CHAPTER 72

BEAN TURNED MALCOMB AROUND, and I noticed once again that the former SAS officer continued to study me, as if plotting where he’d aim if he got the chance and the go-ahead.

“Welcome to Maestro’s remote command center,” Malcomb said. “Everyone in this room has at one time worked for various top-rank intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world. Toomey was in the Marines and CIA paramilitary. Lucas in the SAS. Sarah down there in the second row was a top controller with the Mossad. Edith here was with NSA. Where are we, Edith?”

Mid-fifties, half glasses on a chain, and a funky dresser, Edith put me in mind of a social studies teacher I knew who’d worked at a school where Nana Mama had been vice principal. Edith swiveled in her seat, dropped the glasses.

“Weather here is going to get rough again tomorrow, M,” Edith said in that hoarse voice. “Weather Canada is calling for ninety centimeters. Maybe more. At the moment, the satellite connection is strong, and we are actively monitoring all scheduled missions.”

“Are any a likely go?”

“Boston is possible.”

“Who’s over-watching?”

A man two stations below Edith raised his hand and turned to look at us. It was Toomey, the janitor from the mounted police force offices in Kimberley and, Bree whispered, the Idaho highway department man who’d taken Bree and Sampson.

“Warren was feeling sick, so I stepped in, M,” Toomey said.

“Explain the mission to them.”

The janitor looked up at us, said, “Irish mob just brought in the largest load of fentanyl in U.S. history. Two DEA agents and Massachusetts state police officers are part of it. Stuff is so lethal two of the mules bringing it died the day before yesterday when they accidentally inhaled the dust off the package.”

Malcomb nodded. “We’re inside the state troopers’ phones. That’s why we need to act quick. Tell them how we’re doing it, Edith.”

Edith put her half glasses back on, said, “We used artificial intelligence based on our own algorithms to sort through possible storage locations for the fentanyl and have narrowed them down to one. Toomey’s team is on scene, waiting for confirmation.”

Bree said, “And then what?”

The janitor said, “The team, dressed in hazmat gear, enters, retrieves the drug, and destroys the bulk of it before it can destroy anyone else.”

Sampson said, “And the bad guys guarding the drugs? The DEA agents? The state cops?”

“They die from their exposure to the drug and are found with enough of it to reveal their entire scheme.”

Malcomb said, “This is how the majority of our missions work. We surgically remove the cancer, but we don’t bury the tumor.”

I said, “Is that what you call the cold-blooded murder of three potential candidates to the U.S. Supreme Court?”

The leader of Maestro’s face didn’t twitch.

I looked over at Katrina White. “Your Swallow made a mistake.”

Malcomb’s eyebrows shot up. “That would be a first.”

“We caught her all three times on home security cameras,” I said. “Never her face—so, well done there—but at every scene, after the kill, she adjusted the left side of her neck, the same move I saw her make in the kitchen a few minutes ago. And in Georgia we were able to amplify her words. She said, ‘Maestro knows what you’ve done. It’s over.’”

Malcomb looked at Katrina. “Did you say that, my dear?”

“I did, M,” she said, shrugging. “I figured they should know why they were dying.”

The vigilante leader removed his glasses, came up with a cloth, and cleaned them.

I said, “Why were they killed? Why not just expose them?”

“And jam up the courts?” Malcomb said. “No. Better to remove them.”

“But why Nathan Carver? What did a law professor do to warrant assassination?”

M appeared irritated at being questioned and he rubbed harder on his glasses.

“What did he do?” I said again.

Malcomb put his glasses back on and peered at me with a grin that struck me as both ironic and cruel.

“Unlike Judge Pak, who had skewed morals and judgment, and Judge Franklin, who arranged for her husband’s plane to crash, it’s not what Nathan Carver did, Dr. Cross,” he said. “It’s what the professor planned to do once he sat on the high bench.”

“And what was that?”

“Overturn American Indian law top to bottom. As a professor and an activist, he has quietly advocated challenging every treaty between every tribe and the U.S. government since the Revolutionary War. The oppressed peoples would then attempt to reclaim their rights and lands, and the country would be consumed in havoc for years. We gathered more than one hundred thousand data points that said that would be his mission if he were named to the court, a total reversal of hundreds of years of precedent.”

I shook my head. “For data points you had her kill him?”

“We eliminated Carver to prevent the chaos he would have caused in the country,” Malcomb said. “All property ownership. All mineral rights and water rights. All oil and gas leases. All of them possibly thrown out if Carver reached the court at such a young age.”

Sampson shook his head. “How can you know how much sway he’d have on the court?”

“If Pak and Franklin joined him, a great deal,” Malcomb shot back.

“And you personally make all these decisions—who lives, who dies. I’m sorry, but who made you God? Other than your brother.”

I could tell the vigilante leader was not used to being challenged, and he struggled not to lose his cool.

“It’s more complicated than that,” Malcomb said. “The algorithms—”

Bree said, “The algorithms? You have machines making these decisions?”

Malcomb blinked and rubbed at his temples. “Edith? Explain.”

Edith said firmly, “There are rules, and we collectively make the decisions based on the data and the hard evidence.”

Bean said, “There is a vote on every target.”

The janitor said, “And no one takes their votes lightly.”

“No one,” Katrina White said.

Malcomb lifted his head and looked at us in a way that made me wonder if he was feeling ill rather than irritated by our challenges. “As Edith indicated, there are rules in Maestro. Strict ones. And we hold our operatives to the highest standards, which is why we brought you here instead of killing you.”

Bree beat me to it.

“What are you saying?” she demanded.

“That we believe that while you are misguided, you are uncorrupted, and because of that we want the three of you to join us. Join Maestro and help us restore order.”