The Eighth Day (39 page)

“Of course,” Manziger shot back.

“Why?”

Manziger’s eyes widened. “Because no one would do that,” he said. “No way.”

Danny gave him a skeptical look. “You said yourself, there’s a lot of money at stake.”

Manziger scoffed. “Money? If Jay was right . . . we’re
fucked
. Nanobots can’t mutate. They must be entirely stable. It doesn’t matter about the particular mutation he saw. It’s the
fact
of mutation—
any
mutation. It would shut down the field—overnight.” Manziger lowered his head, spooned foam off the top of his cappuccino, and slurped it.

“Because it would mean . . . ?”

“Goo!” Manziger actually shouted the word, so that several diners wheeled toward their table. He made a gesture, then smiled an apologetic smile. “But Jay wasn’t right. He couldn’t have been.”

“How can you be so sure?” Unger asked.

“Because we have artifacts of all our code—trials, everything. We have an archival system, right? We have to. You program a sequence, it works or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t work, you make a note and change it. In order to know what to modify, you’ve got to know what went before. Right?”

Danny and Unger were silent.

“That’s just the way it
is
. So you tell me, how likely is it that the
one sequence of code
that Jay was talking about—the one sequence—was eradicated from the archive?” When neither Danny nor Unger replied, Manziger asked, “Who would
do
a thing like that?

“Anyone at VSS,” Danny suggested. “It’s going to make you all rich, right? I mean, unless it goes under.”

Manziger shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you? This isn’t some arthritis pill. I’m not talking about fudging clinical trials so the product looks better than it is. If these assemblers
mutate
, it means they’ll adapt. Not today, not tomorrow, but eventually. And the limitations we’ve embedded in them won’t work.”

“You couldn’t stop them then?” Unger asked.

“Maybe the program controlling replication would still kick in. If not, you’d have about twelve hours,” Manziger replied. “Possibly you could nuke it. Otherwise . . . welcome to the Slime Planet.”

“So what you’re saying,” Danny suggested, “is that if you knew these things could mutate and you still went ahead, you’d have to be crazy.”

Big snort from Manziger, who drained his cappuccino in a gulp, leaving a fleck of foam on his upper lip. “ ‘Crazy’?” he repeated. “ ‘Crazy’ doesn’t cut it. You’d have to be evil.” He thought about it for a moment. “More than evil,” he said. “You’d have to be . . . the devil incarnate.”

TWENTY-TWO

Danny could feel it on the back of his neck, the spider crawl of apprehension. “Someone walked on my grave,” Grandma C. used to say with a shiver. And that’s exactly what he felt, a cold lick of menace, the whispered threat of his own mortality.

The devil incarnate.

Inzaghi had used the same phrase and so, for that matter, had “Belzer.” How had he put it describing the slurs against Zebek?
They say he’s in bed with the Mafia—that he’s an arms dealer . . . a polluter, and a cheat.
They say
he’s the devil incarnate.

And so they did. He was “the Peacock Angel,” strutting along the balconies of Sistema di Pavone, roosting atop Tawus Holdings, surveying the dead at the villa near Lake Van. He was the same man Terio saw getting out of a Bentley in Diyarbakir.

But he was
not
the devil. Danny was spooked, yes, but nothing supernatural was involved. He was sure of that, though he wasn’t sure that it mattered. Zebek was crazy-evil, no matter how you sliced it.

And Danny couldn’t do a thing to stop him. Not really. The air in the restaurant seemed to close around him. His mood collapsed. The Elders would have their directors meeting in Zurich, where they would cede control of the Yezidi assets to Zebek—who would use them to launch the First Assembler. Within a year, there might be a cure for breast cancer. Within a year, there might be a cure for life.

Danny paid the bill, thanked Manziger and Unger for their help, and drove them home. Then he headed north to the airport in South San Francisco, hoping to catch a red-eye back to Washington. Dusk faded into night, a night full of mist. His headlights tunneled into it. Every few moments his wipers slapped back and forth across the damp windshield. He turned the radio on, flicked through the channels, then switched it off. What had he been thinking? What kind of music could possibly be appropriate for the way he felt?

A dirge
. He shook his head at that and allowed himself a bitter smile. Because after all, he’d done it. He’d investigated the hell out of this case. He’d solved the puzzle, learned Zebek’s motive for murdering Terio, Patel, Barzan, Inzaghi, Rolvaag. The dead were sacrifices to Zebek’s greed and ambition, eliminated so that the billionaire would not be exposed—as an impostor defrauding his people, as a madman willing to roll the dice on the future of the universe. Zebek was willing to mow down anyone who stood in his way, anyone who threatened his access to the Yezidi fortune—the money he needed to bankroll his project at VSS. And Danny had helped him identify his human obstacles. He might as well have set them up as targets. And now? Now there was nothing Danny could do to stop him. The game was over. And he’d lost.

