Page 95 of Chain Reaction

“What’s your meeting about?”

“No agenda yet.”

“Is that normal?”

“Not with this guy. Usually we get it the day before.”

“Are we at war with someone?”

“I assume so, somewhere. We usually are. But nothing new since yesterday, as far as I can tell.”

“So what’s it about?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the biggest thing ever. But maybe it isn’t. The last one was a whole lot of nothing. He dragged me back from the West Coast to tell me the army is trying A.I. Well, duh. My refrigerator uses A.I. At least it said so in the brochure.”

“Did he know you were on the West Coast?”

She paused a beat.

“I guess not,” she said. “I didn’t put anything in the system.”

“Does he look in there?”

“Every day,” she said. “He has input to the presidential daily briefing. He checks our updates in case there’s an angle he needs to mention.”

“So he checked your status, and he thought he was dragging you from the D-ring to the E.”

“Now he’s doing it again.”

“Same answer.”

“I think he’s playing Clue, like we did with Elwood.”

“How could he? He doesn’t know you’re out of the office.”

“He could track my phone.”

“He’s a four-star general. He can barely dial a phone.”

Turner was quiet a long moment. Then she said, “Do a thought experiment. Suppose EEF has one of the new A.I. contracts, and for some corrupt reason he’s somehow protecting them. How would his behavior be any different?”

“He wouldn’t just yank you back every time you got close. He would order you to a specific place at a specific time so they could kill you.”

“He did exactly that,” she said. “That last meeting. They knew where I would be the night before. The phony DIA guy drove right over.”

“This time he ordered you straight to the office. That proves his innocence. No one would set up a hit in the E-ring of the Pentagon.”

“There’s that,” she said.

—

Axel Brill was taking his second formal meeting with Hennessy, up on the glossy, glassy executive floor, with the wall to wall windows and the twinkling evening view. Saxby Cameron was sitting in again. The news was not good. Turner and Elwood had made it to their plane. They were en route to D.C. In fact they were nearly there. The EEF Gulfstream was forty minutes behind. Not the pilot’s fault. Air traffic control made the decisions. But not to worry. The mission would be completed back east. Maybe it would be easier there. Arlington County at night was better terrain than San Francisco International on a busy weekday afternoon.

Hennessy said, “If Mr. Cameron is right, they’ll go talk to Mrs. Bisley right away. This is urgent business for them. They’ll wake her up if necessary. They’ll all be in the same place at the same time. Plain sailing. No problem.”

Brill didn’t answer. He was flashing back on Hugo Blackwell. All I ever get is the same error message, over and over again.

Cameron asked, “Will three men be enough?”