“Yes, but I cannot tell you. You see why. Still playing against the tiny chance that somehow you’ll end up in deep conversation with the FBI. They’ll have the rubber hose, and you’ll want to cooperate.”

“I would die first.”

“Everybody says that. But the hose always wins. The only issue is, how quickly.”

58

Cyber Division, Zombieland

The Theater of Insane Security continued into a second act. Mr. Gold remained in the lounge below Cyber Division, talking by phone with Memphis, while Swagger and Neill were nine feet away through the floor. It was feared by someone important with not enough to do that Mr. Gold would identify the brand of computers the FBI used and share it with Mossad. It never occurred to anybody that Mossad already had its own computers and wasn’t looking for new ones.

“Okay,” said Neill, “this is what I’ve got.” He ran through the attributes listed by Swagger. “Everybody’s in accordance? That’s it, from 1,847.5 yards at a westward trajectory, in a south wind of four to six miles per hour, with sixty-five percent humidity, over a significant body of water . . .” And on and on, through all iterations of the attributes Swagger had determined were in play with Juba’s upcoming shot.

“Can you think of another one, Mr. Gold? Any breakthroughs?”

“Not a thing,” said Gold, from nine feet straight down.

“Anyone else? Chandler, you have anything?”

“I think we’ve got it covered,” she said.

“Okay,” said Nick. “So now we are going to run these attributes against the locations of appearances of high-level officials over the next three weeks, as recorded on the highly classified Secret Service master schedule. We begin with the Cabinet and the Executive. We assume any Cabinet or Executive officer to be the high-value target that would incite a plot. But we will move on to talk-show hosts, movie directors, star athletes, best-selling authors—whatever—anyone whose prominence might incite elimination with grievous consequences, not merely to morale but, really, to everything. We’ll come up with—”

“It occurs to me,” said Mr. Gold suddenly, “shouldn’t time be a consideration?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we first became aware of this possibility upon acquisition of Juba’s south Syrian location, courtesy of Mrs. McDowell, where, after our raid, the intelligence indicated he was preparing a shot in America with an ultra-long-range rifle. That was fifty-four days ago. Since he was in preparation for the shot for some time before then, it means that their plans were suppositioned on something that had to be on the schedule and immovable for at least fifty-four days, and almost certainly longer. So does it not make sense to limit the inquiries by focusing on those few dates that were in place early enough for them to be planned against?”

“Excellent,” said Nick.