Ethan struggled to his feet as he massaged his shoulder. 'I'm fine, thanks for asking.'

'Were you hit?' she asked, looking at his arm.

'Not by bullets,' Ethan replied, 'but just about everything else.'

Bryson called across to him. 'Speak for your goddamned self.'

Ethan saw a roughly applied tourniquet adorning Bryson's left forearm, where either a bullet or shrapnel had grazed him.

'Jarvis is on his way with the police,' Lopez said. 'I called him the moment you took off.'

Ethan nodded.

'Good work. We need to get back to Canaveral,' he pointed out as he turned to Bryson. 'And we need to search that spit of land where Charles Purcell died. He just sacrificed his life to find justice.'

44.

FLORIDA EVERGLADES.

June 28: 16.04 'Just what are we supposed to be looking for?'

Captain Kyle Sears looked expectantly at Doug Jarvis, who in turn looked at Ethan. Nearby, two uniforms guarded the spot where Charles Purcell had died, while other officers scoured the forest in pairs. A flotilla of police airboats were moored side by side on the surface of the water nearby.

'Bullet casings,' Ethan replied. 'Treat any that you find as forensic evidence. Have them bagged and sealed and sent to the nearest suitable lab for analysis. If I'm right, or rather if our victim was right, they'll have traces of Rubidium-82 on the surface.'

Kyle Sears squinted at Jarvis.

'Why the hell didn't you call us in to provide backup?' he demanded.

'Same reasons as before,' Jarvis replied. 'This is too sensitive for local law enforcement.' Jarvis turned to Ethan. 'What happened?'

'We got jumped, same guy who killed Macy at the courthouse.'

'Any leads from Purcell before he died?' the old man asked.

Ethan explained what Purcell had related to them; the details held on the camera, the future that he had seen, and IRIS's implication in his family's murder. Jarvis remained silent for a long moment after Ethan had finished speaking.

'So he gave his life to keep the investigation on track,' Jarvis replied.

'He'd already lost everything,' Ethan replied pragmatically, then regretted it. 'But he was a hero, and we should ensure he's remembered that way. What I don't get is why he wouldn't tell us where the copies of the documents he stole from IRIS were.'

'He knew he was about to be killed,' Lopez said. 'My guess is that he couldn't tell us for fear of letting his assassin know. You saw the way he was looking around.'

'This camera,' Jarvis said, 'you say that its hard drive holds the record of six months' future events?'

'As seen through its own lens, starting at a secret complex supposedly built by IRIS,' Lopez nodded. 'Doesn't matter now where the camera goes or where it's pointed. It's already seen the future while in the black-hole chamber and recorded everything to the drive.'

Ethan could see the old man's eyes sparkling with intrigue, and realized that he was already entertaining the prospect of acquiring the camera and its uniquely valuable record for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

'We have to stop Joaquin Abell,' Lopez said, sensing the same as Ethan. 'He's got a game plan and this is only the beginning of what he intends to do. The camera can wait it's only of secondary importance to shutting IRIS down.'

'That camera,' Jarvis replied, 'could save all of our butts. I'm down here trying to persuade the powers that be to continue funding our investigations, and not for the first time the two of you are at the epicenter of gunfights, accidents and general mayhem. I'll be lucky if I have a job when I get back to the district. But if this technology were to be acquired by us then the DIA would change their tune overnight.'

Ethan smiled, the pain in his shoulder momentarily forgotten.

'Then you'll be relieved that I let our attacker get away with the camera.'

Jarvis's eyes widened as he stared at Ethan. 'You let him get away?!'

'Bryson took a bullet so that you could let him get away,' Lopez snapped. 'What the hell were you thinking? Why chase him in the first place?'

Ethan raised a placating hand at her.

'Look, right up to this moment we've been one step behind, all the time. If Joaquin Abell really can see future news reports then he's had us by the balls ever since we got here. Everything we do is only a reaction to what he has already anticipated and acted upon.'

'So?' Jarvis asked.

'So, that all changed the moment we met Charles Purcell,' Ethan explained. 'He said it himself only he has seen the future as it will unfold over the next twenty-four hours. Joaquin only sees news reports from the future, and uses what he sees for his own ends. But Charles Purcell took a camera outside of the IRIS facility, out into the world. It would have already seen our conversation with Purcell, and its being stolen by that assassin; it would have seen everything that occurs into the future for six months, with absolute clarity, with regard to this very case.'

