Zimmerman's Algorithm

1.05 Mon. Mar. 2

Gideon held his cast awkwardly upright as his left hand rested on the Bible.

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

Gideon nodded to the grand jury foreman and said, "I do."

He sat down and faced a panel of twenty jurors. It was a familiar position, part of being a cop, testifying before grand juries and criminal courts. Gideon had long ago lost count of the number of times he had been subpoenaed to testify. It was always a somewhat nerve-racking experience, whether it was a grand jury or a trial.

This time was worse than usual. He kept going through the shooting in his mind, racking his brain thinking of the hundreds of things that he should have done, or shouldn't have done, anything so it would have ended with a result different than the one that had actually happened.

The more he had thought about it—after the shock of Rafe's death had withdrawn enough for him to consider the details of the event—the more it seemed that there was something wrong with what had happened. The news kept reporting fewer Secret Servicemen involved than he remembered. The men in the building were in contact with teams outside, Gideon remembered the radio traffic. Then there was the fact that they'd been armed with silenced weapons. Most bizarre to him was the memory of the men pulling black Velcro covers off of their jackets to reveal the yellow letters "U.S. TREASURY."

Gideon would've thought that the men weren't Secret Servicemen at all, if it wasn't for the Attorney General taking the heat for the fiasco.

Gideon kept thinking of Monica, her grief, her all but accusing him of shooting Raphael himself. Could he trust his own suspicions, or was he only trying, somehow, to find someone to blame other than himself?

He felt sweat rolling down the back of his shirt as he sat down. Here, with the grand jury, at least there wouldn't be a defense lawyer calling him a liar. All he would have to do was answer the prosecutor's questions. . .

That would be bad enough.

The prosecutor shuffled a few papers and said, "I'll try to make this brief."

Gideon nodded. Thank God for small favors.

"I want to ask you about what happened in the early morning on February thirteenth of this year. Do you remember what you were doing then?"

Gideon swallowed and tried not to think of the jurors staring at him. "Yes, I was on a stakeout."

"With Agent Raphael Malcolm of the FBI?"

"Yes."

"Why was he there?"

"I felt the Bureau would be interested in a lead I was following up."

"A lead on the possible location of a stolen Daedalus supercomputer, correct?" "Yes."

"You then had no knowledge that there were already suspects in custody and the computer had been recovered."

"As far as I knew, no one did."

"Agent Malcolm was related to you, wasn't he?"

"Yes, he is—" Gideon sucked in a breath. "Was my brother."

The prosecutor nodded. "Why was he with you, and not some other FBI Agent? There is a liaison that the DC Police Department normally works with, isn't there?"

"Yes." Gideon felt cold, the sweat under his shirt had become like ice on his skin. Were they going to accuse him of causing Rafe's death, here? What could he say if they did? Could he deny it? He couldn't even deny it to himself. "I went through my brother because I thought I'd have a better chance of getting an expedited hearing. I had a specific date, after which the Daedalus was going to be gone, who knows where. I couldn't wait for the liaison to sift through his priorities and kick it upstairs when he felt like it."

"What was the Bureau's reaction?"

"There wasn't one. They felt the same as the department. The tip I was working off of wasn't credible enough to assign the manpower I requested."

"But they assigned you Agent Malcolm?"

Gideon nodded.

"Why did they do that?"

"He—" Gideon's voice caught a bit. "He requested the assignment."

"So it was you and Agent Malcolm, your brother, alone on this stakeout?"

"Yes."

"You had managed to get a warrant to do this?"

"Yes, Judge Bachman, based on an informant's tip."

The prosecutor nodded again, as if he was making some sort of point. "Who was this informant?"

"His name is Kareem Rashad Williams, his street name is Lionel. A small-time drug dealer."

" 'Small-time drug dealer?' But you believed him when he gave you information on a theft worth fifty million dollars?"

"Based on my prior experience with him, I thought he was credible. He had no reason to make up something like that."

"No one else seems to have shared your view."

"That was why we were alone—"

"Why didn't you call for backup when you decided to go into the building?"

"By then I suspect we didn't believe Lionel either. It was after midnight and since no pickup had shown for the computer, we didn't expect to find anything."

"Now let me see if you can walk us through what happened, step by step—"

That was what they did, in excruciating detail. Gideon felt as if every step he took had half a dozen questions attached— Why did he do this? Why didn't he do that?

It seemed to be hours before they reached the ambush that had taken Rafe's life.

"Now," the prosecutor asked Gideon, "what were Agent Malcolm's words as he turned toward the light?"

"He said, 'FBI, freeze.' "

"He was holding his gun at the time?"

"Yes."

"It was then that the shooting began?"

"Yes."

"As he spoke?"

"Maybe during, things were going fast—"

"During?"

Gideon nodded.

"Did you both return fire?"

"I did, I'm not sure about Raphael. I think the first shot hit him before he could do anything."

The prosecutor shuffled his papers and looked back up at Gideon, "I think that's about it."

"But—"

"Thank you," said the prosecutor.

Gideon didn't have a chance to object; they were already bringing in the next witness. He stood up, and seemed to feel the world lurch underneath him. The prosecutor hadn't asked him anything about the men who'd shot at them. Gideon had no chance to mention silenced weapons. . .

As he walked out of the room, he couldn't help thinking that there was something very wrong going on.

