Harmony House, Woodbury, New Jersey, May 27, 5:39 p.m.
Inside his basement office, Barnes had just finished giving instructions for another mission to Able and Baker, his other two-man team. Able was Conrad Strunk, the smallest of Michael Barnes’s team, and also the meanest. Alaskan trailer trash. Strunk had absolutely no problem with dirty work, which was the nature of this mission. He saw the world as a battlefield, and terrible things happened in battle. It was that simple. Baker, his partner, whose proper name was Joe Dobson, knew that only too well. The man had survived an eight-week kidnapping ordeal in Baghdad that left him with only one testicle and permanent emotional detachment, as a result of torture methods that could accurately be described as medieval.
Barnes told Strunk and Dobson exactly how it should go down. Barnes wanted it done later that night. The deed was not only intended to stop the leak; it was also designed to send a message to Nurse Gloria’s handlers. Whoever she was working for needed to know the gloves were off. The stakes had been raised. Barnes wanted these bastards to know he would be looking for them, and their next recruit, every second of every hour he remained head of security at Harmony House. Michael Barnes did not like to be played, and he was going to make damn sure the offending party knew it.
He was going to make the nurse suffer.
Fenton passed Strunk and Dobson as they exited Barnes’s office. The senior doctor barely acknowledged them. Normally, he didn’t like being down in this basement, and liked becoming directly involved in facility security matters even less, but today wasn’t normal. Very far from it, in fact. He entered his security director’s office without knocking, something he’d never done before. “Delineate our options.”
Barnes, surprised to see his boss inside his office, paused before answering. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
Fenton put aside his fear of his security director and snapped, “I didn’t ask what you think.”
Barnes remained calm. “It would seem that a previous conversation we had in your office is what set all this in motion.” He paused for emphasis. “If the echo box is working, we both need to be a great deal more careful about what we say in enclosed spaces.”
Fenton had momentarily forgotten how much the world was about to change. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. The oft-repeated statement would have to be amended to something like, Anything you have said can now be used against you, so you might as well fess up and get on with it. People were going to have to learn to be as careful about what they said as they now were with what they transmitted. The American public was going to have to learn restraint, which Fenton thought would be a good thing in the long run. More like things used to be.
No one could retract what had already been spoken. Those echoes were already there, bouncing around, waiting to be reconstructed. Like blood evidence left at the scene of a crime, it never disappeared completely. A permanent record remained for anyone with the proper technology to retrieve. Fenton considered the future. “Eddie has said that eventually, the box will even work outdoors.”
Barnes shook his head. “I guess it doesn’t much matter where we incriminate ourselves, then.” It took him a moment to wrap his head around the notion that anything ever spoken anywhere could one day be heard. It was truly stunning to consider, particularly in his line of work. Barnes quickly asked himself what he would hear first if given the choice. He knew right away that he would take the box to the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, and listen to Lincoln’s address. It had been given at three p.m. on November 19, 1863, and was widely considered to be the greatest speech ever delivered in the English language.
Certain technologies were capable of winning battles before they ever started. In the Information Age, the echo box was going to be one of them. Fenton returned to the question at hand. “What is your plan?”
Barnes paused, deciding just how little he could get away with saying. “You are personally going to deliver the device to the president of the United States.”
Fenton blinked several times as he digested the simple directive. “I’m what?”
“We can’t trust anyone else to hand it over.” Barnes watched the glimmer of a smile slowly appear in Fenton’s face, just as Barnes knew it would.
“How will you regain possession of the device?”
Barnes just stared at him, and then looked pointedly at the four corners of his office. There was no way in hell he was going to answer that question.
Concern appeared in Fenton’s face. “We cannot afford another mistake.”
Barnes resented the statement. “The reason we are in this situation, Marcus, is not because of a mistake. You always knew the world was going to change the moment the box worked. It just so happened that moment occurred today.”
Fenton nodded, both because his chief of security had a point, and because Fenton knew not to push the man too far.
“Immunity would be a good idea before you hand over the box. For both of us.” Barnes was thinking about the crimes he was about to commit more than the ones he already had.
Fenton didn’t hesitate. “Get me the echo box, and I will get us immunity.”
After Fenton left, Barnes turned his focus back to the screen, pleased with the distance Lutz and Hirsch were maintaining from the DHS agents. He reached into his drawer and popped some antacid. The stabbing pains in his stomach were clear reminders of the extraordinary risk he was taking. This was the endgame. Michael Barnes was going all in. He liked his cards, but couldn’t be entirely certain what his opponents were holding. He wasn’t even sure who they were. But somebody had been playing him for far too long. Whoever it was needed to be taught a lesson. And Michael Barnes was going to teach them a doozy.
CHAPTER 64
West Forty-Fourth Street, New York City, May 27, 6:27 p.m.
Eddie looked scared. He had no idea how far he had walked, or for how long. He had just been walking to “nowhere in particular,” which he still found to be a very peculiar destination.
He had given up trying to find the exit pass that he was supposedly given by the Carnegie Hall security guard, because he had no idea what the pass looked like. Eddie also didn’t know why the man had locked him out of the fabled concert hall. It was all very confusing, and it made him feel uncomfortable, which was never a good thing.
Immediately after being locked out of the hall, he had trouble breathing. Then his vision became blurry. He put his hands on his knees because he thought he might fall over. But as his world started spinning and he was on the verge of slapping himself, something unexpected happened: Eddie imagined himself becoming completely helpless in this massive city of strangers. And the thought so terrified him that it somehow helped him to calm down. Because there wasn’t anyone around who would help him. No doctors. No nurses. No anyone. Worst of all, no Skylar. He could relax when he was once again with her, but not until then. For the time being, he knew he needed to help himself. So he did. Counting footsteps, mapping the city visually, as well as acoustically. He differentiated the great many SOUNDS being produced all around him, and he intended to catalog them all from memory at the earliest possible opportunity. He was going to need a lot more notebooks.