“So you’re in from Cleveland, huh?” Cooper set down his shot glass. “The Children of Darwin?”
“Believe it or not, no. I’ve been working a subject there, a scientist. Guy decided to bolt, so I had to pay his protégé a visit, rattle his cage.”
“He know anything?”
“Too early to say.”
They caught up, Cooper letting the talk stay small for a while, not wanting to rush things. Bobby Quinn filled him in on the situation at the agency.
“It’s a grade-A, top-shelf mess. Everybody playing duck and cover, tripping over each other to distance themselves. ‘What? We track and kill bad people? Oh my. How rude.’ ” Quinn laughed. “And at the same time, we still have all these potential targets out there, so the same upper management yahoos that are wringing their hands on CNN are coming around and talking out of the side of their mouths, telling us to keep going, that things will get sorted soon.”
“Will they?”
“Equitable Services is over. But yeah, sure. Give it a year to blow over, and we’ll start back up under a new name. Everyone knows the work still has to be done. Meanwhile, the best and brightest agents in the DAR are in limbo. You know what else they’ve got me doing? I’m heading an internal fact-finding task force to support a congressional investigation. You want a good time some Saturday night, try writing a report on taking down a known terrorist without using the word kill.”
“Terminate?”
“Neutralize. Makes it sound like maybe we pointed out the error of their ways and offered them vocational training.” Quinn shook his head. “How about you? You’re the only guy I know who can murder his boss and end up working for the president. Talk about failing upward.”
“Wasn’t my plan.”
“You had a plan?”
Cooper laughed, gestured for another round of shots.
“Seriously though, Coop. You’re a soldier, not a suit. What are you doing working for Clay?”
“Same as always. Trying to stop a war.”
“How’s it going?”
“Same as always.”
Quinn took a pack of cigarettes from his coat, pulled one out, and spun it between two fingers. The bartender came over to pour their shots, said, “You can’t smoke in here.”
“Really? Is this a new public ordinance or just a personal policy?”
“Whatever.” The guy set the bottle back on the shelf, wandered away.
“Yeah, whatever.” His old partner tapped the cigarette, toyed with it. “Funny world. John Smith gets fat checks to speak at college campuses, but a guy who wants a cigarette can be killed and eaten.”
“You don’t even like smoking them. You just like thinking about smoking them.”
“That’s true. Delayed gratification, like tantric sex.”
Cooper laughed. It felt good to be here, talking to someone who lived in the same world he did. But thinking that reminded him of why he was here, the fear that had been plaguing him. “Okay, full disclosure, this isn’t strictly a social call.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“What do you guys have on the Children of Darwin?”
Quinn shrugged. “No record of them until about six weeks ago, then suddenly, poof, there they are, sneezing in everyone’s sandwich.”
“Any idea how they’re being run?”
“We assume discrete cells, fluid command structure. Terrorist SOP. But with Equitable Services mothballed, nobody’s been able to draw a bead on them.”
“How is that possible? How can we know nothing?”
Quinn leaned back. “Is this the White House asking?”
“No,” Cooper said. “I’m not fact-finding. I’m trying to work it out, and I need your help. You’re my planner.”
“Flattery works.” Quinn sipped his beer. “Okay, between you and me? The whole idea they sprang up out of nowhere, it doesn’t play. No one gets this organized this fast, not even brilliants.”
“So you’re saying they’ve been around awhile.”
“Well, they know exactly how to hurt us, right? Before, most terrorists were planting bombs in post offices, assassinating minor officials, derailing trains. Bad, but essentially a nuisance. But these guys, they’ve got their shit together. Instead of attacking buildings, they hijack a couple of trucks and kill the drivers, knowing that insurance companies will pull their policies. Boom, they’ve starved the city.”
“Same thing with the power,” Cooper said. “I think they took down the grid hoping that we would react by enforcing a quarantine.”
“Yeah, that was a terrible play.” Quinn shook his head. “All it did was create chaos. We essentially just gave them those cities. How did you let that happen, man?”
“Wasn’t my call.”
“And the cover story, that we’re locking down the city to capture the terrorists? Who is that supposed to fool, a ten-year-old with a head injury?”
“I know, I know. Honestly, I think Leahy believes you guys are going to come up with target coordinates for a missile launch.”
Quinn shook his head. “No way. I’d guess the COD have no more than ten or fifteen operatives in each city. Discrete, no centralized command. And the grid probably got hacked by some teenaged twist in a Poughkeepsie basement.”
“Why so few people?”
“That’s all you need to hijack trucks and burn a depot. By keeping it that small, they’re nearly impossible to find. Especially now.”
“If that’s true, then this was all planned in advance.” Cooper chose his words carefully. He thought he was right but wanted to see if Quinn came to the same conclusion. “Not weeks ago. Years ago. Someone organized this, got people in place, funded them, and left them as sleepers for a time when the DAR was in chaos.”
Quinn gave him a curious look. “You’re saying John Smith.”
“A plan like this would take an incredible strategic mind.”
“You once told me that John Smith was the strategic equivalent of Einstein.” Quinn sipped at his beer. “But . . . wait a second.”
“A plan years in the making. A small, dedicated group who uses our systems against us. More than that, action timed at precisely the worst moment, when a strong if immoral president is impeached and facing trial, and the organization that would normally have protected the country is in shambles.”
“If that’s true, then it means—are you saying—” Quinn stared at him. “You realize what that means?”
“That’s what’s been keeping me up nights, Bobby. I just keep thinking it through and landing at the same place.”
It was a place Cooper had never imagined ending up. When he’d gone undercover to hunt John Smith, he’d had no doubts about the man’s guilt. But the journey to reach him had opened his eyes to certain facts he couldn’t ignore. Facts like Shannon’s abnorm friend, Samantha, whose gift for empathy could have made her a healer or a teacher, but who had instead been turned into a prostitute. Facts like a DAR tactical team arresting a family that had helped him, imprisoning the parents and putting the eight-year-old girl in an academy. Facts like the tenuous beauty of the New Canaan Holdfast in Wyoming, where a generation of optimistic dreamers were building something new and better.
By the time he’d finally found Smith, Cooper’s faith had been strained. And when Cooper learned the truth about the massacre at the Monocle restaurant, his faith had snapped.
In a way, he had snapped.
Cooper remembered sitting on top of a peak in Wyoming, a thin finger of stone fifty yards high, watching the dawn. He and Smith had climbed it together, and as a bloody sun rose over the dusty landscape, they had talked. More than talked; traded truths. It had been a terribly surreal experience, conversing with his sworn enemy. It was that morning that Smith told him about the existence of the video showing Drew Peters and President Walker plotting the Monocle. Smith had claimed that they were the ones who wanted a war, that only people already in power would benefit from one.