By the time he returned the car to Alamo and took the shuttle bus to the terminal, it was a little after eight-thirty. The red-eye turned out to be an eleven forty-five United flight that got into Dulles at eight forty-five in the morning. There were plenty of seats and no lines.

Which left him with some time to kill. He drank a bottle of Sam Adams in the Lindbergh Pub, where half a dozen solitary travelers watched a preseason football game on television. Briefly, he considered getting drunk—at least he’d be able to sleep on the flight—but decided against it. He wasn’t much of a drinker, really. And, besides, he didn’t want to make it easy for them. If he was going down (and he was pretty sure that he was), it wasn’t going to be with a hangover. So he walked out of the bar and wandered through the terminal, searching for a newsstand.

What he found instead was a place called
Hook Me Up!
, which rented “data pods” with Internet connections, phones, and faxes. For thirty dollars an hour, Danny could have his own little office, where he could check his e-mail, surf the Net, and call around—not that there was anyone in particular that he wanted to speak to (or, more accurately, there wasn’t anyone he wanted to speak to who was still speaking to him).

A young guy in black jeans and a Ben Folds Five T-shirt directed him to a cubicle, where he was left to his own devices. He sat for a minute, staring at the Dell logo on the monitor, wondering about the point of it all. It really was the end. Everyone who knew anything about Zebek was dead. Except Danny—and, as the joke went,
he wasn’t feeling so good himself
.

Still, he might as well put it down on paper. Make a record of what had happened and spread it around. A copy to Caleigh (in case he didn’t get to her before Zebek got to him); a copy to his brothers, Kev and Sean; another copy to Mounir (he could probably reach the Elder through Poste Restante, Uzelyurt); and a copy to the local cops investigating Patel’s murder. It probably wouldn’t do any good. But what the hell.

So he moved the cursor onto the Word icon, clicked with the mouse, and began to write a sort of “after-action” report that began:
In the event of my death, you should know . . .

An hour later, he had a five-page document, memorializing everything that had happened, beginning with the call from Zebek summoning him to a meeting at National Airport. In his report, Danny explained about the list of toll calls that he’d obtained and recounted his search for Terio’s computer as part of an effort to neutralize the supposed “smear campaign” against Zebek. He put down everything that he could recall about the events in Italy, including his escape from Siena to Rome, where he left Father Inzaghi lying dead in the street. He wrote about his search for Remy Barzan in Istanbul and “Kurdistan” but left out the story of his own kidnapping. (
I found Barzan through a circuitous route
was the way that he put it.) With this established, he repeated what Barzan had said about Zebek’s ascendancy among the Yezidis—the way the faltering financier replaced the sacred Sanjak with a forgery carved in his own image, then engineered a timely appearance on Turkish television, knowing that the Imam would soon be assassinated and a successor chosen.

It was a complicated tale, and Danny’s account was anything but elegant. In fact, it was barely coherent. He found himself writing about the dendrochronologist’s role (and the unhappy fate that the Norwegian shared with so many others) when he realized that he had not yet mentioned Tawus Holdings. At another point in the letter, he realized that he had neglected to spell out Zebek’s objective—which was, of course, to take control of the Yezidis’ assets so that the First Assembler could be put to work at Very Small Systems, Inc. And oh, yeah—it would probably mean the end of the world.

Even so, as slapdash as it was, the document was still a useful one that might someday cause Zebek a bit of trouble. Danny added a few sentences about the First Assembler and referred the reader to Glenn Unger and Harry Manziger for further details. Then he printed out half a dozen copies, adding the
Wall Street Journal
and the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment to his list of recipients.

In truth, he had little hope that anything would come of the rambling missive rolling out of the Deskjet at his side, but getting it all down on paper was the only thing that he could think of to do.
Make a record. Put it out there. What’s to lose?

When the printing was done, he collated the reports and bought some stamps and envelopes from the Hook Me Up! guy. Returning to his cubicle, he went on-line to find the addresses that he didn’t know, then took the envelopes to a mailbox across the hall and sent them on their way. Finally, he decided to see if he had any e-mail.

He did. In fact, he had sixty-seven messages, most of which were jokes, spam, or pitches for
hot chixxx!
, penis enlargement(s), and art supplies. After he deleted the junk, including fourteen jokes from his brother and twelve from Jake, three messages of interest remained. One from Lavinia Trevor.

Danny boy! Where are you? Working hard, *I hope*! We take down the September show Oct. 1 & 2. It should all clear by the 3d, at which point you should begin to install. The opening is set for First Friday, Oct. 5, at 7 p.m. Hate to bother you, but *do* get in touch. I’m a little anxious.

He fired off a reply:
No problem—all set—can’t wait—cheers!
What the hell? If he lived long enough, he’d mount some kind of show (though God knows what he’d put in it). He was warming up to the idea of the
Talking Heads
. The practical end of it—the construction—wouldn’t take a lot of time, and the installation would be a snap. Getting
Babel On II
set up would be more of a challenge, that and organizing display plinths for everything else. Still, it was do-able. If he was still on the planet.

