“Okay, boss, but does the irony of what you just said not strike you? Right now — look at who’s dead and who’s not.”
33
“Passport,” said the immigration officer.
Arrivals at JFK International Airport had been streaming in all afternoon, the European rush heavier than usual, and the officer inside the booth was nearing the end of her shift. She reached out and took a document from the next person in line. Her head was down as she did so, and after finalizing the keyboard inputs for the previous traveler, she looked up and was doubly surprised.
The first thing to get her attention was the massive bald head. It was pink and cylindrical, reminding her of a gallon paint can. The body supporting it was built like a blockhouse. The second surprise was what came with the passport — a small wallet-sized card on which was printed: I HAVE NO VOICE AS A RESULT OF COMBAT-RELATED INJURIES. Beneath that was the emblem of the United States Marine Corps.
The immigration officer gave a tentative smile that was not returned. But then, the face in front of her looked barely capable of it. There were no crinkles at the edges of his mouth or eyes, and his features seemed swollen, the way she remembered her uncle when he’d gone on corticosteroids. Conversely, the man didn’t appear angry or taciturn. His face was simply a blank — as expressionless, apparently, as his voice.
She scanned the passport into her reader and his information lit to her screen. Douglas Wilson from Missoula, Montana. Departed JFK October twentieth, arrived in Vienna, Austria, the next day. Departed Vienna on the return trip nine hours ago. There were no flags, no warrants, no notices for special handling. Everything was in order.
She handed back his passport, and said, “Welcome home, Mr. Wilson. You can go.”
He turned away, and as he did she saw the scars on the back of his scalp. She called out, “Oh … one more thing, sir.”
He paused and looked back at her.
“Thank you for your service.”
He seemed to consider this for a moment, the look on his meaty face something near confusion. Then he turned toward the exit and was gone.
DeBolt’s circumstances went unchanged for most of that day. He sat in a holding room, hearing only the occasional muted voice through thick walls. The restraints on his arms and legs remained in place — he’d moved about the room to explore, but there was little of interest. Twelve feet by twelve. Linoleum on the floor, solid painted walls, a door that was all business. One simple table, no chairs. Most dispiriting of all, he still had no access to information — the screen in his vision remained a blank other than the “voiceprint queued” notification.
It was late in the afternoon, or so he guessed, when DeBolt got his first useful nugget of information — acquired by old-fashioned listening. He heard a male voice outside the door use the term “SCIF.” Taken with his surroundings, he knew what the man was referring to, as would anyone who’d spent time in the military in the last decade. SCIF. Sensitive compartmented information facility.
The building he was in, save for one anteroom near the entrance where mobile devices could be checked, was highly secure, designed specifically for the dissemination of classified information. Everything around him had been hardened to defeat electronic eavesdropping, which explained why he had no connection. Thick walls and shielding allowed no radio frequency signals in or out. The very fact that he was in a SCIF suggested he’d been brought to some kind of government facility. Military most likely, but possibly the regional office of some law enforcement or intelligence agency.
This much DeBolt found encouraging. These killers who at one point had tried to shoot him on sight seemed to have taken a new tack. He’d been placed into custody in a government building. There his logic faltered. DeBolt thought it contradictory that the man who had begun questioning him, and who’d recently tried to kill him, didn’t seem to know his name. Yet he did know Lund’s. Perhaps it was only an interrogation technique.
DeBolt arrived at two conclusions. He was secure for the moment. And whoever these people were, whatever they wanted, it had to be linked to his new abilities. Had to be linked to META. Nothing else made sense.
He was pondering it all, imagining where things might go from here, when, as if in answer, two men burst into the room. Without a word, they hauled him up and frog-marched him down a hallway. He stumbled twice in his shackles, but didn’t fall, the hands under his elbows not allowing it. Soon a door opened, and DeBolt felt a rush of clean night air.
34
DeBolt was pushed and shoved into the backseat of a car. Two doors closed, and the car shot forward like a racehorse out of a gate.
Still cuffed and hooded, DeBolt was thrown left, then right, before the car’s accelerations dampened and fell in with the hum of steady traffic. Realizing he was finally outside the confines of the SCIF, he tried for a connection. His first request was simple: Own location.
The answer arrived instantly, a crisp map in vivid color. His blue dot was at the edge of something called the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Federal Building in central Boston. DeBolt was barely a mile from Logan International Airport, where he and Lund had been captured — the only word that fit. He searched for information on the building, and learned that among its tenants were the Department of Homeland Security, which encompassed Customs and Border Protection, and also the departments of State and Justice. The Secret Service was there as well, as was an administrative outpost of the Peace Corps. Even discarding the latter, it made for a long list of suspects who could be responsible for his abduction.
More ominous was the fact that he was leaving. The man who’d begun interviewing him — whom DeBolt had last seen on the floor of the Calais Lodge, and whose arm he’d nearly broken — had been interrupted by an important phone call. Had something in that call altered the situation? He didn’t like the trajectory of things. For a few hours a semblance of order and reason had taken hold. Now he was suddenly being hauled off to the notorious “undisclosed location.” He sensed someone in the seat to his left, and decided engagement was worth a try.
“Where is Shannon?” he asked. They already knew her name.
No reply. DeBolt used his knees and arms to explore. To his right was a door, and he could feel the buttons for the window and a recessed handle. There was no way to tell if the door was locked. Didn’t police cars have doors that could only be opened from the outside? It was yet another question he’d never before asked.
He decided to try again.
“I want to speak to an attorney. I have a right to—”
The blow struck DeBolt in the rib cage, an elbow probably, compact and heavier than it needed to be. It completely winded him, a nonverbal message that couldn’t have been clearer. DeBolt said nothing more.
He did not, however, give up on communication. There was a chance he was being transferred to a different federal facility, which meant he might end up in another SCIF where he wouldn’t have a signal. Sensing the car bogging down in traffic, DeBolt put META into high gear.
The first thing he did was call up the voiceprint of his interrogator, already recorded and saved — somehow — but never sent. DeBolt launched it into cyberspace. The reply took nearly five minutes, but was worth the wait. He received the identity of his interrogator with: “99.8 % certainty.” Under present circumstances, good enough for DeBolt.
That name led to more requests, and soon the information floodgates opened. He approached his research from every conceivable angle. Some of the answers came right away, others more slowly. A handful never came at all. Certain information altered his course, new vectors taken and gaps filled in. His thoughts fell to a rush. Data in and queries out. He logged certain details as important, discarded others as irrelevant. With the greatest possible speed, DeBolt amassed a trove of information on the men who had been hunting him.