Puppet Master Read online

  “I’m in the hospital with Johnny Givens,” he told her, his voice a notch too high. “I’m waiting—I don’t know what they’re doing. He was hit by a car.”

  “Oh, God,” said Joyce. “Are you all right?”

  “I wasn’t even there. I sent him on an errand, just to fetch someone, and he got—God, I don’t know.”

  “What hospital are you at?”

  “Brigham—no, Boston Med.” Brigham was where his brother had died.

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “No, listen, Joyce, there’s no—”

  Jenkins stopped, realizing she’d already hung up. Folding his arms but still holding his phone in his hand, he walked outside the hospital, circling around in the area where the ambulances waited. It was moments like this, thankfully few and far between, that he wished he smoked; it would have given him an excuse to be here, where he was so obviously out of place.

  He thought of calling Joyce back and telling her not to come, claiming that he was on his way home. That would have been a very obvious lie, however, and he decided not to bother.

  He wanted her here, in fact. He glanced at his cell phone, mentally calculating how long it would actually take her—twenty minutes, at least—then started patrolling up and down the sidewalk, trying to avoid the temptation of talking to himself. When he calculated fifteen minutes had passed since Joyce hung up, he moved closer to the door, positioning himself so he could see her as she came up the driveway.

  Even though he was primed, it was Joyce who spotted him first, approaching from the other side of the street. He saw her as he turned back, just in time to open his arms to meet her hug.

  It lasted long enough that it would have embarrassed him under other circumstances.

  “Any word?” she asked when finally he eased her back.

  “No.”

  “It reminds you of James, right?”

  “Not really.”

  The fleeting look of disappointment in her grimace told him Joyce hadn’t been fooled, but she said nothing. His brother’s death was still a difficult subject, even between them.

  “There was a girl with him,” said Jenkins, eager to change the subject.

  “Girlfriend?”

  “No, she—she’s helping us with the job. She works for Smart Metal, Mr. Massina’s company. There was a problem with the computer. She’s a techie, and I asked him to get her.”

  “So it was a car accident?”

  Jenkins sighed, then explained the circumstances as he knew them.

  “It’s not your fault,” said Joyce. “I hope you’re not blaming yourself. But I know you are.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Where’s this young woman? Maybe she needs something.”

  Chelsea was in the same chair where he’d left her; she seemed not to have breathed, let alone moved, in the time since Jenkins had left her. When Jenkins introduced his wife, Chelsea stared at him blankly.

  “They said you could go home,” Jenkins told her. “Should we call someone?”

  Chelsea didn’t answer.

  “Is your car at your office?” he asked.

  “My house is a few blocks away. I don’t have a car.”

  “You want me to drive you?” Jenkins volunteered.

  Chelsea rose without speaking.

  “I’ll take her,” said Joyce. “You stay here with Johnny.”

  “OK—all right with you, Chelsea?”

  “I can get Uber.”

  “It’ll be easier and quicker if I drive,” said Joyce.

  Jenkins went back to his pacing, adding a loop inside near the nurse’s station. The first few times, he stopped and asked whoever was there how Johnny was doing; after that he simply nodded and gave the best smile he could manage.

  He was just going out the door when his supervisor strode up. Jenkins was shocked; Perse Lambdin was a tall black man who always dressed impeccably, often in a throwback three-piece suit. Tonight he had on a gray sweatshirt and faded, sagging jeans.

  His manner, though, was as imperious as ever.

  “What’s going on?” Lambdin asked.

  “Touch and go,” said Jenkins. “I was just coming out for air.”

  Inside, Lambdin demanded to see the doctor in charge, even after the nursing supervisor explained that he was busy trying to save Givens’s life. When it finally became clear to the nurse that Lambdin wasn’t budging, she called a resident to talk to him. Jenkins knew that the doctor wasn’t directly involved in the case, and he guessed that Lambdin probably knew, too, but the resident was the perfect audience, looking thoughtful and worried and respectful all at the same time. He assured both men that everything was being done for their agent; the head of surgery herself had been called in, and the trauma team was one of the best in the nation.

  “Don’t bullshit me,” said Lambdin. “Just get the job done.”

  “That’s what we’re trying to do.”

  “Good. Good.”

  The resident clamped his lips together and nodded his head before retreating.

  “Now how the hell did this happen?” Lambdin asked Jenkins.

  “Wrong place, wrong time,” said Jenkins. He repeated what he knew about the incident. They thought the driver of the truck was the ATM thief or an accomplice, but he was still at large.

  If the police car hadn’t sped down the block . . .

  “I want the bastard who hit him caught,” said Lambdin.

  “The cop car hit him and did most of the damage.”

  “The other one—the truck,” said Lambdin. “I want that bastard hung.”

  Chelsea pushed her head back against the headrest of Joyce Jenkins’s car. No matter how tight she cinched the seat belt, it still felt loose.

  “Turn right on Beacon Street?” Joyce asked.

  “Yes.” Chelsea couldn’t remember telling her where she lived, but the GPS was open, moving an arrow along the map.

