Secret of the Seventh Son

JULY 31, 2009

M arilyn Monroe had stayed there, and Liz Taylor, Fred Astaire, Jack Nicholson, Nicole Kidman, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, and others whom he forgot because he wasn’t paying attention to the bellman who could see he wanted to be alone and watched him leave quickly without the customary grand tour.

To the bellman, the guest looked confused and disheveled. His only bag was a briefcase. But they got all types of rich druggies and eccentrics, and for a tip, the mumbling fellow had stripped a hundred off a wad so it was all good.

Mark woke up, disoriented after a deep sleep, but despite the cannon fire in his head, he quickly snapped to reality and closed his eyes again in despair. He was aware of a few sounds: the low hum of an air conditioner, a bird chirping outside the window, his hair rubbing between the cotton sheets and his ear. He felt the downward draft from a ceiling fan. His mouth was so desiccated, there didn’t seem to be a molecule of moisture to lubricate his tongue.

It was the kind of suite that provided guests with quart-sized bottles of premium liquor. On the desk was a half-empty vodka bottle, strong effective medicine for his memory problem-he’d drunk one glass after another until he stopped remembering. Apparently, he undressed and turned off the lights, some basic reflex intact.

The filtered light coming through the living room door was infusing color into the pastel decor. A palette of peach, mauve, and sage came into focus. Kerry would have loved this place, he thought, rolling his face into the down pillow.

He had driven the purloined car only a few blocks when he decided he was too tired to run. He pulled over, parked on a quiet residential stretch of North Crescent, got out and drifted aimlessly without a plan. He was too numb to realize he was more conspicuous in Beverly Hills as a pedestrian than as a driver of a stolen BMW. Some period of time passed. He found himself staring at a chartreuse sign with three-dimensional white script letters popping out.

The Beverly Hills Hotel.

He looked up at a pink confection of a building set back in a verdant garden. He found himself walking up the drive, wandering into Reception, asking what rooms they had, and taking the most expensive, a grand bungalow with a storied history that he paid for with a fistful of cash.

He stumbled out of bed, too dehydrated to urinate, chugged an entire bottle of water then sat back down on the bed to think. His computerlike mind was gooey and overheated. He wasn’t used to struggling to answer a mental problem. This was a decision tree analysis: each action had possible outcomes, each outcome triggered new potential actions.

How hard was it? Concentrate!

He ran the gamut of possibilities from running and hiding, living off his remaining cash for as long as he could, to giving himself up to Frazier immediately. Today wasn’t his day, or tomorrow: he was BTH, so he knew he wasn’t going to be murdered or go off the deep end as a suicide. But that didn’t mean Frazier wouldn’t make good on his threat to hurt him, and best case, he’d spend the rest of his life in a dark solitary hole.

He started to cry again. Was it for Kerry or for fucking up so miserably? Why couldn’t he have been content with things as they were? He held his throbbing temples in his hands and rocked himself. His life hadn’t been that bad, had it? Why did he think he needed money and fame? Here he was in a temple of money and fame, the best bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and big fucking deal: it was only a couple of rooms with furniture and some appliances. He had all that stuff already. Mark Shackleton: he wasn’t a bad guy. He had a sense of proportion. It was that fucker, Peter Benedict, that grasping striver, who’d gotten him into trouble. He’s the one who should be punished, not me, Mark thought, taking a small step toward insanity.

He felt compelled to turn on the TV. In a span of five minutes three of the news stories were about him.

An insurance executive had been killed on a Las Vegas golf course by a sniper.

Will Piper, the FBI agent in charge of the Doomsday investigation, remained a fugitive from justice.

In local news, a diner at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant was shot in the head through a window by an unknown assailant still at large.

He started sobbing again at the sight of Kerry’s body, barely filling out a medical examiner’s bag.

He knew he couldn’t let Frazier have him. The chiseled man with dead eyes petrified him. He’d always been scared of the watchers, and that was before he knew they were cold-blooded killers.

He decided only one person could help him.

He needed a pay phone.

It was a task that almost defeated him because twenty-first century Beverly Hills was bereft of public phones and he was on foot. The hotel probably had one but he needed to find a place that wouldn’t lead them right to his door.

He walked for the better part of an hour, getting sweaty, until he finally found one in a sandwich shop on North Beverly. It was in between breakfast and lunch and the place was not crowded. He felt like he was being watched by the few patrons, but it was imaginary. He melted into the drab hall near the restrooms and the back door. He’d changed a twenty back at the hotel, so armed with a pocketful of quarters, he rang the first of his numbers and got voice mail. He hung up without leaving a message.

Then the second-voice mail again.

Finally the last number. He held his breath.

A woman answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

He hesitated before he spoke. “Is this Laura Piper?” Mark asked.

“Yes. Who’s this?” Her apprehension was palpable.

“My name is Mark Shackleton. I’m the man your father is looking for.”

“Omigod, the killer!”

“No! Please, I’m not! You have to tell him that I didn’t kill anybody.”

Nancy was driving John Mueller to Brooklyn to interview one of the bank managers in the borough’s recent robbery spree. There was overwhelming surveillance and eyewitness evidence to indicate that the same two Middle Eastern-looking men were involved in all five jobs, and the Terrorism Task Force was breathing down the neck of the Major Crimes Division to see if there was a terrorism angle.

Nancy was unhappy about the second-guessing, but her partner was undisturbed.

