Landau fished a bottle of pills from his jacket, popped three into his mouth, and washed them down with his remaining coffee.

  Jessup reached over, lifted the plastic bottle, and read the prescription. “You take Oxycontin on an empty stomach? Are you trying to induce a coma? No way in hell a practicing physician prescribed these to a relatively healthy man like you.”

  “I told him I was having severe migraines. What do doctors know anyway?”

  “I won’t ask who you obtained this prescription from.”

  Landau took the bottle from him, slipped it back in his pocket, stood, and paced the room lengthwise. “You’re stalling.”

  “Stalling?”

  “Buying them time to go deeper into hiding,” Landau said.

  “They’ve had three days, for God sakes. They could be at the South Pole by now.”

  Souad sauntered into the room. He removed his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. Jessup noted his handsome face and virile allure, and the snug-fitting shirt that accentuated his physique. Landau shot Souad a questioning look, and he shook his head.

  Landau continued to pace while Souad sat to Jessup’s left.

  “You haven’t seen Kenji or Matt Reece in the last three days?” Landau asked.

  “No.”

  “You saw them drive away?”

  “No.”

  “How can that be? There’s only one road in and out of the ranch.”

  “I told you, I was waist-deep in a grave a half mile from the house.”

  “The Jeep at the ranch is the only car registered in Kenji’s name. Does he have access to another?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “So we’re forced to assume Consuela picked them up while you dug that grave?”

  Jessup shrugged.

  “But you’ve spoken to them on the telephone?”

  “No. I haven’t been home since that morning, and I don’t own a cell phone.”

  Landau glanced at Souad. “We’ve already checked the DMV database and issued an APB on her car. When we take a break, check with the office to see if anything turned up.”

  Souad removed a pen and notebook from his jacket and scribbled notes.

  Landau stood before a starburst of cracks on the wall. He flipped through his notes, studying each page. “One thing still baffles me. Why did he take the boy?”

  To answer that question, Jessup knew he would have to confess about the letter where Kenji explained why. He stared at Landau, silent.

  “What kind of bullshit question is that?” Souad asked.

  Landau closed his notebook. “Is there a problem here?” he asked.

  Souad said, “You always do this; everyone says so. Obsessing over questions that go nowhere.”

  “Well, excuse me for trying to do my job.” He turned to Jessup. “This is our first case we’ve partnered on. He’s unfamiliar with my methods.”

  “A rocky honeymoon, eh?”

  Souad waved an arm to silence him. “Look, we know they were at the lab by themselves with plenty of time to set the charges three nights earlier. We know the lab burned down at about the same time Consuela posted the YouTube video. Now we know she drove to the ranch, picked them up, and they disappeared together. Those are the facts. Who the fuck cares why they took the boy? They did, so deal with it, and stop wasting time. We need to know where, not why.”

  Jessup half smiled. “Do you two need a minute?”

  “Okay, hotshot,” Landau said to Souad. “He’s all yours. I’ll be at the nearest Starbucks.” Landau tucked his notebook into his jacket pocket and left the room.

  Souad leveled his sexy eyes on Jessup. “Let’s start at the point you last saw Kenji.”

  Jessup pounded a fist on the table. “I’ve gone over that with your sidekick. If you clowns can’t compare notes, that’s your problem. Just know that if Kenji took that formula, it’s because he created it. It’s his baby. As for blowing up buildings and killing animals, he’s not wired like that. He’s incapable of taking a life.”

  Souad nodded. “When did you last see Kenji?”

  LANDAU AND Souad took turns questioning Jessup for twenty-four consecutive hours, spelling each other in that squalid room with no windows and no ventilation. Every four or five hours they brought in burgers and soft drinks, and they were generous with bathroom breaks. It was nothing like the third-degree treatment beloved of the movies. Rather, they relied on repetition and asking questions about very specific details to break him down. What kind of jeans was Kenji wearing? Did he take his wallet? What pictures did he carry in his wallet? Which credit cards does he use? How much cash did he have? What were Matt Reece’s last words to you? Was Matt Reece wearing sneakers or boots? We found ashes in the kitchen sink. What did you burn? How old was Groucho? How deep did you dig the grave? How long did it take to dig?

