Zimmerman's Algorithm Read online

  The phone rang.

  Gideon let the phone ring as sweat poured down his forehead and stung his eyes. There weren't many people he wanted to talk to. Chances were, it was another reporter. The calls weren't nonstop anymore, but there were still one or two a day.

  He didn't move to get it. Even if it wasn't a reporter, there wasn't anyone he wanted to talk to this early in the morning.

  When he got to seven, his answering machine got the call. He heard the beep, then a strung out voice. "Yeah, yeah. Malcolm? This you?" Gideon cursed and let his leg drop. With the notoriety of the shoot-out, it was only a matter of time before he started hearing from his share of cranks. The only surprise was that they hadn't joined with the reporters earlier. He needed to change his phone to an unlisted number. "It's Lionel—" the voice continued. Lionel? He suddenly recognized the voice that was hiding under the stressed-out breathlessness. Gideon tried too fast to scramble to his feet. His bad leg gave way, and he fell on his ass.

  Lionel kept talking, breathless and sounding as if he was in a daze. "You interested in some info, man? Better deal than last time—"

  Gideon pulled himself across the floor, toward the corner table with the phone.

  "You want to know something about the fuckup with the goddamn computer, be down at Metro Center, noon. Bring at least tw—three hundred bucks with you."

  Gideon grabbed the phone cord and pulled the whole thing off the table. The answering machine fell, springing the tape loose to scuttle across the floor.

  "Hello, hello?" He was too late, he was talking to a dial tone.

  "Fuck!" He slammed the receiver down on the cradle.

  Everyone and their brother in the department had been looking for Lionel since the whole fiasco went down. The guy was a minor street-level dealer who occasionally heard shit that was good enough to make a bust out of— which meant the fucker had no ties to anyone and could vanish into the D.C. underbelly like a rat into a garbage dump. No one knew anything about Lionel, what he was doing, where he was—

  Now the fucker who had gotten Rafe killed was calling him, trying to cash in on whatever it was he knew. . .

  For all that he wanted to cap the bastard himself, Gideon knew that he wanted to know what it was that Lionel was trying to sell. What he might know about the Secret Service sting that had killed his brother.

  However much he hated the fucker right now, he knew that the information would be worth three hundred bucks to him.

  He looked across at the clock on his VCR. It was nine o'clock.

  He pushed himself up onto the couch and called Captain Davis.

  "Captain? I think I've got Lionel. No—I have to be there. . . ."

  An aide carrying a handful of papers burst into Colonel Gregory Mecham's office shouting, "Sir, Mother has dropped us a flag on a hot target."

  Colonel Mecham looked up from his desk. He didn't wear a uniform; in that he wasn't much different than the other twenty percent of the National Security Agency that were on active military duty. The aide bursting in to his office was one of the people monitoring SIGINT, the NSA's primary, and most overt, mission.

  Mecham pushed aside the file he was looking at and waved the man in while he fumbled to remember the fellow's name. "What've we got?" The man had to be new, otherwise he would have just forwarded the data to him. As far as the vast majority of the NSA staff was concerned, all the fax and data lines at Fort Meade were ironclad secure. Mecham was one of about half a dozen people who knew that Mother might be compromised. That was such a sensitive bit of information that command had made the explicit decision not to alter any internal procedures for fear that such a change might inadvertently reveal that the systems might have a security breach.

  "It came in on a routine keyword search of telephone traffic—"

  "Let me see," Mecham said, holding out his hand for the papers. The man—Gerhard, his name was, Mecham finally remembered—handed over the printouts. The paper was slightly greasy, an effect of a coating that prevented copy machines, faxes, or optical scanners from reading anything more than a fuzzy black image from the pages. Even with that security precaution, the printouts were prestamped with the legend, "Destroy after use."

  The printout was from a voice recognition program, and it bore the transcript of a call from a pay phone in Brookland to a Georgetown residence at 8:17 this morning. It had taken Mother about twenty minutes to parse the call through its decision tree and flag it for attention.

