A Better World

CHAPTER 15

“You look good,” Cooper said. “This government agent thing doesn’t work out, I think you’ve got a future as a rent-a-cop.”

“Screw you.” Quinn adjusted the blazer they’d boosted from the university security office half an hour before. “A polyester tie? Really?”

“That reflective strip down the side of the pants really brings the ensemble together.”

“And once again, screw you.”

The elevator stopped with a jolt, and the doors rattled open. They stepped into a concrete antechamber. A flyer taped to the wall had a profile shot of John Smith, chin up and staring into the future, the colors posterized into iconography, an illustrated style that made him look part politician, part rock star. The text read, “GWU WELCOMES ACTIVIST AND WRITER JOHN SMITH, AUTHOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING I AM JOHN SMITH.”

Cooper and Quinn exchanged a smile, and then the two of them stepped into the underground parking garage. The deck was full, packed with economy cars sporting rusty side panels and bumper stickers for bands he’d never heard of. A few Volvos and Buicks bore faculty tags. They started up the ramp. Quinn pulled a black box from his pocket and took out two earpieces. Cooper tucked the tiny plastic in his ear. Two beeps sounded as the device synced. “Ladies?”

“Got you, boss,” Valerie West said in his ear.

“Clear as a cock in the face,” said Luisa Abrahams.

Quinn snorted a laugh. “As ever, you’re a delicate flower.” His voice was in stereo, the real man and the one in Cooper’s ear.

“Hey, you want delicate, I’m sure some of these coeds could help out.”

“I’ll pass. Anything unusual?”

“I’m monitoring all activity from his team,” Valerie said. “All SOP on their end.”

“Good,” Cooper said. He and Quinn parted ways as they rounded the corner, his partner walking up the center lane as Cooper moved to the front of the parked cars. It felt right to be back in action, relying on people he could trust with his life. The four of them had once been the top team in Equitable Services. Luisa was field ops, a five-foot-nothing who had faced off against men twice her size and possessed the most poetically filthy mouth he’d ever encountered. Valerie was a data rat who manipulated the stream of code that made up modern life. With Equitable Services on hiatus, they’d been reassigned to separate posts inside DAR, but both were too senior and too accomplished to be micromanaged; a short off-the-books gig should go unnoticed.

“Thanks again for the help,” Cooper said.

“Anytime, boss. None of us ever doubted you, no matter what they said about the stock exchange.”

Warmth bloomed in his chest. “Thanks. That means a lot.”

“Hey, it’s nice to have the band back together,” Luisa said. “I’m going quiet; sing out if you need anything.”

“Roger.”

Cooper stepped up on a narrow curb and crouched low, sliding past the cars. Fifty yards ahead of them a black SUV was double-parked facing the exit. The engine was running, exhaust fogging in the cold. The windows were tinted, but they’d watched Smith arrive, seen his second security guard get out with him. It would be just the driver in the car. Armed, no doubt, and probably very good.

Cooper almost felt sorry for the guy.

Quinn strolled up the ramp with the bored ease of a campus security guard. Cooper moved in step with him but six cars back, staying down. Stealth wasn’t his great strength, but the guard would be focused on Quinn. Too bad you couldn’t ask Shannon to help; she could sneak into Fort Knox.

The thought sent a pang through him, and a memory of her body, naked and lithe, framed against the light of his refrigerator last night as she twisted the top off a beer and drank deep. As usual, she’d shown up without warning, and after the sex—he seemed only to get more hungry for her every time they touched, a kind of intoxication he thought had vanished with his teenage years—they’d talked. She had been circumspect with her language, but Cooper could tell that she’d been in action. It had stung a bit to realize she had no intention of telling him what she had been doing.

Of course, you’re doing the same right now. This op will almost certainly mess up your relationship.

He’d almost told her. Last night, stroking her hair as they both drifted off, Cooper had almost told her that he believed John Smith was trying to start a war. After all, he’d trusted her with his life, with the lives of his children. But could he trust her to side with him instead of with her old friend and leader? He wasn’t sure.

That’s the trouble with dating a terrorist, Coop. So many tricky breakfast conversations.

He put her out of his mind. No time for distraction. Whatever was between them, whatever he hoped might be, he had a job to do.

