Smith smiled. Layers of meaning. Who knew how deep they ran.
“So we’re here,” Cooper said, “for symbolic reasons, right? Two guys waiting for the sunrise. No baggage up here. Can’t climb with it.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“What you told me last night. It’s true?”
“Yes.”
“That’s how we’re going to do this. I want truth. No agendas, no goals, no manipulation. No underlying reasons, no rationalization. Just truth.”
“Okay.”
“Because, John, I’m in a ragged place, emotionally speaking. And it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that I decide to throw your ass off this rock.”
He saw the words hit, saw that Smith believed him. To his credit—whatever else he was, he wasn’t a coward—Smith said, “Okay. But it goes both ways. You ask a question, I ask a question. Deal?”
“Fine. Did you blow up the Exchange?”
“No. But I was going to.”
“You planted the bombs.”
“Yes. I also had Alex Vasquez set to cripple military response at the same moment, and a few other strikes that I aborted.”
“Why?”
“Because I got beaten.” Smith scowled, and goddamn if there wasn’t embarrassment behind it. “I hate to say it, but it’s true. I underestimated the ruthlessness of my opponent. Fatal mistake.”
“Explain.”
“The Exchange had no tactical value, didn’t hurt me per se. Destroying it was a symbolic stroke. But sometimes those are the most effective. I wanted to refocus the country on the idea that if there’s going to be a future together, then we need to start thinking of it that way.” Smith raised his arms up, stretching them out. “So I planned to blow it up. But when it was empty.”
“That’s easy to claim.”
“It’s not a claim, Cooper. It was the point. If we’re going to coexist, the normal world has to stop trying to find ways to exclude us. Destroying the building was a way of saying that. But butchering a bunch of innocent people, what good would that do me? That would only hurt our cause. As, in fact, it did.”
Shannon had said the same thing. Of course, she would have heard it from him. Cooper said, “You had to know that targeting it put innocent people at risk.”
“A calculated risk. I wasn’t hoping it would be empty. I planned for it to be.”
“Nice work.”
“As I said, I got beaten.”
“What was the plan?”
“To release a video to every major media organization announcing that I planned to blow up the Exchange at two o’clock the following day. In it I’d say that any effort to disarm the bombs would result in me triggering them early. That they had until then to clear everyone out and evacuate the area.”
“So why didn’t you release it?”
“I did.”
“You—what?” Cooper had been jumping ahead, old interrogation habits, and the answer threw him.
“I did release it. Sent it to seven media outlets. The networks, CNN, MSNBC, even Fox.”
“But—”
“But you didn’t see it.” Smith nodded. “Yeah. That was where I got beat.”
“You’re saying that you sent the warning, and that none of the networks—”
“None of them aired it. Not one. Not before, and not after. Seven allegedly independent media organizations knew that I intended to blow up the building. They knew that it would happen around two o’clock. They knew that if they didn’t broadcast it, people would die. Eleven hundred and forty-three people, as it turned out.”
Vertigo strobed through Cooper again, though he sat nowhere near the edge. “You’re saying someone blocked that story?”
“Yes. Spiked it seven times. My turn. Who has the power to do that?”
Cooper hesitated.
“Who can convince, or force, seven independent networks to bury a story? Could a rogue group do it? A terrorist?”
“No.”
“No. Only someone in the system. Only the system itself.”