  The message was ranked about as high priority as Mother could assign, "Vital, immediate attention." Mecham studied the papers letting his eyes scan the highlighted keywords. "Malcolm. . . Lionel. . . Computer. . . " Something about those words, combined with the destination of the call—the address in Georgetown was highlighted as well. Then Mecham saw who lived at that address.

  "Gideon Malcolm . . ." he.whispered, beginning to see what this intercept was.

  "Sir?"

  Mecham waved at his visitor. "Thanks for bringing this to my attention."

  Gerhard walked out. Mecham didn't explain the significance of the intercept to him. Instead, he reread the transcript two times, committing the words to memory. Then, without the pages leaving his sight, he picked up a phone that was firmly bolted to his desk—one of the few outside lines that he knew was confirmed secure.

  The line didn't even ring once as he put the call through.

  "Sir?" Mecham asked.

  "What is it?" asked Emmit D'Arcy.

  "We have a situation with regard to Zimmerman—"

  "Yes?" Mecham heard the breathless anticipation in D'Arcy's voice. Mecham knew that D'Arcy was hoping that someone had finally turned up Dr. Zimmerman. Even so, Mecham knew enough about the missing Doctor—and more importantly, the Doctor knew enough about them—to doubt that any lead on Zimmerman's location would ever come from Mother.

  "Mother identified someone as associated with Zimmerman. Name's Lionel. We have a transcript of him setting up a meeting with Detective Gideon Malcolm."

  "That Detective?"

  "Apparently he has some information to sell."

  "Where's the meeting?"

  Mecham told him.

  "Anything more to the transcript?"

  "No, sir."

  "Do you have any notes about this, any memos, other records?" "No, sir."

  "That's good. Keep me apprised of the situation—but take no action yourself."

  Mecham nodded and hung up the phone. Then he slowly fed the transcript into his shredder.

  1.07 Tue. Mar. 3

  LIONEL sat on the Metro, passing stop after stop, waiting for the shit to hit the fan. He had been on the trains almost constantly since getting on in Brookland. Half the time he had a plan in his head, get the money from the cop, get back on the train, and make for the airport.

  The other half of the time he was feeling his gun bite him in the gut where he'd shoved it in his waistband, and watching the people who got on and off the train. He studied each face as if it belonged to someone who might want to kill him. It was nuts, but he felt like he was being watched. He had that feeling every time he got on the Metro. It had to do with the cameras at every stop. Today, it was worse. Every time he looked up, he saw Davy's glassy eyes staring at him from behind the lenses.

  He had changed trains a few times, and had gone as far as Arlington, just to avoid someone following him. But those damn cameras were everywhere, making him nervous.

  The people on the train made him nervous, too. Fortunately, none of them chose to sit by him. His psycho stare was giving him some space.

  When they reached Metro Center, he raced to the door and bumped into a lawyer type—three-piece suit and all. Lionel might never have noticed the guy if it wasn't for something the guy carried—keys, pens, Lionel couldn't tell—stabbing him in the hand.

  "Pardon," the man said, without even looking at him. Lionel wanted to tear into the bastard, but the crowd leaving the train had already separated them.

  "Fuck out of
my face," Lionel yelled at the guy, through the closing doors of the train. Frustration was thick enough to make him sweat. He pushed aside a woman who was just a little too close to him and muttered, "Lucky shit. Don't know how lucky . . ."

  The train was pulling away, and the motion ignited a wave of vertigo that sent the inside of his head spinning. The walls were about to close in on him.

  Lionel stumbled out onto the platform. Cradling his hand, which was burning like a motherfucker, he looked at it, and all he saw was a red welt where something had scraped across the skin. Just a scratch, but it hurt like the asshole had driven a spike through his hand.

  The cameras were watching him.

  Him specifically. He saw them pan after him as he moved. The concrete ceiling seemed incredibly far away.

  Lionel began to sweat, and felt real terror. His heart seemed to race, trying to smash through his rib cage...

  His hand, the one that didn't burn, began to drift toward the gun.

  They were here, he could feel it, knew it with a certainty. The sharpness of the knowledge matched the razor clarity with which he saw the platform. Everything, the benches, the poster ads, the train pulling away, was torn out with a bold relief and colors bright enough for his eyes to ache.