Fix it, Natalie had said.

Quinn reached the driver’s side of the SUV, rapped on the window. It slid down, and his partner said, “Excuse me, you’re Mr. Smith’s driver, right?”

Cooper dropped to his hands and knees, hurried past three more cars, and then crawled alongside the SUV. He’d be visible in the side mirror, but keeping the driver focused was Quinn’s job. Cooper slid the remote from his pocket and pressed the button. Newtech that Quinn had brought, an RFID decoder that quick-scanned through millions of codes. Funny, back in the days when cars had keys, they were a lot more secure. Now that everything worked at the touch of a button, all you needed was a master button.

“I understand that, sir, but you can’t park here,” Quinn said, the very model of disinterested officiousness.

With a click, the SUV’s doors unlocked. Cooper yanked open the door handle and slid into the passenger’s seat in one easy move.

The guard was good, already had his pistol in his lap. He spun, started to raise it, Cooper reading the move easily, the play of muscles in shoulders and chest. He didn’t waste time struggling for the gun, just locked three fingers and stabbed them into the man’s neck, spearing the carotid artery where it branched. The guard went instantly limp, the sidearm falling to the floorboards. Quinn leaned in the window with the hypodermic, jammed it into the guy’s arm, and depressed the plunger. Pressure point knockouts didn’t last, but the sedative would.

Together they dragged the guard out of the driver’s seat. Quinn opened the back of the SUV, and they hoisted the guard inside and dumped him behind the seats. Cooper pulled up the cuff of the man’s right arm, found the tight bracelet encircling his forearm.

“Valerie,” he said, “he’s got a biometric alarm.”

“Yup.” Her voice soft in his earpiece. “Just like we thought. I already hijacked it; it’s broadcasting healthy vitals.”

“You’re a marvel.”

Quinn walked to the front of the truck and hopped in the driver’s seat. He picked up the guard’s pistol, fluidly disassembled it, and tossed the pieces in the glove box. “You’re on, Coop.”

“Moving.” He headed for the stairs. “Luisa, how’s it going inside?”

“They’re wrapping up. The target is modestly enduring a standing ovation.”

“His body man?”

“Stage right, calm.”

“Roger.” He hurried up the back stairs of the subterranean parking deck and came out behind the auditorium. Even from outside he could hear the muffled roar of applause. The alley was cracked concrete and cigarette butts, the rear door rusted metal. There was another of the flyers taped to it. Cooper smiled, took a position leaning against the wall on the blind side of the door. In his ear, Luisa said, “Okay, we’re wrapped in here. Elvis has left the stage.”

Quinn said, “Are you sure he’ll go out the back? He’s an attention whore. Why not head out the front, soak up more adulation?”

“Easy,” Cooper said. “He glad-handed for an hour, signed books for two, then did an hour on stage.”

“So?”

“So, he’s a chain-smoker. At this point he’s jonesing for nicotine more than attention. Ten bucks says he’ll be lighting up as he steps through the door.”

“Seems thin—”

“Hold.” The metal door started to open. Cooper moved with it, using it as—

The body man will come out first, check the alley, and then signal the all-clear.

Take him fast.

Spin around the door, grab Smith, yank him out, drop him.

—cover.

A chop across the windpipe, pulled just shy of fatal, staggered the burly guard, his hands flying to his throat. Cooper ignored his gasps, slid past him into the auditorium loading dock, and came face-to-face with a man with easy good looks and a cigarette in his lips, his hand holding a lighter flame an inch from the smoke.

“Hi, John,” Cooper said, and then threw a right hook that snapped Smith’s head sideways and sent the cigarette flying. He grabbed the man by the lapels of his expensive suit, turned, and hurled him into the security guard, both of them tumbling to the ground.

He bent, picked up the smoke, then stepped outside and let the door close behind him.

“Target acquired. Come pick us up.”

The room was a portrait of urban decay, peeling walls covered in graffiti, the air thick with urine and rot. Cooper took a metal folding chair from the side wall and plunked it down in the center of the room. They undid the cuffs, then maneuvered Smith to the chair and forced him down. Quinn yanked off his hood.

John Smith blinked. He looked around the room, at the two of them. “This isn’t a government facility.”

