Target: Alex Cross (Alex Cross #26) - James Patterson Page 0,89

that?”

I got up, opened the door a crack, and saw Rawlins standing there.

“Keith, I’m in the middle of—”

“Take a break,” he said. “Your trap? It caught a bug, maybe two.”

CHAPTER

87

WHEN I LOOKED up from the screens and data the FBI consultant had been showing me, it was 5:21 a.m. on Sunday, February 7, two days after President Hobbs and the others were assassinated.

“Do that second sweep we talked about, and I’ll be right back,” I said, and I ran to the booth outside the interrogation room where Kasimov was still talking with Mahoney.

I knocked sharply, stuck my head in. “Madam Deputy Director, I need to show you something ASAP.”

Carstensen looked annoyed at having to leave the Russian, who was explaining how he’d paid Lawlor for his services, but she came out into the hall.

“What is it?”

“Probably better to let Rawlins explain,” I said. “Mahoney needs to see this too. Kasimov can wait a few minutes.”

Rawlins soon had the three of us looking over his shoulders at the trio of screens before him.

“The algorithm’s function was Dr. Cross’s idea,” the FBI consultant said. “He asked me to write it to sift through NSA-gathered data limited to international phone calls and international data transmissions cross-referenced with proximity to eight specific locations and times.”

He typed on his keyboard. The screen changed to a satellite image of the lower forty-eight states. Seven digital pins glowed on the map.

Rawlins zoomed in on each, and I identified them.

Senator Walker’s murder scene in Georgetown

The murder scene of the assassin Sean Lawlor, a few blocks away

GW University Hospital, where the former Senate president pro tempore had died two mornings ago

The DC arena where the late president and the secretary of defense had been shot

The street where Bree and DC Metro SWAT had engaged in a firefight with West Coast gangbangers

The West Texas ranch where the Speaker and secretary of state were assassinated and, to the north of it, the site of the remote cabin that had been burned down

The motel room that Kristina Varjan had booby-trapped

Lower Manhattan, where the treasury secretary had been shot

“My idea was to look for commonalities in and around these areas,” I said. “Phone numbers used or large data transmissions going to a specific site.”

“And?” Carstensen said.

Rawlins said, “The algorithm found nothing unusual in Texas, around Senator Walker’s home, by the DC arena, near the gangbanger scene, or around GW Hospital. But …”

He typed again, and a new file came up. He tapped on an international phone number: 011-7-812-579-5207.

“This number was called from inside or near Lawlor’s death scene well before discovery of the body. The number was also dialed on Skype from inside the Mandarin Oriental hotel in DC two days before the assassinations, and on a phone in Lower Manhattan shortly after Abbie Bowman was shot.”

“The Mandarin Oriental,” Carstensen said. “Kasimov is lying. He is the mastermind.”

“Or someone else staying at the hotel or working at the hotel was involved,” I said, thinking about Dr. Winters and wanting to go back to ask Kasimov about the makeup and masks the doctor had seen.

“Whose phone number is that?” Mahoney asked.

“Someone in St. Petersburg, Russia,” Rawlins said. “Beyond that, I don’t know yet. If we could get some cooperation from the Russians, it would be a bit easier.”

“Fat chance,” I said. “Did you do that second sweep we talked about?”

“I started it but haven’t taken a look at the results yet.”

The FBI contractor pivoted in his chair and started typing. Carstensen and Mahoney were puzzled.

I said, “I asked him if he could look for that phone number being used in any call coming to or leaving the continental United States in the past ten days.”

“Bam!” Rawlins said. “Look at that!”

The map of the U.S.A. now showed five glowing blue pins. One was in West Texas, not far from the burned-down cabin. Another was close to Varjan’s motel in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The third was near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The fourth was well south of Washington, DC, near I-95 in Ladysmith, Virginia. The fifth pin was not far away from the fourth, near rural Storck, Virginia.

“Can you give us the times with the locations?” Carstensen asked.

Rawlins nodded and gave his computer a command.

The screen blinked and showed dates, times, and whether the connection was incoming or outgoing beside the blue pins.

There was a call from the Russian number to a burn cell in rural West Texas that had occurred late in the afternoon a few days before.

There was a call to the Russian number from near Varjan’s