He’d intentionally left the door to his office unlocked, which saved him nine or ten seconds now. Inside the spartan workspace, he set the homemade Faraday container onto his desk in front of his bulky university-issued Dell computer, which was playing a video of his son’s second grade class production of The Thanksgiving Story. O’Clair skipped his customary smile at the sight of Nathan in the role of Pilgrim number 3, the boy struggling to keep the brim of the Scotch-taped-together black poster-board hat from falling over his eyes. Earlier, O’Clair had cued up the Dell’s video player so that an eavesdropper might conclude that Thornton and Mallery were in the office along with their devices, and the captive audience of an overly proud father. The idea was to explain their silence.
“Beryl, why don’t you and Russ have a seat and enjoy the show?” O’Clair said, as if they were here. “It won’t take me more than a couple minutes to finish up.” For effect, he leaned across his desk and sent each of the guest chairs rasping over the carpet.
Dropping into his own chair, he unsnapped the Faraday container’s lid and removed the cups of purple play sand, placing each one onto its own coasterlike docking station wired to an effectively anonymous laptop computer he’d borrowed from a lab. Each docking station contained a microprocessor-driven signal-isolation system.
Both bugs were transmitting. Good news. Their signals — the relationship between normalized power log10N2 and frequency log10 Hz — were clearly depicted on the laptop’s monitor as sound waves among a sea of similar waves. Unfortunately, it was a larger sea by half than O’Clair had estimated, meaning that identifying which two signals were generated by the bugs would require 50 percent more time than he’d allotted. He wished he’d contrived a visit to meet Thornton and Mallery in Nantucket — or anywhere other than Manhattan. A quiet Sunday afternoon notwithstanding, some 185,783 denizens of this part of the Upper West Side alone were talking on cell phones, texting, piloting radio-control helicopters, and so forth, with each electronic device generating a signal nearly identical to those of the listening devices.
Nevertheless the laptop might have enough time to find the right pair of signals. The frequency-detection and data-tracking software eliminated other waves in a fashion similar to a game of musical chairs. The wave-filled monitor faded to white, refreshing a moment later with 25,781 fewer waves; 160,002 remained. At this rate, O’Clair calculated, the program would isolate the twin signals generated here within—
The shrill ring of the desk telephone not only interrupted his thoughts, but raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had called the landline. Certainly not on a Sunday. Between his cell and his landline at NSA, where he spent almost all of office hours, he had no reason to give out the Columbia number.
“Probably just a telemarketer,” he said for the benefit of his audience. Also probably true, he thought.
Stabbing at the lever on the base of the phone, he muted the ring. As soon as the laptop found the matching pair of waves, he would need to spring into a Jerry Lee Lewis act on the keyboard in order to trace them.
The laptop refreshed again, minus another 21,494 waves. A minute or so and O’Clair would be down to the winning pair. He counted the seconds under his breath if only to negate his inner voice, which was saying that this process was interminable.
Fifteen more seconds and the system had whittled the total to 63,034 waves. The software was learning from experience, thus picking up speed. As its author, O’Clair might have felt pride, but he had no room for anything but apprehension. Nine minutes and fifteen seconds had elapsed since he extracted Thornton’s device. Its capacitor couldn’t last much longer without a human host.
A rap at the door shook him. Someone in the hall. The chatty guard from down in the lobby, Raj, maybe, bringing a Giants-Redskins game update. O’Clair sat quietly, focused on the monitor, hoping whoever it was would go away.
The handle turned.
Dammit. In his rush, O’Clair had forgotten to lock the door behind him.
The door opened a crack. Raj leaned his head in. He was panting, his face flushed. A big touchdown by the Giants, O’Clair figured — or nothing he had time to hear about. He kept his focus on the laptop.
Down to 5,629 waves.
“Doctor—”
“Can it wait, Raj?”
“Sarah’s trying to get you on the phone. Says it’s an emergency.” Raj backed into the hall, allowing O’Clair privacy.
O’Clair eyed the desktop phone. Incoming calls flashed on both lines. He’d also racked up three voice-mail messages. His ex-wife would call only if something had happened to Nathan. He snatched up the handset.
“Is Nathan okay?” he cried into the mouthpiece.
“He’s okay for now,” came the voice of a woman — or possibly the electronically altered voice of a man — that could have fooled Sarah’s friends. “And he will be as long as you give us the two devices.”
O’Clair’s breath froze in his chest. “Where is he?”
“The Madagascar building.”
It meant nothing to O’Clair, until he recalled Nathan’s mention of a soccer team trip to the Bronx Zoo.
“Apparently he wandered away from his pack, and he didn’t pay attention to the Do Not Enter signs,” the voice continued. “Open the e-mail we just sent to your personal account, and you can see him for yourself.”
O’Clair swatted the space bar, freezing the video of the second-grade play on the university-issued computer. He clicked into his Gmail and opened the message titled HI, DAD! Activating the hyperlink in its text box opened streaming video of Nathan standing on a narrow concrete barrier that formed the border between two dark pools lit greenish yellow. Wearing his team’s replica Manchester United soccer jersey, the boy was trembling. A dark form floated across the surface of the water in the foreground.
“That’s a crocodile, eighteen feet from snout to tail,” said the voice. “The Madagascar building is closed until April for renovation. There’s no other human there now except my colleague with the stun baton that’s keeping the crocs from little Nathan — for now, and, we hope, for good. Your boy has absolutely blown us away with his mathematical ability.”
“How do I know this video is real-time?” O’Clair asked.
“Give me a word or phrase and we’ll have Nathan repeat it.”
“We’re going to Disney World after this.”
Over his computer’s tinny speakers, O’Clair heard a man repeat the phrase, the words resounding against the habitat’s damp walls. Nathan turned toward the camera. One of the overhead spotlights revealed his tears.
“We’re going to Disney after this,” he stammered. “Help me, Daddy!”
Agony clawed O’Clair’s intestines.
The woman said, “Now, Dr. O’Clair, take the listening devices and bring them to the service elevator room down the hall. Give them to a man who’ll answer to the name Mr. Kentucky? Got it?”
“Service elevator room, Mr. Kentucky, got it.” O’Clair eyed the laptop. The data streams had dwindled to just 78. Remove the plastic cups from the docking stations now and the entire extraction would be for naught: The capacitors in the listening devices would run out of charge, and the data captured to that point would essentially be reduced to a screenshot of jagged lines, the recipient impossible to track.
The sound of a splash snapped O’Clair’s attention back to the video feed from the zoo. Inches to Nathan’s left, a snout pierced the surface of the murky water. The boy backpedaled, arms flailing in an effort to keep from falling off the slippery balance beam. A pole entered the video camera’s frame, its tip producing a starburst and a blast of electrical static. With a growl, the crocodile submerged.