Cooper locked eyes with him, smiled slightly, and shook his head.

The fear that flashed across the man’s face came and went quickly. “You’re not arresting me.”

“No.”

Cooper could see Smith processing the new data, reanalyzing. Wondering what was happening. He was, Cooper saw, living the kind of moment that happened to him exceedingly rarely—one he hadn’t planned.

“You should know,” Smith said, “that my security team will be here in seconds. I’m constantly monitored via biometric alarm.”

“Like this one?” Cooper held up the bracelet he’d taken from the second guard, now sedated atop his buddy in the back of the SUV. “It’s a good system. If you were to travel with a team of twenty people, you’d look like a third-world dictator. This way you can seem like a man of the people.”

“Problem is,” Quinn said, “it depends on your alarm sending accurate information.”

Smith nodded. “So you’ve co-opted the signal. A good move. But one I anticipated, I’m afraid. My team has to communicate an all-clear code every—”

“Twenty minutes. We know.”

The man’s face tightened. “And that code changes every time.”

“Yeah, a five-digit numeric that evolves algorithmically. It makes sense—you can’t expect that a team will memorize a day’s worth of codes every shift and never make a mistake, so instead you give them one code each day and a formula to apply. We’re sending those okays,” Cooper glanced at his watch, “right about now. Your bracelet is telling your security that you’re still at the auditorium. In the can.”

“And when I don’t leave the bathroom? You don’t think that will trigger—”

“You’ll leave in a couple of minutes, and your bracelets will move around the theater. To your team, it looks like you decided to stick around and kiss babies.” He leaned in, stared the man in the face. “No one is coming to save you.”

Again, the flash of fear, again, mastered quickly. He might be a terrorist, but he wasn’t a coward. Smith nodded. “It’s good to see you, Cooper. Been a while.”

“Three months. You’ve been busy, haven’t you? I read your book.”

“What did you think?”

“Specious self-aggrandizing nonsense dressed up in pompous prose. Tell me, did you already have it written when we sat on that peak in Wyoming and watched the sun rise?”

“Of course.”

“All but the last chapters. The ones where you talk about the Monocle video and the president’s involvement.”

“No,” John Smith said. “I had those written too.”

Cooper laughed. “I appreciate you skipping the part where you pretend to be baffled and claim that you didn’t send me off to serve your own agenda.”

“I was perfectly honest with you. You knew that I had reasons.”

“Right. You wanted to turn a pawn into a queen.”

“Which I did.” Smith rubbed at his wrists, then touched his cheek gingerly. It was swelling badly, the purpling already starting. “So. It’s your meeting. What do you want?”

Quinn snorted, then moved behind Smith. Standard interrogation technique, let the man sweat the guy he couldn’t see. Cooper said, “I want you to know that I can get to you. Anytime. There is nowhere that I can’t find you, no security you can cloak yourself in, no rhetoric that will protect you. You’re mine now. You belong to me.”

“Huh.” Smith reached slowly into his suit jacket, pulled out the cigarettes. Put one in his mouth and lit it with shaking hands. “Funny.”

Cooper reached forward and plucked the smoke from his lips. He dropped it, then twisted his toe over the burning ember. “What is?”

“I expected more from you than a Gestapo routine. You just another bully in a suit?”

“I’m not the terrorist.”

Smith shrugged, glanced over his shoulder, then back again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m an author. A teacher.”

“Save it.” Cooper leaned in until he could smell the man’s sweat. “I know better. Let’s put aside all your old sins, the bombings and assassinations. I know that you’re behind the Children of Darwin.” He spoke calmly and focused on details. Let his eyes soak up all the tiny clues, every tremble of muscle and pulse of blood. “I know that you ordered those trucks hijacked. That you ordered your soldiers to snatch innocent men and women, handcuff them on the side of the road, pour gasoline on them, and set them on fire.”

On cue, Quinn leaned in and held his d-pad in front of Smith’s face. Cooper couldn’t see it from this side, but he knew the image, had stared at it for hours. The burned corpse of a thirty-nine-year-old truck driver named Kevin Temple, blackened skull locked in a scream, ruined arms still bound behind him.

