Zimmerman's Algorithm

3.01 Thur. Mar. 25

THE debriefing lasted for days.

Gideon went through the process with more than a few mixed emotions. It began to feel that he was betraying Julia, and somehow letting Rafe down. Of course thinking he was letting Raphael down was perverse, Rafe had been an FBI agent through and through—if he had been in Gideon's place, there was little question that he would cooperate with the government. Rafe would have been on the Colonel's side.

Somehow, that didn't make things easier.

True to his word, the Colonel brought in a series of people. Not only people to hear about the Israelis, but a series of others, each of whom wanted to hear some specific bit of his story. The eight-hour session that introduced him to the Colonel had seemed long, but the subsequent interviews were much longer. The plain-clothes Marines would bring in food so they didn't have to take any breaks. The sessions were over twelve hours; each time three or four people would participate in questioning him.

The process was exhausting. Each day he was escorted out of his little room first thing in the morning, and each evening they led him back, and all he could do was collapse on the cot they gave him. He wondered if they were keeping Ruth in the same building, but his interviewers were very good at keeping his mind running in the tracks they wanted it to. It was hard for his mind to wander when he was constantly harassed with questions about the minutiae of his movements.

Even when he was alone, sprawled on his cot, his mind still ran over the events since the shooting.

After the third day of questioning, it seemed as if he'd barely laid his head down when the door to his room opened and a series of Marines surrounded his cot.

"Come with us, sir."

Gideon pushed himself upright and picked up his watch. He felt as if he had barely gotten to sleep. He hadn't. His watch read 1:05. He looked up at the trio of Marines and said, "Do you know what time it is?"

"Yes, sir. Now would you please come with us."

Gideon pushed off the thin excuse for a blanket and started getting dressed. He pulled on one of the shirts and a pair of pants that they'd provided him, got up, and took a step to the bathroom.

A Marine seized his arm, the bad one, and Gideon could feel the strain on his barely-healed injury. "I'm afraid you have to come with us now, sir."

The problem with these guys was there was no room to negotiate. Gideon was really in no mood to test them. He yawned and nodded his head. He let them lead him back out, toward the Colonel's office.

That wasn't where they were taking him.

Gideon felt something sick in the pit of his stomach. He didn't exactly trust the Colonel; he didn't even know the guy's name. Any change in the routine they'd established set off warning signals.

The Marines were leading him back toward the elevators that had brought him here. They were moving him. The fact that they were doing it without any warning made Gideon extremely nervous. When they reached the bank of elevators, another trio of Marines were standing there already, escorting Ruth Zimmerman. She looked as tired and confused as he felt.

She blinked at him, as if her eyes were still adjusting to the stark florescent lighting. "Gideon? What's happening? Where are they taking us?"

Gideon shook his head. "I don't know." They were standing in front of the elevator, and at first Gideon thought that was what they were waiting for. After a while it began to dawn on him that they were waiting for something else, another member of the exodus. At first he thought it was the Colonel they were waiting for. Then he heard the Colonel's voice from down the hallway. The man did not sound happy.

"What do you think you're doing? You can't come into a live operation like this—"

Gideon heard another, calmer voice respond. "Don't engage me in a jurisdictional argument. You may have some tactical authority, but I have an executive order from the President of the United States. This is my operation. Not yours, not Fitzsimmons', not the General's . . ."

The two speakers turned the corner, and Gideon got a good look at the new gentleman. He was short, and wore a dark, expensive-looking suit. He wore a pair of thick glasses that made him resemble a thinner Peter Loire. Gideon recognized him—

"Emmit D'Arcy." Gideon whispered.

"What?" Ruth said.

The short man nodded at Gideon and at Ruth. "Mr. Malcolm, Miss Zimmerman. I'm here to take you back to Washington for a more thorough debriefing."

Gideon heard Ruth groan.

The Colonel stood, holding a sheet of paper in his hands. "I can't protest this strongly enough."

The short man nodded, and took off his glasses. This was Emmit D'Arcy, the National Security Advisor to President Rayburn. Kendal had said that there were rumors of D'Arcy's interest in what was happening, but Gideon had never expected to meet the man personally. Whatever Julia was involved in, Gideon didn't think he merited this kind of attention. What the hell was D'Arcy doing here!