“You can’t take these cases lightly,” he said. “Learn that lesson early in your career. We are in a global war on terror and I think it’s completely appropriate to treat these perps as terrorists till proven otherwise.”

“They’re just bank robbers who happen to look Muslim. There’s nothing to indicate they’re political,” she insisted.

“You’re wrong once, you’ve got the blood of thousands of Americans on your hands. If I had stayed on the Doomsday case, I would have pursued the possibility of terrorism there too.”

“There wasn’t any terror connection, John.”

“You don’t know that. Case isn’t closed, unless I missed something. Is it closed yet?”

She gritted her teeth. “No, John, it’s not closed.”

He hadn’t brought it up yet but this was his opening. “What the heck is Will doing anyway?”

“I believe he thinks he’s doing his job.”

“There’s always one right way to do things and multiple wrong ways-Will consistently finds one of the wrong ways,” he pontificated. “I’m glad I’m here to get your training back on the straight and narrow.”

When he wasn’t looking, she rolled her eyes. She was already agitated, and he was making things worse. The day began with a disturbing news story about the sniper-killing of Nelson Elder, surely a coincidence, but she was powerless to check into it-she was off the case.

Will might have gotten the news on the car radio or a motel TV, and anyway, she didn’t want to call and take the chance of waking him during one of his rest breaks. She’d have to wait for him to reach out to her.

Just as she was pulling into the bank parking lot in Flat-bush, her prepaid phone rang. She hurriedly unlatched her seat belt and scrambled out of the SUV to get far enough away to be out of Mueller’s range when she answered.

“Will!”

“It’s Laura.” She sounded wild.

“Laura! What’s the matter?”

“Mark Shackleton just called me. He wants to meet Dad.”

Will was climbing, which felt good to him because it felt different. He was ragged from fighting hypnotically flat terrain, and the I-40 gradient through the Sandia Mountains was helping his mood. Back in Plainfield, Indiana, he’d caught six hours at a Days Inn, but that was eighteen hours ago. Without another rest soon he’d nod off and crash.

When he stopped, he’d call Nancy. He’d heard about Elder’s murder on the radio and wanted to see if she knew anything. It was making him crazy, but there were a lot of things agitating him, including his forced abstinence. He was jittery, humoring himself in a silly voice:

“Maybe you’ve got a drinking problem, Willie.”

“Hey, screw you, the only problem I’ve got is that I haven’t had a drink.”

“I rest my case.”

“Take your case and shove it up your ass.”

And he was agitated over what he’d told Nancy the day before, the love business. Had he meant it? Was it fatigue and loneliness speaking? Did she mean what she said? Now that he’d uncorked the love word, he would have to deal with it.

Maybe sooner rather than later-the phone was ringing.

“Hey, I’m glad you called.”

“Where are you?” Nancy asked.

“The great state of New Mexico.” There were traffic noises on her side. “You on the street?”

“Broadway. Friday traffic. I’ve got something to tell you, Will.”

“About Nelson Elder, right? I heard it on the news. It’s driving me nuts.”

“He called Laura.”

Will was confused. “Who called?”

“Mark Shackleton.”

The line went quiet.

“Will?”

“That son of a bitch called my daughter?” he seethed.

“He said he tried your other numbers. Laura was the only way. He wants to meet.”

“He can turn himself in anywhere.”

“He’s scared. You’re the only one he says he can trust.”

“I’m less than six hundred miles from Vegas. He can trust me to fuck him up for calling Laura.”

“He’s not in Las Vegas. He’s in L.A.”

“Christ, another three hundred miles. What else did he say?”

“He says he didn’t kill anyone.”

“Unbelievable. Anything else?”

“He says he’s sorry.”

“Where do I find him?”

“He wants you to go to a coffee shop in Beverly Hills tomorrow morning at ten. I’ve got the address.”

“He’s going to be there?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Okay, if I keep going at this clip and take an eight-hour nap somewhere, I’ve got plenty of time to have a cup of coffee with my old buddy.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“I’ll stop for a rest. My butt’s sore but I’m okay. Your grandmother’s car wasn’t built for comfort or speed.”

He was happy he could make her laugh.

“Listen, Nancy, about what I said yesterday-”

“Let’s wait until this is over,” she offered. “We ought to talk about it when we’re together.”

“Okay,” he readily agreed. “Keep your phone charged. You’re my lifeline. Give me the address.”

Frazier hadn’t gone home since the start of the crisis, and he hadn’t let his men leave the Ops Center either. There was no end in sight; the pressure from Washington was intense and everyone was frustrated. They had Shackleton within their grasp, he lambasted his people, but an untrained piece of shit had somehow managed to slip the grasp of some of the best tactical ops men in the country. Frazier’s rear end was on the line and he didn’t like it being there.

“We need a gym down here,” one of his men groused.

“It’s not a spa,” Frazier spat out.

“Maybe a speed bag. We could hang it in the corner,” another one piped up from his terminal.

“You want to punch something, come over here and take a shot at me,” Frazier growled.

“I just want to find the asshole and go home,” the first man said.

Frazier corrected him. “We’ve got two assholes, our guy and the FBI turd. We need both of them.”

A Pentagon line rang and the speed-bag man answered and started taking notes. Frazier could tell from his body language that something was up.

“Malcolm, we got something. The DIA tappers picked up a call to Agent Piper’s daughter.”

“From who?” Frazier asked.

“Shackleton.”

“Fuck me…”

“They’re downloading the intercept. We should have it in a couple of minutes. Shackleton wants to meet Piper at a coffee shop in Beverly Hills tomorrow morning.”