Next was a message from the folks. They were back in Maine, and where was he? They’d spoken to Caleigh—
What happened!!!? Mom’s worried—call home!
He hit
REPLY
and sent them a note that was meant to be soothing, if short on detail.
Welcome home! See ya soon. Not to worry. I’m working on the Caleigh thing. Love ya much, Danny

The third message was a whine-o-gram from Ian, announcing that Danny had been fired. In a burst of improbable maturity, Danny resisted the temptation to fire off a smart-ass reply and apologized for his unexpectedly long absence. He’d explain when he got back.

He thought about e-mailing Caleigh but decided against it. Writing to her would be a waste of time. Any communiqué from him would be deleted with about as much thought as he’d given to the proffers of hot chixxx and penis enlargements.

He did send a message to Salim, his benefactor in Dogubeyazit, thanking him all over again and wishing him and his family well. Someday he’d do something for the guy, pay him back somehow.

So he had about an hour to kill and nothing in particular to do. In two days, Zebek would meet with the Yezidi Elders in Zurich—and that would be that. Mounir and the others would get Danny’s “after-action report,” or whatever it was, but not until after the meeting. Nothing would come of it anyway. He was sure of that. Because it was too little, too late—a gesture when what was needed was proof. His rambling missive up against what most of the Elders thought was the Tawus incarnate, a living god. Was there any chance? Nah. He didn’t think so.

He had no doubt that the proof was out there. Somewhere. Terio and Barzan had gone to great lengths to obtain a sample of the Sanjak in the underground city. The tree guy had almost certainly documented the forgery, but the tree guy was dead and so was his report. Dead or missing. Either way . . .

It’s probably sitting in a filing cabinet,
Danny thought,
somewhere in Norway. Or on the guy’s computer.
But no. That was a base Zebek would have covered. Like Terio’s house, Rolvaag’s had probably gone up in flames.

The Ben Folds Five guy ducked his head in the cubicle. “You need anything, man?”

“No, I’m good,” Danny said in a distracted voice. Distracted because an idea had occurred to him.

“You want anything—holler.”

Danny sat back in his chair, swiveling from one side to another. He was thinking about something Remy Barzan had said. Barzan and Terio had been waiting for Rolvaag’s written report, dating the sample taken from the Sanjak. At some point, Terio had spoken by phone with Rolvaag, who must have outlined his findings. Because Terio had then written his letter to Tawus Holdings, asking for a meeting to discuss the Sanjak’s authenticity. Arriving on Paulina’s desk, the letter had been given to Zebek—who promptly arranged for Terio to be killed.

But did Rolvaag know about Terio’s murder?
Danny wondered. Probably not. Terio had been entombed for weeks before his body was discovered. Meanwhile, Rolvaag had presumably gone ahead with what he was doing and finalized the report. At some point, he would have mailed it to his client or sent the report as an attachment to an e-mail. Or both.

Danny threw back his head and swiveled in a circle, coming to a stop in the same place that he’d started.
Mail didn’t stop coming to you when you died. And neither did e-mail.
AOL would cut you off if the credit card your account billed to was rejected—but not until. And as for free accounts with companies like Yahoo and Angelfire, well, for all Danny knew they’d remain operational forever. University accounts might be different, but Danny suspected that they, too, would linger on. It wasn’t as if they
cost
anything—not really. In all likelihood, their status would be reviewed once a year—if then.

Which meant that Rolvaag’s report—and the proof that Danny needed—was probably sitting on a server somewhere.

It only took him five minutes to locate Terio’s e-mail account at George Mason University. He’d logged onto Mason’s Web site, clicked through to the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, and quickly found the faculty listings. Terio was there all right—in the form of a photo, c.v., list of publications, and the two courses he’d been scheduled to teach in the fall. His e-mail address was listed as [email protected].

Danny knew that most universities had a multitier server system, accessed through Telnet. He called a number on the Web site for information about on-line registration and was soon connected to the “Webmistress,” a polite young woman. She accepted his pretext about writing a freelance piece about Web servers and told him what he needed to know about GMU’s servers. There were four (“so far, but we’re growing!”), and they were named after various patriots: Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and Hale.

He logged onto Telnet and tried each of the patriots’ names until he finally connected to the Terio account in “Adams.” It was then that the system requested a password.

The cursor—a gray square on black background—blinked patiently.

He knew—from conversations with techies at Fellner Associates—that the most common password, the one used by something like ninety percent of the people who owned computers, was
password
. With nothing better to do until his flight was called, he tried it:

password

login incorrect

Okay,
Danny thought.
So Terio wasn’t a part of the thundering herd. He was some kinda password wildman.
Which meant that he probably used the name of one of his pets. Or children. Or wives. That’s what ninety percent of the remaining ten percent did (according to Fellner’s very own IT expert, Bob LaBrasca). Only in Terio’s case, the professor was unmarried, childless, and without pets (to the best of Danny’s knowledge).