Split Second (34 page)

57

Edgar Knight radiated such a
delighted glow that he could have been mistaken for a lighthouse. Jenna
Morrison had come through, and then some.

He decided he would never
understand the mathematics involved in Wexler’s theory, but he didn’t have to.
He understood the implications of general relativity without being able to
solve the hideously complex mathematics that had taken Einstein so many years
to master.

Wexler’s guiding ideas—at least
the ideas of
one particular
Nathan
Wexler, now tragically deceased—were beyond genius, beyond elegant. He had
found a way of thinking about higher dimensions that was so out of the box that
someone tripping on LSD couldn’t twist their mind into the pretzel necessary to
arrive there. No wonder none of the other Wexlers, even with identical minds,
had found this one extraordinary thread that allowed the rest to be unraveled.

From out of nowhere, an eardrum-shattering
boom sounded and slammed into Knight’s head with tremendous force.

He nearly jumped out of his
skin, feeling like he had been shot from a cannon.

The entire building shook
violently.

An explosion was rocking all twenty-two
stories, the concussive blast so ferocious it made even the loudest thunderclap
seem tame and whisper-quiet. Knight lost his balance and slammed into a nearby
wall, his heart almost bursting from the adrenaline his terrified system poured
into his bloodstream.

In one instant he had been in Heaven,
and the next in a disorienting Hell. It took five or six seconds after the
shockwave had pulsed through the room for him to regain any clarity of thought,
whatsoever, his mind having retreated into a fetal position.

“What the fuck!” shouted Knight finally
as his senses returned. He noticed on a monitor that several members of
security who had been guarding the penthouse had now recovered and were
clamoring to get in to be sure their boss was okay.

“Lazlo, what just happened?” he
said to his PDA.

“There was an explosion in the
building.”

“No kidding. But where and why?”

“I am attempting to retrieve
this information now.”

“You don’t need your
PDA
to tell you what happened,” said Jenna
Morrison smugly. “
I
can do that for
you.”

Knight had been so rattled by
the explosion he had forgotten Jenna was even in the room, but he turned to her
now. She had weathered the earthquake better than he had, as she had been strapped
to a chair that was bolted to the floor.

And from the triumphant look on
her face, she wasn’t bluffing. She knew exactly what had happened, and why. How
could that be?

“Lazlo,” he said. “Tell security
outside that I’m okay and to maintain watch.”

“Complying now,” said the PDA.

Knight’s prisoner now had her
hands clasped together, her right index finger resting lightly on the only
jewelry she was wearing, a diamond ring that Knight knew must have been given
to her by Nathan Wexler. “You know what that was?” said Jenna as a smile crept slowly
over her face. “That was the signal I’ve been waiting for.”

“
What’s going on?
” he demanded.

“What’s going on is that you’re
fucked!
” she hissed, her eyes wild with
hatred. “You may be the Faraday of our generation, but Cargill just played you for
a
chump
. He orchestrated all of this.”

“Impossible.”

“Really? Why? Because you had a
trusted mole inside, Brian Hamilton? Cargill knew you had a mole. He tricked
you into revealing Hamilton’s identity before he even had us in his custody.”

“How?”

“He sent eight of his most
trusted men a text, telling them he had found me and Aaron, and giving our
location. And then telling them that the operation to get us wouldn’t go
forward for several hours.”

Knight had fully recovered from
the blast, but he still didn’t understand where she was going with this.

Jenna saw that he hadn’t caught
on, and shook her head as though she pitied him. “Are you sure you’re smart
enough to survive your own eugenics program?” she said derisively. “The eight
men each received the same text,” she explained, “except for one detail. Each
was given a different
location
for us.”

Knight finally connected the
dots, and he barely managed to stifle a scream.

Cargill
had
outplayed him, at least in this case. Cargill knew that if one
of the eight men were working with Knight, they couldn’t help but take this
bait. The mole would tell Knight immediately that Cargill had found the two
people Knight most wanted, and he would scramble a team out to the location
given, so he could beat Cargill to the punch.