Frazier clapped his hands together in triumph and yelled, “Two birds with one fucking stone! Thank you, Lord!” He started thinking. “Any outbound calls? How’s she passing the info?”

“No calls from her home line or her cell since this one.”

“Okay, she’s in Georgetown, right? Get a bead on all public phones in a two-mile radius of where she lives and check them for recent calls to other pay phones or prepaid cells. And find out if she has a roommate or a boyfriend and get their numbers and call logs. I want to see a crosshair over Piper’s forehead.”

It was evening in Los Angeles and the heat was starting to dissipate. Mark remained in his bungalow all day with a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. He vowed to do penance for Kerry by fasting but got light-headed in the afternoon and broke into the assortment of salty snacks and cookies at the bar. In any event, he reasoned, what happened to her was meant to happen, so he wasn’t really to blame, was he? The thought made him feel a little better, and he opened a beer. He drank two more in rapid succession, then started on the vodka.

His bungalow had its own private courtyard hidden behind salmon-colored walls inscribed with faux Italianate arches. He ventured out with the bottle, sat on a lounger and reclined. The air was fragrant with the exotic aromas of the tropical garden flowers. He let himself sleep, and when he awoke the sky was black and it had become chilly. He shivered in the night air and never felt more alone.

The Mojave Desert was 112 degrees in the early hours of Saturday morning, and Will thought he might spontaneously incinerate when he pulled the car off the road and emerged for a pee. He prayed the old Taurus would start up again, and it did. He’d make it to Beverly Hills with time to spare.

In the Area 51 Ops Center, Frazier was watching Will’s electronic signature as a yellow dot on a satellite-view map. His last cell phone ping was off a Verizon tower five miles west of Needles on I-40. Frazier liked to limit operational variables and eliminate surprises-the digital hawk-eye view was comforting.

Traditional shoe-leather work led them to Will’s prepaid phone. A Defense Intelligence Agency team in Washington established that Laura’s apartment was rented by a man named Greg Davis. On Friday night Davis’s mobile phone had received and placed calls from a T-Mobile prepaid phone located in White Plains, New York. That T-Mobile phone had only made and received calls from one other number since it was activated, a number corresponding to another T-Mobile prepaid phone moving west through Arizona on Friday night.

It was a trivial leap to Will’s FBI partner, Nancy Lipinski, who lived in White Plains. The DIA tappers put both prepaid lines under surveillance and Frazier had it all, wrapped in ribbon in a bow, like a Christmas present. His men would be at Sal and Tony’s Coffee Shop for a nice Saturday breakfast, and in the meantime he’d watch Will’s yellow dot moving westward at eighty miles per hour and count down the hours till the misery was over.

Will rolled into Beverly Hills just before seven in the morning and did a drive-by of the coffee shop. North Beverly Drive was devoid of traffic-at this hour the whole city had the feel of a sleepy small town. He parked on a parallel street, Canon, set the alarm on his phone to nine-thirty, and promptly fell asleep.

When the alarm went off the street was bustling and the car had grown uncomfortably warm. His first order of business was finding a public restroom to do some morning ablutions. There was a gas station a block away. He grabbed his overnight bag, got out of the car and heard a sound, his prepaid phone clattering onto the sidewalk. He swore at himself, picked it up and stuffed it back in his pants.

At that moment Will’s screen blip at the Area 51 Ops Center went dark. Frazier was alerted and did a caustic rant before calming down and concluding, “It’ll be okay. He’s in our box. In a half hour this’ll be history.”

Sal and Tony’s Coffee Shop was popular. A mix of locals and tourists crammed the tables and booths. It smelled of pancake batter, coffee, and hash, and when Will arrived a few minutes early, his ears were assaulted by loud conversations.

The hostess greeted him with a gravelly cigarette voice: “How’re you doing, honey? You a single?”

“I’m meeting someone.” He looked around. “I don’t think he’s here yet.” Shackleton was supposed to be at the back door near the pay phone at ten.

“Shouldn’t be too long. We’ll have you seated in a couple of minutes.”

“I need to use your phone,” he said.

“I’ll find you.”

From the back of the restaurant, Will studied the room, jumping from table to table, profiling the customers. There was an elderly man with a cane, and his wife-locals. Four smartly dressed young men-salesmen. Three pale flabby women with Rodeo Drive visors-tourists. Six Korean women-tourists. A father with a six-year-old son-divorce visitation. A strung-out young couple in their twenties in tattered jeans-locals. Two middle-aged men and a woman with Verizon shirts-workers.

And then there was a table of four in the middle of the room that made his palms clammy. Four men in their thirties, cut from the same piece of cloth. Clean-cut, recent haircuts, fit-he could tell from their necks they were lifters. All of them were trying too hard to appear casual in loose shirts and khakis, forcing the pass-the-hash-browns banter. One of them had his fanny pack laid on the table.

None of them looked his way, and he pretended not to look at them. He shuffled his feet and waited by the phone, keeping them in his peripheral field. Agency boys; which agency, he didn’t know. Everything told him to abort, to walk out the back door and keep going, but then what? He had to find Shackleton and this was the only way. He’d have to deal with the lifters. He felt the weight of his gun against his ribs every time he breathed.

Frazier felt a spark of electricity coursing through his body when Will Piper appeared on his monitor. The fanny pack was being manipulated by one of the men to track him, and the monitor showed him standing up against a wall beside a pay phone.

