Brilliance (46 page)

You want to make God laugh, you make a plan.

“Lace your hands behind—”

Cooper shook his head. “Can’t do it.”

“You think I won’t shoot you?”

“I don’t know.”
But I do know that if I let you take me, I’m a dead man. And this evidence, whatever it is, it will vanish. Drew Peters will go on fostering a war. And I can’t live with that.

Even if it means I have to die with it.

“I guess we’re going to find out.” Slowly, hands at his sides, he started walking. Not toward Bobby, at a tangent. No time to talk, no time to explain. The rest of the tactical response team would have heard the gunfire, would be closing in on their dead comrade. They’d be here in seconds.

“Goddamn it, Cooper—”

“I’m sorry.” He kept walking but met his partner’s eyes as he did. “I promise you, I’m not who they say I am. But I can’t stay to explain.”

Quinn lowered the barrel of the gun a notch, pulled the trigger. A chunk of turf an inch in front of Cooper’s foot detonated. “I know you can shoot out my legs, Bobby. But that’s the same as killing me. You know those men won’t hesitate. And if it’s going to happen, I’d rather it was you.”

“Cooper—”

“Make your choice, Bobby.” He stopped then. Stared at the man. Trying to read his fate in the set of his partner’s eyes, the twitch of the muscle in one cheek, the tension in his neck.

Finally, Bobby said, “Goddamn you.” He turned, straightened. Put up his gun. “You’ve got three seconds.”

A rush of emotion swept through Cooper. For a moment, he wondered if he would have made the same choice if their situations had been reversed. If he’d have had the courage to be a person instead of an agent.

A question for another time. He took the head start and set off at a sprint.

It was more like five seconds before Quinn started yelling that Cooper was over there, that he was by the chapel, and by that time the fence and the street and the wide world was in front of him.

Cooper stalked the DC night with a bomb in his pocket and his head on fire.

Overhead, faint, he could hear the sound of an airship, flying low. Looking for him. There would be a sniper on board, and a high-res camera package, and if they spotted him, he’d never hear the shot.

Relax. You’re just a man walking down the street. Just like all the others in this crowd. Don’t run, don’t call attention to yourself, and the odds of them spotting you are nil.

Well. Slim.

Any gunfight you walked away from was at least a partial success. But this one felt more partial than he’d like. Until he’d found the drive, he’d harbored hope that maybe Smith had lied, that the things Cooper had done were justified.

He couldn’t shelter that hope any longer. Peters had sent a hit team. No hesitation, no orders to arrest. Just kill and clean it up later. Drew Peters was the bad guy. Which made John Smith…well, who knew what it made John Smith.

Worse, Cooper had hoped to get in and out unspotted. To have time to review the video before the DAR even knew he was back in town. But now Peters would not only know that his precious insurance had been taken—he would know who had taken it.

What would that mean? What would a man like Peters do next?

Cooper froze, every muscle locking like stone. Someone bumped into him from behind, and he spun, hands ready. A sad-looking man in a business suit jumped, his eyes wide. “Hey, man, watch where you’re…”

But Cooper was already moving. Sprinting, despite the risk. A mini-mall was ahead on the right, one of those indoor places with a dozen fading businesses that never seemed to quite go under. He yanked open the door and stepped inside.

Muzak, and the multilayered reek of the candle shop by the entrance. A handful of shoppers wandering like zombies. His boot heels rang on the polished floor. A tanning place, a convenience store, a hair salon, a bright hallway leading to the bathrooms. Opposite them he found a payphone with a frayed cord, the phone book stolen long ago. He dug in his pockets. No change.

Back to the convenience store. He threw a ten at the vigilant-eyed Pakistani behind the register. “Quarters. I need quarters.”

“No change—”

“Give me four goddamn quarters and keep the rest.”

The man stared at him, shrugged, and opened the register in slow motion. Dipped in the drawer like he was pushing through water to do it. “Crazy, you are crazy.”