  The questions were accompanied by fists striking the table anytime his eyes closed.

  The agents were a formidable team because they were such an odd couple: the tall, languid, deep-voiced older man and the aggressive, buff, Middle-Eastern stud with his laser-beam eyes. They were the classic good cop/bad cop duo, and they were effective because Jessup made the mistake of first assuming that Souad was the dangerous one. He later realized that Souad was driven by volatile passion, while Landau was a calculating, cold-blooded killer type.

  The continuous buzz of the light bulbs grew louder and louder, nearly to the point of driving Jessup mad. The questions resounded in his head like muffled incantations. His muscles ached and his sweat-soaked shirt reeked. He would have told them any secret in exchange for a few hours’ sleep. In a moment of lucid thought, he became confident that what they were doing to him was tantamount to torture, and that it was illegal. It was high time to stop this abuse.

  Landau repeated his last question. “Why did Kenji take the boy, and what is Matt Reece’s role in all of this?”

  Jessup lifted his head with effort. He swallowed. “I’m not saying any more until I have legal representation.”

  Landau closed his notebook. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Connors. We’re done.”

  Jessup shook his head to clear his mind of this surprise.

  Landau laughed a dry old man’s laugh, almost a cough, his shoulders shaking. “You passed with flying colors, Mr. Connors. Congratulations.”

  Jessup failed to see any humor in anything.

  “You see,” Landau said, “we made you repeat your story many, many times. Whenever there are no variations in a story, we’re 100 percent certain it’s fake, something rehearsed. Human beings telling the truth never tell a story quite the same way twice.”

  Souad said, “Since your storyline stayed consistent but details varied, we’re convinced you’re telling the truth, that you had no prior knowledge and you’re hiding nothing.”

  Landau stood and laid a comforting hand on Jessup’s shoulder. “We’ve arranged some decent food and a bed. Get some rest. In a few hours, we’ll escort you to your ranch.”

  “Take me home, now.”

  Landau squeezed his shoulder. “A hundred reporters are camped on your doorstep, waiting to sink their teeth into you. You better rest here before facing that mob.”

  They lifted Jessup from under his armpits and half carried him to a toilet where he relieved himself, and then helped him to a cell with a table and chair and a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs and toast. Beside the table stood a cot with a pillow and blanket.

  Jessup was so tired he almost collapsed on the cot without eating, but hunger drove him to the table. He wolfed down the food before he sank his head into that gloriously soft pillow.

  Chapter Nine

  DECLAN HUGHES sat for three rainy days in a cabin at Camp David, waiting for the president to fit him into her schedule. After it became evident he was not her top priority, Declan flew Diane McCarthy back to Nevada to gather more information from the scientists who worked with Consuela and Kenji. Jeffery Wolfe, the president’s science advisor, weaved back and forth between Declan and Madam President with questions and responses. On Declan’s arrival at Camp David, he considered himself a patriot, but now he felt like a prisoner.

  On the first face-to-face with Wolfe, Declan removed a file from his briefcase. “We recovered some notes from the lab wreckage.” He opened the file and read from the paper on top. “The people of the United States and other Western nations created tremendous agony in my country, crushing our collective soul, and then washed their hands with our blood in their false patriotism. The West’s true desire was, and still is, absolute power. Most Western nations are tyrants, indifferent to the suffering of underdeveloped, weaker countries. Now I have power over death, I am the tyrant, and I am indifferent to your misery. It matters little to me how many people die, for you will all die if I keep the formula to myself. There is only one way to acquire immortality, and that is to de-arm the world.”

  “A diatribe,” Wolfe said. “He’s raging against our victory over Japan.”