'Effectively, the camera's hard drive carries a record of everything that the camera will see for the next few months,' Lopez explained. 'But because it was taken away from the facility, what it's seen is potentially different from what Joaquin's cameras may have witnessed.'

'Because of the observer effect,' Jarvis said. 'In principle, the events in the future that the camera saw are now fixed, but only for that camera.'

Kyle Sears furrowed his brow.

'So you're saying that one future vision trumps another, somehow?'

'No,' Ethan said. 'Only that I think Purcell was trying to tell us that viewing the future may fix certain events into place, but only for the viewer. Joaquin can only see the future through the narrow lens of the cameras he has watching the news channels, not the wider picture around those events. It's like being able to look into the future to see a boxer win a fight, but not being able to tell whether they'll win the title.'

Lopez raised an eyebrow.

'Yeah, until he gets that camera back. Then he'll be able to see everything that the camera has. If it goes back to this supposed IRIS facility you mentioned, then any attack we try to launch on it, he'll see coming.'

'Yes,' Ethan agreed, 'but we had to let the camera go in order to prove who's behind all of this. Considering the lengths that they've gone to, they obviously want that camera very badly indeed.'

'Then we need to move fast,' Jarvis said. 'Turns out that Joaquin Abell had both the motive and the know-how to both build his machine and kill Charles Purcell. Their fathers knew each other and they weren't best buddies. Not only that, but Isaac Abell built some kind of underground base meant for housing a nuclear-fusion plant, but it never got finished.' He looked at Ethan. 'So how do we find the assassin now?'

'Project Watchman,' Ethan said. 'By the time we get back to Canaveral, they could focus in down here on the Everglades and track the assassin's movements. If as we suspect he's working for IRIS, then Joaquin will no doubt have instructed his man to return immediately. We just follow him all the way home.'

Jarvis frowned.

'He may anticipate our attempts to track him,' the old man said. 'Even though they won't know about Watchman, they'll try to hide their movements, and our satellites have their limitations.'

Lopez smiled as she realized what Ethan had done. 'It won't matter, as we'll have another way of confirming IRIS's involvement.'

Ethan nodded.

'Charles Purcell made a prediction, probably based upon what he managed to view of the camera's memory. He said that there would be an earthquake at sixteen-seventeen hours and twelve seconds this afternoon, northwest of the Dominican Republic. He said to search for electromagnetic anomalies in the Bermuda Triangle and that we'd find IRIS there, at the epicenter.'

Jarvis blinked.

'The Bermuda Triangle? You think that the IRIS facility is underwater?'

'Charles Purcell told us that's where we'd find IRIS,' Lopez explained, 'and if this device of Joaquin's was being tested on a regular basis then the magnetic fields generated could be responsible for the disappearance of ships and airplanes in the Bermuda Triangle over the years.'

'If he's really got a black hole down there,' Ethan said, 'then going after him directly could be very dangerous. Joaquin's got a nuclear option if he wants it, and judging by how many people he's killed in such a short space of time I'd say he'll use it if his hand is forced.'

'Katherine Abell,' Lopez suggested. 'Purcell claimed that she was innocent of any crime. We could use her, if she can be convinced of her husband's guilt.'

'Do it,' Jarvis said, and glanced at his watch. 'That earthquake is due in a couple of hours, and if Charles Purcell's predictions are true, he's now aiming it at the very island his wife has fled to'.

'Katherine's in the Dominican Republic?' Ethan asked in amazement.

'Flew there from Miami International less than an hour ago,' Jarvis confirmed. 'Looks like Joaquin's own family might be a target too. He may have even planned deliberately to silence Katherine. Something must have happened between them maybe she's started to suspect that Joaquin's not quite the philanthropist he's claimed to be, and we can use that to our advantage. Lopez, you go after Katherine and make sure Bryson helps you out. Ethan, you get back to Cape Canaveral and track down Joaquin via his assassin.'

'What are you going to do? We need all the help we can get,' Lopez asked.

'I'll go with Ethan for now.'

'And what about if we have to go underwater to find Joaquin's base?' she pressed.

'We don't have time for this,' Jarvis interjected.

'Well then make time,' Lopez insisted. 'You're asking us to go into an area that's due a major earthquake, then infiltrate a hidden underwater base against unknown and armed opposition. I wouldn't mind so much except that you and your cavalry only ever turn up after the shooting's done.'