Cooper snatched the coins and ran back to the payphone. Almost knocked over a suburban-looking chick with big hair, didn’t slow.

He slotted two coins, then dialed Natalie’s number. Held the phone to his ear, his heart going wilder than it ever had in the cemetery, his hands shaking, control slipping. Ring. Ring. Ring.
Come on, come on, come—

“Hello, Cooper. Welcome home.”

The world seemed to spin. He planted a hand against the wall. That voice. He knew that voice. “Dickinson.”

“Got it in one.”

“Where are my—”

“Children? They’re safe. Safe as can be. Your ex-wife, too. All three are in the loving arms of Equitable Services.”

Whatever happens, I’ll take care of your family.

Cooper wanted to rage, to scream threats down the line. But it wouldn’t do any good, he knew that.

Did it anyway. “Listen to me, you piece of shit, you let my children—”

“Shut up.” Dickinson calm as the eye of the hurricane ravaging the countryside, calm as the iceberg ripping open the Titanic. “Just be quiet. Okay?”

He started to reply, managed to stop himself.

“Good. Now. This is simple. We’re not gangsters, and this isn’t a B movie. This is a situation you created. And it’s a situation you can resolve.”

Cooper bit his tongue, literally bit it, jamming his teeth down and relishing the pain and focus it brought.

“Here’s how,” Dickinson continued. “Just come in. Come in, and bring what you stole. Simple as that. I’m not going to bullshit you. You won’t walk out again. But it will be quick, I’ll promise that. And we’ll let your family go.”

“Listen to me, Roger, listen. Drew Peters is not what he says he is. He’s a criminal. What I stole, it’s a drive, and it’s got evidence to back me up—”

“Listen to
me
, Cooper. Are you?”

“Yes.”

“I. Don’t. Care.”

The second of silence that followed sounded like an earthquake.

“Get me? I don’t care. It’s not my job to care.”

“Roger, I know you’re dedicated, I know you’re a believer, but what you believe in, it’s all a lie.”

Through the phone, a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “Don’t you remember what I said that morning, after Bryan Vasquez died?”

Cooper forced himself to think back. “You said you didn’t hate me because I was an abnorm. You hate me because you think I’m weak.”

“I don’t hate you at all, Cooper. That’s the point. But I believe. And you don’t.”

Cooper rubbed at his face with his hand. “Roger, please—”

The line was dead. He stood holding the phone to his ear, Muzak in the background, the scuff and squeal of dress shoes on the floor, the faint odor of disinfectant from the bathroom, his family held hostage by monsters.

You decided a long time ago that you’d lie down in traffic for your children. Every parent does. Time to pay that piper.

He dropped the phone and started for the exit. Felt relief, honestly. He was tired, so bloody, stoop-shouldered tired, and he’d been on his own too long. Die for his children? No problem. One dead twist, coming right up.

Do you really believe Peters will let them go?

Why not? It’s me he wants. Me and his precious insurance, whatever it is. What harm can an environmental lawyer and two children do him?

He froze. What harm indeed?

Cooper turned and walked back to the men’s room. Pushed open the door. A janitor was leaning against a mop.

“Get out.”

“Say what?”

“Now.”

The janitor took another look, then rolled his cart out, muttering something about crazy-ass people, he had a job same as anybody else. Cooper opened the middle stall and shut and locked it behind him. From one pocket he took his datapad, from the other the drive, still encased in duct tape. He peeled that off, dropped it on the floor. The chip he’d found on the back of Teddy Eaton’s casket was a standard stamp drive, a terabyte storage, the kind you could buy in any drugstore. He slotted it, then sat down on the toilet.

The screen brightened, then started playing automatically.

The video showed two men talking in a bland room. One of the men was Drew Peters. The other he’d never met, but knew. Everybody did.

Cooper watched the video all the way through.

And when it was done, he hung his head, pressed his fingers into his eyes hard enough that black-and-white patterns danced. But not hard enough to erase what he had just seen.

