Silent Assassin(49)

“I remember reading it in graduate school,” said O’Neal. “The guy was some kind of genius. And I don’t say that lightly.”

“After that, he went the Wall Street route,” Shepard continued. “Made his first million in his first year, then, as far as we know, dropped off the face of the earth.”

“When, presumably, his work turned toward the illegal,” said Bloch.

“There’s no way of knowing,” said Shepard. “But it would make sense.”

“Karen, have you made any headway with the list this time?” This was the list of investment tips that Lee had put together for Len Stuart, which he had intended to deliver the day before.

“I’m running simulations. I’ll let you know as soon as we get something.”

“How do we even know we can use that list?” said Morgan, to no one in particular. “This was the last time he planned on selling this stuff. He was planning on disappearing off the face of the earth. If he gave his clients a fake list, there’d be nothing anyone could do. How do we know that the list is even the real thing?”

“That’s the problem with desperate men,” said Bloch. “They are completely unpredictable.”

“As I see it,” said O’Neal, “if he was desperate and rushed, he could have done one of two things. First is, he picks the list out of a hat. Completely at random. Not a problem if he’s running away and leaving his clientele behind. But that actually takes marginally more work than just handing over the list he has, assuming he had one. I’d say my best guess is, fifty-fifty, that this list is worth something.”

“The problem is, will we know the difference?” asked Bloch.

“We will,” said O’Neal. “The computer’s running my model. If it finds any significant coherence to it, we’ll know.”

“Good,” said Bloch. “How soon until we know?”

“Could be a few minutes, could be a few hours,” she said.

“All right,” said Bloch. “I think we can take a much needed break. Shepard, come with me. I have something to ask you.”

Morgan found himself sitting alone at the table with Karen O’Neal, who slumped in her chair red eyed, staring off into nowhere.

“Tired?”

“You have no idea,” she said. “Although, maybe you do. Like we get to complain, the home squad here. It’s not like they’re shooting at any one of us in here.” She rubbed her temples. “Christ. My brain is just shot to hell.”

“It must be torture,” said Morgan. “Having to wait for results all the time. I don’t know what to do with myself if I can’t do something.”

“Honestly?” said O’Neal. “I’m glad for a little respite. I feel like I haven’t been away from my computer in days. I’m starting to see numbers in everything. They’re running in my head when I close my eyes, just running across my field of vision. God, I’m boring you out of your mind, aren’t I?” She smiled, a tired smile with heavy-lidded eyes.

“I wonder what that’s like,” he said. “Seeing the world like you do.”

“It’s alienating. You just don’t see things like other people. So a lot of the time, you don’t think like they do, you don’t talk like they do, and you end up saying the wrong thing. I’ve gotten better about that, but it’s still an issue.” She smiled to herself, as if remembering a private joke. “This one time, on a date, I told a guy that he had the exact same nose-to-eye proportion as Adolf Hitler.” She burst out laughing, an exhausted laugh, and Morgan joined in. “As you can imagine, that didn’t go over well.”

“So I take it there’s no one special in your life?”

She shrugged. “What can you do, with a job like this? I pretty much live here these days. No joke. There are a couple of dormitories over by the server room. I’ve spent every night this week so far sleeping back there—and ‘sleeping’ I’m talking here in purely relative terms, because I don’t think I shut my eyes long enough to qualify as real sleep.”

“Must be lonely,” said Morgan. “That kind of lifestyle.”

“I guess sometimes I prefer to keep my own company. How about you? Is the mighty Cobra married?”

“Almost twenty years,” he said, with more than a hint of pride in his voice.

“But no wedding ring?” she asked. “I mean, I get it. You can’t wear it here. I didn’t expect that you would wear a wedding ring. But you don’t have a mark either. You know. Suntan mark, or a depression in your skin. There’s nothing there.”