Daniel Suarez - Daemon

Tilly glanced at the chairman with some exasperation, then turned back to Merritt. “This was your sole reason for entering the mansion?”

Merritt looked up. “Yes.”

Tilly flipped through the pages of Merritt’s reports.

There was silence for a moment.

The chairman looked gravely at Merritt. “Agent Merritt, I can only imagine the horror you’ve been through, but because of your actions the mansion and all the outbuildings burned to the ground—destroying evidence that might have helped to locate and convict Sebeck’s accomplices.”

Merritt knew this all too well. He thought of little else nowadays.

The chairman looked down his glasses. “Let’s bring this fish to the boat, shall we?” He flipped through his papers, then looked up. “You say you have very little recollection of how you survived the fire. You write in your report”—he lifted his glasses and read from the page—“‘my tac-suit must have kept me afloat in the water and turned me upright.’” The chairman lowered the page. “And yet, you were found a hundred feet east of the location you indicated as the mouth of the pit. It might be very hard, Mr. Merritt, but can you recall anything—absolutely anything—of the layout or contents of the cellars before you lost consciousness?”

Merritt stared at the floor. Not a night went by that he didn’t recall fleeting images of terror from that night. The trapdoor above him engulfed in flames. Flaming wood falling down upon him. The air in his gas mask growing warmer—suffocating him slowly. The sudden explosion. The cinderblock wall blasting apart near him, sending fragments into his leg. A rush of water. Falling as it flowed out into a room of fire. The flood of water roiling around him. Scalding steam. Like a scene of hell itself. Crawling. Then the water sweeping him—converging with another stream and sucking him across the center of the inferno as he struggled for air. The rush of water. Tumbling down steps into the wine cellar and landing in the pool gathered there at the lowest spot in the house.

He didn’t regain consciousness until four days later in the burn unit at USC. Months of agony followed. His wife’s loving eyes. The faces of his girls. Faces he thought he’d never see again. Faces that gave him the courage to face each agonizing day.

He had no recollection of floor plans or equipment or schematics. It was all just a sea of fire.

He shook his head slowly.

The senators looked at each other. The chairman nodded. “Well, Agent Merritt, I must tell you this is not easy. Six men died under your command, and the entire estate was lost—by your own admission—due to your attempts to penetrate the server room—contrary to orders. This committee has no choice but to recommend to Director Bennett that you be put on a disciplinary suspension, pending final judgment in this matter.”

The words fell on Merritt like slabs of rock. It felt like the last ounce of breath had been crushed out of him. He couldn’t speak.

The chairman picked up his gavel and rapped it twice with an echoing clack-clack . “This hearing is adjourned.”

Merritt limped down the steps of the Capitol, thinking hard on the changes in his life since that October night. But today was a beautiful spring day. The cherry trees blossomed along the Potomac. He gazed across the National Mall at the monuments built by the valiant generations that came before him.

All he ever wanted was to serve his country.

But he’d failed. And all of the conspirators except Sebeck had escaped, possibly because of Merritt’s foolhardiness. His career was over.

He limped onward, along a landscaped sidewalk beneath budding oak trees. Men and women in uniform or suits scurried this way and that in groups of two or three, clutching briefcases and talking earnestly. Merritt needed time to think. Time to figure out what he was going to say to his wife.

He eased onto a park bench and gazed out at the National Mall. The business of government was carrying on without him.

Merritt was still lost in thought as a nondescript man in a nondescript suit approached and sat down on the far end of the bench. Merritt bristled slightly. All he wanted was to be left alone.

The man spoke without looking at him. “The house didn’t hold any important information, Agent Merritt.”

Merritt stopped short and turned to glare at the man—a federal bureaucrat type, late twenties. The kind of person you forgot even while you were looking at him. Cheap gray suit, unkempt brown hair, lime green shirt with a striped tie, leatherette attaché case. Merritt saw a federal ID badge hanging off the man’s lapel:

Littleton, Leonard

General Services Administration

Merritt finally looked up into the man’s eyes, narrowing his own. “What did you say to me?”

“I said: Sobol’s house was a trap. It didn’t hold anything important.”

“Yeah? What the hell do you know about it?”

Littleton’s reaction surprised Merritt. He didn’t shrink back. He didn’t even seem surprised.

“I know a lot. In fact, I know more than any man alive.”

Merritt frowned. There was something about those eyes. The nose. He’d seen this man before. But where?

Littleton sensed that Merritt was trying to place him. “No, you don’t know me, Agent Merritt. But you know of me.”

Merritt studied Littleton’s face.

Littleton zipped open his ratty attaché, producing a small notebook computer about the size of a thin hardcover book. Littleton dropped his attaché without concern and flipped open the computer.

It turned out to be a portable DVD player.

“Who are you? A reporter?”

Littleton ignored him and instead hit the PLAY button, then turned the screen to face Merritt.

In a moment Merritt was taken back to that night many months ago. The video screen showed him standing in Sobol’s entertainment room, eyes bloody, face blistered, nose bleeding—a smoking shotgun in his hand. It was an isometric perspective, looking down on him from near the ceiling. A slightly grainy image, as though from a security camera.

On the screen Merritt was reloading. He looked up and shouted, “I’m going to shut you down, Sobol!” And that voice behind him—but the voice didn’t register at all on the video. It was as if the Merritt on the DVD screen was a schizophrenic—hearing voices. Merritt saw himself turn and fire point-blank into the wall behind him.

The real Merritt shook himself out of his stunned silence and dropped his cane with a clatter onto the sidewalk. He leaned over to Littleton, whispering urgently. “Where did you get this?”

Littleton snapped the DVD player closed. “From the source.”

“What source?”

“The Daemon.”

Littleton leaned down to pick up Merritt’s cane while Merritt groped for words.

It suddenly dawned on Merritt. He pointed a tentative finger. “You’re Jon Ross.”

He extended the cane to Merritt. “I once was, yes. That seems like ages ago now.”

“The FBI’s Most Wanted man.”

“I suppose I’m manna from heaven to you. You could quickly get yourself reinstated if you turned me in. Maybe even decorated—which, on a personal note, I think is overdue.”

Merritt felt reflexively for his shoulder holster—then remembered that he didn’t have a weapon on him. He had come for a congressional committee hearing. It would have created an unnecessary hassle going through the metal detectors with a gun.

Merritt smiled calmly. “What’s to stop me from turning you in?”

“My innocence. And the fact that you’re a man who loves this country.”

Merritt tried to resist the appeal to his wounded patriotism. Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.