He’d thought things were bad before. Bad last night, in Wyoming. Bad this afternoon, in the cemetery. Bad half an hour ago, on the phone with Roger Dickinson.

It turned out he’d had no idea what bad was.

There was no chance, none at all, that Peters would let his family live.

He might have cried, sitting in that smelly toilet stall in the shitty mall in the heart of DC. He might have. He couldn’t really say.

There seemed to be a few moments missing from his personal history. And he was having a hard time wanting them back.

What he did know was that at some point, he’d stood up, opened the stall door, and walked to the sink. Held his hands under the faucet until it finally came on, then splashed lukewarm water on his face. Again, and again. Paper-toweled dry.

Stared in the mirror. At a dead man, most likely, the father of murdered children.

But not a man who would go quietly.

Cooper tossed the towels in the trash, walked back to the payphone, inserted his last coins, and dialed another number.

Forty-five minutes later he walked into a pub called McLaren’s. Oak and worn stools, coasters with the Guinness logo. A smallish crowd of post-work drinkers, mostly men, mostly watching the game. He’d been there once before, years ago, some work party of Natalie’s. Cooper walked to the bar, signaled the man behind it.

“What can I getcha?”

“You guys have a back room, right?”

“Yeah. Not open now, but if you want to rent it for an event, I can get you the manager’s—”

“I’ll give you…” He opened his wallet and took out a handful of bills. “Three hundred and forty bucks to let me use it for an hour.”

The man looked left, then right. Shrugged, folded his hand around the bills. “Right this way.”

He followed the guy around the end of the bar. The bartender jangled out a ring of keys, found one, and turned the lock. “You want anything?”

“Just privacy.”

“Don’t mess it up, okay? I’m the one who cleans.”

Cooper nodded, said, “Privacy,” then pushed into the back room.

It was a smaller twin of the main room. A bar along one side, the taps unscrewed, pitchers racked, washcloth dangling. Without anyone there, it had an air of sad expectation. Cooper flipped on the lights, then sat down at the abandoned bar. He laid his datapad down, then spread his arms, put them palm first on the polished surface, and waited.

Ten minutes later, he heard the door open. Very slowly, moving only his head, he turned to look.

Bobby Quinn had on the same suit as earlier. His posture radiated fight-or-fight, and screw the other option. One hand rested on his weapon, the holster unsnapped.

“I’m not moving, Bobby. Legs crossed, hands on the bar.”

Quinn glanced around the room. Didn’t relax, but did step inside. He let the door click behind him, then drew the gun. Didn’t point it, which was something.

“Half an hour,” Cooper said. “Like I said on the phone. Then you’ll understand.”

His partner moved to the end of the bar. With his off hand, he reached around his back and came out with a pair of handcuffs. Slid them to Cooper. “Keep your right hand on the bar. Use your left to lock it to the rail.”

“Come on, Bobby—”

The gun came up. “Do it.”

Cooper sighed. He picked up the cuffs, careful to move slowly. Snapped them around his right wrist.

You do this, you’re helpless. If you’re wrong about Quinn, then it’s all over.

He fastened the other end to the brass rail. Gave an experimental tug. A clang and a bite. “Better?”

Quinn holstered his weapon. Walked closer. His face was unreadable, too many things happening at once. “I’ll give you your half hour, because I said I would. But when time is up, I’m going to call a team to bring you in.”

“Like I said on the phone, if you do, I won’t resist.” He tried for a grin. “Much.”

“You resist at all, and I’ll kill you.” It was a simple statement of fact, and all the more jarring for coming from Bobby Quinn, to whom sarcasm and irony were akin to oxygen. “Start talking.”

Cooper took a breath. “I’ve been in deep cover for six months. Since March 12th, when you and I almost stopped the bombing of the Exchange. I was inside. No idea how I survived, but I woke up in a triage tent. When I could walk again, I hitched a ride with a bunch of Marines and went to see Drew Peters. I pitched him a crazy plan: I’d go rogue. Everyone would blame me for the explosion. I’d become a bad guy. Be hunted.”