“I’m a big boy, Drew. I don’t need Roger Dickinson’s love. There are plenty of people here who don’t like me. I’m an abnorm hunting abnorms, and that makes people nervous.”
“It’s not just that. It’s also the power you have. Everyone else at Equitable Services operates within much stricter latitudes than you. Know why that is?”
“I’ve been here since the beginning. And my record is better.”
“No, son,” the director said gently. “It’s because I trust you.”
Cooper opened his mouth, closed it. After a moment, he nodded. “Thanks.”
“You’ve earned it. Now. Can you and Dickinson cooperate on the interview?”
“Sure. Of course.” He had a flash of Dickinson leaning over the table, red-faced and yelling. “Though I guess I’ll be playing good cop.”
“In that case,” Peters deadpanned, “God help Bryan Vasquez.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“What’s the attack?”
“I already told you, I don’t know.” Vasquez’s voice was at once exhausted, frightened, and eager to please. “All I know is that there’s going to be one.”
“Yeah, so you keep saying.” Dickinson tapped his fingers on the metal table. “Thing is, you’re not giving me any reason to believe you.”
They’d been at it half an hour, and Cooper had spent most of that time letting Dickinson run through the preliminaries. Interrogation was a dance, and while the early steps were important, they weren’t delicate, so he’d used the time to size up Bryan Vasquez, to note his tells and ticks, to read the energy coming off him. One of the peculiarities of his gift was that he sometimes saw people almost as colors. Not literally—he didn’t have optical manifestations—but connotatively. The combined effect of a hundred subtle muscle movements—the level of dissonance between what someone was sharing versus what they held back—took on shades in his mind the way hot soup tasted red or a forest smelled green. Natalie was the cornflower blue of a clear winter morning, honest and cool. Director Peters was the heather gray of an expensive suit.
In Cooper’s mind, Bryan Vasquez was an awkward orange, simmering with tension, angry but unfocused, withholding but not doing it well.
“Haven’t you read a history book? This is a revolution. It’s set up in discrete cells so that we can’t betray one another. I can’t tell you what the attack will be because I don’t know. He set it up that way on purpose.”
“‘He’ being John Smith,” Dickinson said.
“Yeah.”
“You spoke to him?”
“Alex did.”
Cooper said, “Personally?”
“No.” The hesitation was almost imperceptible. “Over the phone.”
You lying little shit. Your sister met with John Smith personally. No wonder she went off the roof. But what he said was, “How do you know she was telling you the truth?”
“She’s my sister.”
“Did you help her code the virus?”
Vasquez looked stunned.
“We know about it, Bryan. We know she was working on a virus to incapacitate the guidance of military aircraft.” He leaned into the table. “Were you the one who was going to execute it?”
“No.” His voice came out weak, and he started again. “No. I helped with the technical specs. Alex knows everything there is to know about computers. But airplanes,” he laughed, “I’m not sure she’d know how to buckle her seatbelt. But the virus needed to be released inside military firewalls, at root level. It would take someone with clearance way, way higher than mine.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes were steady, his pulse elevated but no higher than it had been. He was telling the truth. Cooper said, “So how would it work?”
“I’m supposed to deliver it to someone the day after tomorrow.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I just show up and he’ll approach me.”
“How do you know it’s a man?”
“That’s what Alex said.”
“Where?”