Blood List (15 page)

Paul grunted as his ribs shifted. "I told you yesterday that was a CIA job." He leaned in a little, almost too close to her. "Let me educate you a little about my industry." He tried not to sound patronizing. "There are three types of contracts. Dead, looks-like-an-accident dead, and CIA dead. Most CIA jobs are just another version of the first two types, but sometimes they insist on a certain method. Daniel Burnhardt was one of those cases." Jerri opened her mouth to ask a question, but he kept talking. "I don't know why, I don't ask why, and Langley doesn't tell why.

"Besides," he said, standing, "I didn't choke the life out him with my bare hands. If it makes you feel better, I wore gloves. It doesn't make me feel any better about it, but if it helps you at all, more power to you. I'll let you get back to your work."

Paul headed back up to his seat. He noted with passing interest the look of pure venom on Martin Palomini's face.
What did I do now?
Paul wondered.

He sat back down, picked up the laptop he'd been assigned, and went back to work. Click-drag-drop, click-drag-drop.

*   *   *

January 8th, 5:52 PM EST; Dulles International Airport; Washington, D.C.

Just short of six PM Eastern Standard Time, the plane landed at Dulles International Airport. The team exited down a portable flight of stairs to twin government sedans waiting on the tarmac. The vehicles were stereotypically black, with tinted windows and "US GOV" on the license plates.

Gene, Doug, and Paul loaded into one while Marty, Jerri, and Carl took the other. They were awash with new car smell and looked to Doug like they had never been ridden in. The drivers were non-descript Bureau employees, paid to drive safely, observe and react to everything going on outside the vehicle, and ignore everything inside.

Doug continued to click-drag-drop from the passenger seat as the cars started rolling. Even after hours of nausea on a plane, somehow when he worked in a car it didn't bother his stomach. Carl had confiscated Paul's laptop before they left the plane, and Paul looked down at Gene's laptop sitting at his feet. "Not going to work on the way?" Paul asked.

"No," Gene said. "I'm fine in a plane. In a car it just gives me a headache." He favored Paul with a puzzled look. "Why didn't you pack a bag?"

"I'm not going to reveal where I have bags to pack, Gene. I'll buy what I need here or have one of your guys do it," Paul said. "Speaking of which, it's probably not a good idea for security at the FBI building to find this." A small pistol appeared in his hand from out of nowhere.

Gene had frisked Paul before they'd entered the airport and was positive he was clean. Paul held the gun out to him.

Gene took the pistol while Doug stared with his mouth open.

"Paul, this is completely unacceptable. Surrender all other weapons on your person, immediately, or the deal is off and we're remanding you to custody. Now." Unseen by the others, Doug slid his pistol out of his holster and fingered the safety.

Paul smiled sheepishly. "That was it. Frisk me. I have no other weapons." They pulled over the car and Doug frisked him, with as much attention to detail as he'd ever put into a search. He was rougher this time and took his embarrassment out on Renner.

"One more stunt," Gene said, "and you're done. One. Got it?"

"I got it," Paul said. Doug gave Gene an I-told-you-so look. They got back into the car.

"How did you get this through airport security?" Gene asked.

"Lots of Special Forces troops are trained to do it. Sometimes with much bigger guns."

"Is that where you learned to do it?" Doug asked.

Paul looked out the window and smiled. "Something like that."

"Your prints don't match any military records," Gene said.

Paul's smile widened. "True."

Forty-five minutes later at the J. Edgar Hoover building, Paul Renner experienced the single most thorough frisking he'd ever been through. It didn't include a cavity search, but he still felt that the guard owed him dinner and flowers by the time he finished. He was then subjected to a metal detector and an X-ray. "I suppose I have you to thank for the extra attention," he said as he walked up to Gene.

"Absolutely." Gene's tone was businesslike, a Special Agent in Charge at the FBI Headquarters sort of voice. He gestured for Paul to follow him down one of the warrens leading into the massive complex and started off on his crutches. "The Assistant Deputy Director who approved our arrangement wants to make sure a confirmed freelance assassin isn't roaming his halls armed. That's what the ankle bracelet is for.

