The quantum solution, p.14
The Quantum Solution, page 14
Isobel waved a hand. “Well, whatever this group is up to, Marsden’s team is light-years ahead.”
He nodded. “She admitted as much. Which is why they’ve sought me out, why they’re making a concerted effort to recruit me. They want me to find the smoking gun that will prove Marsden was culpable for Brady Thompson’s death.”
Isobel hissed. “Did Zahra the Brainiac give you a motive? Why would Marsden want the secretary of defense dead?”
“I have no idea.” Ben looked at her. “Do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay, but all I know for sure is that he’s the most secretive person I’ve ever come across and we both know that’s saying a lot. As far as I’m concerned anything is possible. In any event, these people are going to believe what they want to believe. They know Tribe is way ahead of them. This is the way they’ve chosen to find out what he knows, or to slow him down so they can catch up.”
Isobel’s eyes narrowed. “There’s your motive. Thompson’s death set this all in motion. I’m betting they were the ones weaponizing—”
Ben cut across her. “I don’t think their program is anywhere near being able to do that. Until yesterday I didn’t even know it was possible. I’m still not sure they’re right. We’ve been trying and failing to discover the cause of ‘Havana syndrome’ for a couple of years now.”
Isobel shook her head. “Then it’s impossible for qubits to be responsible. Three years ago full-scale exploration into the quantum universe hadn’t even begun. It’s still in its infancy; what we know about it is far less than what we don’t know.”
“Agreed,” he said, “but the first attacks were debilitating, rarely if ever lethal. The attack on the secretary of defense was of another order entirely. The evidence they showed me—I don’t know what else could have caused the mini-explosions in Thompson’s brain.” He took a breath and said, “What if they’re right.”
“About Tribe?” Isobel shook her head. “Impossible.”
“I mean how well do you really know him?” He had deliberately elided over Zahra’s insinuation that something was going on between Tribe and Evan. He didn’t want to involve Isobel in that theory, at least not yet—not until he’d had time to verify it. His mind was also gnawing over the possibility that he was being played, that everything Zahra said to him was either a lie or a distortion of the truth. After all, he had admitted to Isobel that these people were living in their own form of reality.
Her eyes bored into his. “Has this Zahra gotten into your head?”
“General Reade and his people say one thing, privately she says another. In fact, she goes so far as to ridicule them. She thinks they’re idiots.”
“Well, in that she may very well be right.” Isobel frowned. “But who is she that she’s given such wide latitude?”
“I’m not sure it’s her per se,” Ben countered. “It may be the quantum initiative she’s working on.”
“Whatever the case, we need to know more about these people.”
Ben nodded. “Agreed.” And because he wanted to break Isobel out of her typical overseriousness, he added with a grin. “I could contact Ant-Man.”
It took a moment for Isobel to return his grin. “If only we lived in the same metaverse.”
She waited several beats, taking her time pouring more coffee, stirring in sugar granules. She took a sip and, over the rim of her cup, said, “I assume it was this woman, Zahra, you went back to see.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Ben.” She shook her head. “Don’t be coy. It doesn’t suit you.”
“She wanted time with me without interference from the others.”
“So she was the one who made the final pitch.”
He nodded.
“And what did you tell her?”
“I accepted their offer.”
Isobel spent long moments drinking her coffee, her eyes turned inward. Ben knew she was sifting through all the angles, knew better than to interrupt her.
When her gaze refocused on him, she put down her empty cup. “How do you feel about this woman?”
“I don’t trust her.”
“I’m certain the feeling’s mutual.”
“I’d be highly surprised if it wasn’t. We scarcely know one another.”
“Sure. But I’m sure General Reade’s people have done a thorough background search on you. I’d do the same on her, but as we both know background checks can spew back the most fascinating disinformation.”
He smiled. “Wherever she claims to come from, whoever she says she is—all of that’s on shaky ground with me.”