“Okay, DeCorso, that’s good,” Frazier said into his headset mic. “I’ve got him.” He clenched his jaw. He wanted to see the screen fill with the second target, he wanted to fire out the go order and to watch his men take both of them down and bundle them up for special delivery.

Will explored his options. He did his best imitation of a casual saunter and entered the men’s room for a look-see. There were no windows. He splashed some cold water on his face and wiped himself dry. It was still a few minutes before ten. He left the men’s room and headed straight out the back door. He wanted to see if any of the men made a move, but more important, he wanted to scope out his environs. There was an alleyway running between Beverly and Canon that serviced the buildings on both streets. He saw the back entrances of a bookstore, a drugstore, a beauty salon, a shoe store, and a bank all within a stone’s throw. To his left the alley opened up into a parking lot servicing one of the commercial buildings on Canon. There were foot routes that would take him north, south, east, or west. He felt a little less trapped and went back inside.

“There you are!” the hostess called out from the front, startling him. “I got your table.”

The table for two was near the window, but the view to the phone was unimpeded. It was 10:00 A.M. The men at the middle table were getting more coffee.

DeCorso, the team leader, had a buzz cut, heavy black eyebrows, and thick hairy forearms. Frazier was complaining into DeCorso’s earpiece, “It’s time. Where the fuck is Shackleton?”

On his monitor Frazier watched Will pouring coffee from a carafe and stirring in cream.

Five minutes passed.

Will was hungry, so he ordered.

Ten minutes.

He wolfed down eggs and bacon. The men in the middle were lingering.

At ten-fifteen he was beginning to think that Shackleton was playing him. Three cups of coffee had taken their toll-he got up to use the men’s room. The only other person inside was the old man with his cane, moving like a snail. When Will was done, he left and noticed the bulletin board beside the pay phone. It was a paper quilt of business cards, apartment-for-rent flyers, lost cats. He’d seen the board earlier but it hadn’t registered.

It was staring him in the face!

A three-by-five-inch card, the size of a postcard.

A hand-drawn coffin, the Doomsday coffin, and the words: Bev Hills Hotel, Bung 7.

Will swallowed hard and acted on pure impulse.

He snatched the card and dashed out the back door into the alleyway.

Frazier reacted before the men on the scene. “He’s taking off! Goddamn it, he’s taking off!”

The men jumped up and pursued but got hung up when the old man leaving the restroom blocked their way. It was impossible to watch the video images since the camera bag was jostling up and down, but Frazier saw the old man in some frames and screamed, “Don’t slow down! He’ll get away!”

DeCorso lifted the man in a bear grip and deposited him back in the men’s room while his colleagues rushed to the door. When they hit the alleyway it was empty. On DeCorso’s orders, two went right, two went left.

They frantically searched, scouring the alley, running through stores and buildings on Beverly and Canon, checking under parked cars. Frazier was screaming so much into DeCorso’s earpiece that the man begged him, “Malcolm, please calm down. I can’t operate with all the yelling.”

Will was in a bathroom stall in the Via Veneto Hair Salon, one door away from the coffee shop. He stayed put for over ten minutes, half standing on the toilet, his gun drawn. Someone entered shortly after he arrived but left without using the facilities. He exhaled and maintained his uncomfortable pose.

He couldn’t stay there all day and someone was bound to use the toilet, so he left the bathroom and quietly slipped into the salon, where a half-dozen pretty hairdressers were working away on customers and chatting. It looked like a female-only type of shop and he was way out of place.

“Hi!” one of the hairdressers said, surprised. She had severely short blond hair and a micro-mini stretched over strawberry tights. “Didn’t see you.”

“You do walk-ins?” Will asked.

“Not usually,” the girl said, but she liked his looks and wondered if he might be famous. “Do I know you?” she asked.

“Not yet, but if you give me a haircut you will,” he teased. “You do men?”

She was smitten. “I’ll do you myself,” she gushed. “I had a cancellation anyway.”

“I don’t want to sit near the window and I want you to take your time. I’m not in a rush.”

“You’ve got a lot of demands, don’t you?” She laughed. “Well, I will take good care of you, Mr. Bossy Man! You sit right there and I’ll get you a cup of coffee or tea.”

An hour later Will had four things: a good haircut, a manicure, the girl’s phone number, and his freedom. He asked for a cab and when he saw it standing on Canon, he gave her a big tip, sprang into the backseat and sank low. As it pulled away, he felt he’d made a clean escape. He ripped up the slip with the phone number and let the fragments flutter out the window. He’d have to tell Nancy about this act, certifiable proof of his commitment.

Bungalow 7 had a peach-colored door. Will rang the bell. There was a Do Not Disturb tag on the handle and a fresh Saturday paper. He’d slipped his Glock into his waistband for fast access and let his right hand brush against its rough grip.

The peephole darkened for a second then the handle moved. The door opened and the two men looked at each other.

“Hello, Will. You found my message.”

Will was shocked at how haggard and old Mark appeared, almost unrecognizable. He stepped back to let his visitor in. The door closed on its own, leaving them in the semidarkness of the shade-drawn room.

“Hello, Mark.”

Mark saw the butt of Will’s pistol between his parted jacket. “You don’t need a gun.”

“Don’t I?”

Mark sank onto an armchair by the fireplace, too weak to stand. Will went for the sofa. He was tired too.

“The coffee shop was staked out.”

Mark’s eyes bulged. “They didn’t follow you, did they?”