Cargill had unlimited authority
and could direct law enforcement, military, and government agents at will to be
his eyes and ears in each of the eight locations. When Knight’s team was spied
arriving at one of them, and beginning surveillance activities in preparation
for an attack, Cargill would know who his mole was: whichever of the eight men had
been texted that particular location.

In hindsight it made perfect
sense. It explained why Cargill sent this text so far in advance of the planned
op, and why he had then sent a second text, explaining that Blake had lied
about his location and aborting the op.

“I can tell you’re beginning to catch
on,” said Jenna. “As I told you, Cargill had ferreted out Hamilton early on.
But he didn’t let on, so he could feed him false information. Manipulate him.
The problem was that everyone knew there was a mole, and it would be suspicious
if Cargill suddenly pretended to trust Hamilton, or any on his team. So he had
to find a way to pretend he had found the mole and was fat, happy, and clueless
again. He had to find a justification for trusting Hamilton implicitly again.
If not, if he had just begun confiding in Hamilton, you would have been
suspicious, and might have guessed your man inside was being played.”

Knight’s lip curled up into a
snarl. “So the man outing himself during the polygraph testing, the one saying
he sympathized with my views, was just acting,” he said, “wasn’t he? His
actions and the gun battle were all staged beforehand.”
 

Jenna nodded.

As angry as he was at being
manipulated, he couldn’t help but admire his old friend’s ingenuity. The
polygraph test was a double ruse, and it was nothing short of inspired. It
hadn’t been just good fortune that another man had taken the fall for Hamilton,
freeing him to operate within Q5 once again.

“Blake and I signed on with
Cargill after our second day with him,” continued Jenna. “The first thing he
had us do was delete Nathan’s file from the cloud, by the way. Yesterday, after
we had perfected our plan to beat you, Cargill briefed four of his men,
including
Hamilton, which he knew was
the same as briefing
you
. He told
them I still wasn’t sure I would join. That I had insisted on being relocated.
And making it clear that the file in the cloud still existed. Making sure you
thought the bait was still on the hook.”

She shook her head in contempt. “You
didn’t think this all played into your hands just a bit too easily?”

“So you expected to be
captured,” said Knight. “So what? Now you’re here. But how has this helped
you?” he asked, realizing as he did that he was almost afraid of the answer. He
had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that there were more layers yet to
come, which he was failing to see. The massive explosion was clear evidence of
this.

Jenna didn’t reply. She remained
motionless, her hands still folded together.

Another thought occurred to
Knight. “Wait a minute,” he said. “If Cargill was the puppet master here, he
didn’t do a very good job of it. Because I know for certain he’s dead, along
with a number of his key people.”

“Come on, Edgar,” said Jenna,
mocking his earlier comments to her. “You are so much smarter than that.”

Knight shook his head in disbelief.
They were all
duplicates
?

Impossible
. But what else could she mean?

“Lee Cargill would never allow a
human to be sent back through time,” insisted Knight. “He would never allow
human duplication. He had a bug up his ass about this the size of a dog. It was
his fucking Prime Directive. I refuse to believe it.”

“
Believe it
,” snapped Jenna. “To stop you, he was willing to make an
exception. And he’d still never allow two copies of the same person to coexist,
but he knew you’d kill everyone but me and Aaron. He and the men involved all volunteered
to be duplicated, beginning with Chris Entwistle, the man who pretended to be
the out-of-control Knight sympathizer during the polygraph test. They all
volunteered to be kamikazes, knowing that one version of themselves would be
killed, but their unique consciousness would live on. Joe Allen had strict
instructions to execute any of these duplicates you failed to kill.”

Knight nodded. Knowing Cargill,
this made sense. He would allow duplication as a last resort, but only if he
was sure the duplicates would have very short life spans. “Okay,” he said, “I
believe you. But I still don’t see his end game.”