"In addition, the guards have all been issued your photo, and the badge you're wearing gives people permission to shoot first and ask questions later. It's equipped with RFID and a tiny heart rate monitor, just to make sure you keep it exactly where it's supposed to be, so we know where you are at all times. Removing either it or the ankle bracelet will trigger an immediate manhunt, and security won't be concerned with sparing your life.

 "You will be escorted by a member of my team at all times, though you shouldn't have any reason to leave our section. As long as you're in this building, the only thing you're free to do is exactly what you're told. Anything else will be viewed as a hostile action and will be responded to in kind." Gene stopped and looked him in the eyes. "Have I made myself perfectly clear?"

"Crystal," Paul said. He wasn't sure he believed all that, but he didn't want to test it.

"Good, because I meant every word," Gene said. He gestured forward, then started off on his crutches. "Let's go find the man who hired you, shall we?"

By the time they reached Gene's section, Paul felt like a tiny mouse in a gigantic maze. There were no colored lines on the wall, no friendly and well-lit directories with "You Are Here" printed on them. On this level there weren't even exit signs. Paul knew that wasn't legal and was sure it was intentional.

Gene's section consisted of a large meeting room, three offices, a single-seat unisex bathroom, and a small kitchen complete with a full-sized fridge, coffee pot, and microwave. A short, fat girl in neon-green stretch pants and an oversized Toby Keith T-shirt walked out of the kitchen nook, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She carried a freshly opened pint of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream, the first spoonful already in her mouth. She stopped and looked Paul over from top to bottom. "I thought you'd be taller," said Sam Greene's familiar voice as she waddled her way to a doorway, swiped a key-card, and disappeared into the darkened room beyond. The door shut behind her.

Paul raised an eyebrow at Gene, who motioned him to the large meeting room. A huge, dark-stained table dominated the room. A single desktop computer sat in the middle with adjustable wheeled office chairs around the outside. Circling the table were nine individual desks against the walls. On each desk sat a large stack of papers, a computer monitor and keyboard, and a folded-paper plaque, each with a separate victim's name.

"Listen up," Sam chirped over the COM. A large projector in the middle of the ceiling lit a wall nearly the size of a movie screen. "Data classification will be complete within the hour and we'll start matching. Each station has physical and digital copies of all data compiled for each victim listed. When you're done with your last bit of data, feel free to start rooting. It goes without saying that all files on a desk stay on that desk. PPD has been combing through this data and will add their findings in real-time.

"Keep an eye on the match lists. The converters won't be done until morning, so you can force priority if you want. There's a link in all this data somewhere. Go find it." Sam's voice cut off.

"Does anyone want to translate that into English for me?" Paul asked no one in particular.

"I will." Carl motioned Paul closer so as not to disturb the rest of the team. "PPD is the VICAP Psychological Profiling Department. They've gone over most of this with a fine-toothed comb, and they'll help us create data matches with what they can figure out about victim correlations and a profile on the guy who hired you.

"As the computer finds information that's the same for other victims, it creates a match which it will display on that projection there. We're looking for high-numbered, irreconcilable matches. That is, matches that aren't automatically explained by another factor.

"For example, we're going to get a Match-7 on males, but that's automatically reconcilable because the other two are by default females. So we know these victims weren't killed because of their sex. Hence, sex will be discarded and will come off the screen. Sam will be poring over matches as the data shows up, flagging them as reconcilable or irreconcilable.

"The converters change non-computer-recognized text into computer-recognized text. That's just a fancy way of saying it turns handwriting into computer-readable text. A separate but similar program converts photos of text. That is, everything we could only get paper copies of and some of the file-types for the electronic stuff doesn't show up like a web page or a word processor document. Imagine having to re-type every one of the documents we scanned yesterday. Yeeesh."

