Chapter LXXII
CHAPTER LXXII
In the laboratory version of the observer effect, studying an electron requires a photonic interaction, one that alters the electron’s path. Similarly, in the social sciences, an awareness of observation may cause the subject to change their behavior, while observer bias can lead those watching to interpret what they see according to their expectations and miss or ignore what does not match those preconceptions.
The federal agents conducting surveillance on Devin Vaughn suspected he might have become aware of them. It was a feeling as much as anything else, though one based on what the more experienced among them saw as identifiable changes in his habits, including leading them on a merry urban dance while they’d attempted to lock on to his latest burner. Vaughn had also ceased communication with Aldo Bern, or at least contact by any traceable means. Vaughn and Bern might well have reverted to old-school methods, which was why additional wiretaps were being sought for landlines in three business establishments frequented by some of Vaughn’s known associates.
Bern’s continued absence was a matter of concern to the agents. Devin Vaughn had been prone to rashness in his youth until Bern took him under his wing. Subsequently, Vaughn and Bern had developed a successful working relationship based on mutual respect and Bern’s near-constant presence at Vaughn’s side. They were two faces of the same coin. Bern was believed by the FBI to have traveled to Tennessee, an undertaking related to the ongoing tensions between Vaughn and Blas Urrea. Now Bern had gone quiet, though not before gifting the FBI a name, Eugene Seeley. Digging had revealed Seeley to be linked to the Nashville Codex Corporation, which, for a company dealing in Bibles and restored religious tracts, had a complicated, even byzantine, financial setup. The FBI was prepared to set aside the NCC for the present, but they’d return to it in their own good time.
A more immediate problem involved the specific application of a general issue in surveillance, namely how beneficial it continued to be after its existence was noted by the subject. If that subject was a criminal or spy, surveillance temporarily removed them from the game, the downside for the observers being that the operation continued to consume valuable resources of time and manpower while potentially leaving the subject’s confederates to go about their business unhindered. In very sophisticated operations, awareness of surveillance could be used to influence a subject, a variation on photonic interaction, so that conscious changes in behavior revealed the existence of patterns by deviation. Eventually, the sensation of being watched, or the fear of it, might even break the subject, leading them to seek an accommodation to bring it to an end.
In the case of Devin Vaughn, no definitive proof existed that he knew he was under the eye of law enforcement, and the threat from Blas Urrea remained real and imminent. It was decided that the surveillance should continue across all platforms, but as a precaution, the two fixed locations were abandoned, and alternatives secured at considerable expense.
WHEN SEELEY AND THE woman arrived in Manassas, the exterior of Vaughn’s home was being monitored by infrared and night vision cameras. The FBI had one electronic ear inside the house—a new recruit to Vaughn’s security detail, careless with his cell phone—aided by horn antennae, which blasted radio beams at the building from outside. The beams were modulated by the minute surface vibrations caused by speech, and the results then amplified and analyzed. So far, all the agents had picked up were discussions of women, pizza, and YouTube videos. Vaughn might have swept the house for devices, but he was still reluctant to say anything aloud that might be used against him in a court of law. Mostly, the FBI was relying on the fact that no living creature of any size could approach or leave the house without being picked up by a camera.
THE AGENTS AT THE eastern fixed-surveillance point—the top floor of a derelict office building, accessible only by a ladder as the stairs had collapsed—were watching two guards patrolling Vaughn’s yard, the thermal imaging revealing them as healthy blurs of red, orange, and yellow. The agents were sipping fortified water and thinking of the overtime when one of the guards slumped against a tree and slid slowly down the trunk.
“Wait,” said the first agent. “Is he—?”
A match flared, followed by the incendiary glow of a cigarette.
“No,” said the second, “he’s taking five.”
“If Vaughn catches him, he’ll take five in the ass.”
They returned to drinking their water and ranking the worst college football teams, which was easy until you got beyond Hawaii and UMass, maybe Colorado. It passed the time.
LA SE?ORA MOVED THROUGH Devin Vaughn’s house. Her feet were bare and made no sound as she climbed the stairs. The child, sensing her proximity, called out, but la Senora ignored her for the present.
Seeley had tried reasoning with la Senora as they sat parked near the property. The child was the priority, he reminded her. Vaughn could be left until later. Seeley even offered to kill Vaughn for her before couriering his heart to Urrea. He wouldn’t even charge extra for the job.
“But the hearts are not for him alone,” the woman replied. “The hearts are also for me. You should know that by now.”
“Then I’ll deliver Vaughn’s heart to you in person.”
“Where?” asked the woman. “Where will you deliver it?”
To which Seeley had no reply, recognizing that, once they were done with this and the children were recovered, la Senora would not be seen again. She would vanish as surely as Seeley was set to vanish—except that while a man who resembled Eugene Seeley would continue to walk the earth under a new name, the woman would evanesce. He had a vision of her disintegrating, her integument fragmenting to be carried away like so much dust upon the breeze.