She nodded. “Okay, then. Go ahead. But be careful, Ben.”
He rose, smiled down at her. “Aren’t I always?”
“I mean with this woman, Zahra.” She stood too. “All my instincts say she’s poison.”
He smiled. “You know as well as I do that for every poison there’s an antidote.”
She walked with him to the door. “Just don’t take it too late.”
22
WASHINGTON, DC
Carat, one of the few all-night bar-clubs inside the Beltway, throbbed like a living heart in a nondescript building along Florida Avenue NW, just north of where it intersected with T Street. The club had no sign outside, just a mob of people trying to get in. The long entryway on the ground floor opened onto a disco for thirtysomethings and fortysomethings trying to be thirtysomethings. Above was a cabaret for the kinky set, below a basement of raves where the twentysomethings hung for the all-night thumpers that didn’t get going until one in the morning. The bar, where Wilson was ensconced, lived on the third floor, accessed via stairs and, for the seriously drunk, an elevator.
It was where George Wilson, head of the Defense Threat Reaction Agency, had been coming at four in the morning five nights a week for the last three years, since his wife’s death. From that time forward Wilson found sleep an enemy. Every time he drifted off he dreamed of his wife lying in a Walter Reed hospital bed in the biosecured wing, dying of a SARS-like virus no doctor knew how to treat. Wilson was not allowed in to see his wife—not on the last day of her life, not when her body was buried by six masked and gowned gravediggers. Not ever. No place for him to mourn, apart from the recurring dream that racked him to his marrow, something out of a postapocalyptic horror film. The dream from which he’d wake up screaming, drenched in sweat. The first time that happened he almost gave his security detail a collective heart attack. Now they were used to the sounds. They were the only ones who knew about his nightmares and cold sweats.
Inside Carat, Wilson found a measure of solace impossible for him to grasp elsewhere, even when he worked until after midnight. The echoes of soft footfalls in the maze of hallways, indistinguishable from one another, impelled him to keep the door to his office locked, disconcerting his staff, but especially his adjutant. Well, fuck them, he thought as he sat at the far end of the bar, which described two-thirds of a circle. At this ungodly hour only a handful of people were at the bar. Two businessmen going over paperwork—a contract or perhaps a divorce settlement. An old man with a crooked back, who looked like a hobo but Wilson knew was a billionaire, hunched over his bourbon. A bored-looking Asian woman at the opposite end nursed a cocktail, and, more or less in the middle, a brace of stunning high-end escorts, one Nordic blonde, one inky Black, heads together, laughing softly as they unwound with champagne after a long and, if Wilson was any judge, lucrative night.
In truth, Wilson was built for the clandestine services. With his specialized attributes he navigated through the infuriating government bureaucracy, rose to section head, which he ruled with an iron hand. He might look like a meek numbers cruncher; he was anything but. Once he was inside the services, his outsize intellect allowed him to rapidly rise through the ranks. He networked, knew the right people, memorized the upper-echelon codex. As a result he found it a snap to say the right things to the right people above him in rank, like General Reade. They liked his emphatically stated opinions, which he made sure jibed completely with theirs. So he continued to rise, all the while loathing his chosen profession and those around him. Not such an easy task. As Secretary Thompson knew well, Wilson possessed a wicked temper that was liable to flare up if he didn’t keep it under tight control. No wonder he was plagued with ulcerative colitis.
And so, for the past three years, burdened by grief, misery, and dyspepsia, he had spent the last hours of the night and the early hours after daybreak at Carat’s bar, drinking añejo tequila, numb to the effects of alcohol, even though his veins and arteries were flooded with it. He was well aware that the alcohol did his colitis no good, but he didn’t care.
His security detail never accompanied him to Carat; only his driver/bodyguard Bruce stayed with him, sitting outside in Wilson’s SUV, playing Wordle on his cell phone and checking the immediate vicinity at the same time.
