It really was the only way to travel, even if it did cost $50 million and change. But right now he wasn’t thinking about his lofty and privileged ability to move around. He was thinking about the possibility of losing everything he’d worked for. His meeting with Harkes had troubled him greatly. He really felt things slipping out of control.
Once they left the airport Bunting ran into the world of the peasant commuter and got bogged down in traffic on the toll road. It took him far longer to go six miles by car than it had over two hundred miles through the air. But he finally made it.
The building he entered seemed ordinary. Passersby would not give it a second look. It was not the office building that Sean had followed Avery to. That was located several miles from here. This place was the most important facility in Bunting’s empire. This was where the Wall was located. He entered the building and sped through interior security portals, before taking an elevator down and then walking along a corridor.
It had taken him years, millions of dollars, and many an anxious moment before he had convinced the American security community to move into the twenty-first century and embrace his vision for what intelligence collection and analysis could actually become. When it had finally happened, the floodgates had opened and billions of dollars of government money had flowed into his coffers. It was the greatest triumph of his life. And what many took for granted was the fact that aside from the money, the E-Program worked. It had foreseen and stopped countless terrorist attacks on American soil and against US interests overseas. It had allowed CIA, DHS, DIA, Geospatial, NSA, and a host of the lesser-known intelligence agencies to rack up success after success. The FBI, armed with leads provided by the E-Program, had set up and sprung sting upon sting, bagging criminals and terrorists, and gathering valuable intelligence used to stop future heinous acts.
The Wall was the focal point. The Wall was Bunting’s masterstroke. While teams of traditional analysts so enmeshed in the trees that they had no comprehension a forest even existed, had no reasonable chance to successfully ferret out the true threat, one person, the right person sitting in a chair and taking up the challenge of the Wall, had led them to the promised land. The Wall would give up its well-hidden secrets to just the right person. And the rewards were immense, and also immediate.
The program had worked well for years. And then the snag had come. The information that required analysis had bested the most superior minds he could find. The E-Program had finally shown a chink in the armor. Opponents like Ellen Foster at DHS and Mason Quantrell in the private sector had started circling like the vultures they were.
And then Bunting had found Edgar Roy. Even against the high benchmarks of the E-Program Roy had stood out. Time and again he had picked up on things that even powerful supercomputers together with a hundred thousand toiling and lesser analysts had missed. Bunting was convinced that if Edgar Roy had been staring at the Wall prior to September 11, 2001, that day would have simply been like any other, and utterly forgettable.
He entered the room, far below the basement level of the facility. He nodded to people who worked there. They nodded back and then quickly looked away, perhaps sensing his nervous detachment. Even though Foster had made it clear that his last chance had passed, Bunting had arranged one more attempt to salvage the program. Results so far had not been good.
He entered the control room and nodded at Avery, who sat, as he usually did, in front of the computer banks that operated not only the Wall but also the feedback from the Analyst. There were three in the room today to check the goings-on at the Walclass="underline" two women and a man, all longtime analysts at BIC.
As Bunting settled into his seat and opened his electronic tablet he noted that two of them were perfectly capable E-Fives and the other a top-level E-Four. Indeed, the E-Fives had been the best he had seen until Edgar Roy had entered his life and sent the possibilities quite into the stratosphere.
But now things had changed. As Avery had correctly pointed out previously, the information flow grew exponentially, outpacing the abilities of minds that a year ago could have handled it. Roy could handle it. But he didn’t have Edgar Roy anymore.
Bunting looked through the glass. The three Es were doing their best, but he could see that the throughput on the Wall data had been throttled back sixty percent. At this rate the conclusions reached would be worthless before the folks even memorialized their findings and sent their reports on up the chain. It simply wasn’t going to cut it.
He let this exercise go on for another five minutes and then looked despondently at Avery and flicked a finger across his neck.
Avery immediately spoke into the headset he wore. “Thank you all. We will be shutting the Wall down in five, four, three, two, one.”
He hit some keys and the screen became dark.
Bunting nearly fell into a chair and sat there staring at the floor. Foster was right. It was over. He was over. They’d probably kill him. And Roy next.
A man opened the control room door. “Mr. Bunting?”
He looked up.
“Secretary Foster wants to see you ASAP.”
Oh, God.
CHAPTER 52
SEAN THOUGHT IT would be a problem getting into Cutter’s Rock, especially after the murder of Carla Dukes. However, her absence seemed to have lessened the hurdles necessary for them to see the prisoner, even with Kelly Paul in tow.
Thus, the mighty gates had opened, the guards did their search, and very soon after that they were waiting in the visitor’s room for Edgar Roy.
Megan stood by the glass wall, Michelle beside her. Sean was watching the door. Kelly Paul paced, her gaze on the floor. Sean thought he knew what she was thinking. And she was probably right. Roy might react to seeing her and blow his cover of insanity.
The door opened and in came Edgar Roy. He was dressed the same, looked the same, smelled the same. He towered over the guards and over Sean and Michelle. Towered most of all over the petite Megan.
Sean heard it first, a long, low whistle that sounded like some tune Sean couldn’t place at the moment. He turned to find its source. Kelly Paul was against the wall, her face turned away from her brother. Sean whipped back around to Roy. The whistle had come right when Roy had been looking down, so his eyes could not be seen. Sean thought he noted the slightest flinch in Roy’s shoulder. They seated him behind the glass, locked him down to the floor ring. The guards slammed the door shut on the way out. Roy sat there, legs splayed out, face to the ceiling. Eyes fixed on that damn spot. As always.
Except for that flinch, thought Sean.
The whistled tune came again. Once again Sean turned. This time so did Michelle.
Kelly Paul was now facing her brother.
“Hello, Eddie, it’s good to see you,” she said, her voice calm, her smile genuine.
She walked toward him, curved around the glass wall, and stood in front of him. She did not bend down. In fact she seemed to be standing as tall as she could. Her hands came up to her chest.
Sean’s gaze flitted around the room and then, behind him, he saw it and wondered why he hadn’t before. A slight imperfection in the wall, up high. The camera lens was pointed right at the wall of glass, the chair. The prisoner. But now Paul was blocking its view of her brother.