“One of Santa's little helpers?”
“You got anything else you want to tell me?” I asked.
“Just Merry Christmas to you and Mrs. Claus.”
The line went dead. He'd hung up. Mrs. Claus — Anna. “Thanks for reminding me, asshole,” I said to the handset before putting it back on the cradle. I glanced again at the title page of Boyle's speech: “Playing God.” I recalled my last meeting with Dr. Tanaka in the coroner's refrigerator. If Cooke wasn't lying, the professor sure was pretty good at smiting. The phone rang again.
“Hello, Arlen,” I said.
“Who've you been talking to?”
“Don't I get a hello?”
“We've already done all that. I've been down here twenty minutes already.”
“Where's down here?”
“The cafeteria.”
I realized why he was angry: He was probably drinking the coffee. “Have I been on the phone all that time?” I looked at my watch. A good half an hour had passed since we'd last spoken.
“I don't know — you tell me. You've got seven minutes to get down here.”
“You got anything for me?” I asked.
“That's six minutes, fifty-five seconds …”
Seven minutes. Arlen was referring to the often-quoted brag that, despite occupying close to four million square feet and having three times the floor space of the Empire State Building, no point in the Pentagon was further than seven minutes away from any other point in the Pentagon. It's probably true, but only if you're Jesse Owens in spikes. I made it in eight minutes thirty.
The smell of the cafeteria always spoke to me well before I arrived there. What it was telling me was to turn around and run in the opposite direction. If I could have dissected that smell, it would have been a combination of sugar, deep-fried dough, grease, and the aforementioned coffee.
Despite this, however, the cafeteria was always reasonably full, as was the case this time, the gentle roar of hundreds of conversations rising toward the ceiling. It was a sea of uniforms. Every military service was represented here, mixed in with politicians, clerks, public servants, contractors, spooks — the individual cogs that made up the inner workings of the greatest fighting machine the world has ever known. The place had to be bugged.
I scanned the floor and saw Arlen standing, waving his arm above his head. On the small, round table in front of him were two cups of coffee, one half empty, and two sugar doughnuts, one with a bite out of it.
“Stale?” I said, gesturing at the spread.
“Yeah,” he replied. “And so are the doughnuts. What took you?”
He wasn't expecting an excuse so I didn't offer one.
At the nearest table a couple of tanned, gray-haired marine gunnery sergeants stared angrily at a third man, also a marine, who wore the insignia of the JAG corps — a lawyer. He was speaking to them in hushed tones, underlining the point he was making with hand movements. Whatever he was saying, it wasn't giving the two older men a whole lot of joy. I wanted to tell the sergeants my current favorite lawyer joke to cheer them up, but I could sense that they were well beyond being humored, so, to get things rolling, I said to Arlen, “Hey… a couple of lawyers are in a bank when a gang of robbers bursts in and begins taking the money from the tellers. Another gang member lines the customers up and starts stripping them of their wallets, cash, and jewelry. While this is happening, Lawyer One feels something being jammed into his hand by his associate, Lawyer Two. Lawyer Number One whispers to Lawyer Two, ‘What's this for?' To which Lawyer Number Two answers, ‘It's all that money I owe you.' “
“They're not getting any better, are they?” said Arlen.
“Seemed appropriate,” I said, gesturing at the JAG guy in a huddle with the marine sergeants.
“Where do you want to start?” Arlen asked, but he already had his own thoughts on how to get things under way because he said, almost immediately, “Vin, I'm sorry things worked out the way they did between you and Anna.”
I gave him what I hoped would pass for a smile and said, “So how'd you make out with Moreton Genetics?” After a moment's hesitation, Arlen reached down to a briefcase at his feet and pulled out a plain manila folder, placing it on the table. I made a bet with myself that a hidden surveillance camera had picked up that action and captured it on tape.
“I think you should wait till you get out of here before you go through this,” Arlen advised. His eyes held not the slightest flicker of emotion. Sometimes nothing can say everything.
“So,” I said, placing the folder on my lap. “How's everything across the river?”
But something had distracted Arlen. The expression on his face had changed. In fact, he now had one. He was also looking past my shoulder. Somewhere close by, I heard a cup smash on the tiled floor. I was about to say, “Another happy customer when Arlen got to his feet. I glanced around and saw that several people were following suit. One of the Air Force lieutenants had her hand up against her mouth, her eyes wide with shock, and I realized that the entire cafeteria had fallen silent, like it was holding its breath. I'd experienced group shock like this only once before, one day in the month of September that was both a long time ago and just yesterday. I turned and saw all eyes focused on the television monitors scattered about the place. The channel was tuned to CNN. Then the cells and beepers began to ring, a chorus of two hundred assorted ringtones — Beethoven's Fifth, dogs barking, bells tolling, rock songs, rap, blues, applause, a door slamming, the growl of a NASCAR V8 revving up … My own cell was vibrating against my leg. On the television screen was a view being filmed from a network news chopper. The caption read, Live. Smoke, fire, and torrential rain made it difficult to see what was going on below the aircraft. The helo flew into relatively clear air revealing a familiar skyscraper with many of its upper-story windows smashed and its lower floors shrouded in smoke. The helo continued on past a building that had collapsed in on itself and was burning fiercely. A second title appeared on the screen.
It read, San Francisco Attacked.
NINE
When I arrived in San Francisco, the air was still heavy with dust that stank of burnt concrete, scorched paper, and cooked sewage. The smell took me back to Baghdad and Afghanistan and Kosovo, the three war zones I've been unlucky enough to experience firsthand. The smell would hang around for some time — it was the type that sticks to the back of the nostrils and puts down roots. San Franciscans wouldn't forget that smell for years to come, nor would any town downwind.
The Transamerica Pyramid building in downtown San Francisco was built to withstand significant earthquakes and so its structural integrity had not been compromised by the blast, despite numerous assertions by so-called experts on television that it would come down like a World Trade Center tower at any moment. Several other buildings in the immediate vicinity, in particular an upmarket apartment block, had fared far worse. That had been utterly consumed, along with the majority of its residents, by a gas explosion and subsequent fire. Broken glass had fallen away from buildings three blocks from the epicenters of the twin blasts, causing a frightful array of injuries.
A command center had been established two blocks from America's newest ground zero, within the closest building to have kept its windows. The place was a nightmare of shouting people, sirens, phones, and heartbreak. Homeland Security had assumed control, unless you talked to the FBI, who begged to differ. The San Francisco Police Department maintained the crime scene and so believed it was the lead agency, except that the San Francisco Fire Department was concerned about secondary cave-ins and gas leaks, which meant you couldn't get near the Transamerica Pyramid building without their consent and escort. The National Guard was securing the wider area, telling everyone where they could and couldn't go. CIA was there, covering its butt in the event that the culprits turned out to be on its watch list. And, of course, there was little ol' me, representing the DoD's interests. The situation reminded me of the one about the various parts of the body arguing over which was more important, the head because it did all the thinking, the heart because it pumped all the blood, the stomach because it processed all the food, the legs because they provided the locomotion, and so on. The joke went that eventually all the contenders agreed on the most important part of the body being the asshole, which won the argument. It did so by refusing to do its thing and clamping up solid. Within a couple of days, the brain could no longer think, the stomach could no longer deal with food, the legs couldn't move, and the heart threatened to stop pumping altogether. I wondered which agency would turn out to be the asshole here, a question quickly answered when the representatives from my fellow crime-fighting agencies were introduced to the CIA's SAC — the special agent in charge.