plane flights, fund transfers, that stuff. I think I’m using half the RAM in the entire network. I’m surprised Jamey hasn’t—”
The screen flickered. Jessi stared at the screen as an enormous list of transactions appeared. “See, I knew there’d be too many to make the list usable—” She stopped speaking again. Her logarithm had ranked the listing in order of probability. The one at the top caught her attention: it had been ranked in the ninety-ninth percentile. She drilled down into the line and read the following:
TRSP $US2,000,000.00 FROM 343934425 TO 904900201* CAYMAN ISLDS *ACCOUNT NO. ACTIVITY MATCH: EASTERN TURKISTAN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT
“Hmm,” Jessi said, astounded.
Henderson patted her on the shoulder. “I’m taking you to Vegas.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. If the computer match was correct, it appeared that someone had transferred two million dollars to an account in the Cayman Islands — an account that had been connected to ETIM. So much for ETIM not having resources. “Let’s find out who,” Jessi said.
Henderson watched her work. He’d liked her from the moment he took over as Director of Field Operations. She was certainly a wizard on the computer, but every analyst at CTU could make that claim. Bandison had a level head and a detective’s mind. One of his predecessors, Kelly Sharpton, had written her glowing reports.
“There,” she said. He tore his eyes away from her to study the computer.
“Marcus Lee,” he read. “Chinese American, living in Los Angeles. Now why would Mr. Lee want to give two million dollars to ETIM?”
Kim stomped her foot impatiently. “I don’t care what my dad says, I need to get out of here.”
Her face was flushed, and she was starting to perspire so much, she was sure her makeup would run.
“We should just go,” Janet said, lifting her hair up from her shoulders to cool her neck. “There’s like nothing happening here anyway.”
Even as she said that, Brad Gilmore and another guy from Teen Green shoved into them, hitting Janet on the back and nearly knocking Kim off her feet.
“Hey, cut it out!” Kim yelled.
“It wasn’t us!” Brad complained. “It’s them!”
On the other side of Brad, two or three people Kim didn’t know had started to push and shove each other — a middle-aged granola with shoulder-length gray hair, and a cute guy who looked like he was in college. They were yelling over each other, and Kim could barely understand the words. The college guy shoved the granola, who shoved back. The people around them simultaneously whooped encouragement and yelled at them to stop causing trouble.
In moments, four or five policemen were on the scene, pushing past the spectators and grabbing hold of the two men.
“Excuse me, miss.”
Kim Bauer turned away from her conversation with Janet to find three policemen standing around her. They had serious looks on their faces.
“Yeah?” she replied.
“You’ll have to come with us, please.”
Kim looked around as if trying to discover something she’d done wrong. The fight was already breaking up, and she hadn’t even been involved. “What do you mean?”
“Is there a problem, officer?” Marshall Cooper, the advisor, pushed past several gawking members of Teen Green. “Is something wrong here?”
One of the policemen with a bandage around his wrist said, “Step back, sir. We’re going to have to take this girl inside for some questions.”
Kim didn’t like the sound of that. “What’d I do?” she asked fearfully.
The cop paused. “Disorderly conduct.”
“That’s ridiculous!” said a high-pitched voice. Andi Parks practically rolled over Cooper as she set herself between Kim and the policemen. “That’s completely and totally ridiculous, I’ve been here the whole time and that girl hasn’t done a thing, in fact she’s not feeling very well, are you, Kimmy?”
Her onslaught was enough to make all three cops step back, but they recovered quickly. The injured cop puffed his chest out again. “Back off, ma’am. We’re just doing our job. Now come along, miss.” He took Kim by the arm gently but firmly.
Kim looked from Janet to Andi Parks to Mr. Cooper, who looked confused, outraged, and helpless, respectively.
Jack watched from the crowd, a safe distance away. He was wearing a borrowed blue Dodgers cap that hid his blond hair, and he kept his chin tucked, hiding half his face in the collar of his shirt. If anyone was keeping an eye on Kim, he was sure they wouldn’t recognize him in that throng of people.
The police officers had surrounded Kim and were leading her toward the entrance to the Federal Building. Jack trailed them. He was vaguely aware that the shouting and arguments continued behind him.
There is a single-mindedness that settles over a person about to die. For Mercy Bennet, that single- mindedness refined itself into the single, repetitive motion of her bound wrists along the edge of an exposed nail. Elbows bent, elbows straightened, elbows bent, elbows straightened. It was not monotonous. It was not tedious. It was, in fact, the single most thrilling and interesting event of her entire life, because her entire life depended on it.
They had argued twice more about killing her. “They” comprised at least five distinct individuals, though by the sound of footsteps there might be others coming in and out. She had no faces to match the voices, but she had begun to learn more about them. They used names with one another that had to be codes: Jack Mormon, Rudolf the Red…and at last, when one of them spoke to the man she thought of as the leader, she heard the name Smith. She guessed who it was: Seldom Seen Smith, the leader of the Monkey Wrench Gang. At one point during her captivity, Smith apparently left the room, and two others spoke of him in voices mixed with reverence and contempt.
“What’s gotten in to him?” one male voice asked.
“Easy, Rudolf,” a female voice said. “Smith’s the man.”
“He’s turning in to some kind of Hayduke, though,” said Rudolf.
Mercy was surprised to find that she understood the term, and she thanked her research on the Edward Abbey book from which the terrorists took their name. Hayduke was one of the most revered characters in the environmentalist book — he was famous in part for the fact that he studiously avoided causing harm to other people.
“That’s not such a bad thing, is it?” the female voice asked.
Rudolf spoke stubbornly. “It is if it gets in the way of the goal. Hell, if we’re going to talk and not do anything, we might as well join the Sierra Club.”
“Quiet.” This came from a new female voice. Mercy thought she recognized it as Frankie Michaelmas.“I was with him in Brazil. I saw what he did to those surveyors that time. Trust me, when the time comes, he’ll kill her.”
Conversations like that were very motivating. Mercy had managed to roll so that her body lay almost over her arms, which she moved ever so slightly to fray the ropes. Under her hood, she had no idea if anyone was watching her, so she had to make her movements imperceptible. Twice she heard footsteps approach, and felt heavy steps on the floorboards beneath her, and she froze. Only when the footsteps turned and walked away did she resume her cutting.
After what seemed like hours, she felt the ropes part. She stifled a gasp. Her hands were free, but her feet were still bound. If she sat up and someone discovered her now, she’d be nearly helpless. She listened carefully, reaching out with all her senses to gather information about the room. There was neither sound nor movement. She had to risk it.
In one fluid motion, Mercy sat up and pulled the hood from her head. She was sitting in a bare room with scratched wood floors and faded yellow walls. The single window had been covered in heavy drapes. The door was