Wilson was aware of her even before she sat down. He felt the stirring of the atmosphere, the scent of her—jasmine and black licorice—wafting over him when she was at his side. She dropped onto the low-backed stool next to him.
“You arrived early,” she said, settling herself.
Of course, she was lying. She was late. But as was typical of her she would not apologize for it, let alone admit to it. She was not that kind of person, never had been, as far as Wilson knew.
“Zahra.” He said it like a sigh, as if he’d been waiting for her for days instead of less than fifteen minutes.
“Long night of the soul.”
“With Benjamin Butler, I assume.”
She nodded, ordered her usual, an original Sazerac, made with cognac instead of rye and, of course, absinthe, said nothing more until it came and she took her first long sip. Wilson knew better than to rush her, which, he’d learned, could be a dangerous business.
When had women become like this, he asked himself idly—brash, liars, schemers. He supposed they’d always been like that, only now it was out in the open. These days you could not so much as lay a finger on a woman without an outcry being raised, your entire career in danger of going down in flames. Of course, men were better sheltered from accusations of any kind here in the military, but still he found the ascendance of women a bitter pill to swallow. Not that he had any intention of making a move on Zahra; the very idea was absurd. He had no intention of becoming the next General Petraeus. No, no, no—never, he told himself. Zahra had suggested their twice-weekly meetings take place here at the bar at Carat, where, she informed him, there were no CCTV cameras to record their conversations. Still, he wasn’t immune to the intimacy of the space, which lent their meetings the veneer of a lovers’ rendezvous.
“So,” he said, hating that she was making him ask, “how did things go?”
She did not answer him right away. Instead, she stared between the precisely lined bottles at her own reflection in the mirrored back wall. “I think I was able to neutralize Reade.”
“Butler doesn’t like him.”
“He’s not too crazy about you or Connerly, either,” she said. “Apparently, the only people he feels anything for are his partner, Evan Ryder, and their boss, Isobel Lowe.” She sipped at her drink. “But back to Reade. Ben not only doesn’t like him—worse, he has no respect for him; he thinks he’s an idiot.” She put her glass down, turned to him, a smile curving her lips. Wilson hated that smile—or more accurately he was afraid of it. It was like staring into the face of a serpent as its jaws slowly opened. “All to the good because I told him the same thing. And that led to him questioning whether his boss is responsible for Thompson’s death.”
“So I was right in culling you from the herd,” Wilson said. “It’s now you two against Reade and Connelly.”
A vertical line appeared between her eyes, a sure sign of her annoyance. “You really can be a shit, George. You didn’t cull me from anything. I’m not an animal.” She leaned in close enough that he could smell the absinthe on her breath. Her hand on his sent a shiver through him. “Is that how you think of me, George? I mean deep down inside, do you see me as an animal?”
Did she require an answer, or did she already know? She was working her magic, making him feel small and ineffectual. He should have hated that, but he didn’t. The truth was he reveled in it. Being here at this time with this woman, no one else knowing, sent a buzz through him like an electric shock. How extremely pleasant that was, almost ecstatic. For a moment, he glanced over at the two escorts, no longer appearing all that alluring compared to the woman so close to him he could feel the heat coming off her in waves. So close he could smell her sweat mingling with the jasmine and black licorice of her perfume, altering it subtly but absolutely. Another shiver ran through him, bone deep this time.
Reaching out, she lifted a drop of sweat from his hairline, put the tip of her finger into her mouth. That smile again. “Don’t worry, George, if I bite anyone it’ll be Ben.”
Wilson took a ragged breath. “Will he come around?”
“He’s agreed.” Her nostrils flared as if she’d scented a far-off threat. “Whether he can be believed is another story.”
He leered at her. “You know what will seal the deal.”
The smile was gone now, her face settled into its battle expression. “You are such a pig.”
“I state only the truth,” Wilson said. “You’re a master manipulator. You’ve used your father’s family to gain outsized recognition. You use your, um, female assets, to the best ends possible. Are you now going to balk at using them on Ben Butler to get what we want?”
