Marcus Sakey - Brilliance

“Well, we’re not sleeping.”

“Sorry about that.”

“S’okay. Just busting your balls. So. The Monocle.”

“The VCS. That woman under the table.”

“Juliet Lynch.”

“Right. I was looking at that again, and it hit me, that could have been Natalie. And the kid, it could have been Todd.”

“Shit. Yeah.”

“What are we doing? All of us, I mean. Ever since I visited the academy, I haven’t been able to shake it.”

“Shake what?”

“The feeling that things are about to get a lot worse. That we’re on the brink, and nobody seems to want to step away from it. All these horrors we’re creating. The academies, the Monocle, they’re the same. Flip sides of the same horror. And meanwhile, I’ve got two kids.”

“And mentally you’re putting Kate in an academy and Todd at the Monocle.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t.”

“I know.”

“All of this stuff, it’s a mess. I know. We all know. Not just DAR. The whole country, the whole world knows it. We’ve been on this collision course for thirty years.”

“So why aren’t we swerving?”

“Got me, boss. That’s above my pay grade.”

Cooper made a sound that wasn’t a laugh. “Yeah.”

“You know what I do, these thoughts hit me?”

“What?”

“I pour myself a stiff drink.”

“Check.”

“Good. Listen, I know you want to take this on. But all we can do is our job, one day at a time. I mean, at least we’re in the game. We’re trying . The rest of the world is just hoping things work out okay.”

“He’s out there right now. Somewhere. John Smith. He’s out there, and he’s planning an attack.”

“You know what he’s not doing?”

“Huh?”

“He’s not calling his best friend to agonize over whether the world is going to shit. That’s how I know we’re the good guys.”

“Yeah.”

“Get some sleep. For all we know, Smith’s attack is coming tomorrow.”

“You’re right. Thanks. Sorry for the hour.”

“No worries. And Coop?”

“Yeah?”

“Finish that drink.”

He made himself jog the next morning as planned. Cooper did five miles twice a week, hit the gym opposite days, and sometimes enjoyed it, though not today. The weather was nice enough, warmish and bright for a change, and last night’s insomnia cocktails didn’t affect him as much as he’d feared. But part of the pleasure of exercise was losing himself in the physical, offlining the analytical side of his brain for a while and just concentrating on his breathing and the rhythm of his muscles and the beat through his headphones. This morning, unfortunately, John Smith jogged with him. The length of the run, all Cooper could think about was something he had said yesterday. He may be a sociopath, but he’s also a chess master. The strategic equivalent of Einstein.

The trick was to figure out how to beat a man like that. Cooper was the top agent at arguably the most powerful organization in the country. He had enormous resources at his disposal; he could access secret data, tap phone lines, command police and federal agencies alike, deploy black-ops teams on American soil. If an abnorm had been designated a target, Cooper could kill without legal consequence—and had, on thirteen occasions. He could, in short, bring incredible force to bear…but only if he knew where to focus it.

His opponent, meanwhile, could attack wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Not only that, but even a partial success was a victory for him, where for Cooper, anything less than complete triumph was a failure. Prevent half the casualties of a suicide bomber, and you still had a suicide bomber and a lot of dead bodies.

Brooding on it made a five-mile run seem like ten. And in one of those charming little ironic moments, when he passed the convenience store at the end of his block, he saw that the locked security roll-door had been freshly graffitied: I AM JOHN SMITH.

What you are, pal, is an asshole with a can of spray paint. And man, do I wish I’d rounded the corner as you were finishing up.

Inside his apartment, he peeled off the sweaty T-shirt, caught a whiff—yow, laundry time—and headed for the shower. When he was done he flipped on CNN as he toweled his hair.

“—a significant increase in the so-called Unrest Index, to 7.7, the highest level since the measurement’s introduction. The jump is largely attributed to yesterday’s bombing in Washington, DC, which claimed—”

In the closet he chose a soft gray suit with a pale blue shirt, open collared. He checked the load on the Beretta—it was full, of course, but army habits died hard—and then clipped the holster to his hip.

“—controversial billionaire Erik Epstein, whose New Canaan Holdfast in Wyoming has grown to seventy-five thousand residents, most of them gifted and their families. The twenty-three-thousand-square-mile area, purchased by Epstein through numerous holding companies, has become a polarizing factor not only in the state, where New Canaan’s occupants comprise nearly fifteen percent of Wyoming’s total population, but in the country at large with the introduction of House Joint Resolution 93, a measure to allow the region to secede as a sovereign nation—”

Breakfast. Cooper broke three eggs in a bowl, beat them frothy, and dumped them in a nonstick pan. He toasted a couple of slices of sourdough, poured a coffee big enough to dock a yacht, slid the scrambled eggs on the toast, and squirted sriracha on top of that.

“—culminating in an opening ceremony at two o’clock this afternoon. Developed to be impregnable to individuals like Mr. Epstein, the new Leon Walras Exchange will function as an auction house. Instead of the former NYSE’s real-time trading of every stock, company shares will be offered in daily auctions with descending bid prices. Final prices will be locked in according to the average at which they are purchased, thus removing the possibility—”

He’d overcooked the eggs a little, but the hot sauce made up for it. Hot sauce made up for most everything. Cooper finished the last bites, licked his fingers, and glanced at the clock. Just after seven in the morning. Even with traffic, he’d be at headquarters early enough to review the highlights of the phone taps before the weekly target status review meeting.

Cooper set his plate in the sink, dusted off his hands, and headed out. He skipped the elevator and took the three flights to the ground. It really was a lovely morning. The air was warm and rich with that ionized smell he usually associated with thunderstorms, but the horizon was clear and bright. As he reached the car, his phone rang. Natalie. Huh. His ex-wife was many things—sincere, clever, a wonderful mother—but “morning person” was not on that list. “Hey, I didn’t know you could manage to dial a phone at this hour.”

“Nick,” she said, and at the sound of her voice and the sob that cut her off, all light vanished from the morning sky.

And that was before he heard what came next.

Cooper’s apartment in Georgetown was eight miles from the house he and Natalie had shared in Del Ray. Like most DC drives, it had moments of grandeur set among long stretches of drab ugliness, all divided into agonizingly short blocks with lights at every damn one. Add city traffic, and the eight miles usually took twenty-five minutes, thirty if you skipped 395 and stuck to surface streets.

Cooper made it in twelve.

He opted for the Jefferson Davis, a distinctly unpretty street, but four lanes each direction. The transponder in his Charger broadcast a signal that marked him as a gas man to every cop within a mile, and so he treated speed limits as jokes and red lights as suggestions. When a cascade of brake lights bloomed before him, he downshifted to third and bumped the car up on the median.