“Of course you don’t. So let me
educate you. Aaron Blake and I knew we would never be safe as long as you were
alive. More importantly, the world could never be safe. So I agreed to be the
bait. To sacrifice myself to get to you. Aaron volunteered as well. All I asked
was that before we completed the mission, we be allowed to do everything
humanly possible to try to save Nathan.”

“You knew I had duplicates of
him?”

“Not for sure, but we thought it
was likely. Dan Walsh was shocked when he learned Nathan had been killed. After
Nathan’s death, he had received an e-mail answer to a scientific question he
thought only Nathan could have provided. It occurred to us when we learned the full
truth about time travel, about human duplication, that maybe Nathan had sent
the e-mail after all. Maybe you had made a duplicate of him and put him up to it.
Cargill thought this was likely, given how much time you spent fantasizing
about copying geniuses when you were with Q5.”

“How did you know I’d bring
Nathan into the picture once I had you?”

“We didn’t. That was just lucky.
My plan was to offer to give you the file you wanted if you let Aaron go and
gave him a thirty-minute head start. He would have tried to locate Nathan from
there. Cargill assured me you would take me up on this offer. He was sure you
wouldn’t be able to resist the chance to get the file and test your security.
By bringing Nathan here, you made it easier for us.”

“If you expected him to be
alive, how were you able to weep so convincingly when you saw him?”

“Wow, you really are devoid of
emotions and empathy. I thought he was still alive, but I wasn’t sure. And I
had seen him killed in front of me. Seeing the man I love alive once again was incredibly
emotionally charged. The tears were real.”

Jenna paused. “As good as Aaron
is,” she continued, an awed look now on her face, “I thought the chances that he
would succeed were one or two percent, at best. But he did it!” she added,
beaming. “He is absolutely incredible.”

Knight had been caught up in
Jenna’s narrative like it was nothing more than a fascinating puzzle, but this
last brought him back to reality in a hurry. Because it
wasn’t
just a puzzle. Somehow it had impacted him, and could well
do so again.

But how? Even if Blake and
Wexler had managed to cause an explosion somewhere in the building, they still
had no prayer of escaping from the island.

Knight gasped as the truth hit
him like a pile driver.

“Cargill found a way to extend time
travel beyond forty-five microseconds,” said Knight. “Didn’t he? Q5 used
Wexler’s theory, and in a week they were able to do what I’ve spent years
working toward.”

“That’s right,” said Jenna. “But
there’s more. We’re just getting to the good part. Cargill guessed your
security setup exactly. You two spent dozens of hours over the years discussing
security issues, after all. He knew exactly how you would set up cell and
Internet coverage. So all Aaron had to do was get to a computer and download a
file from cyberspace. One that seemed like gibberish but didn’t require a
password, so he could get it passively.”

Knight felt like vomiting. He
had never changed out Cargill’s password. So Cargill’s people could have easily
written a program to take control of any one of his devices and teleport Wexler
and Blake to safety.

“How did Blake know where my
time travel units were located?”

“He didn’t. He hoped Nathan
would know where one was. If not, Aaron made sure to conceal a dark energy sensor
in his left shoe before our road trip, when we knew Hamilton would capture us.
One that Cargill assured us could detect a device within a mile or two. I have
no idea if he needed to use it or not.”

Jenna paused. “We wanted to give
Aaron as much time as possible to succeed, so we made sure we restored Nathan’s
actual file to the cloud to mesmerize and distract you. Make sure you weren’t
on your toes.”

“What makes you so sure he succeeded?”

“The explosion was the signal. It
could only be triggered if the teleportation was a success. Aaron had this
ready to go also. We used a little explosive that
you
actually brought to our attention: octa-nitro-cubane. Ring a
bell? The most explosive non-nuclear substance known to science, but impossible
to make without a time machine.”

Knight saw it all now. Cargill,
Jenna, and Blake had played their hand masterfully. And he had no doubt that
what he had felt was octa-nitro-cubane in its full glory. It must have come
from the ground floor, which housed the only time travel device in the
building.