Decker found himself staring at Lulu. It wasn’t just her odd looks, her dyed hair and piercings, or her diminutive form — although she was certainly curvy in all the right places. Maybe too much so. No, it was despite that, thought Decker. There was something about her.
“You know,” he said, “you look nothing like her, not at all, but you kind of remind me of Emily. My ex-wife. Dead wife. You know. Never mind.” Now, of course, he regretted his outburst. What was wrong with him? I’m tired, he thought. That must be it. The jet lag, not to mention the attempt on his life.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Lulu said. “I’m only on this expedition because I have to be. Someone tried to kill me, remember. They tried to blow up my loft. They also tried to kill you. So, for better or worse, we’re stuck here together, at least for the foreseeable future. The sooner we figure out what’s going on — who’s behind this thing and what they want — the sooner we can go back to our lives. Our individual and separate and uniquely distinct personal lives.”
“I didn’t mean anything,” Decker started.
“Good.” She hunched over the steering wheel once again and continued to stare at the distant horizon.
“Frankly, I’m the wrong person to ask about all this social stuff, anyway,” Decker added.
“It’s because we got that damned coffee in Westminster, isn’t it? I knew we shouldn’t have stopped. Now, you just won’t stop talking.”
“No, really,” he added. “Who wants to keep tabs on all the people you didn’t want to know back in high school? I mean… People talk about the faceless Web. I think it’s got way too many faces.”
“Oh, I caught that piece in the Times. The one by Pamela Paul.”
“You have a remarkable memory, Lulu. Anyway, I’m not on Facebook, or Google+, or Twitter. Given what I do for a living, we’re not exactly encouraged to join social networks. Besides, I don’t want to see pictures of your kids’ braces or the scar from your recent sigmoidectomy. Not really. TMI, man. TMI. And my life isn’t that interesting that I need to be constantly talking about it.”
“You’re probably right,” Lulu answered, glancing over at him.
“Thanks.”
Lulu laughed. “I know one thing. I know that if you and a bunch of your FBI friends came over and ransacked my computer, you’d be like, ‘What’s this obsession with this kid from sixth grade, and why have you looked at her picture like a million times?’ Funny how when you’d never sneak a peek at someone’s physical diary, you have no compunction in stalking them online. Creeping’s creepy but a lot easier using Foursquare. Oh, I forgot. You trashed my Alienware laptop. Never mind.”
“Pre-pubescent, sixth grade girls, huh? Really? Not that I’m judging.”
“Fuck you.”
“Frankly, I don’t care to know about all the interesting parties and dinners other folks are attending while I’m getting home late from work yet again… just in time for some cold TV dinner and to watch my daughter pass out.”
“You ever get tempted to leave the Bureau for more lucrative pastures?” asked Lulu. “I just saw this study from McKinsey that estimates we’ve got a shortage of something like 150,000 to 200,000 or so ‘deep analytical experts,’ and a million and a half ‘data-literate’ managers. Big data’s exploding, Special Agent Decker, doubling every two years. All those countless digital sensors in industrial equipment, in cars, electrical meters and shipping crates measuring movement, location, temperature, vibration, humidity, and so on and so forth. All those sensors on websites measuring user behavior. Researchers often find a spike in Google search requests for terms like ‘flu symptoms’ and ‘flu treatments’ two weeks before folks begin showing up in hospital emergency rooms. And housing-related search terms are a greater predictor of housing sales than the prognostications of our best real estate experts. Folks like you — guys who know how to manage terabytes of data, to decode and unscramble it — are much in demand. Zimmerman bounced back and forth between the public and private sectors. You know: The revolving door of the military-industrial complex.”
“And look what happened to him. Thanks but no thanks,” Decker answered. “I like what I do. How about you? Why haven’t you left for a job at Booz Allen or Allied Data Systems?”
Lulu laughed. “Not my cup of tea. I mean, look at me. I’ll leave that to folks like General Flapper. He worked at Booz Allen for a spell. Most senior intelligence officials have taken a turn or two in the private sector. Pays on the average twice as much as the Department of Homeland Security. Maybe you don’t need the money, being a best-selling author and all. Then again, you’re kind of a techno-curmudgeon, aren’t you — for someone who works in intelligence? I’m beginning to see a real pattern here.”
“Not a curmudgeon. I’m just skeptical about the value of all this linking together. Crowd-sourcing is cool if you’re looking for the lowest common denominator solution, the least offensive, least off-putting reply. But it’s individuals, not crowds, one or two guys, guys like Zimmerman, who end up having the greatest impact. Black swans. Like Benjamin Franklin or Nikola Tesla. Like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. In the end,” Decker said, turning back to look at the road, “it’s just some guy acting alone who changes the world.”
“Some guy? You mean some brilliant and beautiful girl,” Lulu said with a laugh. She stepped on the gas and the car roared to a blistering sixty.
CHAPTER 28
It all started with a blueberry pie. Decker had had a strange yen for it not long after Emily had passed in the crash. Becca had long since recovered from her few cuts and bruises. It had been a Sunday, he remembered. So, he had walked down to the Dean and DeLuca on M Street and picked up a few odds and ends: flour and eggs, whole milk and fresh blueberries. But, as good as it was, and it was absolutely incredible, it wasn’t enough. For some reason, Decker had found himself making another pie right after that. And another. And another.
In the end, he was up for three days.
By the time people started noticing at work, he had already made dozens of pies, so many in fact that he had started giving them away to Miriam’s Kitchen on Virginia. At least someone was eating them.
This obsessive behavior lasted three months, more than two of which Decker spent homebound, simply baking. Pies mostly. Blueberry, strawberry, apple, pear and peach. Boysenberry, raspberry, cloudberry, lingonberry. Then cakes and breads, and even a fortnight of tortes. In the end, it didn’t much matter. As long as he was using his hands, and putting something in the oven, and taking it out when it was perfectly done. As long as it looked brown and delicious and the room was filled with the scent of cooked dough.
It was around that time that he first started seeing Dr. Foster at the Center.
All this came flooding back to Decker as soon as he took one step into the Winhall Market off Route 30 in Bondville, Vermont. Freshly baked pies. The scent hit him like a slap in the face. It was so overwhelming that he had to step back out to the porch.
“It’s just up the road,” Lulu said to him when she reappeared minutes later. “You ok?”