“Well, it’s not the sort of airplane I fly,” said McDermott, “but Anchorage is about three hundred miles. A Lear might need two, maybe three hundred gallons.”
“And to Minnesota?”
“That’s gotta be a couple thousand miles more. The jet could do it, no problem, but you’d need full tanks.”
Lund found the paper she wanted. “They paid for eight hundred gallons.”
“I’d say that’s full. Which implies to me that they never intended to go to Anchorage in the first place. More to the point…” His coarse voice drifted off, allowing Lund to finish the thought.
“They were trying to hide where they were going.”
DeBolt was casing a neighborhood for a home to burgle. There was simply no other way to think about it.
He approached on foot, looking up and down the street. He watched the homes adjacent to 98 Mill Street closely, but saw no activity, although the house diagonally across the street had an open garage door and a minivan parked inside. The tasteful stone path that led up to 98 meandered through tight landscaping, and near the front steps he encountered a plastic sign shaped like a shield. It warned that trespassing was inadvisable, courtesy of AHM, a home security company so commonplace that even a lifelong renter like DeBolt had heard of it.
He went straight to the front door like any visitor would, and paused in a portico twenty feet tall. There DeBolt turned three hundred and sixty degrees, taking in everything around him. He wondered if there might be a key under the doormat, or behind the terra-cotta planter that held the remains of last spring’s annuals. He was dismissing that hopeful thought when he looked again at the sign. AHM. Having never been a home owner, he was unfamiliar with how such systems worked. All the same, two questions arose. Did the Thompsons really have an active security contract with AHM, or was it only a sign meant to frighten away shady people like him? And if there was a system — what could AHM do for him?
He looked up and saw a security camera. A tiny red light glowed steady, the lens pointing directly at him.
DeBolt composed his thoughts in the way that was becoming second nature: 98 Mill Street, AHM, front door camera.
He waited, thinking, Surely not. For almost a minute there was nothing.
Then, all at once, DeBolt was looking at himself. It streamed in near real time on the tiny screen in his visual field. He shook his head in disbelief, which actually registered in the feed, although not right away. Curious about the delay involved, he put it to a test — he waved and began counting Mississippis. Four and a half seconds later, he saw the wave in his right eye. He supposed the interval might be different for another camera, or another system. All technologies had variables and electronic quirks, the likes of which he had no hope of comprehending. In this case it was a four-and-a-half-second relay gap. He was learning.
DeBolt suddenly felt vulnerable, wondering who else might be watching the feed — it was a monitoring system after all, and not intended for his private use. He suspected the Thompsons in New York could, if they wished, see his image on their phones or tablet computers with the same four-and-a-half-second delay. Fortunately, both were probably too busy to bother, he in meetings with well-starched attorneys, she engaged with smiling sales associates in front of changing-room mirrors.
He thought: 98 Mill Street, AHM, front door camera, disable.
This took ten seconds. Then the image disappeared from the screen in his eye.
16
He was on a roll and, on the same principle as the OnStar system he’d used to steal a Cadillac, DeBolt wondered if AHM might unlock someone’s front door for him. It seemed a logical feature, useful for an owner who’d lost their key, or to let in a neighbor to feed the dog. His question was answered by the clunk of an electronic dead bolt sliding free.
This is utterly insane.
He cast one glance toward the street, then stepped inside. DeBolt closed the door behind him and immediately encountered a keypad. Should he have sought a code to disarm the system before entering? There was a backlit number pad, along with a tiny TV screen, currently blank — the dead camera on the front steps? A system status field assured him the system was armed, and next to it were two comforting green lights. Both remained steady. Satisfied, DeBolt turned into the home.
What he saw was not unexpected. Over-the-top furnishings, a living room with an old-world theme, fusty and manufactured, all of it incongruous against an open kitchen that was a veritable sea of stainless steel. Wood inlays did little to soften marble floors, and the walls were crammed with knockoff copies of Renaissance masters. At least, he thought they were knockoffs.
The air was stale and musty, and diffuse light came from transom windows over the closed curtains. Constellations of dust floated in the air. The place had clearly not been occupied for some time, instilling a funeral home pallor that compelled DeBolt to move quickly. In the back of his mind he imagined a judge reviewing a search warrant in New York — how quickly could such an order be acted upon?
A hardwood staircase beckoned, and DeBolt climbed to the second floor. On the upper landing he steered toward a room whose entrance was sided by two massive faux Roman columns. Predictably, he encountered the master suite. Far less expected was what he saw on the bed.
“I’m so sorry,” said General Karl Benefield, “I wish I had better news.”
He was addressing the complete staff of the Metadata Transfer and Analysis Project, thirteen somber faces, many of whom had been here for the entire first two years of what was to have been a five-year campaign. Each of them Benefield had cherry-picked from government and private industry — some of the best minds in computing and cyberspace. The general struck an imposing figure. He’d worn his Army combat uniform, with its digital camouflage pattern, thinking it would give him the most gravitas amid a herd of civilian techies. He spoke smoothly, and his swept silver hair — just within regulations — suggested a post-retirement corporate scion in the making.
“DARPA is facing devastating budget cuts, and META, in spite of its far-reaching potential, simply didn’t make the cut. All of you, of course, will be given priority in finding jobs within the agency, or assistance in returning to private industry. A few offers have already come across my desk, so rest assured, the talent in this room will find a home — I will see to it personally.
“In the coming days I’ll be meeting with each of you, one on one, to discuss specific opportunities and your desired career paths. That said, I must also impress upon you the continued need for secrecy, and remind you of the strict confidentiality agreements we all signed.”
This point, Benefield knew, was less important than he made it out to be. He had gone to extreme lengths to compartmentalize the project. The technicians here were only partially aware of META’s greater aims, having seen the same vague and sanitized PowerPoint briefing he’d given to their DOD and congressional overseers. Besides himself, only two people were aware of META’s more ambitious goal. And there, he knew, lay his greater problem.
One was the neurosurgeon, Dr. Abel Badenhorst, who led the clinical team in Maine. The other was the chief programmer, Atif Patel, PhD, who was currently attending a conference in Austria. Benefield knew he could never end those relationships so easily — both men were fully vested in the more complex mission. Each was also a brilliant scientist in his own right. But perhaps too brilliant.