Split Second (13 page)

Do we live in a block universe? Is Hawking’s chronology protection
conjecture correct? How will gravity affect the transference? Does time branch,
or is there only a single timeline? And these few profound questions—answerable
questions!—are just off the top of my head.

So that’s it for now. I’m pretty fried, and I’m about to become
unconscious whether I want to or not. So I’m not going to reread this to see if
it makes any sense. If it doesn’t, just know that we’ll have many, many hours
to discuss all of this, beginning Monday when I see you at UCLA.

I hope all is well. Can’t wait to have a second pair of eyes (connected
to that massive brain of yours, of course) look this over.

Nathan.

Walsh stopped reading and there
was an extended silence in the car. Jenna’s mouth had fallen open halfway
through the recitation and had remained there. Blake was just as stunned by the
revelations in Nathan Wexler’s e-mail as was Jenna, but was forced to keep some
of his focus on the road.

“What in the world?” said a
wild-eyed Jenna Morrison. “This is beyond extraordinary!” But a few seconds
later her expression turned pensive. “But at the same time, what about it could
possibly be important enough to
kill
for? Nathan was right. Going back in time far less than the blink of an eye is
useless.”

“Apparently not,” said Blake grimly.
“We must be missing something. Something big.”

“Well, we’d better figure it
out,” said Jenna with a sigh. “And we’d better do it quickly.”

PART 2

Mystery

Yesterday is
history.

Tomorrow is a
mystery.

But today is a
gift.

That’s why they
call it the
present.

—Unknown

“The Moving Finger writes; and,
having writ,

moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit

shall lure it back to cancel half a
line,

nor all thy tears wash out a word of
it.”

—
Omar Khayyam

20

Lee Cargill waited impatiently
for Joe Allen to arrive, repeatedly delaying the departure of his private jet.

What the hell was keeping him?

Cargill had wanted to arrive in
DC in time to catch some quality sleep before his private meeting with Alex
Janney, President of the United States.

Cargill checked the time once
again and cursed loudly. Finally, ten minutes later, Allen arrived, expressed
apologies for his tardiness, and was ushered onto the plane for an immediate
takeoff.

The Gulfstream accelerated along
the runway and streaked relentlessly to thirty thousand feet before leveling
off. While the jet was on the extravagant side, considerable work had been done
to give Cargill the cover of a wealthy tech entrepreneur, running a private
company called Q5 Enterprises, so a military jet was out of the question.

The plane seated twelve people in
such spacious luxury that first-class passengers on commercial flights were
like peasants crammed into a third world bus by comparison. But for this trip,
Lee Cargill and Joe Allen were the only passengers. The pilot was in the cabin,
which had been made totally soundproof so Cargill could carry out business
during flights without privacy concerns.

After they had leveled off,
Allen began his report. “We found our mole,” he reported, but with less
enthusiasm than Cargill would have expected, and an instant later he found out
why as Allen added, “but I’m afraid we still have one left.”

Allen was seated in a cushioned
captain’s chair that he had swiveled to face the one Cargill was in, a small
table between them. If not for the round windows and thirty-thousand-foot drop
below them, the meeting could well be taking place in an expensive apartment or
an executive lounge.

“One thing at a time,” said
Cargill. “First, who is the mole you found?”

 
“Jack Rourk.”

“You’re positive?”

“Absolutely.”

Cargill thought about this. Jack
Rourk was a good man. At least this is what he had believed a second earlier. “And
your evidence?” he said.

“I realized after the team
disposed of Mark Argent’s body that they hadn’t recovered his phone. So I pinged
it. I found it about ten feet away from where he was shot, hidden in a mat of
pine needles. He had set it to audio recording, so we have a record of everything
that was said.”

Allen produced a black custom cell
phone, a little worse for wear, and handed it to Cargill. It was the same
custom phone Rourk had been issued. While it was an untraceable, no frills
variety, it still contained a camera and retained the ability to take audio and
video recordings.

“I know you’ll want to listen to
this yourself,” said Allen, “but let me give you the shorthand version. Seems
that Mark Argent spotted a guy
surveilling
our
clean-up crew on Palomar Mountain. Argent held him at gunpoint. The guy claimed
to be a private detective, working for Jenna Morrison. Which means she
did
get off the mountain alive, after
all. He may have been attempting to capture one of our crew. A more charitable
interpretation is that he was there to examine what he thought of as a crime
scene.”

“What’s his name?”

“Don’t know. Argent never used
it, at least after he started recording.”

