredded. Where the blood was thick and caked, he carefully soaked the area with wet paper towels, then blotted it dry, picking out every little piece.

Four hours later he had finished. Nothing.

Now for the shoes. He had saved the most likely hiding place for last.

Noon. He hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before, a sandwich up in the mountains, and now the only substance inside his stomach was a dozen espressos. It felt like he’d drunk a pint of battery acid. No matter: he picked up the phone and ordered a triple espresso from room service, hot, hot.

He took the shoes out of a paper bag and set them on the coffee table. They were Chinese-made knockoffs of John Lobbs. Both were caked with hardened blood — Wu’s legs had been crushed. One shoe was horribly mangled and had been cut off the foot; the other was merely caked in gore. In the summer heat, they had already begun to smell.

Clearing a space, he examined the right shoe with the sweep kit. Nothing. A knock came on the door and he went outside — keeping the door mostly shut — took the coffee, tipped the bellhop, and drank it down with a single gulp.

Ignoring the boiling feeling in the pit of his stomach, he went back to work, taking the shoe apart, methodically, piece by piece, and labeling each with a felt-tipped pen. First the heel came off; then he unstitched the sole and detached it, laying the pegs and stitches in neat rows to one side. With the X-Acto blade, he unstitched all the leather pieces and laid them out. The heel was of leather, built up in layers, and he carefully separated each layer and laid them side by side. A second sweep revealed nothing. Still using the X-Acto knife, he split every piece of leather, examining both sides and sweeping them all again. Yet again, nothing.

He repeated the process on the other shoe without success.

Gideon packed everything away in ziplock bags, labeling each one, and then sorted and stacked it all into a large Pelican case he had bought for the purpose, locking it up tight. He leaned back in the chair. “Sink me,” he muttered exasperatedly. This was getting tedious. The thought of all the money Glinn had promised revived him a little.

Now for the inside work. It seemed unlikely, but he had to be thorough. But first: Music to Search Entrails By. Something a little more stretched out. He decided on Cecil Taylor’s Air .

He picked up a thick manila folder from the bedside table — the complete suite of ER X-rays, head to toe, to which he was entitled as Wu’s “life partner.” Pulling the shade off the lamp, he held up the first X-ray to the bulb and examined it with the loupe, inch by careful inch. The head, upper chest, and arms were clean, but when he came to the lower midsection his heart just about stopped: there was a small white spot indicating metal. He grabbed the loupe and examined it, and was immediately disappointed. It was indeed a fragment of metal, but nothing more than a twisted piece that had obviously gotten embedded in the car accident. It was not a microchip, or a tiny metal canister, or secret spy gizmo.

There was nothing in the stomach or intestinal tract indicating any sort of container, balloon, or storage device. Nothing in the rectum, either.

It horrified him to look at the X-rays of the legs. Embedded in them were more than a dozen bits of metal—​all showing as irregular white spots, along with grayer pieces that he guessed were fragments of glass and plastic. The X-rays had been taken from several directions, and he was able to get a crude idea of the shape of each piece—​and none of them even remotely resembled a computer chip, a tiny canister or capsule, or a magnetic or laser storage device.

He had a vision of the owlish man descending the escalators, frightened and peering about, small, serious — and courageous. For the first time Gideon considered the risk the man had taken. Why had he done it? It would be a miracle if the man ever walked again. If he even survived. At the hospital, Wu had remained in a coma; they’d had to cut a hole in his cranium to relieve the pressure. Gideon reminded himself that this hadn’t been an accident. It was attempted murder. No, with the death of the innocent cabdriver and half a dozen bystanders it was actual murder—​mass murder.

Shaking off these thoughts, he slid the X-rays back into their manila folder and rose, going to the window. It was late afternoon — he’d been at it all day. The sun was already setting, the long yellow light spilling down 51st Street, the pedestrians casting gaunt shadows.