'What the hell was it you pulled on them.'
'Heckler & Koch MP55D—your basic police-slash-antiterrorist weapon.'
'Can you legally carry that thing around?'
'Now that's a disingenuous question.' Kendal accelerated out down New York Avenue.
'MIT . . .' Gideon said to himself.
'What?' Kendal asked as he jerked to a stop at a red light.
'Someone trying to get their hands on a supercomputer? A lot of tech-heads around that kind of operation.'
'Uh-huh,' Kendal said. 'You're basing this all on a Rastafarian's description of a sweatshirt. You don't know for sure even if this Mike guy ever went to college—'
'It's a lead.'
'No talking you out of this, is there?'
'I really don't give a shit if it's D'Arcy or the Pope behind this. Someone's responsible for Rafe's death, and I'm not going to let Magness hang me for it.'
Kendal sighed. 'Okay, I'll back you up on this thing. You can't do this alone.'
'Thanks.'
'So what was it you showed the bartender?'
Gideon took the paper out of his pocket. While he was doing it, the light changed and cars started honking. Kendal pulled up, through the intersection.
Kendal glanced over at the paper and the symbol Gideon had copied. 'What is it?'
'I don't know. A symbol associated with the people who hired Davy. It was on a card in his wallet.'
Kendal kept glancing from the road to the handwritten N.
'It's an aleph,' Gideon said. 'The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. But I haven't figured out what it means with that circle attached. It isn't a word—it might be some sort of occult symbol, but if so I don't know what it means.'
'I don't think it's occult,' Kendal said. 'I didn't have much science in high school, but I think we're looking at a subscripted constant of some sort.'
'Huh?'
'I think what you have here is some sort of mathematical or scientific symbol. You said we're dealing with a bunch of 'tech-heads.' '
'Why you think so? Do you know what it is?'
'I have no clue. But I remember how that kind of techie stuff looked. And putting a little zero at the base of the thing makes it look like some sort of constant that someone would put in an equation somewhere.'
'I thought they only used Greek letters for that? You know, like pi.'
'They probably ran out of the Greek alphabet a century ago. Talk to a mathematician or an engineer. I bet one of them would know what that means.'
Gideon had a gut feeling about what university he would find one at.
1.12 Mon. Mar 9
GIDEON drove to Cambridge. He parked at MIT in the early afternoon, after spending hours on the road. He had to sit in the parking lot for about half an hour just to allow his wounded leg and shoulder to rest. He had driven here in a fog of denial. He had to keep telling himself that he was acting perfectly reasonable.
The fact was, he was here, like Kendal had said, based on a Rastafarian's description of a sweatshirt. He could have e-mailed someone, gone to Georgetown, or any of a number of things—
But he had driven to Cambridge.
He sat in the car, massaging his legs with his good arm and wondering if Magness had gotten him suspended yet. Am I here just because I have to do something?
What did he have? A name, 'Mike,' and a scrap of paper with a symbol that could mean just about anything . . .
And the possibility that the government was covering up something about the theft of a Daedalus supercomputer.
He was fooling himself if he thought he was going to find out anything here.
But, now that he was here, it really would be pointless driving back without trying, so he spent ten minutes maneuvering himself out of the car with his crutch.
A student, carrying a backpack and huddling against a severe wind, stopped and asked, 'Do you need any help, sir?'
Gideon shook his head as he made it to his feet. 'I've got it under control.'
The kid turned to go, and Gideon called out, 'Can you tell me where the mathematics department is?'
'Building two,' the kid called back over his shoulder. 'There's a directory over there.' He hooked a thumb toward a nearby building, where a campus map stood.
'Thanks,' Gideon said as he crutched over to the map.
'Fuck,' he muttered. He had parked on the far side of the campus from building two.
Gideon looked up math professors at random. On the third try he found an office occupied. The office's occupant was named Doctor Harry Cho. Dr. Cho's door was ajar on a tiny office that was crowded with bookshelves and filing cabinets. Gideon knocked on the doorframe with his cast, letting the door swing all the way open.
Dr. Cho looked up from his computer and spun around. The movement startled Gideon before he realized that the professor was seated in a wheelchair.
'Can I help you?' Cho asked. Cho's expression was one of frank, almost embarrassing, curiosity.
Gideon extended his good hand and said, 'My name's Gideon Malcolm. I'm a detective with the Washington D.C. Police Department.'
Cho took his hand. 'I hope I haven't done anything wrong, Officer.'
'No—'
'D.C?' Cho looked at the cast and the crutch and said, 'You aren't that cop from that Dateline story, are you?'
Gideon sighed and nodded.
'Well, what do you know?' Cho waved behind the door. 'I have a chair—'
Gideon moved to sit down. It was a relief after walking across the campus. His leg and his shoulder were both giving him grief. He sat, massaging the scar-tissue crater through his pants leg. It felt, through the material, as if the hole went straight through his calf.
'It hurts?' Cho asked.
Gideon was almost embarrassed to admit it in front of someone in a wheelchair, but he nodded. 'My leg was torn up pretty good.' He patted the cast. 'The arm was broken by the bullet, but it'll probably recover sooner than the leg.'
Cho nodded. He slapped the side of his chair. 'Anyway, what brings you here? A bit out of your jurisdiction.'
Gideon shook his head. 'I'm here on my own. I don't even know why I mentioned I was a cop—habit, I
guess.'
Cho cocked his head and stared at Gideon with an expression that made him uneasy. It was as if all his doubts were visible on his face for Cho to see. He pulled out the paper with his hand-drawn aleph on it. It was severely crumpled now. 'I'm interested in two things,' he said staring at his paper. 'The first is someone who might have been a student here, in Mathematics, Engineering, or—'
'Why are you looking for him?'
Gideon looked up from his crumpled paper. 'What?'
'You said you were here on your own. Why are you looking?' He eyed Gideon suspiciously.
It took a while before Gideon said, 'If you've seen any of the news stories, you should know why.'
