Page 88 of Mastermind

“Perhaps. But what you don’t know is that informant tipped us off to five shipping containers in Chicago that had enough chemical EMPs to take out the city. There was a countdown timer that stopped shortly after we found them. We think we preempted an attack.”

“Or Heywood set us up to think so,” I suggest.

“Possibly. But why?” asks Gerald.

“So you’ll buy whatever bullshit this informant feeds you. Come on, you have to see that.”

“We have to explore all leads, whether or not my gut tells me otherwise,” says Gerald.

“And does your gut tell you that this may all be a waste of time so Heywood can distract you?”

“It does. But the question you and I haven’t answered is, to distract us from what? Heywood likes creating chaos, but his goals have never been apocalyptic.”

“People change,” I reply. “Besides, what better way to reset the social order than with a minor apocalypse?”

“Dr. Cray? What do you think Heywood’s up to?” Gerald turns the floor over to Theo.

He thinks it over. “I told Agent Blackwood earlier that I don’t have enough information to discern his pattern. The problem is like when we try to imagine what aliens or a superintelligent artificial intelligence would do in a given situation. You can’t emulate a mind you don’t understand. What we end up doing is either projecting our own ideas or playing a naive game of opposites, where we try to determine what’s evil by our understanding of what’s good. Some of the worst people I’ve gone after thought they were doing good, albeit in horrific ways. For example, if you were the conjoined twin a surgeon had to kill to save the other, you’d think he’s evil. In the case of Heywood, my question is for Jessica: Does he see himself as a force for good or a force for evil?”

“Red Chain thought they were doing good by attempting to kill off half the planet. Does it matter?” I ask.

“Very much so. A man who sees himself as good and has multiple options will likely try the ones that cause least harm first. Michael Heywood has an incredible pool of resources. If he sees himself as good, then I can’t comprehend what he’ll attempt.”

“He wants people to see him as a god,” I reply. “Good gods, bad gods—they all have one thing in common: they define themselves by their ability to kill.”

“And create life,” adds Theo.

“So what does that mean? He’s going to have a kid?” I ask, frustrated by Theo’s semantics.

“No. Perhaps not. But he does like to create. The Void, as destructive as it is, is a sight unto itself. His little AI trick with that video call was another act of creation. He could have done something destructive.”

“Like murdering a young girl so he can use her corpse in a macabre display in a cemetery, making it appear she crawled out of her own grave? By luring another girl hundreds of miles across the country to then throw her out of an airplane so he could pick up the broken pieces?” My hand goes to my side. “Is my scar an act of creation? Were the bodies I found hanging in the vault an act of artistic expression?”

“That’s not what I mean,” Theo says.

“He’s evil. Evil does as evil is. Can’t you see it?”

“Yes,” says Theo. “Yet even Satan, a fallen angel, saw himself trying to restore the world to a more perfect order before man came along. From your account, Heywood doesn’t derive any kind of sexual pleasure from what he does. He sees himself as a surgeon. Sometimes temperamental and vindictive, but his larger purpose is one I can’t fathom. And it would be best if we stopped him before he accomplishes whatever it is.”

I take a long breath and let my blood cool. Everything Theo said was maddeningly correct. But it was also cold and logical. Michael Heywood wounded me on a number of levels. The faces of his victims will never leave my mind. It’s hard to see him as anything other than the embodiment of evil.

“Okay,” I say. “What should we do?”

“Find him,” says Gerald. “If you two can’t, I don’t know who can.”

“Find him? Just like that? The man escaped federal custody and outsmarted the CIA and apparently your task force. So we just find him?”

“Start with his pattern,” says Theo. “There’s a flaw in his thinking. What is it? We know he took risks trying to kill you. So that tells us he’s vindictive and probably feels threatened by you. He even built an AI to act as a go-between because you intimidate him. What else?”

“He’s arrogant.”

“Okay. I know from personal experience that can be a fatal flaw. In what way is he arrogant?” asks Theo.

“He likes to show you how close you came before he outsmarts you. We know he watched several of the crimes he committed in the past from up close. That’s why I had our agents record video of all the onlookers at the Manhattan Void. But we got nothing.”

“Yet you think he was there?” asks Theo.

“A hundred percent,” I say without hesitation. “The question is, where?” Then it hits me like a ton of bricks. “Oh shit.”