Cargill frowned. “Go on.”

“The PI had a camera on him. He claimed
Jenna Morrison kept her whereabouts secret, even from him, but he claimed his
camera had footage on it that would lead Argent to the girl. But when he was
handing over the camera he somehow got the drop on Argent. Not sure exactly how
it happened, but he took control.”

Cargill nodded thoughtfully.
This was a surprise. Like all the men on the team, Argent was top drawer.

“Not much later,
Rourk
arrived on the scene,” continued Allen. “Argent
thought he was there to help him.” He blew out a long breath. “Until Rourk shot
him to death.”

Cargill’s stomach tightened.
Argent’s death was bad enough, but a death caused by a
betrayal
was even worse. “You’re positive the PI didn’t shoot him?”

“Positive,” said Allen. “First, Rourk
made the PI drop his gun, and was holding him at gunpoint. And just in case
there was any doubt remaining, Rourk later called in a report to a superior,
who I’m assuming was Edgar Knight. Rourk admitted in his report that he had
been, in his own words, ‘forced to kill Argent.’”

Allen gave Cargill a few seconds
to digest this and then continued. “Rourk also requested to come in, and reminded
Knight that they still had one man on the inside.”

“Exact words?” said Cargill.

“Yes.”

“So he never said the name of
our second mole?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Would it have been too much to
ask for Rourk to use his partner’s fucking name?” thundered Cargill in
frustration.

Allen swallowed hard. “On the
bright side, at least we know exactly what we’re up against. Instead of
thinking Rourk was the last of Knight’s moles, or wondering if we were infected
with several others, now we know the score.”

Cargill nodded. “Yes, at least
we have that.”

“Unfortunately, you’re going to
like this next part even less,” said Allen.

“Are you going to tell me, or
just warn me?”

“Rourk was after Jenna Morrison,”
began Allen, wincing uncomfortably at having to be the bearer of even worse
news. “But the PI told Rourk he was carrying a flash drive, which he claimed the
girl had given him. One with Dr. Wexler’s recent work on it. And now Rourk has
it.”

Cargill felt as though his heart
were being squeezed in a vise. Could it be?

He considered this further and then
shook his head. “I think it’s fifty-fifty that the PI was bluffing,” he said
finally. “Our intel was certain that no trace of Wexler’s work remained.”

On the other hand, thought
Cargill, even as he said this, garbage in, garbage out. Why should he trust his
intel any more than he could trust his team? He had been told Wexler’s work had
only been backed up on a single hard drive, and they had obliterated Wexler’s
cloud storage account just to be certain.

But were there additional copies
he had
not
been told about?

“It might have been a bluff,”
said Allen. “You can listen to the recording and make your own judgment. But from
what I heard, Rourk was taking the guy very seriously. I even got the sense
that Rourk had pre-knowledge that such a flash drive existed. He agreed to let
the detective go in exchange for it.”

“Still could have been a bluff. Rourk
had to explore the possibility it was real. Just because he pretended to be
willing to free the PI means nothing. I doubt he had any intention of keeping
his word.”

Cargill wondered whom he was
trying to convince, Allen or himself. If the private eye had been telling the
truth, this was an unmitigated
disaster
.
Cargill realized he was grinding his teeth, a subconscious manifestation of his
tension.

How had that fuck-head Knight gotten to Rourk, anyway?

Cargill turned his head toward
the window and the dark skies beyond, deep in thought. He then turned back
toward Allen and locked his eyes onto his subordinate’s for what seemed like an
eternity, not blinking for an inhumanly long period.

Could he trust this man? He had
thought he could trust Rourk, after all. And while Edgar Knight had always been
a strange duck, he had trusted him as well. Until he learned otherwise—the hard
way.

Men were snakes. If God himself
could be betrayed by an angel in Heaven—an angel named Satan, whom he was
forced to cast out—certainly any man could be betrayed by any other man at any
time.

He continued staring at Allen,
who met his stare calmly, although he was forced to blink half a dozen times.

When Cargill had first learned
that the men extracting Wexler had been ambushed, he had asked Allen point-blank
why he should trust him, and Allen had reminded him of their history together.
But now Cargill had even more reason to continue to trust this man. Hadn’t Allen
found Argent’s phone? If he, too, were in league with Knight, he could have
ignored the recording on the phone or deleted it. Instead, he had brought the
recording to Cargill’s attention, fingered Rourk, and given him Argent’s phone.