“I think we’re good. For now.”

“They must’ve tapped my call to your daughter. I knew you’d be mad and I’m sorry. It was the only way.”

“Who are they?”

“The people I work for.”

“First tell me this: what if I hadn’t seen your card?”

Mark shrugged. “When you’re in my business you rely on fate.”

“What business is that, Mark? Tell me what business you’re in.”

“The library business.”

Frazier was inconsolable. The operation was blown to hell and he couldn’t think of one thing to do except shriek like a banshee. When his throat became too raw to continue, he hoarsely ordered his men to hold their positions and continue their apparently futile search until he told them otherwise. If he’d been there, this wouldn’t have happened, he brooded. He thought he had professionals. DeCorso was a good operative but clearly a failure as a field leader, and who would take the blame for that? He kept his headset glued to his skull and slowly walked through the empty corridors of Area 51, muttering, “Failure is not a fucking option,” then rode the elevator topside so he could feel hot sun on his body.

Mark was hushed and confessional at times, alternatively tearful, boastful, and arrogant, occasionally irritated by questions he considered repetitive or naive. Will maintained an even, professional tone though he struggled at times to retain his composure in the face of what he was hearing.

Will set things in motion with a simple question: “Did you send the Doomsday postcards?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t kill the victims.”

“I never left Nevada. I’m not a killer. I know why you think there was a killer. That’s what I wanted you and everyone else to think.”

“Then how did these people die?”

“Murders, accidents, suicides, natural causes-the same things that kill any random group of people.”

“You’re saying there was no single killer?”

“That’s what I’m saying. That’s the truth.”

“You didn’t hire or induce anyone to commit these murders?”

“No! Some of them were murders, I’m sure, but you know in your heart that not all of them were. Don’t you?”

“A few of them have problems,” Will admitted. He thought of Milos Covic and his window plunge, Marco Napolitano and the needle in his arm, Clive Robertson and his nosedive. Will’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re telling me the truth, then how in hell did you know in advance these people were going to die?”

Mark’s sly smile unnerved him. He’d interviewed a lot of psychotics, and his I-know-something-you-don’t-know grin was straight out of a schizophrenic’s playbook. But he knew that Mark wasn’t crazy. “Area 51.”

“What about it? What’s the relevance?”

“I work there.”

Will was testy now. “Okay, I pretty much got that. Spill it! You said you were in the library business.”

“There’s a library at Area 51.”

He was being forced to drag it out of him, question by question. “Tell me about this library.”

“It was built in the late 1940s by Harry Truman. After World War Two, the British found an underground complex near a monastery on the Isle of Wight, Vectis Abbey. It contained hundreds of thousands of books.”

“What kind of books?”

“Books dating back to the Middle Ages. They contained names, Will, billions-over two hundred billion names.”

“Whose names?”

“Everyone who’s ever lived.”

Will shook his head. He was treading water, feeling like he was about to go under. “I’m sorry, I’m not following you.”

“Since the beginning of time, there’ve been just under one hundred billion people who’ve ever lived on the planet. These books started listing every birth and every death since the eighth century. They chronicle over twelve hundred years of human life and death on earth.”

“How?” Will was angry. Was this guy a sicko after all?

“Anger is a common reaction. Most people get angry when they’re told about the Library because it challenges everything we think we know. Actually, Will, no one has a clue about the how part or the why. There’s been sixty-two years of debate and no one knows. It would have taken hundreds of monks at a time, if that’s what they were, writing continuously for over five hundred years to physically write down all these names, one for each birth, one for each death. They’re listed by date, the earlier ones in the Julian calendar, the later ones in the Gregorian calendar. Each name is written in its native language with a simple notation in Latin-birth or death. That’s all there is. No commentary, no explanation. How did they do it? Religious types say they were channeling God. Maybe they were clairvoyants who saw the future. Maybe they were from outer space. Believe me, no one has any idea! All we know is that it was a monumental task. Think about it: the numbers have been accelerating over the centuries, but just today, August 1, 2009, there are 350,000 people who will be born and 150,000 will die. Each name written with pen and ink. Then tomorrow’s names and the day after, and the day after that. For twelve hundred years! They must have been like machines.”

“You know I can’t believe any of this,” Will said quietly.

“If you give me a day, I can prove it. I can pull up a list of everyone who’s going to die in Los Angeles tomorrow. Or New York, or Miami. Or anywhere.”

“I don’t have a day.” Will got up and started aggressively pacing. “I can’t believe I’m even giving you the right time of day.” He angrily swore and demanded, “Go online and look up the Panama City, Florida, News Herald. Look at today’s obituaries and see if you’ve got them on your goddamned list.”

“The local paper’s outside the door? Wouldn’t that be easier?”

“Maybe you’ve already looked at it!”

“You think this is an elaborate setup?”

“Maybe it is.”

Mark looked troubled. “I can’t go online.”

“Okay, this is bullshit!” Will shouted. “I knew this was bullshit.”

“If I log my computer onto the Web, they’ll locate us in a few minutes. I won’t do it.”

Will looked around the room in frustration and spotted a keyboard in the TV cabinet. “What’s that?” he asked.

Mark smiled. “Hotel Internet access. I didn’t notice that.”

“So, you can do it?”

“I’m a computer scientist. I think I can figure it out.”

“I thought you said you were a librarian.”

Mark ignored him. In a minute he had the newspaper’s website on the TV screen.

“Hometown paper, right?” Mark said.

“You know it is.”

