Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (157 page)

He gave an exaggerated shrug. “All right. Here’s how it works. If you look at an individual channel in the implant when the subject hears the word ‘shopping,’ you might get a similar response to when the subject hears the word ‘shipping.’ It’s overlapping, non-discrete data, doesn’t lend itself to facile algorithms. Only when you look at thousands of channels can you parse the difference between similar words. You have to record from those channels over and over again with a test set of key words before you can train a computer to recognize the probability that the subject heard shipping rather than shopping. There’s a lot more to it, but I’m sure it’s way over your heads.”

“What do you mean by probability?” Markov asked. “I don’t like the sound of that. You mean we just guess?”

“Each sound the subject hears is assigned a probability of a word by the computer. Then a kick-ass algorithm I developed myself matches which words are most likely to fit together based on the context. For example, you’re more likely to hear ‘shopping’ with ‘shoes’ than ‘shipping’ with ‘lose.’ Eventually the computer spits out a transcript.”

“So how long does a transcript take to process?” Sarah asked.

“Sometimes hours of work on the supercomputers. It’s pretty involved.” Chang turned back to the computer and started typing. “But again, I’m working on that. It’ll get better.”

“And thoughts? Feelings?” Sarah turned back to Julia.

“As far as I know,” Julia said with an irritated look at Markov, “people are working on that. I haven’t been updated because of my
need to know.
”

Chang interrupted the group. “Hey guys, data’s all downloaded onto the supercomputers. Where should I start querying?”

Sarah stiffened. “All of the data? Anything missing? Everything he saw and heard?”

“How am I supposed to know until I look at it?”

Sarah turned to Markov. “We’re done here. Let’s get back to the States where we can analyze this properly. Nice work, Julia. I’ll see that there’s a commendation in your file. Anton, could you please see to arranging for more suitable flight arrangements for Julia? I have some business to attend to in the Capital.”

Julia protested, “But we’re just getting started. I thought…”

“That will be all.”

“What about him?” Markov gestured to Ian.

“Those arrangements have already been made,” Sarah said. “I’ll brief you when we get back.”

Julia bristled. It was coming into focus now. She’d let Sarah knock down her defenses with sweet talk. Markov, at least, was direct in his assholery.

“No,” she said firmly. “Not yet.”

Sarah stopped, turned with a look of surprise that became a frown. “Dr. Nolan,” she said in a warning tone and Julia caught Markov giving her a look that might have been his own irritation or maybe a warning to shut up.

“Ian’s a mess,” Julia pressed on. “There’s no way I’m leaving him looking like this.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Sarah looked furious, Markov stared at Ian, his expression unreadable, and Chang watched Julia with a half-smile that reminded her of nothing so much as a ten year-old boy cooking a grasshopper under a magnifying glass.

Julia wasn’t ready to give it up. “At the very least, let me give him a more thorough examination, make sure he doesn’t have any broken bones or internal bleeding. And there are a couple more wounds that could use sutures.”

“Fine,” Sarah said at last. “But make it quick.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Julia got off the plane refreshed, happy to be home, but was quickly deflated to discover that her husband was not waiting for her at Dulles.

It had been a revelation to fly in first class—at Sarah Redd’s insistence—with plenty of space, delicious food, and personal attention from the crew. She’d spent several restful hours in London at the Cavendish Square hotel, on the CIA’s dime, taken room service and a massage before flying Virgin Atlantic back to Dulles in what the airline called “upper class.” And she’d actually slept several hours on the plane, which was a rarity for her.

She’d called Terrance from London. He’d known what time her flight was scheduled to arrive, but he wasn’t waiting for her when she scooped up her luggage and passed through customs.

Julia looked around for several minutes before she flipped open her cell phone and called. She got voice mail.

“Hi, I’m at the airport and wondering where you—oh, never mind.”

She stopped as she saw a man holding a sign with her name on it.

It proved to be a driver, hired by her husband. By the time the driver dropped her off at the house, she was wondering what had kept Terrance.

But he was at home, working on his laptop in the atrium. He glanced up, then turned back to his work. “Oh, hey hon. Welcome home.”

She draped her garment bag over the nearest chair and stood at the entrance to the atrium with her rolling suitcase in hand.

“Love you too.” She made no attempt to hide her irritation.

“What? Are you pissed that I didn’t come get you at the airport? You are, aren’t you? Look, I’m sorry about that, but I’m really busy.”

“You could get off your butt and give me a hug, at least. I just got back from Africa.” She regretted her words at once, the tone of her voice even more. Maybe she was more tired than she’d thought.

Terrance got up and gave her a quick hug, then went back to his computer. “It’s not like I forgot about you.”

“You mean the car? Who paid for it, the company?”

“No, not exactly. It wasn’t really company business, I just couldn’t get away.”

“But how much does it cost to rent a car from Dulles to Langley? It can’t be cheap. I could’ve taken the bus.”

“I said don’t worry about it.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay, I guess it’s no big deal.”