La Senora arrived at the master bedroom. She could hear water flowing and a female voice humming a tune. La Senora entered and saw a girl, not yet into her twenties, brushing her long fair hair in front of a mirror. The girl was naked from the waist up, her lower half concealed by a cream slip. To her right was the master bath, its door open and the faucet running inside.
The girl paused in her brushing. La Senora was already close enough to be able to make out the goose bumps forming on her skin. The girl turned, the tumi flashed, and a spray of blood washed over la Senora, the carpet, the bed. The girl staggered back but made no sound, so keenly did the blade cut. La Senora gazed at her dispassionately. There were no innocents here; the girl ought to have kept better company. The back of her thighs hit the bed and she collapsed backward on the mattress. La Senora did not stay to watch her die.
She was already moving toward the bathroom when Devin Vaughn emerged with a towel wrapped around his waist and a gun in his right hand. Again, the tumi gleamed, its edge almost severing the hand from its wrist before Vaughn’s finger could pull the trigger. Instinctively, he lashed out with his left, scratching the woman’s face but drawing no blood, though his nails dug deep. The tumi sliced Vaughn’s belly, and he cried out for help even as la Senora twisted the weapon, the spike entering Vaughn from below, gouging its way toward his heart. She gripped his chin with her left hand, jamming his mouth shut so that he made no further utterance as the life left him. Finally, she yanked free the tumi, shifted her grip once more, and commenced a more exquisite excavation of Devin Vaughn.
THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL DEBATE had run its course.
“Has he even smoked that cigarette?” asked the first agent. “It doesn’t look like it’s shifted from his hand.”
“It doesn’t look like he’s moved, either.” The second agent leaned forward. “Could be he’s asleep.”
They’d lost sight of the second guard, who was now at the rear of the property. The first agent got on his Sonim and called the team on that side of the house.
“Do you have eyes on a guard?”
“Yeah, he’s sitting in a lawn chair with a cigarette.”
“How long?”
“Ten minutes, could be a little more.”
“Has he smoked the cigarette?”
“What? I guess. I mean, we haven’t had much motion. Ah, jeez—”
“We’ve got the same here. No movement.”
“Shit.”
The first agent took a few seconds to think. He didn’t want to go sounding the alarm unnecessarily. That kind of overreaction gained a person an unwanted reputation for flightiness.
“Let’s give it two more—”
The shape against the tree tipped over on its side to lie still on the ground, and the first agent ditched the Sonim for the general radio.
“We have one guard down, possibly two. Advise.”
There was no way of knowing if the guards were dead or simply incapacitated. A dead body cooled at about 1.5 degrees per hour, so it would be a while before any change registered on the thermal imaging.
“Do you have motion?”
“Nothing. If he was shot, it came from outside.”
“Hold.”
They held. The voice returned.
“Wait.”
They waited.
LA SE?ORA WAS ALMOST at the bottom of the stairs when one of Vaughn’s men ambled from the kitchen, a glass of milk in hand, to be confronted by a vision from an abattoir, trailing bloodied footprints across the carpet. He dropped the glass and reached for his gun, but she was on him before his hand could pull it from its belt, the impact of the blade driving him back into the kitchen, where he died as easily or as hard as the rest.
Now the woman had no choice but to finish off the last of them before retrieving the child. She picked up the fallen glass. Beside her, by the door leading to the living room, was a console table. She climbed on top of it before throwing the glass against the wall.
“Marek?” a man’s voice called.
La Senora heard him approach the door. He was being cautious, but not enough to escape her notice. He made his final move quickly, the compact Bushman submachine gun held close to his body. Wherever he might have been expecting the threat to come from, it was not from above, as La Senora drove the blade into the side of his neck. It sank to the hilt and the man went down, La Senora on top of him. He hit the floor, a finger spasmed, and shots were fired.
BOTH FIXED SURVEILLANCE TEAMS heard the gunfire from Vaughn’s house. Within seconds, agents were descending on the property. Seeley watched them go. Bern had revealed that Devin Vaughn might be under surveillance. Whether true or not, Seeley, aided by Acrement, had taken precautions.
The first device exploded inside a car parked at the eastern perimeter of the house, and the second, moments later, in a stolen SUV not far from the rear entrance to the south. The latter was the larger of the two blasts, the SUV packed with a mixture of fertilizer and fuel oil. It was, on reflection, a miracle no one died, not that Seeley bothered to check the surrounding area before activating the device. The explosion shattered windows, set off alarms, and scattered debris across the street, as well as demolishing a section of the late Devin Vaughn’s back wall. La Senora stepped through the gap shortly after, a bundle at her breast, her departure wreathed by smoke and fire. By the time the agents managed to get past the bomb site, the woman, the child, and Seeley were gone.