Джеймс Паттерсон - Target - Alex Cross

“Load him,” she said. “But I want someone with him in case he remembers anything else. He’s the only one who’s come in direct contact with one of the assassins.”

“You think there were two?” Sampson said.

“Someone shot the president upstairs in the arena. A blond man with weird blue eyes cut the lights. Mr. Leonard surprised that person and got beaten.”

“I’ll go with him,” Agent Crane said.

“No,” Reamer said. “I need you here. The Secret Service may not be in charge, but we are involved.”

“I’ll go,” Sampson said.

“I need you here,” Bree said. “I’ll get a uniform to go with him.”

“I’m off,” Reamer said as he turned away. “I’m still looking for an eyewitness to the shooting.”

In the conference room off the hangar at Joint Base Andrews, I looked at the president and the country’s leaders and saw them all studying me.

I said, “If I had unlimited resources, I’d bring in the best investigative coordinator the FBI has to oversee four distinct teams. One team should focus on forensics and generating swift, accurate test results. The second team should be composed of the Bureau’s best investigators dispatched into the field, starting at the three assassination sites. Intelligence analysts from the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Homeland Security should staff the third team and should have an eye on every piece of evidence that comes in.”

President Larkin nodded. “And the fourth?”

I said the last team should be composed of a smaller group of elite investigators, analysts, and forensics specialists assigned to look at the crimes from a loftier perspective. What was the purpose of the assassinations? Why did they have to happen? Whom and what did they benefit? Whom and what did they destroy?

Mahoney agreed with my rough design but added, “That fourth team should also be charged with identifying and arresting the person or persons in government who helped coordinate the attacks.”

There was dead silence in the room.

Finally, Director Sanford said, “You believe there’s a traitor, Agent Mahoney?”

“Without question, sir,” Ned said. “Probably several.”

An older man with a professor’s manner whom I later learned was NSA director John Parkes leaned forward and said, “Or whoever is behind this has completely compromised our cybersecurity system. You’ll want to consider this as well.”

Parkes typed on a laptop. A screen on the wall flashed, then showed a map of the world with continents and countries connected by strands, streams, and rivers of tiny shimmering lights.

Parkes said, “You’re looking at the data flow on the dark web forty-eight hours ago, then twenty-four hours ago, and now.”

The lines of sparkling light ebbed and flowed. Roughly thirty-six hours ago, a big dense river of data connecting the United States, Russia, North Korea, and China had appeared, then widened and deepened, building toward a flood.

Linda Johnson, the Senate minority leader, said, “Are we looking at the start of World War Three?”

Before anyone could reply, Director Sanford looked at his phone, said, “Abbie Bowman’s assassin was killed ten minutes ago. New York rookie cop shot him. He was carrying perfect forgeries of Treasury Department IDs. They’re fingerprinting him and checking dental records as we speak.”

Mahoney said, “That’s a big break.”

“Here’s another,” Felix White, the CIA director, said, gesturing at his laptop. “We’ve picked up satellite chatter, Russian satellite chatter. Three-quarters of the Kremlin think the motherland is behind the assassinations.”

“Maybe it is,” I said. “Maybe through Viktor Kasimov.”

“Son of a bitch,” White said, and he threw a pencil on the table. “We keep an eye on Kasimov when he’s not here assaulting women. We were alerted this morning that his pilot filed flight plans to London. Kasimov and his crew took off around nine.”

“Right before the shooting started,” General Hayes said.

President Larkin said, “Have our agents waiting for Mr. Kasimov at Heathrow. I don’t give a damn about his diplomatic status. The second he touches down, grab him and put him on a return flight in handcuffs and ankle irons.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” the CIA director said. “With great pleasure, Mr. President.”

There was a soft knock at the door. It opened, and a flustered air force captain said, “Excuse me. There’s a Keith Karl Rawlins, an FBI contractor, who just landed from Quantico. He says he might have figured out who shot the president.”

Keith Karl Rawlins, Aka Krazy Kat, entered the room a few moments later. Rawlins usually worked in a subbasement at Quantico; he was a very highly paid contractor who offered his unique expertise exclusively to the FBI.

Rawlins had dual PhDs from Stanford, one in physics and a second in electrical engineering. In his spare time, he was working on a third doctorate from MIT in computer science.

The last time I’d seen him, he’d cut his hair in a Mohawk and dyed it flaming red. That was all gone now. He’d shaved his head, grown a beard and braided it, and he wore camo fatigues, sandals, and two new nose rings.

You could tell from the expressions on the faces of the people in the room that they didn’t know what to make of Rawlins, even if Director Sanford had described him before he came in as “possibly the smartest person on earth when it comes to harnessing data.”

Rawlins nodded to me, said, “Good idea, Dr. Cross.”

“It worked?”

“Well enough,” Rawlins said as he got out a laptop and started typing.

“What are you talking about?” President Larkin demanded.

“Dr. Cross asked if I could harvest pictures and videos from cell phones in the DC arena being posted on social media. The challenge was putting it all together in a meaningful way. But even that wasn’t like learning to speak Cantonese in ten days.”

Rawlins hit a button and looked up at the screen on the wall. The NSA director’s map showing the ballooning dark-web activity among the U.S., Russia, North Korea, and China vanished.

In its place we saw a digital, somewhat disjointed, almost 3-D rendition of the inside of the DC arena and the crowd of excited youngsters as President Hobbs came down the rope line surrounded by Secret Service agents.

Rawlins slowed it after Hobbs took a selfie with a young boy, then spun the view around so we were looking over shoulders and around heads at the president, who shook hands and talked with three tween girls.

A grinning blond man, camera left, reached over the girls to shake President Hobbs’s hand. Hobbs smiled at the man, who wore a cleric’s collar and tinted glasses.

President Hobbs released the blond man’s hand, moved toward the next person, and then suddenly fell backward into his bodyguard. The blond man’s smile turned puzzled and then alarmed before the screen froze.

“I didn’t see a gun,” Chief Justice Watts said.

“Swing us around,” I said. “Let’s see him from the front.” Rawlins gave his computer an order. The media swept back in time and went around again before zooming in on the blond man reaching for the president’s hand. We watched the same events unfold: the handshake, the release, President Hobbs stumbling.

“I still don’t see it,” the chief justice said.

“I think I did,” I said. “Take us in super-slo-mo. Watch his right hand, his loose shirt cuff, and the belly of his coat sleeve right after the president ends the handshake.”

They all leaned forward as Rawlins rewound the footage and stayed on President Hobbs, still smiling as he released the blond man’s hand. When their fingers had drifted ten, maybe twelve inches apart, the minister arched his hand backward as if to wave. The belly of his sleeve billowed. The cuff distorted.