“Look, you sound tired. Why don’t you go take a nap and we can talk tonight, when you’re feeling more yourself.”

“Maybe you’re right. But first, can you tell me what happened in Namibia?”

“What makes you think I know anything more than you do?” he asked.

“Just a feeling. You work with Markov, you have conference calls with Sarah Redd. I’ll bet you had some sort of discussion with those guys, a debriefing. Maybe even two, once before I went to Namibia and once after the data extraction.”

He closed his laptop, but slowly, as if trying to collect his thoughts. She’d nailed it, then.

“Let me get this straight,” Terrance said, “you’re asking me to share top secret information with you. Operational information that might put current and future missions at risk.”

“Terrance, I don’t give a damn about national security right now. I want to know what happened to my patients. One guy is dead, the other suffered a psychotic break. They’re going to expect me to perform more implants and how can I possibly do that—follow my oath to ‘do no harm’—if I can’t study the data, figure out where mistakes were made and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”

“The malfunction had nothing to do with your surgery, so you can stop worrying. As for the other stuff—”

“Damn it, will you just give me some straight answers for once?”

“How about this? How about you ask a question and I’ll tell you what I can. That way you’ll know I’m not holding anything from you just to be difficult.”

She nodded. It was not good enough, but it was a start. “Okay, fine. Did Ian kill all of those people?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Did he kill Kendall?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Kendall is dead. It appeared from our contacts in Namibia and aerial footage that Ian killed him. Given Ian’s mental state, that’s a reasonable assumption to make.”

“What caused Ian’s breakdown? It was the implant, wasn’t it?”

“We don’t know that.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Julia said. “There was nothing in his profile to suggest a fragile mental state. And both men passed training with flying colors. It has to be the implant, or something to do with the surgery.”

Terrance nodded. “That’s the only thing that makes sense, yes.”

“Okay, now answer this. Was Ian drugged when I saw him in the jail cell in Windhoek?”

Terrance hesitated a fraction of a second. “Not that we know. And certainly not by us. No, I don’t think he was.”

Was he lying? Or just not sure?

“Where’s Ian now? Is he back in the U.S?”

“I don’t know. They’ll move him to a secure facility and give him treatment. With any luck they might cure his psychosis or at least control it with medication. You’ve got to understand that a man like Ian Westhelle is dangerous. I don’t just mean dangerous in the way that a trained killer, his mind wrecked, can hurt a lot of people, although certainly that, too. But Ian has a big chunk of working intel buried in his brain and no longer possesses the facilities to keep his mouth shut about what he knows.”

She stopped as the implication sunk in. “He’s in a government run insane asylum? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not exactly, no. And again, I have no idea where they’ll take him. But they’ll give him the best care possible. Do you have any other questions?”

“What was the mission?” Julia asked.

“The mission?”

“That’s right. Why was he in Namibia? Who else was involved?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Fine, but it wasn’t just a simple recon mission, was it?” she asked. “And there was no Al-Qaeda camp.”

“I can’t answer that, either, and what difference does it make, anyway?”

“I’m looking for some other reason things went to hell besides the implant. If there were no stakes, if the whole thing didn’t matter, then it had to be either a hardware problem, a software problem, or a medical problem. I mean, something that I screwed up in surgery or some overlooked side effect of the brain machine interface. But if you make the mission important, all sorts of other variables enter the equation.”

“Other variables? Like what?”

“Like sabotage,” Julia said. “An enemy might have learned about the implant, in spite of all precautions. They could have damaged the implant, or tried to extract data, or something. Or how about this—”

“You’re thinking too hard.”

“Am I? Or am I getting close and you’re nervous I’ll figure out something I’m not supposed to? You know what I think? I think there was something else on that implant that Markov and Sarah Redd don’t want me to know about. Sarah tried to dismiss me the second we got data from the implant.”

“It doesn’t matter what you know or what you think you know. What matters is that you’re going to get in trouble if you keep pushing. Look, it’s fine if you ask
me
all these questions. But you’d better keep your mouth shut or you’re going to lose your position. No, worse than that, you’ll get us both in trouble.”

“You sound like a scared child. I’m a doctor. I have a responsibility to my patient. I have every right to know what happened.”

Terrance stared back without flinching. “Julia, please. You don’t know how the system works like I do. The stakes are bigger than you know.”

He stood up and went to her side, then picked up her garment bag and took her suitcase. “Come on, honey, let’s get your stuff upstairs. It was a long flight. You had too much time to think. Just let it go. You’ve got a lot to do before the next round of implants. Focus on your work. Leave the operational stuff to other people. That’s what they’re good at.”

Julia followed him upstairs, feeling more and more glum. Terrance was probably right, and no doubt he’d developed a thick skin for this sort of thing. But it was easy enough for him to blow off the death of one man and the psychosis of another as setbacks. He wasn’t the one who’d drilled holes in their skulls, or the one who’d come to know them as real people during weeks of intensive training.

There was no way she could let this rest.