The Broken Window (Lincoln Rhyme 8)

"Give me the details and I'll make sure it's taken care of. He'll have a clean slate."

"Good. As soon as everything's cleared up you'll have what you want. And nobody will see a single piece of paper or file about your Compliance operation. I give you my word."

"No, you have to fight it!" Geddes said bitterly to Rhyme. "Every time you don't stand up to them, everybody loses."

Sterling turned to him and said in a voice just a few decibels above a whisper, "Calvin, let me tell you something. I lost three good friends in the Trade Towers on September eleventh. Four more were badly burned. Their lives'll never be the same. And our country lost thousands of innocent citizens. My company had the technology to find some of the hijackers and the predictive software to figure out what they were going to do. We--I--could have prevented the whole tragedy. And I regret every single day that I didn't."

He shook his head. "Oh, Cal. You and your black-and-white politics. . . . Don't you see: That's what SSD is about. Not about the thought police kicking in your door at midnight because they don't like what you and your girlfriend are doing in bed or arresting you because you bought a book about Stalin or the Koran or because you criticized the President. The mission of SSD is to guarantee that you're free and safe to enjoy the privacy of your home and to buy and read and say whatever you want to. If you're blown up by a suicide bomber in Times Square, you won't have any identity to protect."

"Spare us the lectures, Andrew," Geddes raged.

Brockton said, "Cal, if you don't calm down, you're going to find yourself in a lot of trouble."

Geddes gave a cold laugh. "We're already in a lot of trouble. Welcome to the brave new world. . . ." The man spun around and stormed out. The front door slammed.

Brockton said, "I'm glad you understand, Lincoln. Andrew Sterling is doing very good things. We're all safer because of it."

"I'm so happy to hear it."

Brockton missed the irony entirely. But Andrew Sterling didn't. He was, after all, the man who knew everything. But his reaction was a humorous, self-assured smile--as if he knew that the lectures eventually got through to people, even if they didn't appreciate the message just yet. "Good-bye, Detective Sachs, Captain. Oh, and you too, Officer Pulaski." He glanced wryly at the young cop. "I'll miss seeing you around the halls. But if you want to spend any more time honing your computer skills, our conference room'll always be available to you."

"Well, I . . ."

Andrew Sterling gave him a wink and turned. He and his entourage left the town house.

"You think he knew?" the rookie asked. "About the hard drive?"

Rhyme could only shrug.

"Hell, Rhyme," Sachs said, "I suppose the order's legit but after all we've been through with SSD, did you have to cave so quickly? Brother, that Compliance dossier . . . I'm not happy all that information's out there."

"A court order's a court order, Sachs. Not much we can do about it."

Then she looked at him closely and must have noticed the glimmer in his eyes. "Okay, what?"

Rhyme asked his aide, "In your lovely tenor read me that order again. The one our SSD friends just delivered."

He did.

Rhyme nodded. "Good . . . There's a Latin phrase I'm thinking of, Thom. Can you guess what it is?"

"Oh, you know, I should, Lincoln, considering all those hours I have free here, sitting in the parlor and studying the classics. But I'm afraid I'm drawing a blank."

"Latin . . . what a language that is. Admirable precision. Where else can you find five declensions of nouns, and those amazing verb conjugations? . . . Well, the phrase is Inclusis unis, exclusis alterius. It means that by including one category you automatically exclude other, related categories. Confused?"

"Not really. To be confused you have to be paying attention."

"Excellent riposte, Thom. But I'll give you an example. Say you're a congressman and you write a statute that says, 'No raw meat shall be imported into the country.' By choosing those particular words you're automatically giving permission to import canned or cooked meat. See how it works?"

"Mirabile dictu," said Ron Pulaski.

"My God," Rhyme said, truly surprised. "A Latin speaker."

He laughed. "A few years. In high school. And, being a choirboy, you tend to pick things up."

"Where are we going with this, Rhyme?" Sachs asked.