And Allen’s earlier response had
been on point, as well. Cargill
had
known him longer than any of the other men now under his control. Allen
had
proven his loyalty time after time. Which
were the very reasons he had chosen him to be his second-in-command. If Cargill
had to choose someone to trust, he couldn’t do better than Joe Allen.

Cargill finally broke eye
contact with the man seated across the small table from him. “Is that
everything?” he asked, breaking the long silence. “I assume Rourk and the PI
both marched off into the night so
Rourk
could check
out this supposed flash drive. Or did Rourk cap this unlucky bastard right
after he got the drive? Have you looked for this PI’s body in the woods?”

“No. Believe it or not,” said
Allen, shaking his head in wonder, “I’m all but positive the guy
escaped
. He was apparently throwing the
flash drive to Rourk when a gunshot sounded.
Loudly
. Had to have been fired from the PI’s gun, since the shots
Rourk fired to kill Argent were silenced. And then Rourk cursed, the kind of
screamed profanity you might expect out of someone who had just been shot.”

“I assume you looked for Rourk’s
body as well.”

“Yes. There was no evidence of
either body anywhere within a half-mile radius of Argent’s phone. My guess is
that the PI escaped and Rourk got the flash drive.”

“But you can’t be certain of
this.”

“No.”

Cargill paused to consider what
he had just learned. Whoever Jenna Morrison had hired was very good, and the
more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that the man was not a
private investigator. He wasn’t sure how the girl had dug him up, but he was quite
formidable.

Argent and Rourk were seasoned
pros, and being able to generate a brief distraction and then take advantage to
turn the tables on each of them in turn demonstrated a level of skill, of
real-world experience, that was even greater than theirs.

The range of skill between
practiced experts and novices in every human endeavor was immense. A weekend
tennis enthusiast could play a hundred games against Roger Federer and lose
every point, every time. An average private investigator could try to slip the
noose when held at gunpoint by the likes of Argent and Rourk, but he would lose
every time, just as surely. He wouldn’t have the practiced movements, the speed,
the decisiveness, the boldness. This man had to have been supremely well
trained and extremely experienced.

“Okay, Joe, good work,” said Cargill
finally. “I’m going to listen to the recording myself and do some thinking.”

Allen nodded to acknowledge this
dismissal and swiveled his chair around, locking it into place facing the same
direction as his boss.

Cargill listened to the
recording with great interest. He had to acknowledge Allen had done a good job
of extracting all of the salient information.

Cargill had wanted to find Jenna
Morrison, but this had been a low priority. Nathan Wexler had been critical.
Jenna Morrison was simply a bystander who happened to be screwing the wrong genius
at the wrong time.

But now things were very
different. If Wexler’s work really had survived, and his live-in girlfriend knew
how to get her hands on it, that was a game-changer.

Knight having it was bad enough.
But Knight having it without Cargill having it was
unthinkable
.

And this might explain one of
Knight’s recent moves. Cargill had sent e-mails to both the UCSD physics
department and to Dan Walsh, pretending that Wexler was still alive, so he
would have more time to clean up after himself.

But later, another message had
been sent to Dan Walsh, also pretending to be from Wexler. A message which must
have been sent by Edgar Knight. The message had reported that Jenna’s computer
was infected, and had warned Walsh to block any e-mails coming from her
address. Knight must have known Cargill still had men on the UCLA physicist and
was trying to make it harder for Cargill to reacquire the girl.

Cargill hadn’t understood why
Knight would go to the trouble. But maybe now he did.

Maybe Knight had known that Jenna
had not only survived the attack, but also had access to another copy of her
fiancé’s work.

Now all Cargill could do was
hope like hell that the flash drive Rourk now had was not legitimate. Either
way, he had no other choice but to operate under the assumption that Jenna still
had a copy of Wexler’s work.

So Cargill either had to find
her, immediately, or find a copy. It was his only hope.

His number one priority was
still finding and eliminating Knight, as always. But finding Jenna Morrison had
now been elevated to a close second.

And this private eye, or whoever
he really was, seemed to be the key.

Cargill decided to play this out
in his head, what the scientists he had worked with during his career called a
thought experiment
. He decided to
pretend he was Jenna Morrison, being taken from her home Sunday night along
with Nathan Wexler. Not being told why. Then being ambushed and escaping.

She had been very clever not to
go to the cops. Hiring someone out of Cargill’s easy reach, instead—a PI, or a
mercenary, or whoever this guy was—was inspired.

But regardless of who she went
to, or where she found him, she would need to explain what had happened to her.
Would he believe her? And what would be his next moves?