Binary - Michael Crichton [43]
Graves stared at him and walked away.
HOUR 1
SAN DIEGO
4 PM PDT
His sense of shock was profound. Of all the alternatives, of all the possibilities and options, he had never expected this. He had never expected Wright to die.
Graves walked back up the street slowly, trying to gather his thoughts. What did he do next? Nordmann came up to him. 'That's a damned shame,' he said.
'You bet it is,' Graves said.
Nordmann looked at the crowd clustered around the wrecked car. 'One thing, though,' he said.
'What's that?'
'It proves he could make a mistake.'
'It was a big one,' Graves said.
'Yes,' Nordmann said, in a calm, logical voice. 'But it was a mistake.'
Graves nodded and walked back towards the surveillance building. He thought about what Nordmann had said. The more he thought about it, the more encouraged he was. Because Nordmann was right.
Wright had erred. And that was encouraging.
One of the aides came running out of the building, waving Wright's ticket. 'Mr Graves,' he said. 'There's something very strange going on. We just checked this ticket. He cancelled that reservation yesterday.'
Protect me from fools, Graves thought. 'Of course he did.'
'Of course?'
'Look,' Graves said. 'He planned to let us catch him, and he planned his escape. But he couldn't get far if we knew his real aeroplane reservation, could he?'
'Well, I guess not. . .'
'Keep checking the airlines. Check Los Angeles, too. You'll find he had a reservation somewhere.'
Phelps came over. 'The sniffer's arrived.'
'Has it? Good.' Graves walked across the street to Wright's apartment building. Phelps trailed behind him in silence.
Finally Phelps said, 'I hope you know what you're doing.'
Graves didn't answer. Because the fact was that he didn't know what he was doing. He knew only in a general way what Wright intended. Wright had made Graves a part of the total mechanism, and therefore Graves would have to cancel himself out - inactivate himself - by not doing what was expected of him.
In order to do that, he had to decipher as many elements of the total staging mechanism as possible. Only then could he determine how he was intended to participate in the staging sequence that controlled the final release of the gas.
The sniffer was the first step in deciphering the sequence.
Graves stood outside the door to Wright's apartment. Next to him Lewis held a gunlike instrument in his hand. The gun was attached to a shoulder pack with a dial. Lewis pointed the instrument at the door and ran it along the cracks and seams.
Behind them at the far end of the hallway, six people, including Phelps, stood and watched. Graves wanted everyone away from the door so that they wouldn't accidentally trip the vibration sensors. He didn't know how sensitively they were tuned, but he wasn't taking any chances.
After a moment Lewis turned away with the instrument. 'Wow,' he said.
'You get a reading?'
'Yeah,' he said. 'High nitrogen and oxygen content, trace phosphorus.'
'Meaning?'
'Plastic explosive, very near.'
'Near the door?'
'Probably just on the other side,' he said.
Graves said, 'Is there any chance you're wrong?'
'The sniffer is never wrong,' he said. 'You've got oxide of nitrogen fumes, and that's explosives. You can count on it.'
'All right,' Graves said. He walked away from the door. He had to trust the sniffer. It had been developed for use in Vietnam and had been adapted for customs operations, smuggling, and so on. It was incredibly sensitive and incredibly accurate. If the sniffer said plastic explosive was behind the door, he had to believe it. He walked back to Phelps at the end of the hallway.
'Well?'
'There's explosive on the other side of the door.'
'Nice,' Phelps said. 'What do we do now?'
'Try to get a better look inside the apartment,' Graves said. He glanced at his watch.
'It's four ten,' Phelps said. 'When did your friend say it would go off?'
'Five,' Graves said.
'I hope you know what you're doing,' Phelps said again.
Graves sighed. He wondered if he could ever explain to Phelps that that