  And the people, everyone on the platform, stared at him with Davy's dead gray eyes.

  Someone called his name, and Lionel knew it was death, come for him.

  Gidion called out, "Lionel," again.

  Lionel was normally nervous and shaky, but Gideon had never seen the guy looking this strung out. Gideon approached on his crutches, and made it a half-dozen steps before Lionel reacted.

  When he did, he surprised the hell out of Gideon.

  Lionel looked dead at him and shook his head, "No, no, man, you ain't taking me. Not like Davy."

  After halving the distance between them, Gideon could see just how bad off Lionel was. Lionel was soaking with his own sweat, staring through pupils dilated enough to swallow the iris in a dead, black hole.

  "I have your money—" Gideon started, hoping to calm him down.

  Lionel scrambled backward and someone shouted, "Gun."

  Gideon didn't know if it was one of the undercover cops on the platform, or one of the transit boys manning the cameras shouting over the PA system. But the crowd reacted, a sudden panicked rush of people running past Gideon, toward the exit.

  Gideon fell backward, seeing Lionel waving an automatic, not seeming to know where to point it. As the civilians rushed for the exit, Lionel pointed it at Gideon, at the escaping people, and at the cameras.

  One of the undercover boys had Lionel covered, pointing his weapon at him from behind a bench. In the chaos of moving people, Gideon heard a single gunshot. In response, a dozen other shots reverberated through the giant concrete chamber.

  Lionel was cut to pieces as every undercover cop on the platform fired into him. He was probably dead before he slumped to the ground. Gideon watched, sickened, as Lionel spun, blood spraying from wounds in his chest, his throat, and his legs. It was like watching a replay of what had happened to Raphael.

  The firing stopped when Lionel was motionless, facedown on the concrete. In the few moments of gunfire, the platform had emptied of everyone but cops.

  "Fuck . . ." Gideon gasped as he grabbed his crutches and struggled to lever himself upright.

  Eight plainclothes cops closed on the corpse, ringing Lionel with their guns drawn, as if he might still make a threatening move. Gideon, moving slowly, was one of the last to join the ring.

  Gideon had nurtured a faint hope that Lionel might still be alive, but once he stood next to the body, he could see it was hopeless. The shot to the neck was final.

  One of the detectives turned to Gideon. "You all right?"

  "Yeah, damn it. He wasn't even aiming at me." Someone else said, "Bastard didn't give us a choice." Gideon nodded. Once they heard a shot, the only duty that remained was protecting the civilians on the platform. There was no way around it.

  Gideon crutched around to the other side of Lionel and looked at the other cops. The transit boys would have the ambulance call in already. All they had to do was wait.

  "Any of you have some gloves?" he asked the others.

  One nodded, holstered his weapon, and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. He looked at the body and asked, "What do you see?"

  "Pick up the gun," Gideon asked. "See how many shots he fired."

  The cop with the gloves bent over and retrieved Lionel's gun from the pool of his blood. He looked at the gun, shook his head, frowned. Then he pulled the clip and stared at it for a few moments.

  Gideon didn't like his expression. "What is it?"

  "This weapon hasn't been fired at all." He turned it around so the circle of cops could see the side of the gun. "He never even took the safety off."

  1.08 Fri. Mar. 6

  A T eight-thirty Friday morning, Gideon hobbled into Captain Davis' office. He had spent the last day sorting out the paperwork on Lionel's shooting and giving interviews to Internal Affairs.

  His captain looked worse, as if he'd hadn't slept in the past week. His desk was piled high, as if he was trying to barricade himself in his office with paperwork.

  Gideon leaned on his crutch and waited for Davis to notice him.

  Eventually Davis looked up. He frowned and said, "So what are you doing here?"

  "I want to know what was happening with Lionel—"

  Davis looked at him, and Gideon could hear him sigh. "You're off duty, Gideon."

  Gideon crutched up to the desk. "I have a right to know what's going on with that case."

  Davis shook his head. "What the hell gives you that idea?"