D'Arcy pointed his glasses at the Colonel. "You don't know the depth of what you're dealing with. I need these people in Washington." He pressed a button for the elevator.

"Do you know?" The Colonel looked at Gideon. "There are some disturbing elements—"

D'Arcy replaced his glasses. "I've been privy to your interviews. That's why we have to handle it in Washington."

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. There were two men in suits waiting in the elevator. They didn't look like Marines. The Marine escorts led Gideon and Ruth to the elevator and stepped back out to let D'Arcy in.

"You know there're security problems. Moving these people now is dangerous."

"Their security is no longer your concern," D'Arcy told him as the elevator doors closed.

Ruth sobbed. It sounded more frustration than anything else. Gideon put his arm around her. "What do they want from us?" she muttered.

D'Arcy heard her. "Only your cooperation," he said.

The elevator doors opened on the parking garage. There were two cars waiting for them, engines idling. At first Gideon thought they were going to separate him from Ruth again. It would make sense from a security standpoint.

He was wrong.

The two men escorted them into the rear car, a tan Ford sedan that looked like an unmarked police car. Then the men walked to the lead car, a black Oldsmobile, and got in with D'Arcy.

The setup made Gideon feel nervous. Since he'd gotten here, every time they moved him around they'd used a trio of Marines. Now all they had was the driver. His mind kept going back to what the Colonel had said, that moving them was dangerous.

The Olds pulled out and the Ford followed. Ruth was still leaning against him and asked, "What's going to happen to us?"

The driver spoke, and after dealing with the Marines for days, hearing someone engage in a conversation was a bit startling. "Don't worry, madam. We're just going straight to JFK. No problem."

JFK? Gideon thought. Isn't La Guardia closer?

"Want to hear some music?" the guy asked. He slipped a CD into the car's stereo and the car was suddenly filled with the sound of Mozart.

They spent some time on the Long Island Expressway as the night deepened. It was close to two-thirty as they took the exit for JFK. They still had a ways to go on the Van Wyck Expressway. The lead car, with D'Arcy in it, was little more than a set of taillights ahead in the distance.

The Olds seemed to have pulled ahead quite a bit since they'd gotten on the exit. That alarmed Gideon, especially when he checked their own speedometer and saw that they were going ten over the speed limit. He was about to ask the driver if he shouldn't catch up, when their car was washed by the brights from a vehicle behind them.

Ruth must've felt the same unease. She turned to look behind them just at the same time as Gideon did.

The lights behind them were coming from a truck or a van, Gideon couldn't make out the silhouette past the glare of the headlights. As he watched the vehicle close on them, he saw another set of headlights drift into the passing lane.

Gideon turned toward the driver, but the man was aware that something was wrong. The needle on the speedometer was already passing seventy. The guy was muttering, "Fuck, fuck, fuck . . ." He was barely audible under the whine of the engine and the pulse of a Mozart symphony. Gideon saw their driver only had one hand on the wheel.

He grabbed Ruth and said, "Get down."

He saw a look of panic on her face and he had to yell at her, "Get down!"

The vehicle in the passing lane had pulled up next to them. It was a Dodge pickup four-by-four, the side of it a sheer metal wall blocking in the Ford.

Gideon was thrown against the front seat as their follower touched the rear bumper. Gideon looked behind and could just make out the grille of another giant pickup beyond the glare. Then he was thrown to the side as the truck next to them drifted into the side of the Ford.

Gideon threw himself on top of Ruth as their driver cursed and leveled an automatic at the driver's window. But there was nothing for him to shoot at but the passenger door. The truck was too close for him to aim at anything else.

The truck next to them made contact again, and the rear driver's side window shattered, covering Gideon and the back seat with safety glass. From the sound of abused metal, the truck stayed in contact and began pushing them to the right, off the road. Their driver did the only thing he could, he tried to accelerate away, but at the angle he was at, he was fighting the mass of the truck. The only way he could go was the way he was being herded.

The driver took that as their only chance and peeled off to the right. He took an exit that was so fortuitous that Gideon wondered if they were meant to take it.

