The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [51]
Bobby caught his partner’s eye with a skeptical glare. Traden suppressed a laugh.
Cepeda apparently found what he was looking for and turned to face them. “When those planes crashed last month and the authorities were unable to find a direct cause right away, I started thinking about the coincidence of it. Coincidence can be explained by math, of course. The person who reads the Lotto numbers knows somebody’s gonna win, but the person who wins always thinks, Christ, what are the odds? When you hit a golf ball onto a fairway, there’s a 100 percent chance that the ball will land on a blade of grass, but that particular blade of grass must think it’s been chosen by divine intervention. Still, this time I thought there might be another explanation.
“The weekend before the crashes, there had been a conference on private-wealth management at an extremely exclusive hotel called the Boca Raton Resort and Spa. The invitees included wealthy families and powerful individuals from all over the world.” He pulled a folder from a shelf and handed Kloska a sheet of paper with a list of names; a couple dozen of them were highlighted.
“These don’t register much with me.” He handed it to Traden for a look.
Cepeda said, “Many of them are CEOs in high-tech industries and aerospace, or banking and Wall Street.”
“I’ve heard of this guy,” Traden said, stabbing the paper. “He owns casinos.”
Kloska asked, “So what?”
“Have you ever been to Boca Raton, detectives?”
They shook their heads.
“Do you know what airport you fly out of when you’re leaving Boca?”
Traden guessed: “Miami.”
“That’s one option. Do you know the other?”
The answer came to Kloska quickly. Fort Lauderdale. It took Bobby a moment to believe Cepeda was really making the accusation. “You think that conference was really a meeting of the Thousand and you think they crashed those planes.”
“It crossed my mind.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Acusmatici and mathematici consider themselves Pythagorean brothers, but they are still opposed on many issues. Think of them like Democrats and Republicans. They share a common interest in preserving the secret knowledge of Pythagoras, but they disagree vehemently over what should be done with it. I think it’s possible that one or two people on those planes were being targeted by the mathematici. Let’s say the intended victims were acusmatici attending the conference along with everyone else. Maybe something happened at that meeting and the mathematici wanted them dead.”
“Why crash planes?”
“Legend has it that the mathematici like to use big disasters to disguise small crimes. Do an Internet search for the Thousand and 9/11. Or the Thousand and Katrina. You don’t leave any evidence. You don’t create any suspicion. You kill innocent people as well, so it’s not even clear who the intended victims were, or even that there were intended victims at all. And by making the wildly improbable occur—causing two planes from the same airport to crash within minutes of each other—you send a message to your adversaries. It’s a demonstration of your power and a devastating calling card that only other members of the Thousand would recognize.”
“They didn’t find any bombs in the wreckage. Black boxes turned up nothing.”
“Do you know how many computers are on board an airplane? In the cockpit. In the main cabin. In passenger luggage. In electric shavers. In pants pockets. On wrists. If you have the power to manipulate numbers, you can make anything happen.”
“Did you tell anyone about this theory? The police? The FBI?”
“Of course not.”
“Why not? If true, this would be critical information.” Kloska tried to say it with a skeptical lilt, mocking the professor