Mark took out his laptop and booted it up.

While he was logging on, Will pounced on an inconsistency. “Wait a minute! You said these books only had names and dates. But then you said you could sort them by city. How?”

“That’s an enormous part of what we do at Area 51. Without geographical correlates, the data is useless. We have access to virtually every digital and analog database in the world, birth records, phone records, bank records, marital records, employment records, utilities, land deeds, taxes, insurance, you name it. There are 6.6 billion people in the world. We have some form of address identifiers, if only the country or province, on ninety-four percent of them. Very nearly a hundred percent in North America and Europe.” He looked up. “I’ve got this encrypted. Just so you know, it needs a password, which I’m not going to give you. I need insurance you’ll protect me.”

“From whom?”

“The same people who’re after you. We call them the watchers. Area 51 security. Okay, I’m on. Take the keyboard.”

“Go into the bedroom,” Will ordered. “I don’t want you seeing the dates.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“You’re right, I don’t.”

Will spent several minutes calling out names of the recently deceased in Panama City. He mixed in names from the archives with people who died the day before. To his astonishment, Mark was shouting back the correct date of death every time. Finally, Will called him back in and complained, “Come on! This is like a Vegas lounge act and you’re like one of those mentalists. How are you doing this?”

“I told you the truth. If you think I’m pulling a fast one, you’ll have to wait till tomorrow. I’ll give you ten people in L.A. who’re going to die today. You check the obits tomorrow.”

Mark then proceeded to dictate ten names, dates, and addresses. Will took them down on a hotel notepad and moodily stuffed the sheet in his pocket. But he immediately pulled it out and said defiantly, “I’m not waiting until tomorrow!” He dug his phone out of his pants and saw it was dead-the battery had gotten dislodged when it fell onto the sidewalk. He reseated it and the phone came alive again. Mark watched with amusement as Will called information to get the phone numbers.

Will swore out loud each time he got voice mail or a no pickup. Someone answered the seventh number on the list. “Hello, this is Larry Jackson returning Ora LeCeille Dunn’s call,” Will said. He was listening and pacing. “Yes, she called me last week. We have a mutual acquaintance.” He was listening again but now he was slumping onto the sofa. “I’m sorry, when was that? This morning? It was unexpected? I’m very sorry to hear the news. My condolences.”

Mark opened his arms expansively. “Do you believe me now?”

Frazier’s headset got noisy again. “Malcolm, Piper’s phone is back on the grid. He’s somewhere in the 9600 block of Sunset.”

Frazier started sprinting back toward the Ops Center on an upward climb of his personal roller coaster.

Will got up and surveyed the bar. There was a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black. He opened it and poured a measure into a whiskey glass. “Want one?”

“It’s too early.”

“Is it?” He pounded back a shot and let it work through his system. “How many people know about this?”

“I don’t know exactly. Between Nevada and Washington, I’d guess a thousand.”

“Who runs it? Who’s in charge?”

“It’s a navy operation. I’m pretty sure the President and some cabinet members are in the know, some Pentagon and Homeland Security people, but the highest-ranking person I’m positive about is the Secretary of the Navy because I’ve seen him copied on memos.”

“Why the navy?” Will asked, bemused.

“I don’t know. It was set up like that from the beginning.”

“This has been under wraps for sixty years? The government’s not that good.”

“They kill leakers,” Mark said bitterly.

“What’s the point? What do they do with it?”

“Research. Planning. Resource allocation. The CIA and military have used it as a tool since the early fifties. They feel they can’t not use it, since it’s there. We can predict events, even if we can’t alter outcomes, at least fatal outcomes. If you can predict large events you can plan around them, budget for them, set policy, maybe soften their blow. Area 51 predicted the Korean War, the Chinese purges under Mao, the Vietnam War, Pol Pot in Cambodia, the Gulf wars, famines in Africa. We can usually spot big plane crashes, natural disasters like floods and tsunamis. We had 9/11 nailed.”

Will was dazed. “But we couldn’t do anything about it?”

“Like I said, these outcomes can’t be changed. We didn’t know how the attacks were going to happen or who was going to be responsible, though rightly or wrongly, we had ideas. I think that’s why we were so quick to go into attack mode against Iraq. It was all gamed out in advance.”

“Jesus.”

“We’ve got supercomputers grinding data around the clock, looking for worldwide patterns.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “I can tell you with certainty that 200,000 people will die in China on February 9, 2013, but I can’t tell you why. People are working on that right now. In 2025-March twenty-fifth, to be precise-over a million people will die in India and Pakistan. That’s a paradigm changer but it’s too far away for anyone to focus on it.”

“Why Nevada?”

“The Library was taken there after the Air Force flew it from England to Washington. A nuclear-proof vault was built under the desert. It took twenty years to transcribe all the post-1947 material and get it digital. Before they were computerized, the books were precious. Now, they’re pretty much ceremonial. It’s amazing to see it, but the actual Library doesn’t have much of a purpose anymore. As to why Nevada, it was remote and protectable. Truman laid down a smoke screen in 1947 by concocting the Roswell UFO story and letting the public believe that Area 51 was built for UFO research. They couldn’t hide the existence of the lab because of all the people who work there, but they hid its purpose. A lot of dumb-asses still believe the UFO crap.”

Will was about to take another hit of scotch but realized it was affecting him more than he wanted. Getting sloshed wasn’t a good option right now. “What do you do there?” he asked.

