Douglas Preston - Gideon's Corpse

Fordyce, with his long experience in questioning suspects, knew when he had reached the probable end of what had been a very useful interview. No point in provoking Novak further. He slapped his notebook shut and rose, turning back on his warm, chummy voice.

“Fortunately, I’m done. Thank you kindly for your time. It was all routine, no need to be concerned.”

“I am concerned,” said Novak. “I don’t think it’s right, and I’m going to file a complaint.”

“Naturally, you’re welcome to do so.”

As he retreated to his car, he hoped to hell Novak wouldn’t complain about him, or would at least wait a few days. A complaint would be most inconvenient. Because he was now halfway convinced that Novak was dirty in some way. That didn’t exonerate Crew, of course, and Novak hardly looked like a terrorist.

But still… Was it possible Gideon had been framed?

Gideon had pulled the Jeep off the dirt road ten miles from the Paiute Creek Ranch. He had to calm himself down, organize his thoughts. He felt awful about what he’d just done to Willis. He had terrified the man, brutalized him, humiliated him. The man was far from being the nicest person in the world, but no innocent person deserved that kind of treatment. And he was clearly innocent. Could someone else at the cult be behind it? Impossible, not without Willis knowing.

Gideon had made a hideous mistake.

On top of that, it was one o’clock in the morning, the day before N-Day. One day. And he had no more idea who was behind the plot than when he arrived in Santa Fe, eight days ago…

He grasped the wheel, realizing that he was hyperventilating worse than ever. He had to get a grip on himself, clear his head, and think this through.

He turned off the engine, threw the door open, and stumbled out of the vehicle. The night was cool, a slow sigh of air moving through the branches of the pines, the stars twinkling above. He steadied himself, tried to regulate his breathing, and started walking.

The Paiute Creek Ranch had nothing to do with the terrorist plot. That much was clear. So he was back to Joseph Carini and the Al-Dahab Mosque. They had of course been the obvious perpetrators all along, and now it was confirmed. He had been too clever by far. The obvious answer, the simplest answer, was almost always the true answer. It was one of the fundamental principles of scientific inquiry—and criminal investigations.

But was it so obvious? Why would the Muslims frame him as a fellow Muslim, when such a move would only increase suspicion, focus more attention on them? After all, the investigation had already come down on them like a ton of bricks. There were hundreds of investigators crawling all around the mosque, going through their most private documents, questioning their members, digging out all their secrets. He and Fordyce had been two investigators out of hundreds. They hadn’t learned anything of value, anything out of the ordinary, at least that he could see. And yet, whoever had attempted to frame him had taken huge risks, breaking into a highly classified computer system. It was someone who believed he had learned something so incriminating, so dangerous, that extraordinary measures had to be taken—

Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. Frame him . There was something he had been overlooking, blindingly obvious only now, after it had occurred to him. These actions were being taken against him, and him alone. After all, they hadn’t framed Fordyce, too. In fact, Fordyce was hot on his ass.

After the plane wreck, after learning about the sabotage, Gideon had always assumed whoever was doing this was trying to kill them both, to stop their line of inquiry. But the fact was, they were only trying to stop him.

What had he done—what had he investigated, who had he talked to—on his own, without Fordyce?

As quickly as he had posed the question, the answer came.

He stared up at the dark sky, at the hard uncompromising points of starlight. Could it be possible? It seemed so incredibly improbable. But he’d proved it wasn’t Willis, and he felt certain it wasn’t the Muslims. As he turned around and began heading back to the Jeep, he couldn’t help but remember the oft-repeated Sherlock Holmes dictum: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Sitting in his cubicle in the 12th Street Command Center, Dart slowly replaced the telephone in its cradle. He glanced out the tiny, makeshift window. A black rectangle of night stared back at him. Then he picked up the telephone again and dialed. His hands shook slightly with a combination of exhaustion and rage. It was four o’clock in the morning but that made no difference.

The phone was answered on the first ring. “Special Agent in Charge Millard.”

“Millard? It’s Dart.”

“Dr. Dart.” Millard’s voice tightened audibly.

“What’s the status of the hunt for Crew?”

“Well, sir, while we’ve got a full complement of personnel still combing the area, we’re nevertheless growing increasingly confident he and his accomplice drowned in—”

Dart found anger overmastering his habitual control. “Of course you’re confident he drowned. Naturally. It’s what he wants you to think. Not only haven’t you caught him, but you let him waltz through the security perimeter of Los Alamos, run amok, and then waltz right out again.”

“Sir, that isn’t exactly the way it happened, and at the time I wasn’t—”

“Do you want to know what I equate that to, Agent Millard? I equate that to a wanted felon walking into police headquarters, helping himself to weapons and ammunition, flipping the police chief the bird, and then walking out again.”

This time, there was silence on the other end of the line. Dart realized he was already beyond the edge of control, but he didn’t care.

In the silence, Miles Cunningham, Dart’s personal assistant, stepped into the cubicle, placed a cup of coffee on the desk—hot, black—and stepped back out again. Dart had instructed him to cease his appeals for rest, instead ordering the man to bring him a fresh cup of coffee, every hour on the hour.

Despite the scalding temperature of the coffee, Dart took a huge swig, swallowed, cleared his throat. “Understand, Agent Millard,” he continued. “I’m not holding you fully responsible. As you started to imply, your command of the New Mexico operations is new. But I am holding you responsible for everything that happens, going forward.”

“Yes, sir.”

“N-Day is tomorrow. Every hour, every minute , the terrorist Gideon Crew continues to remain at large increases the threat to us all. I very much doubt he drowned in the Rio Grande. He’s still in the mountains somewhere. I want those mountains searched. End to end.”

“That search is ongoing, sir, and our people are doing their best. But the area in question covers more than ten thousand square miles of wilderness, and it’s extremely rugged.”

“Gideon Crew is on his own, without food or water. You’ve got hundreds of men and millions of dollars of high-tech equipment. I’m not interested in excuses, I’m interested in results.”

“Yes, sir. We’re going all out. In addition to the dogs and ground search teams, we’ve deployed a large arsenal of remote sensing and monitoring equipment. Choppers with infrared and pattern-recognition computer systems. Predator drones, equipped with the latest synthetic aperture foliage-penetrating radar. But at the risk of offending, I have to report they’ve found nothing, and the evidence really does suggest that Crew and the woman drowned in the river.”

“Have you found the bodies, Agent Millard?”