  "My brother—"

  "This is a police department—not some freelance detective agency. Go home. Rest."

  "All I want is—"

  "All I want is a double-digit drop in the homicide rate and an adequately funded department. Who gets what they want? Get some rest and let this be."

  Gideon stood there, debating whether to push the issue or not. He looked at Davis and decided not. The phrase "public relations disaster" went through his mind as he thought of the incident on the Metro. Shooting someone to ribbons on the platform of what was supposed to be the safest subway system in the nation could not be helping the PR situation.

  He hobbled back out of the Captain's office and crutched over to one of the desks. Behind it sat Tamon Gardener, a homicide detective he knew from the academy.

  Gardener was doing his best not to look directly at Gideon. He managed to avoid eye contact until Gideon had crutched up to directly in front of his desk.

  "I'm sorry, man," he said. "We aren't supposed to talk to you about any police business."

  "Christ, why—" Gideon was about to repeat himself, he had a right to know what was going on. He had a right because it was his case, his brother. He wasn't about to let some political bureaucracy in the department shut him out of the investigation.

  However, it was obvious from Gardener's expression that word had come down from on high in the department. It would be pointless to voice his frustration.

  Instead, he decided to try a little finesse. "Look, all I need is one thing for my report—"

  "Look, I shouldn't even be talking to you."

  "I just need the case number for the Metro shoot-out." Gardener looked up at him as if trying to decide if he'd be breaking any standing orders by giving Gideon that information.

  This has got the whole damn department tied up in knots, Gideon thought.

  Gardener scribbled on a pad. "Look, steer clear of this until things calm down. IA's breathing down the neck of anyone who touches this case."

  "I'll put in a good word for you with Magness," Gideon said. He pocketed the slip of paper while balancing on his crutches.

  "Don't do me any favors."

  When Gideon got home, he crutched his way upstairs and turned on his computer. The old machine took a while to warm up. It gave
Gideon a chance to find himself a comfortable position in his chair. It took him a little longer to get oriented, moving the mouse with the wrong hand.

  Eventually he called up the department. The computer dialed, and soon he was hearing the whine of a carrier.

  He hadn't used his account in the DCPD database since he'd been gunned down. He'd spent all his time on his own private account. He was hoping that all the folks who wanted him on vacation had overlooked his mainframe account. He logged in and waited.

  In a few seconds the screen flashed a prompt at him. He was in.

  He fished out his copy of the Case ID for Lionel's shooting. It took him about ten minutes, typing with the wrong hand, to enter the fifteen digit ID number and get Lionel's file up. The computer thought about it for a few minutes, then the screen showed the first page of Lionel's file.

  Kareem Rashad Williams had quite a rap sheet tagged onto his ass. Gideon didn't care much about that, he knew most of it anyway. He paged into the active case file on the Metro shoot-out.

  The autopsy records were on file. The cause of death was no surprise; what did surprise Gideon was the fact that the toxicology scan showed enough PCP in Lionel's system to send the Mormon Tabernacle Choir into orbit. That was enough of a surprise for Gideon to back up to the guy's rap sheet.

  Dealing heroin, dealing coke, dealing speed. No Angel Dust. Not much in itself, but that combined with the odd fact that Lionel had decided to go flying right before he was supposed to meet with a cop that had no reason to like him made the whole thing seem somewhat fishy.

  Back to the autopsy.

  The cause of death was no big surprise. A bullet had severed his spinal column. The neck wound had finished him off.

  It was the ballistics that really made Gideon wonder. The police, collectively, had fired twelve shots. Lionel was hit by five shots. Seven bullets were dug out of the walls of the Metro station. That meant that at least one bullet had passed through Lionel and had lodged in the wall. That was possible, only two- slugs were dug out of Lionel's body.

  What bothered Gideon was the fact that all the bullets, except the fatal shot, could be tied to a specific police gun. The one in Lionel's neck had fragmented explosively, as if someone was firing hollow points. More disturbing, the neck shot had hit him in the front, in his throat. From Gideon's memory, that meant that the shot had come from in front of Lionel, from behind where Gideon had been standing.