Daniel Suarez - Influx

“Shut up!” Looking past him, she realized her carelessness too late: The hallway had a bend. They were not visible to the barroom crowd.

I am an idiot.

“I need to talk to you, Agent Davis. I came a long way.”

“Who are you?”

“I told you. Would you please stop pointing that gun at me?”

She didn’t lower it. “You just told me you’re dead. I’m not in the mood for crazy today.”

“I’m not crazy. Look, if you want, we can head back to the bar—and you can arrest me. That’s what I want you to do. I need your protection, and I can prove who I am.”

“And who is that exactly?”

“Jon Grady. My memory is a bit spotty, but I was the physicist that Richard Louis Cotton supposedly blew up in New Jersey a few years ago.” He became suddenly grim-faced. “Along with six other people.”

“Edison, New Jersey.” She thought on it. “Chirality Labs.”

He looked momentarily confused then nodded. “Yes. That was my company.”

She made a buzzer sound. “ Nnnnnttt. Wrong. There were six victims total at the Chirality bombing, not seven.”

He looked confused again.

She kept the gun on him. “Let’s see ID.”

“I don’t have any identification. But I am Jon Grady. I can prove it, if you’ll let me.”

“You can’t be Mr. Grady because we found what was left of him and the others. So forgive me if I’m skeptical. Especially because I have a terrorist group out to kill me.”

“It’s not a terror group. It’s a rogue government agency. Something called the Federal Bureau of Technology Control.”

Davis felt the tension disappear. “Oh my God.” She lowered her gun. “Get the hell out of my face.”

“The BTC has been disappearing people like me for decades—inventors of disruptive technologies.”

“For decades. Well, they apparently didn’t disappear you because here you are accosting me outside the restroom.”

“I escaped. They were bringing me to their headquarters in Detroit to work on—”

“Detroit?”

He reacted to her dubious look. “Look, never mind that. I came here because I saw you on the news. Richard Cotton isn’t a terrorist; he’s an agent of the BTC.”

“Last warning. Leave. Now.”

“I need protection.”

“Fine. Call the Chicago police. You can explain it to them.”

“No.” The man looked panicked. “You’re the only one I trust. They said you thought you caught Cotton. That you had no idea what was really going on. That’s why I trust you.”

Davis had run into delusional paranoids before. Sadly, the legal system allowed a lot of them to run around on the streets because nobody wanted to pay for their treatment. And sensationalized criminal cases attracted them like moths to a porch light.

The man nodded as he apparently deciphered the look on her face. “Okay. All right. But do me this one favor.”

“No.” She started walking around him warily.

The man wrapped his hand around an empty beer glass on a shelf by the pay phone next to him. Then he let go and pointed at it. “My fingerprints are now on that glass. Run those prints. And”—at that point he tore a small clump of hair from his head, which he then dropped into the glass—“here’s a sample of my DNA.”

“Are we done?”

“Test them. I know it’ll take time, but once you confirm who I am, I need to talk with you. Meet me”—he thought hard for a few moments—“one week from today. I’ll be in the Mathematics Library at Columbia University in New York City—eight A.M. Sit at the table across from the big gray breaker box—near the windows.”

“That is not going to happen.”

“It will once you confirm who I am. Remember, eight A.M., one week from today. Columbia Mathematics Library. Next to the breaker box. Come alone.”

“No.”

He went to leave but turned around again, walking backward as he talked. “I know you don’t believe me, but I can tell you details about the Edison bombing scene that I couldn’t possibly know if I wasn’t there.”

“You mean like the wrong number of victims?”

“I’m telling you: there was a seventh person there that night. He was a Princeton physics professor who came to evaluate our work. Now that I think about it, I believe he worked for the BTC.” Grady looked frustrated as he tried to recall something. Then he glanced up. “A man named Kulkarni. Sameer Kulkarni. I haven’t seen him mentioned in the news accounts. He was there. Doctor Alcot recognized him.”

“Good-bye.” With that Davis left him behind.

The strange man disappeared into the barroom crowd as Davis headed toward the bar. Her team was there laughing over some just finished joke.

“I thought you guys were going to rescue me if I took too long.”

Falwell read the look on her face and snapped alert. “What happened?”

The rest of the team put their drinks down, suddenly serious.

She waved her hands. “Calm down. Just some nut job came up to me outside the ladies’ restroom—claimed he was one of Cotton’s dead victims.”

They all narrowed their eyes in confusion.

“Say what?”

Davis nodded. “He said the Winnowers are really a rogue federal agency. That it’s all a government conspiracy.”

Most of the team laughed and shook their heads.

But Falwell scanned the crowded bar. “Should we take the guy into custody?”

“We can’t grab every crazy person who comes out of the woodwork after I go on television.”

“Did he seem dangerous?”

“I wouldn’t have let him go if he did. Just a bit loony. Said there was a seventh victim at the Edison bombing scene—some Princeton physics professor.”

The others chuckled, but Falwell narrowed his eyes. “Dwight and I were going through the Edison bombing evidence last week with the prosecutor. Remember that extra tire print at the Edison scene—the one in the snow?”

She thought about it. “Yeah, but it didn’t lead to anything.”

“Right. The lab identified the tire—it was old. Not in common use nowadays.”

Dwight nodded. “175-SR14s.”

“Whatever—they were outdated. From the ’70s.”

Davis leaned against the bar. “So what’s your point? That matches the Winnower M.O. They used an old car.”

“Well, back then Dwight I spent a couple days reviewing traffic camera videos, and there was a car in the area that night that could have been old enough—a Mercedes.”

Dwight chimed in: “A 240D.”

“Right. A Mercedes 240D. And those came with SR14s as standard equipment.”

Davis nodded. “Okay. I remember, but the real owner was deceased.”

Falwell put his beer down. “Right. The family didn’t even know the car existed. And it hasn’t been seen since. Not even by license plate readers.”

She stared at him. “So what? The Winnowers used it to go to and from the attack, then dumped it.”

“That’s just it. The traffic cameras don’t have great resolution, but they showed only one person in the car—after the bombing.”

She contemplated this.

“Meaning in addition to Cotton and his group, someone else left the scene that night. And we never shared that detail about the extra tire tracks with the media.”

“You’re starting to worry me, Thomas.”

“I’m not saying the guy you saw is legit. I’m saying we may have a security leak in the federal prosecutor’s office.”

That got her attention. “Mistrial?”

“Cotton might be cooperating, but then again he might have other plans.”

Davis stared at Falwell for a few moments. And then she pushed through the crowd, headed back toward the restrooms. In the hallway just outside, she took a cocktail napkin and carefully retrieved the empty bar glass by the phone, inserting her fingers inside it, tipping it up onto her hand. She caught the lock of hair with her other hand as it fell out.