The Sign

past mystical sightings for any relevance. Clips about previous claims, from Fatima to Medjugorje, were getting airtime, only they paled in comparison. This wasn’t a handful of kids claiming to see the Virgin Mary in a field.

The world was, simply, entranced.

Matt tilted his head back again and exhaled wearily. “Tell me what you and Vince talked about.”

“Tell you what we talked about?” Jabba rambled. “We talked about everything, dude. Where do you want me to start?”

“Last night,” Matt specified testily. “What did you guys talk about last night?”

“Last night. Last night, right,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “We were watching this thing,” he said, pointing at the screen. “The first one, anyway. Trying to work out how it could be done.”

Matt sat up. “ ‘ Done’? You think it’s a fake?”

Jabba gave him a look. “Dude. Come on. Something like this happens, your first instinct has to be it’s a fake. Unless you buy into that whole ‘the truth is out there’ mind-set.”

“Which, I’m guessing, you don’t?”

“No, hey, I’m open to it. I’m sure there’s some weird stuff they’re not telling us about. But there’s so much bullshit out there, whether it’s from the government or from people who are out to make a fast buck, you’ve got to look at things with a cynic’s eye. And we’re scientists, man. Our instinct is to ask questions first.”

Matt nodded, trying to stay focused. “So you and Vince bounced around some ideas. You come up with anything?”

“No, see, that’s the thing.” Jabba leaned forward, and his voice livened up. “Nothing stuck. Nothing at all. We couldn’t even begin to figure it out. If this thing’s a fake, then whoever’s doing it is using some technology that’s straight out of Area 51.”

Matt frowned. He was missing something. “What is it you guys do, anyway? I mean, if it was a fake, what made you think you and Vince could figure it out?”

“We’re electrical engineers. We work on . . . I mean, me and Vince, we . . .” He stumbled with visible discomfort. “We design computer circuits, microchips, that kind of thing.”

Matt glanced at the screen dubiously. “That doesn’t sound particularly relevant to this thing.”

“I’m not talking about Radio Shack walkie-talkies, dude. Or even iPhones. I’m talking sci-fi-level stuff. Like right now, we’re building these micro-RFID chips—you remember that scene in Minority Report? When Tom Cruise is walking through a mall and all these holographic panels know it’s him and start talking to him and showing him these tailor-made ads?”

“Not really.” Matt shrugged. “I’ve missed out on a few movies over the years.”

“Too bad, man. Awesome movie. Right up there with Blade Runner, the only other Philip K. Dick story Hollywood didn’t manage to screw up.” A look from Matt put him back on track. “Anyway, we can do that now. Not the screen. I’m talking about the recognition part. Tiny chips embedded in the actual fabric of your shirt, that kind of thing.”

“It still doesn’t tell me why you think you’d be able to figure this out.”

“What we do . . . it’s not just a job,” Jabba explained. “It’s a calling. You live it, breathe it, dream it. It takes over your life. It is your life. And part of it is keeping track of everything that’s going on, not just the stuff that’s directly related to your work. You’ve got to want to know about what everyone else is doing, whether it’s at NASA, in Silicon Valley, or in some lab in Singapore. Because everything’s interconnected. One of their breakthroughs could be combined with what you’re doing in ways neither one of you intended and could open up a whole new door in your brain. It can give you the one thing you need to make that quantum leap and send your work in a completely new direction.”

“Okay.” Matt didn’t sound too convinced. “So you and Vince kept an eye on what other brainiacs were dreaming up.”

“Pretty much.”

Matt still felt confused. “Well if the two of you couldn’t figure it out, then why was your conversation a threat to anyone? Do you think you might have hit on something without knowing it?”

Jabba did a quick mental rummage of his chat with Bellinger. “I doubt it. Everything we talked about is public knowledge—at least, among the other ‘brainiacs’ out there. If any of it was relevant in any way—and I don’t think it was—someone else would have made the connection too by now.”

“So why come after Vince? And why did it make him think that my brother was somehow involved?”

The word threw Jabba. “Your brother?”

“Vince thought my brother might have been killed because of it.”

“Why would he think that?”

“I don’t know. They were close.”

Jabba’s face signaled he was now missing something. “Who was your brother?”

“Danny. Danny Sherwood.”

A name that clearly struck a chord. A resonant one. “Danny Sherwood was your brother?”

Matt nodded. “You knew him?”

“I knew of him, sure. Distributed processing, right? Progamming’s holy grail. Your brother’s cred was rock solid on that front.” He nodded wistfully. “Vince loved your brother, man. Said he was the most brilliant programmer he’d ever seen.” He let the words settle as his mind tried to fill in the blanks and see the connections. “What did Vince tell you, exactly?”

“Not much. He said someone called Reece hired Danny to work with him on something. You heard of him?”

“Dominic Reece. They all went down in that chopper, didn’t they? I’m sorry, man.” Jabba’s expression tightened. “Vince told you he thought they’d been murdered? All of them?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” He didn’t want to lose his thread. “He said they were working on some kind of bio- sensor project. Does that mean anything to you?”

“No. But Vince and Danny were close. Closer than close. He might have told him something in strict confidence. Something he wasn’t supposed to spread around. Like maybe the patents hadn’t been applied for yet. In our business, one slip of the tongue could lose you a billion-dollar advantage.”

Matt rubbed the exhaustion from his eyes. The sign over Greenland was on the screen again, taunting him. It was hypnotic, and Matt was finding it hard to take his eyes off it. “You and Vince. That night. He cut the conversation short, didn’t he?”

Jabba nodded.

“What was the last thing he said? Do you remember?”

Jabba concentrated. “He didn’t say it. I did. I was just saying that it looked like the air itself was being lit up. Like the air molecules themselves were on fire. Only that’s not possible.”

Matt studied the grainy image on the screen. “What if it is?”

“Setting the air on fire? I don’t think so.”

“What about a laser, a projector . . . something that needs the skill set of one hell of a programmer.”

Jabba just shook his head. “Nothing I know of can do that. And if anyone else knew how it could be done, they’d be on every channel.”

Matt shut his eyes and leaned back, frustrated. He was having a hard time concentrating and getting his head around it all. It didn’t help that he was running on empty. He was exhausted, physically as well as mentally. He hadn’t slept for well over twenty-four hours, hours that he hadn’t exactly coasted through. And it didn’t look like whatever it was that had him in its grip was about to let go anytime soon.

“There’s a reason they killed Vince. And it has to do with what happened to Danny and the others. Whether this damn sign is real or not, someone’s doing something.”

Jabba’s face sank. “And you want to find out who’s doing it.”

“Yep.”

Jabba looked at him like a kid studying a three-eyed panda at the zoo. “Are you nuts? ’Cause that’s the wrong play, dude. The right play is we lose ourselves until they’re done with whatever it is they’re doing. We disappear, maybe drive up to Canada or something, we sit tight and we wait until it’s all blown over.”

Matt eyed him like he was now the alien species. “You think?”

Jabba frowned, a bit discomfited by Matt’s sardonic expression. “You asked me what made me and Vince