“Okay, but go slow,” Claudia said. “It’s getting really hot.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty hard. You know, ’cause the sand’s soft and you, like, slide back every step. You know what would make it easier, Mitch?”
He glanced up from the phone in his hand. “What?”
They answered in unison. “Elephants.”
Rapp grimaced. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
The consensus seemed to be that they would not.
Claudia watched her trudge back toward the slope, waiting to speak until she was out of earshot. “I’m nervous.”
“She’ll be fine.”
“Not about her. About your call. At some point, Anna’s going to have to learn more than how to sandboard and why zebras have stripes. That’s going to mean figuring out homeschooling. And we’re going to have to find a way for her to be around kids her age. She can’t just socialize with us.”
“The first one’s doable, but you know as well as I do that the second one’s not. She’s a smart kid, but we can’t expect her to keep quiet about her past. And the stories she’d tell are going to attract attention.”
“I know,” Claudia said miserably. “It’s just the uncertainty. Is this going to be a few months? A few years? Our whole lives? If I just had some sense, I could make peace with it.”
He installed a battery in the phone and powered it up. There was barely time for it to acquire a satellite before a proprietary app created by Legion prompted him to join a call.
“Go ahead,” he said, picking up.
“It’s not going to be easy.”
Cyrah Jafari sounded natural, but not like herself. In addition to the secure sat link and encryption, there was also a voice-altering algorithm built into both ends. Where anonymity was concerned, Legion believed there was no such thing as overkill. It was a philosophy he wholeheartedly agreed with.
“You thought it would be?”
“No. But with you gone to ground, he’s not going to be doing many events. And to the degree he does, they’ll be like the last one but even more secure and with an audience that’s even more loyal.”
“Your point?”
“If you stay hidden, it’s likely he won’t win the next time. After that, things become quite a bit easier.”
Rapp shook his head. Anna would be ten by the time Cook lost the White House—assuming he even did. There was only so much of her childhood he was willing to steal from her.
“That’s what you’re charging ten million for? Unacceptable. And it doesn’t get you what you want, either. Not much glory in taking out a civilian with minimal security.”
There was a long pause over the phone before she spoke again. “I assumed that would be your reaction. And we actually do have an idea.”
“I’m listening.”
“Like I said, it looks like he’ll still be doing the mixed virtual events—”
“With a limited and well-vetted audience.”
“Correct. But a lot of the people he chose for the last event were more than followers. They were more like disciples. Based on social media accounts we’ve been able to access, some seem borderline unbalanced. They speak about him like he’s a kind of messiah.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” Rapp said, unsure where she was going with this. “Those kinds of followers make for good optics, particularly when you’re limiting crowd size.”
“Exactly. But unbalanced people tend to be easily knocked off course. They want desperately to be part of something but aren’t really that particular about what it is. After some cursory research, we’ve already found four candidates that fit the psychological profile we’ve developed. Men who are angry, lonely, and desperate for belonging.”
He smiled. “In other words, men who might be easily swayed by a beautiful young Persian woman who suddenly starts paying attention to them.”
“Exactly. Love and hate are just two sides of the same coin. If their energy could be redirected, they might do our job for us.”
Difficult but plausible. Turn Cook from saint to demon in the eyes of some basement dweller, get him into an event with an undetectable weapon, and let the sparks fly. Rapp had to hand it to her. She was one sneaky bitch. Sadie Hansen was lucky to be alive.
“That’s a lot of art and not much science,” Rapp commented. “Do you think you can do it?”
“I’m not looking forward to spending my foreseeable future sleeping with multiple…” Her voice faded for a moment. “What’s the word I’m looking for?”