“The guy who’s filming this …” Xavier points to my phone’s screen. “He’s gotta be wearing a button camera like the one I gave you. Doesn’t look like his buddies know they’re being recorded.” He studies the video carefully, mumbles something about the grade of the C-4 on the table. “Oh yeah. That’s gonna leave a mark.”
There are three suicide vests beside the explosives.
A few more words in Arabic.
I’m pretty sure I know how this is going to end, and I can feel a palpable rush of apprehension.
You’re about to watch these people die.
The man beside the table faces the person filming the scene and speaks to him. I have no idea what he’s saying, but I do make out the words “Allahu Akbar.” The person with the camera repeats the words, and the tenor of his voice confirms that he’s male. Then all three men echo the phrase again.
The man closest to the table takes off his long-sleeved shirt and picks up the suicide vest.
I think again of what Fionna told me earlier: there was a thwarted attack on a Kabul mosque, an unconfirmed number of terrorists were killed.
The research Dr. Tanbyrn was working on before the fire was a joint project between the Pentagon and RixoTray Pharmaceuticals.
RixoTray’s CEO, Dr. Cyrus Arlington, was in communication with Glenn Banner hours before the fire.
Mind-to-mind research …
Telepathy …
The twins …
If you can affect someone’s physiology, can you consciously change it?
If you can alter someone’s heart rate, could you stop it?
All the facts circle elusively around each other, and I try to find a way to fit them together.
“Oh,” I whisper. “They’re going to kill him.”
“What?” Charlene breathes.
“Watch. The guy with the vest, they’re going to kill him.”
The man slips the vest on, tightens some straps to secure it in place, then puts his loose-fitting long-sleeved shirt back on over the vest. It’s not noticeable beneath his shirt, and if I didn’t know he was wearing it, I never would have guessed that he was an armed suicide bomber.
I can feel my chest tensing up.
The taller man, the one nearest the window, peers past the ratty curtains for a moment, then joins his two cohorts in the middle of the room.
I hear the words “Allahu Akbar” repeated again by the three men in the group.
The man wearing the vest turns toward the window.
And then.
Explodes.
For a fraction of a second you can see the blast, a blur of color and fabric flaring toward the camera lens overwhelmed by a deafening roar.
And then there’s nothing but a blank, silent screen.
Neither Charlene nor Xavier speaks.
So I was wrong.
They didn’t stop the guy’s heart.
Manipulating matter? Telekinesis? They made the bomb explode?
That seemed even more implausible.
At last Charlene speaks: “Wow.”
Xavier shakes his head. “How did they get this footage? The camera was destroyed, so this footage was obviously being transmitted to someone — and then that person sends it to the CEO of one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical firms? Are you kidding me?”
“I don’t think he intended to do that,” I tell them.
“Who?”
“The suicide bomber. It’s hard to tell, but it didn’t look like he reached for the vest. Neither of the other guys touched the cell phones to detonate it. Also, he put his shirt back on right after putting on the vest. Why would he do that if he was just going to blow up his buddies right there in the room?”
“You think it malfunctioned?”
“No. And I don’t think he detonated it. I think somehow the twins did it for him.”
Cyrus shut off the video and Riah waited for him to comment, for any of the four people she was with to speak.
Finally, Williamson did. “So it works.”
“Yes,” Daniel said quietly. “Apparently it does.”
I expect Xavier to be on the same page with what I just said, to agree with me about the evil schemes of the federal government’s secret psychic research and black-ops assassination programs, but both he and Charlene seem skeptical. “Tanbyrn’s study concerned mind-to-mind communication,” he reminds me, “not telekinesis.”
“As far as we know. But it could have something to do with quantum entanglement. Manipulating matter nonlocally. Remember? Like the nuclear reactor or the torpedo?” But even as I try to convince them, I begin to doubt it myself, and the more implausible the whole telekinesis angle seems. I sigh. “You’re right. I don’t know. We’d need more information to tell.”
The link on my phone expires, and when I try to refresh it, I’m unsuccessful.
I doubt Fionna would have severed the connection. Maybe someone at RixoTray did.
Just in case the video comes back on, I leave the browser open, set down my phone, and ask to borrow Charlene’s. She’s more than happy to give it to me.
I really have no idea how deep all this goes or who we can trust, but Abina is dead, Dr. Tanbyrn might die, the three people in the video are dead. RixoTray’s CEO is involved with this and has ties to the Pentagon as well as to the guy who carried those eleven photographs of corpses in his wallet. There’s no way all of this was simply a local law enforcement matter, and with the DoD’s involvement I don’t trust going to the federal government with what we know either.
For a moment I consider contacting the media, but then the obvious fact hits me in the face—You film documentaries, Jevin. You are the media.
I’m not about to just sit on the sidelines until more people start showing up dead.
“Charlene, last night you told me about a researcher at RixoTray who was in charge of this program. What was her name again?”
“Dr. Riah Colette.”
I navigate to the internet browser on her phone.
“Are you going to call her?”
“No, I think we need to talk to her face-to-face.”
I find what I’m looking for. Dial the number.
“Then who are you calling?” Xavier asks.
“I’m getting us a plane. We’re going to Philadelphia.”
Family Ties
Charlene looks at me curiously. “Philadelphia?”
“Arlington is there. He’s connected with Banner, with the attempt on Tanbyrn’s — and our — lives. Colette is there. RixoTray’s headquarters is there. If we’re going to crack this open, we need to be there too.”
“What about the police?” she asks me. “Or the FBI? Shouldn’t we just go to them?”
Xavier shakes his head. He must’ve been thinking the same thing I was a minute ago. “And when they ask why we suspect that the CEO of one of the largest pharmaceutical firms in the world is involved in conspiracy to commit murder, I suppose we’ll just tell them that we hacked into his computer and phone records after getting the information off the body of the man Jevin killed.”
That was an interesting way to put it.
I’m still on hold, waiting for someone from the charter plane company to speak to me. “Right now we have ties between all these things but no proof. Until we know more, we’d be accused of making unfounded accusations.”
“Which would be true,” Xavier points out.
She considers that.
“We do exposés, right?” I think of Abina again, of justice, of uncovering the truth. “Well, let’s expose something that really matters.”
The charter service’s rep picks up, apologizes for the wait, and asks how she may be of assistance to me.