Cooper never let his eyes move from Smith’s face. He saw the pupils dilate, the orbicularis oculae tighten, the sudden flush of blood as the brain dumped adrenaline into his system. He imagined the other sensations the man would be feeling, the pressure at his bladder, the sweat soaking his armpits, the tingle in his fingers.

He saw it all, and in that moment, he knew that he was right. Smith had planned the attacks, had ordered the burnings. Had paralyzed three cities and left millions cold and hungry. He wanted a war.

John Smith said, “Got proof?”

Cooper smiled.

Then he clocked Smith in the other eye hard enough to knock him out of his chair. Before the terrorist hit the floor, Cooper leaned forward and slid the sidearm from Bobby Quinn’s holster. The weapon felt right in his hand. A flick of the thumb disengaged the safety.

Smith moaned, then rolled onto his side, his eye squinted shut. “Because you need that now.”

Cooper straightened his arm, aimed at center forehead.

“You’re not a secret policeman anymore, Nick. You don’t work for the DAR. You can’t just murder anyone you want.” He blinked, groaned again. “You shoot me, and you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison. Once a month you’ll see your children through plexiglass.” Despite his obvious pain, Smith smiled. “Pull that trigger, and you prove the truth in everything I’ve said, everything I’ve fought for.”

He’s right. But what choice is there? Someone needs to stop him.

You may not have legal authority. But there’s such a thing as moral authority.

Quinn said, “Boss—”

Cooper pulled the trigger.

The pistol bucked in his hand, that good firm punch. The shot was deafening in the small room, echoing off the crumbling walls and fading graffiti. John Smith lay on the broken concrete floor. The bullet had torn the smile right off his face.

Cooper squatted. He paused for a long moment. Then he said, “It’s something, isn’t it? A bullet missing your head by an inch, you never forget it. You’ll feel that wind in your dreams.”

He stood up, handed the pistol back to Quinn. “You’re right. I’m not a midlevel government employee anymore. I’m the special advisor to the president of the United fucking States. I know what you’re trying to do, and I won’t allow it.” He turned and started for the door. Over his shoulder, he said, “I’m coming for you, John.”

Quinn snickered, said, “Enjoy the walk home, asshole.”

Outside the burnout, the sun was shining on a cold blue afternoon. Broken glass tinkled under their dress shoes. Quinn sidearmed the keys to the SUV into the sewer grate as they walked to the sedan they’d left waiting. Quinn started the car, and they pulled away, driving through the decay of Anacostia, DC’s blighted southwestern section.

“Well,” Quinn said, “that was bracing.”

“Yeah.” Cooper stared out the window, watching the blur of rundown houses and abandoned businesses. “You know, I almost didn’t release it.”

“Release what?”

“The video from the Monocle. After we took down Peters, I sat on a bench near the Lincoln Memorial. I had the footage of Peters and President Walker planning the attack on the Monocle. The leaders of the free world agreeing to murder seventy-three Americans. I had it loaded on my d-pad, ready to send, but I just . . . sat there. Trying to decide.”

Quinn glanced over, said nothing.

“I knew what was right,” Cooper continued. “The storybook kind of right, the things my dad taught me. That truth is its own reward, and honesty is always the best policy. But I kept thinking, what if I’m wrong? What if by sharing this, I make things worse?” He shook his head. “I don’t know, Bobby. It’s getting harder to tell which way is north. On paper, I did the right thing. But because I did, three cities are under terrorist control. Because I did, twenty men and women died screaming, burned alive.”

“You can’t take that weight on, man.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I better learn from it.”

They hit a stoplight, and Quinn took the moment to pull out a cigarette. He tapped it, spun it, and then slid it between his lips without firing it. “I’m not gonna lie, I’m glad you didn’t shoot him back there. I’m not fond of prison.” The light turned green, and he accelerated. “But there’s no reason we couldn’t find a way to do it so we don’t get caught.”

“No,” Cooper said. “He’s got us in check there. Even if we got away with it, he’d become a hero, a martyr. It would make things worse. No, what we need to do is expose him. Beat him without killing him.”

“Outstanding. How?”

Cooper shrugged. “Still working on that part.”

But I will find a way, John.

I know what you’re trying to do. I’m certain of it.

And I won’t allow it.