  “Yes,” Declan said, “but it sheds light on who we’re dealing with. He’s suffered great spiritual anguish, a wrenching of his soul. Perhaps he has a madman’s impulse to make others share his anguish.”

  “So you think this demand of de-arming is a red herring?” Wolfe asked.

  “I think it smells fishy. I mean, even if we de-arm, we can rebuild our arsenals once we have the formula. He’s shrewd enough to know that.”

  Wolfe nodded at Declan. “It’s interesting his note uses the singular ‘I’ and not the plural ‘we.’ Could it be a case of male chauvinism, or is he thinking of shedding his partner now that he has what he needs? I dare say he wouldn’t be the first man to play that card.”

  Declan had no idea how to respond.

  After Wolfe left, he thought for the millionth time that his long-held dream was now within his grasp. The one roadblock holding back drone weapons from the next major advancement was the size and heat of the computers needed to control a network of drones, both onboard and at the command centers. For years, computers became faster by cramming components closer together on chips, which in turn generated greater heat. Computer chips had reached an upper limit, becoming so densely packed that any more speed would melt the circuit boards. Having anticipated this a decade earlier, Declan created a subsidiary company to develop a computer using the quantum attributes of atoms. In the eighties, physicist Richard Feynman speculated that such a “quantum computer” would be a million times faster than any current technology. IBM, Sony, and HP were also working on prototypes.

  Declan was confident that with so much raw computational power, he could link a network of drone aircraft, all coordinated by an artificially intelligent system. His dream was to replace a human army with advanced machines capable of defending America against any threat. The idea was made popular by the Terminator movies that labeled it Cyberdyne Systems Skynet, a functional, self-aware, synthetic defense system. Only to Declan it wasn’t fictional; it was simply yet to be built. Research and development outlays had already run into the tens of billions, nearly bankrupting him, and the finish line was still beyond the horizon. He needed a cash cow to continue the research, and Kenji’s trillion-dollar formula was precisely the golden heifer he craved.

  Emails from Diane McCarthy held little information. Consuela and Kenji shared nothing with their peers. Still, Diane pieced together enough data to make some knowledgeable guesses.

  After a pulled-pork sandwich and a green salad lunch on day four, Jeff Wolfe escorted him to an unobtrusive neoclassical building set away from the other cabins.

  Upon entering the foyer, Secret Service agents patted them down so thoroughly that to Declan, it felt like a sexual assault. They checked his briefcase with the same diligence. “Gentlemen,” a female receptionist greeted them, “this way, please.”

  She led them along a corridor to a double door flanked by two armed Marines. She knocked as she opened it and motioned them into a conference room that seemed too small for its massive oak table and two dozen straight-back chairs. A team of top-ranking military men and politicians stood around the table with their iPads and briefcases.

  Wolfe made no effort to introduce Declan to the others, although Declan recognized four senators on the Homeland Security Committee he worked with in the past, two generals from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the foreign relations secretary, Bernie Hurlburt, and the superstar national security advisor, Herman Chan.

  Declan sensed a testosterone-rich aura saturating the room. These men were the puppeteers who manipulated the strings to make the world dance. He smiled. These were his kind of people.

  The double doors reopened, and President Harrington marched in and cut a beeline for the head of the table. Her back was ramrod straight, and she walked with purpose; her blonde hair pulled away from her face in a simple ponytail; her impeccably tailored blue pantsuit broadcasted her brusque professionalism, and the magenta blouse and pink rose pinned to her lapel affirmed her feminine qualities; yet she was not as attractive as she always seemed on television. Without makeup her puffy face and bags beneath her eyes made her look like she was recovering from a three-day binge.