  “Are you from Boston?” Joyce asked.

  “San Diego. I came out for school. MIT and then I stayed.”

  “You’re a computer scientist? There aren’t too many women in that field.”

  “No.”

  “It’s kind of funny to hear Trevor talk about computers,” said Joyce. “He can barely get his phone to work. And forget about programming the TV.”

  Chelsea didn’t answer.

  “I imagine it must be hard for you to deal with all the men in your field,” added Joyce after a few moments of silence. “Are there other women where you work?”

  “A few.”

  Actually, just two dozen, including Massina’s personal assistant. The male-to-female ratio in the technical fields was generally abysmal.

  “I work in an elementary school,” said Joyce. “The girls seem more excited about math than the boys at that age. But they peter out.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Hormones.”

  “Huh?”

  “I think hormones mess a lot of us up. By the time we recover, we’ve missed our chance. Girls need encouragement. When they show aptitude. Was there a key? To get you interested?”

  “I just was. In math. And stuff.”

  “Only child?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I just did.” Joyce smiled at her.

  “I wish I had stopped him,” Chelsea blurted.

  “It wasn’t your fault, hon.”

  “I know, but I wish . . .”

  Jenkins and his boss were joined by a “comfort team,” specialists who worked with the family when an agent went down. Jenkins didn’t know them, but he knew their work—a similar team had met him when his brother was shot.

  The night passed slowly, like a crippled man crawling up a long staircase. Finally the surgeon he had met hours earlier came out.

  Jenkins sprang to his feet and began walking toward him. His heart began pounding in his chest; he could feel his pulse in his neck, a hard roll on a snare drum.

  “He’s still critical,” said
the doctor, nodding his head. “We had to take both legs. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial. There’s internal bleeding. Did you know that he had a heart defect?”

  “No,” said Jenkins.

  “It’s been stressed. There’s a hole—I’m very sorry. He needs a transplant, and I don’t know.”

  “Of his legs?”

  “No, the heart. Without it, and soon, very soon, he’s gone.”

  12

  Boston—early the next morning

  Chelsea didn’t sleep. She tried, stripping off her pants and curling beneath the blanket, but the accident kept playing in her head. She kept seeing Johnny Givens’s face in that last moment when the car hit.

  As she thought about it now, logically, carefully, she didn’t think that she had seen his face. She’d been too far away, hadn’t she? And in the car, and there hadn’t been much light.

  And yet she saw it in her mind, clearly.

  She’d done nothing to stop it.

  After a while she gave up even pretending that she could sleep. She was sorry that she had left the hospital. How was he?

  Maybe dead by now.

  She opened her cell phone’s list of calls and found the number for the FBI agent, Jenkins.

  “How is he?” she asked when he answered.

  “Chelsea?”

  “Is he out of surgery?”

  “You mean Johnny?”

  “Who else would I be talking about?” she demanded. “Damn—is he . . . all right?”

  Jenkins’s pause told her more than she wanted to know.

  “He’s alive. Barely.” The FBI agent ran down a list of injuries that sounded like the index to a medical encyclopedia. Johnny Givens had already lost two legs; he needed a liver and a new heart—those were the highlights.

  “You need to get him to a better hospital,” blurted Chelsea.

  “Better care?”

  “We have . . . Lou has connections. He can help.”

  “Mr. Massina has already done a lot for us and—”

  “I’ll call you back,” she told him quickly. “I’ll call you back.”

  Watched & Unwatched

  Flash forward

  Massina stared at the FBI agent for a good sixty seconds, not believing at all what he had just been told.

  “Mr. Jenkins,” he said finally. “You’re telling me, in so many words, that after all this work, you’re not going to prosecute these bastards?”

  The word bastards stuck in his mouth; it was very unlike Louis Massina to curse, even mildly, even in private. But there was no other word to describe them.

  “These men are responsible for crippling your agent, your friend,” added Massina when Jenkins didn’t answer. “You’re going to let them go.”

  “It wasn’t actually them, as far as we know. The thieves—it’s different people, we think.”

  “You’re still letting these people go.”

  “That’s not—that’s not exactly what’s happening here,” said Jenkins. He had the face of a man who’d been punched in the stomach without warning and for no good reason. And yet Massina felt sure he must have expected some reaction from Massina along these lines. How could he not?

  “Maybe you should explain what is happening, then,” said Massina. He rose from his desk chair, needing to exercise the adrenaline that was suddenly surging through his body.

  “I’m afraid I can’t go into the details,” said Jenkins. His voice was shaking. “I—there is another agency involved and, it’s—I know it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well, make it make sense then. You want them to go without any justice?”