Paul shuddered at the thought. Scanning alone had taken hours. Carl was way too excited about the process.

"Yep," Carl continued. "It's a lot of boring work, but because we did it, what would take weeks or months will be done tomorrow. The
really
cool thing is that Sam wrote both converters. I don't think your buddies at Langley have anything anywhere near as good. Commercial OCR's have come a long way in the past decade, but they still haven't caught up to her stuff. The really
un-
cool thing is that she wrote the code on Bureau time, so instead of being able to patent it and sell it, it's proprietary to the FBI.

"Anyway…," Carl moved back to the topic at hand, "forcing priority means you can put something in front of the others for the computer to dig for matches on. So, if we see that five of the nine people went to Rutgers University, we can tell the computer to complete all of the alumni-record conversions first to see if that's our link. It'll drop everything and try that, then go back to what it was doing before.

"Ideally, when it's all said and done, we'll have one and only one irreconcilable Match-9."

"And that means?" Paul asked with raised eyebrows.

Carl stopped his lecture to explain the term. "Irreconcilable Match-9 would mean that all nine people have something in common, a perfect coincidence. It's doubtful we'll get one, but if we do, we have a massively high chance that that's our link, odds at least in the high 90th percentile. Does that all make sense?" The little man was actually smiling.

"It does," Paul said. "You're an extraordinarily nerdy man, you know that?"

"All I'm missing is the pocket protector," Carl said. He turned back to his computer. Paul noted that although Carl didn't have full range-of-motion with his injured arm, he could type with blinding speed.

"How's your arm?" Paul asked.

"Not so bad anymore," Carl said and rotated his shoulder in a practiced stretch. "I had to have a couple surgeries to repair some tendons, but with a few more months of physical therapy, it should be good as new." He grinned. "Fuck you very much."

Paul chuckled. "I'm glad it's healing okay," he said and turned back to his work. He started looking for matches as the grin faded from Carl's face. Carl rubbed his arm self-consciously and turned back to his computer.
Poor guy
, Paul thought.

January 9th, 8:12 AM EST; J. Edgar Hoover building; Washington, D.C.

After another pornographic frisking and an escort through the endless hallways, Paul found himself back in the same conference room with the same piles of papers, the same nine computers, and the same large display on the wall. The team was busy rooting through documents. "Why does everybody look so pissed off?" Paul asked.

Carl jerked his head toward the wall display, and Paul had his answer. A list was projected on the wall in digital clarity:

Match-2 (276) Rotator cuff surgery, lived in CA, allergic to penicillin, etc.

Match-3 (92) Alumni SUNY school, owned a Hyundai, glasses required for driving, etc.

Match-4 (17) MasterCard, patient at South Manhattan Municipal, etc.

Match-5 (3) Lived in NY, Lived in NJ, two children

Match-6 (0) No matches

Match-7 (1) Owned a cat

Match-8 (0) No matches

Match-9 (0) No matches.

Paul looked at Carl. "So what do the numbers in parentheses mean?" Paul asked.

Sam replied in his ear. "Number of matches in that category. Now shush."

He had no experience with this sort of thing but was pretty sure that even though the team wasn't expecting Carl's ideal Match-9, they expected something higher than a Match-5 that was more significant than cat ownership.

They spent the next few hours digging through files. Again. Looking for missed clues. Again.
I'm glad I never wanted to be a cop,
Paul thought.

Every now and then they found something that the computer hadn't recognized. Paul didn't see why upgrading "Owned a Hyundai" from Match-3 to Match-4 was important or relevant, but Carl seemed pleased when he found the typo that threw the computer off track. He supposed that if there was one error, there must be more. They spent the next several hours looking.

"I think…," Doug started to say, then stopped and studied the paper in his hand. The rest of the team exchanged hopeful looks. Doug slid himself over to the next desk and jumped to the medical files. He muttered to himself as he read. "Knee surgery. There it is again. Toradol, followed by Ultram." After a quick scan, he moved to the next victim's information. At each terminal he made a small entry.