Smith shook his head. “I know she can be a pain in the ass, Fred. Probably better than anyone. But if she says that’s what happened, that’s what happened.”
“I appreciate your loyalty, Jon. And let me be clear that I have a lot of admiration for Randi Russell or I wouldn’t have sent her out there in the first place. This isn’t specifically aimed at her. I wouldn’t take this kind of intel on faith if God himself sent it down on stone tablets. Trust but verify, right?”
Smith nodded hesitantly. He wasn’t accustomed to questioning Klein, but in this case it seemed justified. “So you didn’t send her out there for this — the behavior of the people in Sarabat, the heads…”
Klein didn’t respond immediately, obviously considering how much he wanted to reveal. “There seems to be some money bleeding out of the Pentagon. I’ve been after it for more than a year and still only have a few vague scraps. Whoever’s behind it is incredibly thorough at covering his tracks. But we recently found something — a small and very indirect payment to mercenaries who were reported to be operating in that region.”
“So this didn’t have anything to do with the Merge.”
“Not at first. But now I’m concerned. Have you had a chance to examine the head she brought back?”
“I took it to my lab and spent the night looking it over. Exact time of death is hard to determine at this point but the three months that Randi’s telling us is completely plausible.”
“What about the studs?”
“They weren’t added postmortem, if that’s what you’re getting at. There’s new bone growth around them. I’d say they were installed about a month before death.”
Klein set his pipe down. “And the bodies? Can I assume there were no actual Merge units in evidence?”
“Randi said she didn’t check all of them, but the few she did — and the one she brought back for autopsy — didn’t have units. Someone would have had to remove them. Maybe when they were sawing off their heads.”
Klein just nodded, probably thinking the same thing Smith was — that this stank to high heaven of some kind of covert U.S. test. But if it was, who the hell authorized it?
“The way I see it, Fred, is that if we aren’t responsible for this, we need to find out who is. I’ve been working with the Merge for a few months now and my opinion of it has gone nowhere but up. This is going to be a transformational technology, and exclusivity is an important part of that. If someone had access to this thing before us, we have to find out who and what exactly they’re doing with it.”
“How plausible is it that someone has gotten access to the military version of the operating system?”
“Not. It only runs on our network and the encryption is generations ahead of anything else out there. Plus, I’m the only person who can authorize apps. That means that not only does my password have to be entered, but it has to be entered by my brain pattern.”
“What about Dresner himself?”
“It’s his system and I haven’t been able to figure out a way to shut him out of it.”
Klein put his pipe down and let out a long breath. “Who would have ever thought I’d look back fondly on the Cold War? This damn thing’s only been out for a few months and we’re already worried that it’s filtered down to a bunch of goatherders in Afghanistan. Technology cannot be controlled, Jon. Not anymore. And it’s going to be our downfall.”
Smith nodded sympathetically. “It seems unlikely that Christian Dresner would make an end run around us and hand over this technology to our enemies. He was never obligated to give us the exclusive deal. If he wants to sell it to anyone with a handful of cash, he has every right to do it. No, there are simpler explanations, don’t you think?”
The implication was obvious: The United States had a small, beyond-top-secret team who had been involved in some early tests that wouldn’t look good in the newspapers.
“Understood,” Klein said. “I’ll speak with the president and make sure this particular dark corner isn’t one he wants to remain dark. Until then, you’re not to continue any inquiries into the matter.”
“I assume you’re going to tell Randi the same thing?”
“I am. And I expect you to make sure she complies.”
Smith let out a short laugh at the idea that he could control Randi Russell. “In that case, sooner might be better than later for your conversation with Castilla. Randi’s not the most patient woman in the world.”
31
The rain came down harder — not quite in solid sheets but in a disorienting rush that blurred the people around him and turned the lake to mist. The words of the priest were overcome by the impact of the drops against umbrellas and Christian Dresner considered it a blessing.
Of course he could use his Merge to compensate for the visual and audio chaos, but why? To hear a stream of meaningless platitudes about a God and a soul that he now knew didn’t exist? To hear passages from a two-thousand-year-old book written by ignorant men who needed a deity to explain every clap of thunder and burning bush?
What was left of Craig Bailer’s body had been cremated after a cursory autopsy, but it had taken months for the family to put together this modest ceremony. He looked at their faces — the stoic wife, the supportive children, impatient business associates — and wondered about the delay. Was it because no one cared enough to shuffle their schedules? Perhaps they had seen Bailer for what he was: a man obsessed with money and the illusion of personal value it could be used to create. A man eminently replaceable as a business partner, parent, or friend by the thousands just like him.
The priest stepped down and a young man Dresner didn’t know took his place. Not that he would have expected to recognize him. He knew very little about Bailer personally. The man had been a convenient tool but, beyond that, of little interest. Not that their impersonal relationship had made killing him — murdering him — any easier. But then, it had been an act of no real importance. Bailer would have died later with all the others anyway. For his sins.
“My father loved it here,” the young man said, his voice cutting through the rain in a way that the priest’s had not. “When I was a boy, this piece of land only had a little cabin on it and there were other houses surrounding the lake. Over the years, he bought them all up and removed them. He loved the quiet. The beauty of nature.”
Dresner frowned imperceptibly. The “cabin” was now a thousand-square-meter monstrosity and the dock they were standing on held a massive speedboat painted a garish red and yellow. The truth was that Bailer had never shown any interest in nature. This was just another trophy.
The family walked in a silent procession to the end of the pier and turned an urn upside down over the water. The wind whipped at the ashes for a moment before they were soaked through and dropped unceremoniously into the lake.
A fitting end to Craig Bailer.
The crowd began to disperse, about half checking their email on cell phones and the other half doing the same with the subtle pupil jerks that people had taken to calling the Dresner Stare.
He moved against the exodus, people shuffling out of his way with nervous glances as he approached Bailer’s wife.
“I’m so sorry, Lori,” he said, feeling her tense under his embrace. He was less human than symbol now and people often didn’t know how to react to his physical presence.
“I want to thank you for coming,” she said as he took her hand. “It would have meant a lot to Craig.”
“I considered him one of my closest friends and owe him a great deal. I can’t imagine how you and your family must be feeling, but I want you to know that it was a devastating loss for me, too.”