“Where do you want to touch down?” Andrea heard the man’s voice in her headphones; the chopper noise made it hard to communicate otherwise. “You got several helipads to pick from. House? Office?”
“House,” Andrea said. She was going to confront her cousin face-to-face, and confront him where he lived.
The wash of the helicopter’s downdraft flattened the grass below and puffed at the leafy trees that encircled the landing site. As soon as she felt the bump of the steel skids against the earth, she clambered out of the craft and, as the nameless man flew off, broke into a trot, bounding down a bosky path, treating a stone wall like a vaulting horse, hurtling through a grove of trees, and then racing up to Paul Bancroft’s house. The smell of old wood and old rugs was as she remembered it. The door was open, and she raced up the stairs. A room that was obviously his study was empty. In his bedroom she saw an unmade bed. As if he had turned in for the evening and then been summoned. All she knew was that he wasn’t home.
“Where’s Andrea?” Force returned to Belknap’s voice as he fought to regain his focus.
“I thought you were going to be Andrea. She should be here in a moment. She’s great, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Belknap said. Once more, the room seemed to spin slowly.
“You look kinda pale. Sure you don’t want that Sprite?”
“I’m good.”
Brandon nodded. “That’s what I hear.” He looked down shyly. “They were gonna do bad stuff to Andrea. But one of my guys on the inside figured out where she was. Got her on a copter. She wanted to come here.”
Andrea—safe? Yet could he trust the message or, indeed, the messenger? Apprehension and elation cycled through him.
“You like Bach?” the boy asked.
“I like this,” Belknap said.
“I like a lot of music. But this one always gets me.” The boy turned back to the keyboard, started typing a series of instructions. Belknap could see the boy’s shoulder blades moving against the thin cotton of his shirt. “Chapters twenty-six and twenty-seven of the Book of Matthew.” He touched a button on a remote controller, and the music was muted. The boy recited, “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Belknap gave him an uncertain look.
“Don’t worry, it’s not like I’ve got a messiah complex,” Brandon said. “When Jesus grew up, he learned that his father was God. I learned that my father plays God. There’s a difference, huh?”
“God or the devil. Hard to say.”
“Is it?” Brandon met his gaze. “They say the most diabolical thing the devil ever did was to persuade people that he doesn’t exist,” he said. “If you’re facing off with the devil, you gotta turn that principle upside-down.”
“Persuade people that a fictional creation is real,” Belknap said, clarity starting to arrive. “And those stories—they were just a way to magnify your authority as Genesis, weren’t they?”
“Well, sure. Have you ever played multiuser computer games? You can create an avatar, a fictional alter ego, give him a path through the world. You know something about it now, don’t you? I mean, that was you spoofing Senator K., right? Thought so.”
So Genesis was an electronic legend, nothing more, nothing less. With comprehension came awe. A legend dressed up with stories, rumors, tales that spread over the Internet and then from person to person. “But there was more to it than that, wasn’t there?” Belknap prodded, thinking aloud. “As Genesis, you could transfer money from one account to another. You could hire people who never saw you, could send instructions, monitor, reward. You could do a great deal. But to what end?”
Brandon was quiet for a few moments. “I love my dad. I mean, he’s my dad, right?”
“But he’s not only your dad.”
Branded nodded miserably. “He created something that’s bigger than just him. Something…evil.” He whispered the last word.
“You father believes that the greatest good for the greatest number justifies any act at all,” Belknap said.
“Yes.”
“And what do you believe?”
“That every life is sacred. Not like I’m some pacifist or whatever. It’s one thing to kill in self-defense. But you don’t take lives on spec. You don’t justify murder with a calculator.”
“So you spent months orchestrating events through underlings who had never seen your face, transferring funds, sending orders, monitoring the results—all remotely, digitally, untraceably. All in order to dismantle the Theta Group?”
“A multibillion-dollar operation.”
“Inver Brass squared,” Belknap said. “‘Genesis’ was a name you knew would inspire fear in your old man. And the Kirk Commission was your opportunity. It was going to help you enlist the authority of the United States government to uproot Theta. You’ve been collecting data files on its operations and parceling them out to the Senate investigators.”
“I couldn’t think of any other way,” the boy said. He had, Belknap thought, a curious combination of self-assurance and fragility. “Oh, don’t take this personally, but could you ditch the gun? I have a thing about having those doodads pointed at me. Kooky, huh?”
Belknap had forgotten the gun was in his hand. “Sorry,” he said. “Bad manners.” He set the weapon down on the semicircular table by the door and took a few steps further into the room. “Does your father know how you feel about Theta?”
“He doesn’t like me reading Kant, let alone the Bible. He knows we disagree, but, like, he isn’t moved by arguments. It’s tough to explain. I told you, I love my dad, Mr. Belknap. But…” Brandon faltered.
“You felt you had to stop him.” Belknap’s voice softened. “Nobody else was in a position to. So it’s as if you’ve been playing online chess with your father.”
“It’s not chess when the pawns are human lives.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Thing is, at first, I thought threats would be enough.”
“Threats to expose the Theta Group to the Kirk Commission.”
“Right. But they weren’t. So I started to compile a detailed record—a digital dossier, like—of the group’s operations. It hasn’t been easy. But I’ve completed it. The file exposes every last root and branch.”
“You’ve completed the dossier, you say.”
The boy nodded.
“Meaning that with a few keystrokes and clicks, you can send it to every member of the Kirk Commission. And a thing of darkness will come to light.”
Brandon nodded. “It’s time to do it, isn’t it?”
Genesis: a thirteen-year-old boy. Belknap fought to reel in his mind, to concentrate. “Then Jared Rinehart was working with your father. He never had anything to do with Genesis.”
“Rinehart? Gosh, no. From what I hear, that’s one scary dude. Glad we’ve never crossed paths.”
A voice from the doorway, silky, cold, and commanding. “Until now.”