Jarvis recoiled, and then his bright blue eyes turned hard and cold.

'I can't just whistle up military intervention whenever it suits the two of you by making a quick phone call or calling in a debt. Do you have any idea how much it costs to support you both, especially when you insist on tearing up the countryside wherever you go? Scrambling those two F-15s earlier, plus the ride down from Illinois, plus this team of police and their transports, has set our budget back by almost a hundred thousand dollars in just one day. Think about that for a moment: a hundred thousand dollars in a little over six hours, is what it's cost my department to keep the pair of you in goddamned work.'

Lopez exhaled and closed her eyes. 'And we appreciate it.'

Jarvis kept his gaze on her for a moment, then looked across at Ethan.

'Stopping IRIS is a priority, but so is convincing the DIA that their taxpayers' dollars are being wisely spent. Recovering that camera and what it contains might just ensure that the Defense Department has the upper hand against rogue nations for several months to come. The intelligence could be priceless and I intend that our department recovers it. Is that understood?'

Ethan nodded, and saw Lopez do the same. Jarvis gathered himself.

'Ethan, let's get back to Watchman and find out where that asshole who took the camera went. Lopez, when you return from the Dominican Republic we'll send the pair of you to shut him down. Any further questions?'

Ethan was about to turn for the nearby airboat when a police officer hurried up alongside them and raised an evidence bag to Jarvis.

'The bullet that killed Charles Purcell,' the officer said, then looked at Ethan. 'We found it right where you said it would be, lodged in that tree trunk.'

'How long will it take to have the casing analyzed?' Ethan asked.

'We can rush it through back at base, sir,' the officer replied. 'We already know the compound you're looking for, so it should only take a couple of hours or so to confirm its presence, if it's there.'

'Enough time for the assassin to make it back to Miami,' Ethan said to Jarvis.

'And enough for us to track him to wherever IRIS is hiding,' Jarvis agreed, and then looked at his watch. 'We'd better hurry we've an earthquake to catch.'

Another police officer rushed up to them.

'Crime scene investigators are working on Purcell's body,' the cop said to Kyle Sears. 'You need to see this, captain.'

Ethan followed Sears as he was led to Purcell's body, Lopez and Jarvis behind him. As they reached the spit of sand, Ethan could see that the CSI team had removed the shirt from the scientist's corpse, to photograph more clearly the entrance and exit wounds. Now, Ethan could see what had not been visible beforehand.

'Oh my God,' Lopez uttered.

Across Purcell's chest was scrawled lines of letters.

'What the hell does that mean?' Sears asked.

frsbz racjotrl kbnq sf bpuzl mibmo yuwtez jrrwe Lopez stepped forward.

'Charles said that he would take the secret of where he had put the documents to the grave,' she said. 'If he already knew that he was to be killed, then he might also have known that we would find this on his body. It must be another code of some kind, maybe the location of the documents.'

'It looks like a cipher code,' Jarvis said. 'Not complex in itself, but the number of possible combinations runs into the tens of millions.'

'What do we need?' Lopez asked.

'It'll be a string of numbers, used to scramble the alphabet,' Jarvis said. 'Could be two numbers, could be ten, even a hundred. I could send this to the NSA and get them to work on it, but it could still take days, weeks even, and we only have a few hours.'

Lopez stared at Purcell's body.

'He wouldn't have made it that difficult,' she said. 'He was only covering his tracks. He must have left us a clue somewhere.'

'Well, right now we don't have the time to decode it, not here anyway,' Sears said, and turned to the nearest police officer. 'Have the remains flown out of here immediately. I want a lid kept on this: no media, no leaks, understood?'

The officer was about to carry out the order when Ethan stepped in.

'Wait. If this is Joaquin's work, then how did he know where to send his assassin?'

Sears stared blankly at Ethan for a moment. 'Maybe he followed the two of you?'

'Not a chance,' Lopez said. 'Ethan's right. He ran like hell to get away from us in Miami, remember? Tracking us since then, from Cape Canaveral and then out here on these airboats, would have been next to impossible.' She looked at Ethan. 'What are you thinking?'

'Well,' Ethan began, 'if Joaquin uses television reports to judge what's happening in the future, then maybe he saw one that showed Purcell's body being recovered.'

Sears rubbed his eyes wearily. 'Jesus, this is going to really start messing with my head.'

'Point is, Joaquin would have to have known about what would happen out here in order to have sent his man in to try and recover that camera,' Lopez said.