Douglas Preston - Gideon’s Sword

O’Brien clicked the forward button in the transport control window, and an image appeared on the screen. “An airport,” O’Brien said. “Shit. It’s a security tape.”

“So?”

“Their quality sucks. Heavily compressed, too.”

They watched in silence for a minute as a worried-looking Asian man crossed the screen and made his way through a tangle of passengers.

“It’s been hard-telecined,” O’Brien said, staring at the monitor. “A hair under thirty fps—”

“There.” Gideon pointed at the screen. “Back up just a bit, then go forward, frame by frame.”

O’Brien returned playback to the moment the man encountered the group of passengers, then moved forward again.

“Slower, please.”

O’Brien took a lengthy pull of the Dr Pepper, worked the transport controls. “One frame per second.”

They watched together as a boy in the crowd dropped a teddy bear, a woman beside him picked it up, handed it back.

“Pause,” said Gideon. “Now, you see the satchel that boy is carrying?”

“Yup,” O’Brien said, peering at the flickering screen.

“I want you to find the clearest frame of that satchel, then enhance it. It’s got a blurry logo of some kind. I want to know what it is.”

“Sure thing.” O’Brien went backward through the frames, then forward, until he found the clearest shot of the satchel.

“Blurry as hell,” he muttered. “Whoever demultiplexed this for you did a lousy job.”

“They were in a hurry.”

“I’ll have to de-interlace the image or the combing will kill us.” O’Brien’s fingers ran over the keyboard. The image in the main window faded, grew larger.

“What are those bars across the image?” Gideon asked.

“That’s 2:3 pulldown. I’m trying to compensate.” Again he typed a rapid-fire series of commands. The image brightened, stabilized. “That’s better. Let me apply some unsharp masking.” O’Brien moused through a series of sub-menus.

“It’s a shield with a motto,” Gideon said, staring.

O’Brien worked the machine, further refining the image.

“ Pectus Est Quod Disertos Facit ,” Gideon read from the screen.

“What the hell’s that? Latin?”

“It is the heart that makes men eloquent,” said Gideon.

“What a crock,” said O’Brien, shaking his head sadly at the supreme idiocy of the sentiment. “Who the hell said that?”

“It’s from Quintilian’s Orations . But it’s just pompous and vacuous enough that it might be a private school motto.” He stood up. “Thanks, Tom.”

“Hey. What about that other thousand bucks?”

“Enjoy your sandwich. I’ll be in touch.” He paused just before going out the door. “You haven’t heard from that doctor yet, I suppose?”

“Oh yeah. I did. I meant to tell you about that.”

“And?”

“I hope the guy in those X-rays isn’t really a friend of yours.”

Gideon looked at him. “Why do you say that?”

“According to the doc, he’s fucked .”

Gideon slid onto the vinyl stool of the all-night diner and ordered coffee, poached eggs, hash browns, toast, and marmalade. The waitress, her zaftig figure bursting out of a 1950s uniform, took his order and bawled it into the back.

“You should sing opera,” he said distractedly.

She turned to him with a brilliant smile. “I do.”

Only in New York. He nursed his coffee, feeling numb.

I hope the guy in those X-rays isn’t really a friend of yours. Maybe O’Brien’s doctor was wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. But this was the third opinion.

Would he have been happier not knowing? Just enjoying his final year of life in blissful ignorance? But no — this changed everything. Gideon felt a strange sense of dissociation, as if he were already out of his body, away from the living world. Suddenly, very suddenly, his priorities had shifted. No point anymore in meeting someone, raising a family. No point in advancing his career. No point in not smoking or worrying about his cholesterol count. No point, really, in anything.

He took another sip of coffee, trying to shake the odd feeling of nerveless disbelief. One thing at a time. There’d be plenty of opportunities to think about this later. Right now, he had a job to finish.

He forced his thoughts back to Throckmorton Academy. He’d been correct about the private school motto. Having perused the school’s website, he’d gleaned some important, if inadvertent, information about the place. It was very exclusive, highly protective of information regarding its students and staff, and sophisticated in the management of such information. But every person and organization had a weakness, and Throckmorton Academy’s was written all over its site: overweening self-​regard. Pectus Est Quod Disertos Facit. Yeah, right.

The question was how to devise a social engineering plan to exploit that weakness. These were not idiots. He couldn’t go busting in there as a hyper-successful, self-important billionaire hedge fund manager seeking to enroll his son. They would undoubtedly have seen that type before, many times. They would be immune. He couldn’t pose as a celebrity, phony or real: Google had ended that game. Something just the opposite would be required: something that would play more subtly on their hopes, assumptions, and—​perhaps—​prejudices. As he mulled it over, an approach began to take shape in his head. Unfortunately, it would take two to pull it off. Jackson wouldn’t do: she was off trying to scare up her own leads, and besides, she wasn’t the type. No, it would have to be Orchid. Orchid would be perfect. He pushed away the sting of guilt at using her again, telling himself the ends were worth the means. After all, hadn’t she said she wanted him to call her?

A man slid onto the stool next to his, laying a folded Post down on the counter. Gideon was irritated that, in an empty diner at three o’clock in the morning, some asshole had to sit down right next to him.

The waitress came out with his plate, laid it down, and turned to the other man. He ordered coffee and Danish.

She poured it, brought him the Danish, and retired into the kitchen.

“How’s it going?” the man murmured, opening his paper.

Gideon glanced sideways in irritation, decided to ignore him.

“You must be almost out of cash,” the man murmured, perusing the front page.

Gideon felt something touch his leg and glanced down to see the man proffering a fat roll of cash under the counter. Before Gideon could react, the man had slid it into Gideon’s jacket pocket, all the while reading his paper. Gideon raised his head, got a better look at the face.

Garza. Eli Glinn’s right-hand man at EES.

An unpleasant mixture of shock and irritation coursed over him. So much for his facility at staying below the radar.

“It’s about time!” he said, turning on the man, suddenly snarky in his embarrassment at being caught unawares. “I wondered when Glinn would be sending a messenger boy.”

Garza frowned, his previous unflappability fading slightly. “That’s how you say thank you ?”

“Thank you? Obviously you people at EES knew a lot more about this situation than what you briefed me on. I feel like I’ve been hung out to dry.”

Garza took a sip of coffee, pushed the Danish away, rose, and placed a few dollars on the counter. “You’re doing okay — at least until now. If I were you, instead of complaining I’d be worried as hell that we were able to locate you. If we can find you, so can Nodding Crane.”

The man slipped back out into the night, leaving the paper unfolded on the counter, its headline displayed.