“I’m not balking at anything; I’m simply being careful. If I make a wrong step, if I spook Ben, we’re out of options, get me?”
She drained her glass, called for a refill.
Her voice lowered even further. Wilson was mesmerized by her lips, wet and luscious.
“Look, George, we suspect that Marsden Tribe is behind the secretary’s murder but only you and I know there’s another player in the field—the Russians. One of their top quantum physicists, Marius Ionescu, was spirited out of Moscow. Where is he? We don’t know. Who got him out? We didn’t. Tribe is the only one with the wherewithal to do it successfully. Evan Ryder is with Tribe, she’s Ben’s partner. We get to her, chances are good we’ll find Ionescu. And we need him, George. Desperately. We’re falling behind in the quantum race and you know why. Our government doesn’t think physics is a science worth supporting in any major way.”
* * *
An Binh had taught herself to lip-read when she was just a child, so her father could use her in his business dealings. She was better than having a microphone secreted on his adversaries. When they moved away from him to talk among themselves he turned his back, but his daughter did not, and she marked everything that was said between them. She liked lipreading; in her mind it was one step away from telepathy.
An Binh was the bored-looking Asian woman George Wilson had barely noted at the other end of the bar from him, and she was aware of every word said between Wilson and the young woman he called Zahra. She had come here through the intel derived from her own network of informants, which consisted of hotel night clerks, concierges, limo drivers and night-shift cabbies, salon workers, bartenders, doormen—in short, all the working people who were invisible, part of the wallpaper of life that no one paid attention to and who heard everything, shouting matches and whispered conversations alike.
She had never seen Zahra before but it was quite clear that Zahra knew Ben. In fact, she had been with him tonight. An Binh did not like this woman, did not like that she had been with Ben for so long. Zahra was beautiful in the way An Binh found certain reptiles beautiful—the way they held themselves perfectly still, the sudden surprising litheness when they sprang into action. She had eyes like those reptiles—gemstone bright, acquisitive, razor-sharp, even when half-lidded.
But most of all it was her parting remark, spoken against George Wilson’s ear, that struck a needle of anxiety into An Binh.
“It’s pathetic how much you want to fuck me.” Her lips touched his earlobe. “Also, kinda adorable.”
An Binh stayed at the bar long after Zahra and George Wilson left, long after the pair of escorts tottered down the stairs, giggling, heads tilted together, long after the old man fell asleep with his cheek in a puddle of bourbon the bartender was trying to mop up without waking him. Apparently this was a normal end to the old man’s night. At some point thereafter the old man’s chauffeur arrived and, in a fireman’s lift, bundled him downstairs presumably on the first leg of his journey home.
She stayed because she needed to clear her mind of the magnetic pull of Zahra, and also because she needed to examine her anxiety. Eventually, she realized that her anxiety was not for herself but for Ben. Zahra had done something heinous: she had weaponized her femininity. An Binh had known Ben only a little over a year, but in working him through his physical disability and the psychological blocks it had caused, she had come to know him as well as either Evan or Isobel did—in some ways perhaps better. She did not think Ben could stand up long to Zahra. She saw how Zahra had handled George Wilson, running her psychological spear clear through him. Perhaps on some level he knew how he was being manipulated but didn’t care. Either way, Wilson was hers body and soul. The thought of Ben being in thrall to Zahra was unendurable.
She paid her bill in cash, left a generous tip for the bartender. As she slipped off her stool and crossed to the staircase, she resolved to take care of Zahra herself. In her earlier life in Asia she had come across women like her, had dealt with some of them. She knew how they worked; she knew their thought processes as well as she knew the map of Vietnam. Their playbook hardly ever varied and even when it did it was not by much. And yet, as she descended the staircase, she was gnawingly aware of not underestimating Zahra. Only once had she made that mistake, and it had almost cost her an eye before she could gather herself for the final reversal.