  She said, “Gentlemen, my apologies for keeping everyone waiting for so many days. I assure you it was not by choice. This YouTube video has caused a shitstorm across the globe. The Joint Chiefs and I have tried to contain the panic, both here and abroad. So far, we’ve been unsuccessful.” She shot an accusatory glance at Declan. “Mr. Hughes’s scientists claim to possess the greatest godsend in human history, but the price they demand for this boon is astronomical. Let me remind everyone that the lion’s share of our economy is based on military spending and selling arms to the world. Without it, we would suffer the deepest and longest depression in our history. That, gentlemen, is intolerable. We need a strategy to retrieve this formula without affecting America’s ability to defend herself, both militarily and economically.”

  She sat, and the men followed her lead. Declan and Jeffery sat on her left, across the table from Gerry Chalmers, the head of the World Health Organization.

  “Mr. Gonzales,” the president said, “please enlighten us with your findings.”

  The director of Homeland Security stood before a stack of blue folders. He rose and passed one to each attendee. “This is everything we have so far.”

  She raised an eyebrow at the thinness of the folder and murmured, “Everything?”

  Gonzales held up three fingers. “We’re attacking this problem on three fronts. First, we’ve thrown a military cordon around every airport, harbor, and border crossing to contain the fugitives and keep known assassins out. Obviously we need to keep these scientists within our reach. If they slip beyond our borders, it will be impossible to protect them. We’ve deployed the bulk of our resources on containment. That leaves us shorthanded to deal with our second objective: controlling the rising internal strife. We are now shipping all of our overseas troops home to help with this effort.”

  The president opened Gonzales’s file and skimmed the documents. She gave the impression she already knew everything it offered.

  Gonzales adjusted his glasses and leaned forward, as if to give his words more weight. “A number of townships in the Midwest and South have cut themselves off, claiming that they will never surrender their weapons. Armed vigilantes have supplanted local governments. The media is all over it, which has spurred a panic that is spreading exponentially. Vigilantes are using social media to organize resistance to any disarming.”

  General Henry Pollard waved a hand. “Fragmentation left unchecked leads to revolution. If this situation deteriorates, we’ll need to declare martial law in several states. I’ve put the entire National Guard on alert.”

  The president glanced at General Pollard, an obese, florid-faced man with cold blue eyes and thinning hair. She nodded her approval. “Let’s be candid about this, gentlemen. It’s not only a few dozen towns scattered across red states. Unrest now spans coast to coast. The nation is polarized, thanks to the NRA’s fanning the flames of fear and distrust and resentment. Everyone on Capitol Hill has the NRA breathing down our necks. We’re holding a political bomb set with a hair trigger.”

  Gonzales nodded. “Our third objective is to find the fugitives and recover the formula. The FBI is using every resource available to accomplish this. The file I’ve given you, Madam President, includes a profile for both scientists. There isn’t much we don’t already know from the tabloids about Consuela Rocha y Villareal.”

  Declan scanned her profile: Fifty-five years old, IQ above 180, a graduate of Northwestern, published several scientific volumes on anatomy, physiology, and genetics. An LA street gang gunned down her parents when she was an undergraduate. Also, her only child, a son, was killed while serving in Iraq, and because of that her husband drank himself to death. She now had no living relatives. Declan mumbled to himself, “No surprise she’s on a mission to rid the world of guns.”

  Gonzales continued, “She recently cashed out a sizable portfolio of stocks and bonds and sold her house in Nevada, giving her over five hundred thousand dollars in cash. With that kind of money, they can stay hidden indefinitely.”

  “How could a researcher accumulate so much liquidity?” General Pollard asked.

  “Obviously,” the president said, “we are not dealing with country bumpkins.”

  Declan flipped the page to a picture of Kenji. It was a recent photo, taken at Golden Eagle Industries for a security clearance, yet the accompanying documentation supported the claim he was born in Hiroshima soon after the US dropped the bomb. If this information is indeed true, Declan thought, he is living proof.

  “You’re convinced this is no hoax?” the president asked.

  Gonzales said in a tone of dismissal, “We must assume the formula is legit.”

  A jolt of electricity blistered the air. Something Declan had felt for days, and now the others felt it as well. The excitement became palpable.