“Database security. We have the most secure servers in the world. We’re hack proof and leak-proof, from the inside and out, or at least we were.”

“You breached your own systems.”

“I’m the only one who could have done it,” he boasted.

“How?”

“It was pure simplicity. Memory stick up my butt. I beat the watchers, those fuckers. They can’t have the public knowing about the Library. Can you imagine what the world would be like? Everyone would be paralyzed if they knew the day they were going to die-or their wife, or parents, or children or friends. Our analysts think that society, as we know it, would be altered permanently. Whole segments of the population might just fuck off and say, ‘What’s the point?’ Criminals might commit more crimes if they knew they weren’t going to be killed. You can envision some pretty nasty scenarios. The funny thing is, it’s just births and deaths. There’s nothing in the data about how people live their lives, nothing about quality. All that’s extrapolation.”

Will raised his voice. “Then why did you do it? Why the postcards?”

Mark knew the question was coming. Will could see it. His lower lip quivered like a child about to be disciplined. “I wanted to-” He broke down, sobbing and choking.

“You wanted to what?”

“I wanted to make my life better. I wanted to be someone-different.” He dissolved in tears again.

The man was pathetic, but Will controlled his ire. “Go on, I’m listening.”

Mark got a tissue and blew his nose. “I didn’t want to be a drone stuck in a lab my whole life. I see rich people at the casinos and I ask myself, why them? I’m a million times smarter. Why not me? But I never catch a break. None of the companies I went to work for after MIT exploded. No Microsofts, no Googles. I made a few bucks on stock options but the whole dot-com thing passed me by. Then I screwed up by going to work for the government. Once the sexiness of Area 51 wears off, it’s just a low-paying computer job in an underground bunker. I tried to sell my screenplays-I told you I’m a writer-and they were rejected. So, I decided I could change my life by leaking only a little data.”

“So this is about money? Is that it?”

Mark nodded but added, “Not money for the sake of money-for the change that goes along with it.”

“How were you going to make money off of Doomsday?”

Mark’s frown turned into a triumphant smile. “I already did! Big money!”

“Enlighten me, Mark. I’m not as sharp as you.”

Mark didn’t pick up on his facetiousness-he took it as a compliment and launched into an explanation, slow and patient at first then increasingly pressured. “Okay, here’s how I conceived it-and I’ve got to say that it played out exactly as I planned. I needed a demonstration of what I could deliver. I needed credibility. I needed to be able to get people’s attention. The way to do that is to get the media involved, am I right? And what would satisfy all these criteria? Doomsday! I thought the name was brilliant, by the way. I wanted the world to think there was a serial killer who was warning his victims. So I picked a random group of nine people in New York from the database. Okay, I see the look in your eyes, and maybe this was a crime at some level, but obviously I didn’t kill anybody. But once the case really took off in the media, I was able to instantly capture the attention of the man I needed to reach-Nelson Elder.” He tripped on Will’s expression. “What? You know him?”

Will was shaking his head in amazement. “Yeah, I know him. I hear he’s dead.”

“They killed him.” He whispered, “And Kerry.”

“I’m sorry, who?”

“They killed my girlfriend!” Mark cried, then lowered his voice again. “She didn’t know anything. They didn’t have to do that. And the thing is, I could have looked both of them up early on. By the time I thought to do it…”

The lightbulb went off in Will’s head, a delayed reaction. “Jesus! Nelson Elder-life insurance!”

Mark nodded. “I met him at a casino. He was a nice guy. Then I found out his company was in trouble, and what better way to help a life insurance company than tell them when people are going to die? That was my big idea. He saw it right away.”

“How much?”

“Money?”

“Yeah, money.”

“Five million dollars.”

“You gave away the crown jewels for a lousy five million?”

“No! It was very discreet. He gave me names, I gave him dates. That was it. It was a good deal for everyone. I kept the database. Nobody’s got it but me.”

“The whole thing?”

“Just the United States. Desert Life only does business in the U.S. The whole database was too big to steal.”

Will was swimming in a stew of information overload and raging emotions. “There’s a little more to this, an extra little wrinkle, isn’t there?”

Mark was silent, fidgeting with his hands.

“You wanted to stick it to me, didn’t you? You chose New York for your charade because that’s my patch. You wanted me to eat shit. Didn’t you?”

Mark hung his head in childlike contrition. “I’ve always been jealous,” he whispered. “When we roomed together, I mean, I never knew anyone like you in high school. Everything you did worked out great. Everything I did…” His voice trailed off to nothing. “When I saw you last year, it reopened things.”

“We were just freshman roommates, Mark. Nine months together, when we were kids. We were very different people.”

Mark made a forlorn admission, choking back emotion. “I was hoping you’d want to room with me after freshman year. You helped them. You helped them tape me to my bed.”

Will’s skin crawled. The man was pathetic. Nothing about his actions or intentions had a trace of nobility. It was all about self-loathing, self-pity, and infantile urges wrapped in a surfeit of IQ points. Okay, the kid had been traumatized, and okay, he’d always felt guilty about his role, but it was an innocent college prank, for Christ’s sake! The man holed up in this hotel room was loathsome and dangerous, and he had to quash a powerful desire to lay him out with a blow to his sharp, thin jaw.

In one fell swoop this pitiable creature had turned his own life on its ear. He didn’t want to be involved with any of this. All he’d wanted was to retire and be left alone. But it was obvious that once you knew about the Library, things could never be the same. He needed to think, but first he needed to survive.