That question was answered once the Ford peeled out onto the surface street. The two pickups still shadowed them, and a third turned off of a side street ahead of them and reversed toward them in their lane. The Ford had to swerve around the truck to avoid a collision, and that effectively cut off their exit down the side street.

All three pickups were on them in no time. The Ford couldn't outrun them. The driver was on the radio yelling for backup, help, anything. He yelled the names of cross streets into the radio, and then a truck was slamming into the passenger side of the car.

The driver grabbed his gun off of the seat and Gideon ducked his head. The space inside the Ford seemed to shake with the sound of the automatic going off. The smell was rank before the driver let off a third shot.

The only response was a shudder from another impact. Gideon heard twisting metal and breaking glass, and risked a look up. The Ford was sandwiched between two of the pickup trucks, doors buckling inward, and the screeching protest of the Ford's engine cut through the air as their driver tried to gun the accelerator.

Gideon smelled burning rubber, oil, and hot metal. The Ford was slowing whether it wanted to or not.

He turned to look behind them and heard the sound of strain from the rear window. He ducked his head just before the stress on the frame shattered it. It popped right next to him like another gunshot.

Ruth was shaking under him. She was screaming something incomprehensible.

He looked up in time to see the trailing headlights drift to the right to pass them. Then the whole mass of traveling metal pulled to a stop at an intersection. Gideon could see a stoplight swinging above the front of the cars.

Their driver still tried to accelerate, gunning the engine. The Ford responded with a short jerk and the smell of burned rubber. They'd stopped moving.

"Come on," he yelled at Ruth. "Move, now."

He pulled her up, and after about half a second of paralysis, she saw what he was doing. He pushed her through the remains of the rear window and quickly followed, cutting his hands and knees on cubes of safety glass.

His one hope was that there might be some cover near them that they could run for before the guys in the pickups got their act together.

No such luck.

One side of the road was a parking lot, the other a used car dealership. Both were floodlit even at this time of night. Ruth headed to the dealership, it was closer.

Gideon followed, limping on his game leg. Ruth was already three quarters of the way to the dealership, where the cars offered some cover. Gideon stumbled, barely away from the rear of the car. He heard gunfire behind them and saw her turn to look at him.

He waved at her: get moving!

Instead she backed up to grab his arm and help him toward the dealership. That hesitation was too long. They were both on the sidewalk, a dozen yards from the first car in the dealer's lot, and cover, when the sidewalk erupted in orange sparks and the smell of superheated concrete.

They stopped where they were, even before an accented voice told them to freeze.

Gideon stood still, waiting for the bullets to cut them down. They didn't. Instead, a pair of men, one of whom Gideon recognized from Greenwich Village, approached them from either side. The voice from behind them, the one with the heavy Eastern European accent, said, "No sudden moves, or you will be shot."

The admonition wasn't necessary. One of the men in front of them put away his weapon and grabbed Gideon's hands, pulled them behind him, and slipped a nylon restraint around his wrists, tightening it. He did the same to Ruth. While he was binding their hands, the other man roughly patted them down.

The speaker cautiously circled around, covering them with his weapon. When his face came into view, he saw, without too much surprise, the man who had shot Morris Kendal.

The men roughly turned them around and led them to the lead pickup truck. It had a quad cab, with a back seat, and their new captors unceremoniously shoved them into it, belting them in tightly. It hurt when he sat on his wrists, and he was effectively immobilized.

Gideon had a chance to see the Ford. It wasn't a pleasant sight. He couldn't see much through a windshield starred with bullet holes, but a dark shadow was visible through the glass, on the driver's side.

He heard Ruth whisper, "My God."

He turned toward her, and saw her staring past him, at the Ford. She looked at him and said,

"They're going to kill us, aren't they?"

Gideon shook his head, even though he was unsure himself. But, if they wanted them dead, they wouldn't have dragged them to the car. "Try to be strong," Gideon whispered, wishing he had a hand free to comfort her.

As he spoke, the door behind Ruth opened up and one of the men grabbed her from behind, pulling a black hood over her face. She gasped when it happened, as if expecting a garrote. Afterward, Gideon could see her shaking.

"Are you all right?" He asked.

"N-No."

Then Gideon heard the door behind him open, and before he could turn around, a black hood descended over his own head.