Douglas Preston - Relic

“Mr. Pendergast is up here from the Deep South to give us a little help here and there when we need it. I’m running the show now. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” said Ippolito. He reviewed the procedures again while Coffey sat in an operator’s chair, twirling a set of earphones around his finger. D’Agosta wandered around the room, looking at the control panels. Pendergast listened carefully to Ippolito, looking for all the [257] world as if he hadn’t heard the speech before. When the Security Director finished, Coffey leaned back in his chair.

“Ippolito, you got four holes in this perimeter.” He paused for effect. “I want three of them plugged. I want only one way in and one way out.”

“Mr. Coffey, fire regulations require—”

Coffey waved his hand. “Let me worry about the fire regulations. You worry about the holes in your security net. The more holes we have, the more trouble we have waiting to happen.”

“That, I’m afraid, is precisely the wrong way to go,” Pendergast said. “If you close these three exits, the guests are going to be locked in. Should something happen, there would be only one way out.”

Coffey spread his hands in a gesture of frustration. “Hey, Pendergast, that’s just the point. You can’t have it both ways. Either you have a secure perimeter or you don’t. Anyway, according to Ippolito here, each security door has an emergency override. So what’s your problem?”

“That’s right,” said Ippolito, “the doors can be opened using the keypad in an emergency. All you need is the code.”

“May I ask what controls the keypad?” asked Pendergast.

“The central computer. The computer room is right next door.”

“And if the computer goes down?”

“We’ve got backup systems, with redundancies. Those panels on the far wall control the backup system. Each panel has its own alarm.”

“That’s another problem,” said Pendergast quietly.

Coffey exhaled loudly and spoke to the ceiling. “He still doesn’t like it.”

“I counted eighty-one alarm lights on that bank of controls alone,” Pendergast continued, oblivious to Coffey. “In a true emergency, with multiple system failure, [258] most of those alarms would be blinking. No team of operators could deal with that.”

“Pendergast, you’re slowing me down,” Coffey snapped. “Ippolito and I are going to work out these details, okay? We’ve got less than eight hours to show-time.”

“Has the system been tested?” Pendergast asked.

“We test it every week,” said Ippolito.

“What I mean is, has it ever been put to the test in a real situation? An attempted theft, perhaps?”

“No, and I hope it never is.”

“I regret to say it,” said Pendergast, “but this strikes me as a system designed for failure. I’m a great advocate of progress, Mr. Ippolito, but I’d strongly recommend an old-fashioned approach here. In fact, during the party, I would disable the whole system. Just turn it off. It’s too complex, and I wouldn’t trust it in an emergency. What we need is a proven approach, something we are all familiar with. Foot patrols, armed guards at every ingress and egress point. I’m sure Lieutenant D’Agosta will provide us with extra men.”

“Just say the word,” said D’Agosta.

“The word is no.” Coffey began to laugh. “Jesus, he wants to disable the system right at the moment when it’s most needed!”

“I must register my strongest objections to this plan,” said Pendergast.

“Well, you can write up your objections, then,” said Coffey, “and send them by slow boat to your New Orleans office. Sounds to me like Ippolito here’s got things pretty well under control.”

“Thank you,” Ippolito said, swelling visibly.

“This is a very unusual and dangerous situation,” Pendergast continued. “It’s not the time to rely on a complex and unproven system.”

“Pendergast,” said Coffey, “I’ve heard enough. Why don’t you just head down to your office and eat that catfish sandwich your wife put in your lunchbox?”

[259] D’Agosta was startled at the change that came over Pendergast’s face. Instinctively, Coffey took a step back. But Pendergast simply turned on his heel and walked out the door. D’Agosta moved to follow him.

“Where’re you going?” asked Coffey. “You better stick around while we work out the details.”

“I agree with Pendergast,” D’Agosta said. “This isn’t the time to start messing with video games. You’re talking about people’s lives here.”

“Listen up, D’Agosta. We’re the big boys, we’re the FBI. We’re not interested in the opinions of a traffic cop from Queens.”

D’Agosta looked at Coffey’s sweaty red face. “You’re a disgrace to law enforcement,” he said.

Coffey blinked. “Thank you, and I will note that gratuitous insult in my report to my good friend, Chief of Police Horlocker, who will no doubt take appropriate action.”

“You can add this one, then: you’re a sack of shit.”

Coffey threw back his head and laughed. “I love people who slit their own throats and save you the trouble. It’s already occurred to me that this case is much too important to have a lieutenant acting as NYPD liaison. You’re gonna be pulled off this case in twenty-four hours, D’Agosta. Did you know that? I wasn’t going to tell you until after the party-didn’t want to spoil your fun—but I guess now’s a good time after all. So put your last afternoon on this case to good use. And we’ll see you at the four o’clock briefing. Be on time.”

D’Agosta said nothing. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised.

= 37 =

An explosive sneeze rattled beakers and dislodged dried plant specimens in the Museum’s auxiliary botanical lab.

“Sorry,” Kawakita apologized, sniffling. “Allergies.”

“Here’s a tissue,” Margo said, reaching into her carryall. She’d been listening to Kawakita’s description of his genetic Extrapolator program. It’s brilliant , she thought. But I’ll bet Frock supplied most of the theory behind it .

“Anyway,” Kawakita said, “you start with gene sequences from two animals or plants. That’s the input. What you get is an extrapolation—a guess from the computer of what the evolutionary link is between the two species. The program automatically matches up pieces of DNA, compares like sequences, then figures out what the extrapolated form might be. As an example, I’ll do a test run with chimp and human DNA. What we should get is a description of some intermediate form.”

[261] “The Missing Link,” Margo nodded. “Don’t tell me it draws a picture of the animal, too?”

“No!” Kawakita laughed. “I’d get a Nobel Prize if it could do that. What it does instead is give you a list of morphological and behavioral features the animal or plant might possess. Not definite, but probable. And not a complete list, of course. You’ll see when we finish this run.”

He typed a series of instructions, and data began flowing across the computer screen: a rapid, undulating progression of zeros and ones. “You can turn this off,” said Kawakita. “But I like to watch the data download from the gene sequencer. It’s as beautiful as watching a river. A trout stream, preferably.”

In about five minutes the data stopped and the screen went blank, glowing a soft blue. Then the face of Moe, from the Three Stooges, appeared, saying through the computer’s speaker: “I’m thinking, I’m thinking, but nothing’s happening!”

“That means the program’s running,” Kawakita said, chuckling at his joke. “It can take up to an hour, depending on how far apart the two species are.”

A message popped on the screen: