Dantes' Inferno (25 page)

“I need
coffee
, very strong coffee.” She grabbed a peach and bit in. “Where the hell am I?”

“Died and gone to heaven, Dr. Strange,” Luke said. “MOSAIK—Multiplex prOfiles Systems AnalysIs Kit—is
multitiered and agent based. The profiling program is geared for terrorist analysis, and she digests all data typology: linguistic, forensic, geographic. She works from the bottom up. We begin with scaled-down basics, avoiding pitfalls of the top-down model, which failed to take every variable into consideration.”

Excitement lit up his pretty face. “MOSAIK
links
so we can search historical
and
predictive data, mapping patterns, all depending on the level or tier you're after. At the moment, we're tracking a dozen terrorists around the globe—linking crimes, methodology, and suspects.”

Sylvia's eyebrows arched. “Is that how you tracked Ben Black?”

“MOSAIK was the key to the Black–Abu Mohammed investigation,” Luke said, nodding.

Gretchen ran her fingers over a keyboard. “MOSAIK's sortable by linguistic venue: verbal, written—extortion, threat, confession, suicide. The program matches syntactic similarities, speech patterns, grammatical errors—for example, who is Shakespeare?”

“And mapping shows us geographic patterns,” Luke interjected, “as the perpetrator expands his home range, his sources, enhances his signatures—even seasonal or temporal data.”

“Well, shit,” was all she could think of to say.

At which point she heard that distinctive voice: “Didn't I tell you the doctor has a way with words?” A thick, carved door swung wide, and Sweetheart stepped into the room. This morning he was wearing a charcoal-toned linen suit over a pale yellow shirt. Seen in the shadows, his expression was pensive, almost brooding, but he smiled at Sylvia. She was struck again by the handsome planes of his face, the almond eyes, the rich gleam of his skin, the power of his massive body. He looked good in his home.

He said, “MOSAIK . . . think of it as the gestalt of computer-based profiling. I know it's a bit overwhelming.”

“Gestalt.” Sylvia tested the psych term in a computer context. “So spatial, forensic, psycholinguistic information is combined—”

“In an effort to glean the larger pattern or patterns.” He offered his hand, maintaining contact well beyond the brief seconds allowed for social convention; it was one of those moments when a connection is made, no telling, no use analyzing, whether the live current is chemistry or alchemy.

He said, “The program was developed by Nightsky in Santa Fe—your home town. Nightsky was started by members of the Santa Fe Institute. The company specializes in data-mining, or ‘info-harvesting.' We're linked to Quantico. Gretchen is our linguistics expert; she's handling M's extortion communications. Luke is our geographic-spatial man; he's working on the crude map we pulled from Dantes.”

“So it really is a map?” Sylvia asked.

“I'm still trying to extract coordinates.” Luke offered a rueful smile as he gathered discs and walked away from his desk. “Ask me again in an hour,” he said over his shoulder, disappearing through the carved door; Gretchen followed.

Sylvia found herself alone with the professor.

“What did Dantes have to say for himself?” Sweetheart asked abruptly.

“You tell me.”

Sweetheart didn't evade her question. “It's true we monitored the live feed.” He watched her with interest, as if she were some unknown substance smeared on a slide. “But I'm asking for your analysis.”

Sylvia kept her voice carefully neutral: “How do you feel about conversion disorder?”

“Bullshit diagnosis.” He caught his lips between very white teeth. “Psychology is already a soft science—please
don't turn it into cotton candy. Dantes is playing crazy. He likes games. Don't believe me, just look at his infernal boxes.”

“I thought you'd say that.”

“Don't tell me you actually buy his hysterical symptoms? He's a good actor—he's doing Anna O.”

“All right, so it's the wrong century for hysteria,” Sylvia said, shrugging. Josef Breuer, Sigmund Freud's mentor, had made a splash in the 1880s with an unusual case: Anna O. exhibited dramatic but fleeting hysterical symptoms. “But Breuer's hypnosis worked.”

“His talking cure?” Sweetheart snorted.

“The symptoms abated.”

“Then they got worse,” Sweetheart said, with an impatient wave. “Phantom pregnancy, hysterical childbirth—which probably wouldn't be an issue with John Dantes. Forget hypnosis, catharsis—we could try voodoo.”

“You think this is funny?”

“No.” Sweetheart's gaze was direct. “I think too many people have died because of this man.”

His straight, dark brows accented piercing eyes. “I prefer hard, clean, clinical data to your moth-eaten Freudian repression. Give me an MRI, even a PET scan; give me Planck's neuron transistors, and the latest superresolution scans of interneuronal connections, synapses, neurotransmitter concentrations—show me where these repressed emotions light up the brain, give me fingerprints on the cortex, and then maybe I'll begin to listen to your theories.”

“That's your bailiwick,” Sylvia said, gesturing toward humming computers and scanners.

“Agent-based data-mining is the foundation of my specific profiling analysis,
yes
.” Sweetheart's eyelids creased at the outer corners. “We've developed MOSAIK, building
on what the Feds accomplished, capable of comparing collateral data, behavioral scripts—”

“Whoa.” Sylvia held up both palms, planting her feet. “You're losing me.”

“Simply put, MOSAIK makes it possible to sort through gigabytes without losing data through the cracks—the problem with Unabom. We've taken the crucial step in data-based profiling.”

Sylvia selected a strand of grapes from the table; she pulled the fruits off, one by one, adding punctuation to her words. “You can play with the FBI, CRI, Holmes, and Catchem databases until the cows come home; you can search for linking information; map, chart, and play with patterns; your analysis is based on national data sets to ensure statistical validity; you can infer, enhance, hell, you can even intuit . . . but
only
if the offender makes you a
gift
of his signature.”

“M exists, he
lives
, in our data—I guarantee it. We
will
extract him—and more important, we will link him to John Dantes.”

“Great. If you're so perfect, why am I here?”

He eyed her quizzically for a moment; long enough to make her uncomfortable. Then he offered a half smile. “You're my wild card, Dr. Strange.” His brows rose, lending him a rueful air. “Cognitively, you leap crevasses.” He shrugged. “Although I have great faith in MOSAIK, that's still a very human trait.”

“It really puzzles you, doesn't it? The idea that the human mind is capable of something the computer can't achieve?”

“AI will catch up tomorrow—the day after tomorrow, humans will be left in the dust.” He smiled. “But for the moment, you have a knack for creative links; it was evident in your recent paper on psychopathy, child abuse, and
object-relations theory. I may disagree with your means and methods—but I'm intrigued by your end results.” He moved toward the door. “Shall we?”

Following him into the inner sanctum, Sylvia felt like a child in a fun-house maze, traveling deeper, each threshold adding another layer of complexity to the issue of escape.

She found herself inside a large office crammed with books, files, and two additional computers. Sweetheart closed the door, shutting out the noise from other rooms. The lighting was dim, the space close, and the computers glowed amber like cybercoals.

“Take another look at the data we've extracted from M's written communications. Gretchen's been playing for the past twenty-four hours.” Sweetheart's fingers skimmed over the keyboard. “Our first step is to analyze each communication, extracting salient details; second step, search for similarities, mirrors, and matches in the existing database; third step, develop our profile.” He scowled. “Something beyond the obvious—white male, loner, antisocial, paranoid ideation.”

Sylvia moved to Sweetheart's side, noticing the rather delicate shape of his hands as she gazed down at the messages displayed, enlarged—and variously highlighted—on screen.

dear feds

babbel, babbel, babbel

no more Limbo

2nd circle soon complete

release yr prisoner DaNTes, prophet apocryphal

or hungry for next

Vvv

M—

dear john, prodigal son . . .

message received

will follow orders to the letter

on our journey to 4th circle

they shall be punishd for sins of other

sacred city seen sacifice

remember our relentless thoughts bk 9, M

The professor clicked a key and flipped screens. He said, “Sort, associations, three-level,” and a series of word associations began to race across the monitor face in endless loops like cyberized tickertape.

babbel = [error, grammatical] = ?words = gibberish = ?Dantes' Inferno

babbel = babble = babel = Babylon = tower = tower built to heaven

Dantes = prophet apocryphal = false prophet = fallen angel = apocalypse = ancient seer

yr = ?your [repetitive error] = you are = you're = lexicon = query

yr = you are = form of address = Dantes addressee = relationship = query

yr = ?year abbreviation = error punctuation = lexical error = data search in

yr = yur = ?Ur = city of Sumer, ancient Mesopotamia = trading city = height of

yr = Ur = city fell to Babylon = city under rule of Nebuchadnezzar = query

yr = Ur = code of Ur-Nammu, world's oldest code of law = older than Hammura

Vvv = [numerical] = Roman = 15/5 = ?cuneiform = ?four = ?4 = [alphabetical]

prodigal = wasteful = lavish = spendthrift = prodigy = child marvel = monster

punishd = [error, grammatical] = ?punished = punitive = vengeful = revenge

Limbo = outside gates of hell = Divine Comedy = Dante, Alighieri = Inferno

sacifice = [error, grammatical] = ?sacrifice = sacred = sacrilegious

sacred city = holy city = angels = Los Angeles = scared city = cite = Ur = Babylon

seen = experienced = map = known = map = revealed = scene

M = maker = maestro = master = god = ?God = ?initial, surname = query

relentless thoughts = anger = unbearable = unmerciful = obsessive

As Sweetheart bit into an apple, the fruit's sharp scent was released into the air. Between bites, he asked, “Care to leap?”

“My mother told me to look first,” Sylvia answered. “Babel, as in tower, as in the hubris of humankind to believe they could reach heaven. God's punishment in the form of language reduced to
babble
, or gibberish, which isn't that far removed from schizophrenic word salad.”

“Not to mention the myth of the Tower of Babel,” Sweetheart interjected.

“The skewing of language as punishment.” Sylvia was enjoying the riff. “For that matter, M definitely babbles.”

The professor examined the now exposed apple core in his palm. “Ur . . . if it
is
Ur . . . fallen cities.”

“Babylon—fallen civilizations. Los Angeles—fallen city.”

“I've given some thought to M's Polaroid of the bomb—the timing device, the setting on the clock face,” Sweetheart said. “Eighteen minutes, thirty seconds past one.”

“There was no explosion at one eighteen.”

“I believe the numbers pertain to
where
, not
when
. One eighteen point thirty is the latitude of Los Angeles. M's got big plans for the City of Angels.”

“Isn't that obvious?”

Ignoring her testy reply, Sweetheart said, “The triangles embossed on the threat note . . . they're sexagesimal symbols, the oldest example of place value numeration, predating the Sumerian-Akkadian system—”

“Sumerian as in Mesopotamia?”

“As in Babylon, the ruin, nothing but sand, rock, wind. I've
been
there.”

“So you're saying our guy wants to facilitate the fall of
New
Babylon, bring it to rubble.”

“It's a thought—which begs another question.” Sweetheart watched her closely. “Suicidal ideation?”

Sylvia frowned; her delivery was suddenly hesitant. “Dantes equals false prophet and his work equals gibberish.” She kneaded the muscles in her neck. “If
God
equals M, and
fallen angel
equals Dantes, then this story is about envy and narcissistic rage.”

“Narcissistic rage?”

“As in, rip their balls off.” She shrugged. “As in projection defense.”

“Rage,” Sweetheart confirmed. “Aggression turned
outward
.”

“But that doesn't eliminate the possibility of suicide-slash-homicide.” Sylvia's mouth formed a tight line, and she picked up a pen and twiddled it between thumb and forefinger. She was silent for more than a minute. Sweetheart just waited.

Finally, she said, “I'll give you a leap—hell, I'll leap the Grand Canyon.”

She squeezed her eyelids shut; excitement fired her up. “The second message begins with an implication,” she said, catching her lip between her teeth. “‘Dear John,
I
will follow
your
orders to the letter.'”

She gripped the pen tightly, oblivious to the ink staining her fingers. “Or . . . ‘John will follow
my
orders to the letter.'” She stared up at Sweetheart. “And . . . ‘they shall be punished for sins of
other
.'” She dropped the pen on the table. “What if John Dantes equals M's
other?
”