“Tell me something, Mark, did you look me up?” he said confrontationally. “Do I get taken out today?” As he waited for the answer, he thought, If it’s yes, who gives a shit? What do I have to live for anyway? I’ll only screw up Nancy’s life the way I screwed up everyone else’s. Bring it on!

“No. Me neither. We’re both BTH.”

“What does that mean?”

“Beyond the horizon. The books stop in 2027. Area 51 had a life expectancy of eighty years.”

“Why do they stop?”

“We don’t know. There was evidence of a fire at the monastery. Natural disaster? Something political? Religious? There’s no way of knowing. It’s just a fact.”

“So, I live past 2027,” Will said wistfully.

“I do too,” Mark reminded him. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Okay.”

“Did you figure out it was me? Is that why they’re looking for you too?”

“I did. I nailed your ass.”

“How?” Will could see how badly he wanted to know. “I’m sure I didn’t leave any tracks.”

“I found your screenplay in the WGA registry. First draft, bunch of uninteresting character names. Second draft, bunch of very interesting names. You had to tell somebody, didn’t you? Even if it was a private joke.”

Mark was astonished. “What gave you the idea?”

“The font on the postcards. It’s not used that much these days unless you’re writing screenplays.”

Mark sputtered, “I had no idea.”

“Of what?”

“That you were that smart.”

As Frazier sat in front of his terminal, he willed himself into a state of optimism. They had Will’s cell phone blip on the screen again, his men were in proximity, and he reminded himself that none of his operatives were going to die today and neither was Shackleton or Piper. The inescapable conclusion was that the operation was going to be smooth and that both men would be reeled in for interrogation. What happened to them afterward was clearly not going to be up to him. They were BTH, so he imagined they’d be defanged one way or another. He didn’t much care.

His optimism was shaken by DeCorso. “Malcolm, here’s the story,” he heard through his headset. “This is a hotel, the Beverly Hills Hotel. It’s got a few hundred rooms on twelve acres. The beacon we’ve got is accurate to about three hundred yards. We don’t have the manpower to box him in and search the hotel.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Frazier said. “Can’t we boost the signal somehow?”

One of the Ops Center techs answered without looking up from his screen, “Call his phone. If he answers, we can triangulate him to fifty feet.”

Frazier’s mouth curled into a Cheshire smile. “You fucking all-star. I’m going to buy you a case of beer.” He reached for a phone and hit the button for an outside line.

Will’s prepaid phone rang. He thought of Nancy. He wanted to hear her voice, and didn’t pay attention to the caller ID tag: OUT OF AREA. “Hello?” No one answered. “Nancy?” Nothing.

He hung up.

“Who was it?” Mark asked.

“I don’t like it,” Will answered. He looked at his phone, grimaced and turned it off. “I think we should leave. Get your stuff.”

Mark looked scared. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know yet. Somewhere out of L.A. They know I’m here so they know you’re here. We’ll get a cab to my car and start driving. Couple of smart guys, we should be able to figure something out.”

Mark stooped to pack his laptop away. Will was towering over him. “What?” Mark said, alarmed.

“I’m taking your briefcase.”

“Why?”

Will gave him a brawn over brains look. “Because I want it. I’m not asking again. And I want your password.”

“No! You’ll ditch me.”

“I won’t do that.”

“How do I know?”

The slender man looked so frightened and vulnerable that Will took pity on him for the first time. “Because I’m giving you my word. Look, if both of us have the password, it increases the chance I can use it as leverage to get you back if we get split up. It’s the right move.”

“Pythagoras.”

“Come again?”

“The Greek mathematician, Pythagoras.”

“Does that have some significance?”

Before Mark could answer, Will heard a scraping sound from the patio and drew his pistol.

The front door and the patio door blew in simultaneously.

The room was suddenly full of men.

For a participant, close-quarter firefights seem to last forever, but to an external observer like Frazier, who had an audio feed, it was over in under ten seconds.

DeCorso saw Will’s weapon and started shooting. The first round buzzed past Will’s ear.

Will dived onto the tangerine carpet and returned fire from a low angle, aiming at chests and abdomens, big body masses, jerking his trigger as fast as he could. He’d only fired his weapon in action once before, at a very bad highway stop in Florida, his second year as a deputy sheriff. Two men went down that day. They were easier to hit than fox squirrels.

DeCorso fell first, causing a moment of disarray among his men. The watchers’ guns were fitted with silencers, so the bullets didn’t pop, but thwacked into wood, furniture, and flesh. In contrast, Will’s gun boomed every time he pulled the trigger, and Frazier winced at each one, eighteen blasts, till the room fell silent.

By then, it was filled with caustic blue fumes and the tart smell of gunpowder. Will could hear a tinny voice yelling hysterically into a headset that was lying on the floor, separated from its man.

Everywhere, the primary color of blood was clashing with the suite’s pastel hues. Four intruders were on the floor, two moaning, two silent. Will rose to his knees, then haltingly stood on rubbery legs. He didn’t feel any pain but had heard that adrenaline could temporarily mask even a serious wound. He checked himself for blood, but he was clean. Then he saw Mark’s feet behind the sofa and scrambled to help him up.

Christ, he thought when he saw him. Christ. There was a hole in his head the size of a wine cork, bubbling with blood and brain matter, and he was gurgling and oozing secretions from his mouth.

He was BTH?

Will shuddered at the thought of this poor son of a bitch living like this for at least another eighteen years, then grabbed Mark’s briefcase and bolted out the door.