The God's Eye View

CHAPTER 48

Remar felt like a man who’d stepped on a merry-go-round that was now spinning so fast and wobbling so hard he couldn’t get off it. He and the director hadn’t left the building all night. Hadn’t slept. An aide was funneling in food and coffee while they ran the director’s office like some kind of wartime command center.

They’d diverted just about every far-flung supercomputer, every bit of processing power they had, to God’s Ear — already the biggest data take in the history of intelligence collection, and now substantially augmented by the feed from the JLENS blimps and the CIA/Marshals program. Amazingly, it seemed to be working. They had picked up Gallagher’s voice calling from a landline located at the nursing home where her father was cared for. They’d looked more closely, and someone had accessed an online baseball game from the facility’s IP address. It turned out Gallagher’s son had an account — further confirmation that the voice they’d picked up had been Gallagher’s. She had called a cab, and they were scrambling to track it when they’d picked up her voice again, calling from a prepaid unit at BWI, bought not twenty minutes earlier at the Walmart just outside the damned NSA campus. Remar had already sent units to BWI. He supposed they might get lucky, but he had a feeling Gallagher was too smart to stay there. Still, they were getting closer. The first intercepted call had taken nearly a half hour to process. But the confirmation had enabled them to filter out a lot of background noise, and they nailed the second call less than ten minutes after it had actually happened. A little more time, and just a little luck, Remar thought, and the next time they picked up Gallagher’s voice, they’d be right on top of her.

The door to the inner office opened and the director strode out. “Manus,” he said. “I told you.”

He showed Remar his phone. There was a text message: I’m on her. I’ll get you the thumb drive. And make her promise never to tell. But you have to promise not to hurt her. Or the boy.

There was a reply. It said, If you can make her promise, then I promise. Yes.

“Burner,” the director said. “But it’s Manus. Geolocated at BWI. He’s following them.”

“Are you tracking him now?”

“No. He pulled the battery.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He isn’t certain. He wants to do this on his own terms. But I told you. He still believes we’re all on the same team.”

Remar nodded, keeping his expression neutral. “A dangerous error in judgment.”

“Yes, well, let’s not make one of our own. Stay on the woman. If we can get to her before Manus does, so much the better. Eliminate the middleman.”

He returned to his office, closing the door behind him.

Remar’s secure line buzzed. He looked and saw it was Jones. He picked up and said, “Vernon. How are we doing on that local detachment?”

“I got four handpicked door kickers locked and loaded and waiting in your very parking lot. Hard men who will do as they are told with no questions. But you don’t get to use them until you tell me what the hell is going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Mike, a bullshitter knows a bullshitter. What’s this new bomb threat I’m hearing about?”

“Terrorist chatter. Just taking precautions.”

“Terrorist chatter my ass. That horseshit is what we feed to the morons running the six o’clock nightly news to give the rubes a sense of meaning and make them think we’re on top of things we in fact know nothing of. Are you trying to insult my intelligence?”

“No,” Remar said. “Anyone who did that would have to be stupid himself.”

“And you’re not stupid, Mike.”

“I’ve never thought so before.”

There was a pause while Jones absorbed that. “Is something different now?”

Remar looked over at the closed door to the director’s office. It was time. Past time.

He sighed and said, “You and I need to talk.”