Glenn Cooper - Library of the Dead aka Secret of the Seventh Son

Their apartment was tiny, with minimal light and no views, but they’d rather have a garret in Georgetown than a nicer place in a soulless suburb. She had finally fallen asleep at 2:00 A.M., but as soon as she awoke, she turned the TV back on, saw the crawl on the screen informing that her father remained at large and began crying again.

“Do you want regular or herbal?” he called out.

He heard sobs. “Herbal.”

He brought her a cup and sat beside her on the bed.

“I tried calling him again,” she said weakly.

“Home and cell?”

“Voice mail.” He was still in his boxers. “You’ll be late,” she said.

“I’m calling in.”

“Why?”

“To stay with you. I’m not leaving you alone.”

She wrapped her arms around him, and his shoulder got wet from her tears. “Why are you so good to me?”

“What kind of question is that?”

His cell phone began to vibrate and move on the bed table. He lunged for it before it fell off the edge. It read: UNKNOWN CALLER.

A woman was asking for him.

“This is Greg.”

“It’s Nancy Lipinski, Greg. We met at Will’s apartment.”

“Jesus! Nancy! Hello!” He whispered to Laura, “Your dad’s partner,” and she sat bolt upright. “How’d you get my number?”

“I work for the FBI, Greg.”

“Yeah. I see that,” he said. “Are you calling about Will?”

“Yes. Is Laura there?”

“She is. Why’d you call me?”

“Laura’s phones could be tapped.”

“Christ, what did Will do?”

“Am I talking to his daughter’s boyfriend or a journalist?” Nancy asked.

He hesitated then looked at Laura’s pleading eyes. “Her boyfriend.”

“He’s in a lot of trouble but he didn’t do anything wrong. We got too close to something and he’s not backing down. I need you to promise me you’ll keep this confidential.”

“Okay,” he assured her, “you’re off the record.”

“Put Laura on. He wants her to know he’s all right.”

The Realtor was a platinum blonde entering her Botox years. She talked a mile a minute and bonded with Kerry in an instant. The two of them were yapping away in the front of the big Mercedes while Mark sat in the back, anesthetized, his legs straddling his briefcase.

He was aware on some level that there was chatter going on and that they were passing cars and people and shops along Santa Monica Boulevard, that it was cool in the sedan and hot and sunny outside the tinted windows, and that there were two clashing perfumes in the cabin and a metallic taste in his mouth and a throbbing behind his eyes, but each sense existed in its own dimension. He was no more than a series of unlinked sensors. His mind wasn’t processing and integrating the data. He was somewhere else, lost.

Kerry’s squeal penetrated his veil. “Mark! Gina’s asking you a question!”

“Sorry, what?”

The Realtor said, “I was asking about your time frame.”

“Soon,” he said softly. “Very soon.”

“That’s great! We can really use that as leverage. And you said you wanted a cash deal?”

“That’s right.”

“I mean, you guys are so totally with it!” the Realtor gushed. “I get out-of-towners coming in and all they want to see is Beverly Hills or Bel Air or Brentwood-the three B’s-but you guys are so smart and focused. I mean, did you know that the Hollywood Hills in your price range with your aggressive attitude is the single best luxury value in L.A.? We’re going to have a great afternoon!”

He didn’t respond and the two women picked up their conversation and left him alone again. When the car began its climb into the mountain range, he felt his back pushing against the seat. He closed his eyes and was in the rear of his father’s car, driving into the White Mountains to their rental cabin in Pinkham Notch. His father and mother were droning on about something or other and he was on his own with the numbers swimming in his head, trying to arrange them into a theorem proof. When the theorem yielded and QED started flashing in his mind, he was suffused with a gush of joy he wished he could summon now.

The Mercedes snaked up narrow winding roads and houses hidden by gates and hedges. It came to a stop behind one of the ubiquitous landscaping trucks they had been passing, and when Mark opened his door he was blasted by furnace heat and the roar of a leaf blower. Kerry sprinted to the gate clutching a listing sheet, looking like a skipping child.

The Realtor told Mark, “She is so cute! You guys better pace yourself. I’ve got a lot of appointments lined up!”

Frazier was motoring on black coffee and adrenaline, and if he could persuade someone in medical to give him amphetamines, he’d throw those on board too. The facility was in normal day-mode, filled to the gills with employees doing their regular geek jobs. He, on the other hand, was doing something irregular and unprecedented, juggling an internal investigation and three field ops simultaneously while briefing his masters in Washington every few minutes.

One field team was in New York, pursuing the Will Piper angle; the second was in Los Angeles, in if-and-when mode, in case Mark Shackleton materialized in California; the third in Las Vegas, working the Nelson Elder situation. All his men were ex-military. Some had served in CIA field ops in the Middle East. All of them were effective sons of bitches, performing coolly despite the impotent panic in the Pentagon.

He was feeling better about Rebecca Rosenberg, although her eating habits disgusted him and spoke to a lack of personal discipline. He watched her gorge on nougat and caramel all night, and she seemed to be getting lumpier in front of his eyes. Her trash bin was filled with wrappers and she was ugly as hell, but he was concluding with grudging admiration that she wasn’t just a geek supervisor but a damned good geek in her own right. She was breaking through Shackleton’s defenses stone by stone and laying it all out in the open.

“Look at this,” she said when he swung by. “More Peter Benedict stuff. He used to have a credit line under that name at the Constellation Casino, and there’s a Peter Benedict Visa card.”

“Any interesting charges on it?”

“He hardly used it but there were a few transactions with the Writers Guild of America. For screenplay registration or something.”

“Jesus, a fucking writer. Can you get ahold of them?”

“You mean hack them off their server? Yeah, probably. There’s something else.”

“Hit me.”

“A month ago he set up an account in the Caymans. It got kicked off with a $5 million wire transfer from Nelson G. Elder.”

“Fuck me.” He needed to call DeCorso, the Las Vegas team leader.

“He’s probably the best programmer the lab’s ever had,” she marveled. “A wolf watching the chickens.”

“How’d he get the data out?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Every employee’s going to have to be rescreened,” he said. “Forensically.”

“I know.”

“Including you.”

She gave him a sour-ball look and handed him a dollar. “Be a dear and get me another candy bar.”

“After I call the goddamn Secretary.”

Harris Lester, Secretary of the Navy, had an office suite at the Pentagon deep in C Ring, about as far removed from fresh air as any of the complex’s interior spaces. His path to the highly political position was fairly typical-navy service during Vietnam, years in the Maryland Legislature, three-term congressman, Senior VP Northrop Grumman Mission Systems Division, and finally, a year and a half ago, appointment by the newly elected President as Secretary of the Navy.

He was a precise, risk-averse type of bureaucrat who disdained surprises in his personal and professional life, so he reacted with a mix of shock and irritation when his boss, the Secretary of Defense, personally briefed him on Area 51.