  “No,” said Jenkins quickly. “No—I have to go. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”

  13

  Real time

  Boston—Tuesday morning

  Convinced by Chelsea to help save the FBI agent’s life, Louis Massina approached the problem the way he approached any problem: all-out. All of his resources were devoted to the young man. Not only did that mean all of Smart Metal’s technical expertise and devices; it also meant all of Massina’s considerable contacts. Grace Sisters’ Hospital and its experimental operating suite were put at Johnny Givens’s disposal, as were its doctors. Drugs that would speed his recovery as well as sustain him through the heart operations—drugs that couldn’t be bought at any price—were rushed to the hospital, with the FDA’s blessing. Sister Rose Marie saw personally to the young man’s care, and even Father O’Gorman, one of the hospital’s crusty chaplains, took an interest in the case.

  The latter was doubly unusual, in that Johnny Givens was a confirmed Baptist.

  It was O’Gorman whom Chelsea met outside the ICU when she came to check on the man she’d helped so much to save. O’Gorman sighed and shook his head when he saw her. Chelsea was Catholic, but to O’Gorman she represented the grievous future versus the blessed past. For despite working in one of the world’s most advanced medical centers, O’Gorman regarded technology as something close to the Devil’s plaything.

  If not worse.

  “Hello, Father,” said Chelsea.

  O’Gorman shook his head and pointed at Chelsea’s iPhone, which she was just turning off.

  “I hope you’re not thinking of taking a selfie,” grumbled the priest.

  “I’m just turning the ringer off.” Chelsea slipped the phone into her pocket. “I’m surprised, Father.”

  “What?”

  “That you actually know what a selfie is.”

  “Vanity, young lady, is one of the seven deadly sins. That I know. Book of Proverbs 6:16–19. King Solomon. The phrase is a ‘proud look.’ And as—”

  “How is that vanity?” interrupted Chelsea.

  “Just when I thought there was hope,” grumbled the priest, stalking away.

  “It’s vanity because it means to be too proud, which is when God trips us up,” said Sister Rose, turning the corner. “But I don’t think it’s a sin you have to worry about, dear,” she added kindly. “It’s not wrong to be aware of the gifts God has bestowed on us. As long as we put them to their best use.”

  “I try.”

  “You’re here for our patient.” The nun was practically the only adult Chelsea knew in Boston whom she could regard eye to eye without raising her head. “Come.”

  Chelsea followed her down the hall to an intensive-care room. Johnny lay sandwiched in the high-tech bed, only his arms visible on the side. His body floated on a mattress of air currents, which bathed him top and bottom with medicated vapor designed to quickly heal his burned skin as well as lessen the pain. Tubes and wires ran from the top of this metal sandwich to an array of machines on both sides of the room.

  “We’ll have him up by the end of the week,” said Sister Rose.

  “That soon?”

  “He’s responded well to the new heart. And we’re using an experimental therapy—it is very promising, though it does rely on some nanocompounds. If he hadn’t been close to death . . .”

  Chelsea did not work on the medical side of the company, and she knew very little about its prosthetics, let alone the more exotic and experimental devices like the artificial heart. But she was well aware of how important those devices were, as well as the huge advances they represented. The heart machine was a perfect example. Made of a proprietary carbon-strand-fiber and microlattice nickel phosphorus, it weighed just under a pound. That was still a little heavier than Johnny’s actual heart had weighed, but it was less than half what the leading fully artificial heart weighed.

  His new heart was only the headline. Some of his nerve damage had already been repaired by grafts that used a synthetic growth system—the doctor who had pioneered it described it as something like a cancer bath, a miniature tube inside which actual nerve cells were propagated to replace the damaged ones. And Johnny had already been measured for two artificial legs, which were being fashioned to his exact specifications.

  Sister Rose stopped Chelsea as she stepped closer to the bed.


  “This is as close as we should get,” said the Sister. Despite her diminutive size, her grip on Chelsea’s arm was remarkably tight. A doctor had warned Chelsea never to arm-wrestle the nun. “You never know what germs we carry.”

  Chelsea glanced to the floor. Their toes were edging a red line.

  “I’m sorry, Sister. I just wanted to see his face.”

  “Still intact,” said Sister Rose. “Barely a blemish. Tell me—is this interest more than professional?”

  “No, professional only.”

  “A white lie is still a lie,” said the Sister tartly. “Especially if you tell it to a nun.”

  Two hours later, Chelsea stood in front of a large glass screen in Smart Metal’s Number 3 conference room, summarizing the situation for the group Massina had put together to help the FBI on the bank card fraud case. Jenkins, the FBI agent, sat at the far end of the table. Massina was next to him.

  “It wasn’t a software problem at all that caused the computer in the FBI surveillance van to freeze,” she told them. “The operator hit a succession of keys as he tried to clean up the coffee he’d spilled. Two of the keys were shorted, and to the program, this looked like a series of command inputs that overflowed the error buffer. In layman’s terms,” she added, noticing the perplexed look on Jenkins’s face, “the coffee fried the keyboard, so the computer hung. The program did not trap for that kind of error.”

  “No spilled coffee algorithm?” asked Terrence Sharpe.

  Sharpe was the head of the company’s programming unit. He was trying to make a joke. As usual, his timing and tact were out of whack.

  “I feel terrible about it,” said Chelsea.