A gentle snow was drifting down on Washington as Senator Daniel Tenroyan was taking his regular lunchtime stroll around the Mall. It had been three years since a triple bypass, and he had become religious

about his exercise. Every day that Congress was in session, he made two complete circuits around the Mall during his lunch hour.

He was passing the baroque pile of stone that housed part of the Smithsonian when he noticed someone sitting on a bench about thirty feet away, watching him intently. At first Tenroyan thought it was one of the homeless people that dotted the landscape in D.C. But as Tenroyan approached, and the man stood, Tenroyan recognized him.

"D'Arcy?" Tenroyan said.

Another step and he was certain. He was facing Emmit D'Arcy, President Rayburn's national security advisor. The last time he had seen D'Arcy, it had been from across the table at a Senate Intelligence Committee briefing.

The short man pushed his glasses back on his nose and said, "Let's walk for a while."

Tenroyan felt uncomfortable next to D'Arcy. The man had the reputation of being the most active proponent of black covert operations since William Casey. Tenroyan had gained a deep distrust of such things back when he was a Congressman and had served on the House-Senate Committees for Iran-Contra. That had left a bad taste in his mouth ever since. He felt that it was that bungled intelligence operation that kept Ronald Reagan's presidency from achieving what it might have.

Tenroyan walked next to D'Arcy, but he refused to start a conversation with the man.

"I understand that you're having a press conference this Friday."

"Yep," Tenroyan said. He looked up to watch the flags snapping around the base of the Washington Monument. Tenroyan had a Coolidge-like reputation for being laconic, and it came in handy when dealing with hostile reporters, and anyone else he didn't trust. He had a motto, don’t engage the devil in conversation.

"I understand you're going to chair this committee on the Secret Service incident."

"Yep."

"The Administration wishes to cooperate with the investigation."

Then what are you doing here? Tenroyan thought.

D'Arcy continued as if he heard Tenroyan's thought. "I just wanted you to know that there are some sensitive issues tied up in this. If the hearings turn into a fishing expedition, some uncomfortable things could be made public."

Tenroyan stopped walking and turned to face D'Arcy.

D'Arcy kept going. "I don't know if you remember Operation Firewall—"

Tenroyan nodded. He did. It was just a few years ago, when the Internet was a big new thing, and people on the Hill were running around terrified of it, passing blatantly unconstitutional legislation like the Communications Decency Act. That atmosphere bred the largest "sting" on the Hill since Abscam.

The little-reported "Operation Firewall" was a Secret Service project to test the security of the computer networks run by Congress and a half-dozen other civilian agencies. Their forays broke into most of those systems, revealing gaping security holes, as well as nearly fifty Congressional aides who were using government computers for illegal purposes from credit-card fraud to child pornography.

"I'm breaking security by telling you this," D'Arcy said, "but the NS A had a hand in the operation—"

Tenroyan snorted and shook his head. That news ranked up there with the fact that Bill Clinton had improper sexual relations in the White House—ugly, somewhat disgusting, but no real surprise.

Tenroyan didn't like the idea, but as a member of the Intelligence Committee he knew that the ubiquitous nature of the net made it nearly impossible to impose restraints on domestic espionage when it came to computer traffic. The Internet was a giant web spanning the globe, and the NSA was the giant spider straddling the network. Legend had it that every signal on the net passed through the NSA's computers at least once.

"I'm telling you," D'Arcy continued. "Because I have access to all the Firewall data that wasn't made public."

"Get to your point." Tenroyan was losing patience with the man.

"I just wanted you to know that there are thousands of gigabytes of data that would be embarrassing to many people still sitting on the Hill, especially those in the leadership."

Tenroyan took a step back, feeling anger building. "Son, are you threatening me?"

D'Arcy was an incredible actor. He actually looked shocked at the accusation. "No, no—I just want you to know that there are probably areas that would be better left unquestioned, or you might inadvertently open all of Firewall to public scrutiny. It would be as much of an embarrassment to the Administration and the NSA as it would be to Congress."

"I see," Tenroyan said.

"I'm glad you do," D'Arcy slipped off his glasses and Tenroyan was struck by the thought of how much the man resembled Peter Lorre. "I want you to know that I'll always be available to help steer you away from any embarrassing revelations." D'Arcy wiped off his glasses and replaced them. "It's been a pleasure talking to you, Senator."

"I wish I could say the same."

D'Arcy left the Mall, walking down Fourteenth, where Tenroyan saw a black Ford Taurus idling behind the concrete traffic barriers. He watched as D'Arcy got into the car and it drove off.

What do they have on me? Tenroyan thought. Pornography, certainly. At one point or another Tenroyan had downloaded smut off the net. It wasn't all that much, and it was all normal and heterosexual—but anything pornographic related to the net was the kiss of death. In the public's mind, it was all child pornography or bestiality. . .

Worse than that was the possibility that they had his e-mail. He had, years ago when e-mail was still a new thing, carried on a torrid written relationship with a woman who wasn't his wife. It was all virtual, he had never even met the woman. But he knew that if any of those letters were made public, his personal life would disintegrate, and his political life would become impossible.

He had ambition, but he wasn't a Bill Clinton. He couldn't see himself pressing forward inexorably, not caring what scandals turned up in his personal life.

For the first time since his triple bypass, Tenroyan didn't complete his circuit around the mall. He turned his back on the Washington Monument and walked back past the Smithsonian, toward the Capitol Building.