“Should we let the authorities know what’s going on?” Calvin asked.
“Since we don’t know the target cities, there’s not much the authorities could do short of evacuating whole cities. People could be killed in the panic. I think the key here is still the treasure. Abby?”
“I had the scepter and other chests crated and stored in a temperature controlled vault on the floor below. I’ve authorized vault access for everyone in this room.”
“Thanks, Abby. With the treasure removed from circulation, we’ve torpedoed the Shadows’ plans for now. But if we believe what Marzak told me, he’s not working for the Shadows and the decision to tie the clasp on the Prophet’s necklace isn’t his. He’s working for someone else.”
Abby nodded. “Makes sense, Matt. He could have set the plot in motion the second he was clear of the boat, but he didn’t, and he hasn’t since, which means that he’s either biding his time or telling the truth about the sarin attack being out of his hands.”
Hawkins nodded. “Marzak is only one piece of a jigsaw puzzle that looks like a Pollock painting. That’s why I’ve asked Molly to work on a forensic search to help us assemble the pieces as fast as we can.”
On cue, Sutherland clicked the computer mouse, and dozens of facial images filled the screen. At the center of the photo-montage was the image of the emerald scepter.
“These are the faces of every individual, including us, who has a connection to the Prester John mission,” Hawkins said. He pointed the laser dot at a square that had a close-up picture of a rat. “What’s this?”
“That’s Rashid,” Sutherland explained. “I didn’t have a photo of him.”
“That rat’s a lot better looking than ol’ Rash,” Calvin said. “Good picture of me, though. Handsome and mean at the same time.”
“That other one looks like Omar Sharif, the actor,” Abby said.
“It is. That’s supposed to be Amir,” Sutherland said.
“Not bad,” Abby said. “But how is this going to help us find Marzak?”
“I’ll explain. When I first started digging into the lives of people who interested me, I’d go through search engines like Google. What I got was collard greens, turnips and beans.”
“Pardon me?” Abby said.
Sutherland blushed. “Sorry. That’s my West Virginia talking. You throw all those things in a frying pan back home and you get a dish called a mess. There’s no way to separate one thing from the other. Same thing online, too, only it’s a mess of data. Lot of it is useless. That’s when I came up with Snoopster.”
Abby glanced at Hawkins with an expression of distress on her face. He responded with a shrug.
“My guess is that Snoopster is a computer program,” he said.
“That’s right. I named it after Snoop Doggy Dog. They use a data miner like this in some human resource departments to figure out someone’s character. It uses a huge list of key words to help sift the weevils out of the flour. In my program the key word at one extreme is Bad-ass. At the other end, it’s Saintly. I came up with a big list of things to measure a person by, and gave each one a point score. I tweak it with stuff that isn’t on the record, but that I know.”
“That seems pretty subjective,” Abby said.
“I know it’s not rocket science, but sometimes what I feel about someone is more accurate than what I know.”
Hawkins said, “It’s called instinct, Molly, and it’s kept me out of a lot of trouble.”
Sutherland smiled at the praise. “Depending on the point score, the person is dumped into files labeled Good Guy, Bad Guy and Maybe. Then I smooth out the rough files and come up with an estimate of what a person is.”
Suddenly intrigued, Abby leaned forward. “Could you give us an example, Molly?”
“Sure. I’ll use me. I got math awards in high school, and good marks for my army service. They gave me an honorable discharge, so that makes me a Good Guy. You take Rashid up there on the screen. Lies, steals, tries to kill and hurt people, and he’s an easy Bad Guy.”
“What about a Maybe?” Hawkins asked.
Sutherland smirked. “That would be you, Matt. You did good in the navy, but got screw-up points when you went before a board of inquiry that had you cashiered for being crazy.”
“That would make me a Bad Guy, wouldn’t it?”
She shook her head. “You went on to be an engineer who made some contributions to science. The fact that you were evaluated by a Bad Guy like Trask gave you goodie points too, but not enough to move you out of the Maybe category. That’s where I come in. I add in feelings, which could push you to the Good Guy category.”
Hawkins had to admit that Sutherland’s simple explanation made perfect sense. “Thanks, Molly. Can this program help us locate Marzak?”
“Not exactly, but it can give us an idea who he hangs out with. Like my mama used to say, ‘Tell me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.’”
“Hey, sounds like what my mama used to tell me when I got in with the bad crowd,” Calvin said. “Birds of a feather flock together.”
“Too bad you didn’t listen to your mama, or you wouldn’t be hanging around me,” Hawkins said. “Go on, Molly.”
“Sure. It’s all about connections. Watch.” She clicked the computer and the montage of faces was covered with a web of black lines. “It’s the Kevin Bacon thing. Everybody’s connected to everybody else. But how you’re connected makes a big difference. Amir is a drug guy, and has bad connections, but he’s also connected to you and he helped find the treasure and fight the bad guys.”
The lines disappeared and the photos were grouped on two sides of the scepter in clusters that were labeled Good Guys and Bad Guys.
“No more maybes?”
“Not when you factor in the details. The program connects the dots and arranges the photos depending on the strength of the link.”
Hawkins was disheartened that the bad guys greatly outnumbered the good, but he scanned the faces, moving from one side of the screen to the other. Most were pretty obvious, like Rashid and Murphy, who were paired side by side with the baddies, and Cait and Abby on the other side. Then there was him and Calvin.
But his wandering gaze rested on one photo in particular. He placed the laser dot on the photo.
“Are you sure this is accurate?” he said.
“As much as it can be,” Sutherland replied. “You take what you know and apply it to what you don’t know. The computer connects the dots.”
Hawkins couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The man in the photo had the same necktie he had seen when he met with the Newport Group. Then there was the cottony hair, the goatee and the lips pursed in perpetual disapproval.
And next to the man’s photo was an all-too familiar face.
Marzak.
A thought occurred to Hawkins. “Molly, could you Google the word Arrowsmith?’
“The rock band?”
“No. Arrow as in Arrowhead corporation.”
The first listing that came up was for the Sinclair Lewis novel by that name. He asked Sutherland to click on the next listing, a Wikipedia link.
Arrowsmith may refer to: A person who makes arrows (see fletching)
Why hadn’t he seen it before?
Fletching is the art of putting feathers on arrows.
And the person who attaches the feathers is a fletcher.
CHAPTER SIXTY