Code White (23 page)

He had barely finished a quick stretch to get the blood flowing back into his arms and thighs when the fire alarm went dead, accompanied by an “all clear” announcement over the loudspeakers. Kevin knew that Harry had finished checking things out and was on his way back from the Tower. But this was the homestretch; it remained only to reposition the relay box. After turning the box’s power back on, Kevin unclipped the relay’s safety line from his harness, threaded his rappel rope through the carabiner and tied it on with a clove hitch. Looping the rope around his fist to give it some friction, he braced his forearm on the frame of the panel like a crane and began to lower the relay an inch at a time. He was careful to keep the relay in the center of the shaft to avoid scraping or banging against the walls. After he had payed out fifteen feet or so, the closet went completely dark. A second or two later, the lights came on again.

“Thank you, Odin. Looks like we’re home.” He looked down the shaft and carefully swung the relay box inward until it made a soft contact with the wall. Holding the rope stationary with his left hand, he looped the free end around a crimped flange where two sections of aluminum sheeting met. It was a weak anchor, but it would hold the relatively light relay box, and it was important that nothing be visible outside the air shaft. After tying off the loop with another clove hitch, he unhitched his body harness and dropped it on the floor.

He had just picked up the access panel to reposition it when he heard a thump behind him. Turning, he saw the door to the hallway jiggle against its frame as someone tried to force it open. For several seconds, he froze. Not until his bucket-and-mop barricade began to give way did he snap into action, hastily replacing the access panel and kicking the harness and ropes out of sight behind a canister of floorwax.

“Hold on a sec,” he shouted. “A mop fell over and it’s blocking the door.”

A hand was already groping through the doorway. “Who’s in there? What’s going on?” called a husky voice.

“A mop fell. Wait! Wait!” Kevin picked up the mop handle and opened the door. Two maintenance men and a security guard pushed inside.

The husky voice belonged to a short, stout plumber in a gray jumpsuit. “What the hell are you doin’ in here?” The plumber’s eyebrows knitted angrily, but then relaxed when he spotted the white ribbon dangling from Kevin’s ID badge.

“A mop fell. I … I’ve just checked the closet and that service panel in the back. It leads to a ventilation shaft. Everything’s clear.”

“Where’s the rest of your group?”

Kevin remembered the names of the two workmen Kathleen Brown had been grilling. “Owens and Mueller went on ahead to check out the hydrotherapy room down in P.T. We were going to do that and then break for lunch.”

The plumber pushed Kevin aside with a brawny, hairy arm and leaned forward to peer at the service panel. He was so close that Kevin could smell his aftershave. “Do you have any tape?” he asked.

“Uh, tape?” Kevin for once was at a complete loss.

The plumber stopped the half-open door with his foot, as he tore off two six-inch pieces from a roll of masking tape and slapped them against the door in the shape of an X. “Don’t want anyone else to have to go back in there,” he said.

Kevin snickered nervously. “No. No, of course not.”

The plumber gave Kevin a condescending look, then turned and started with the other two men down the Pike. Kevin could hear them joking as they turned a corner—perhaps a laugh at his expense.

Go ahead, sneer all you like,
he thought.
Before the day’s over, you’ll know that the joke is on you.

*   *   *

Five minutes later, Kevin charged into the lab, shutting the door so hastily that it pinched the heel of his shoe.

“So, is it working?” he called out as he rushed toward his desk.

“THE RELAY IS FUNCTIONING AT 99.98 PERCENT SIGNAL INTEGRITY, WHICH IS MORE THAN ADEQUATE. AT 13:11:19 I INTERCEPTED AN ENCRYPTED E-MAIL FROM SPECIAL AGENT RAYMOND LEE TO KATHERINE M. ALBRIGHT AT THE WASHINGTON OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, REQUESTING AUTHORIZATION TO EMPLOY SPECIAL INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES ON RAHMAN AL-SHARAWI, A FOREIGN NATIONAL ILLEGALLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES.”

“No good. We’ve got to get Rahman out of there. He likes to talk daggers, but he’s really a thin-skinned son of a bitch. Not the sort that can stand torture.”

“HE IS PRESENTLY BEING HELD IN ROOM EI-1, THE PSYCHIATRIC ISOLATION ROOM. HE IS GUARDED BY ONE UNARMED POLICE OFFICER INSIDE THE ROOM, AND FOUR OFFICERS WITH SIDEARMS IN THE ADJOINING ROOM EI-1A.”

“Too bad we didn’t put a bomb in the isolation room. We could have done the world a service and taken the bastard out. But who knew?”

“ROOM EI-1 HAS NO WINDOWS, AND ONLY A SINGLE DOOR OPENING ONTO ROOM EI-1A. THERE IS, HOWEVER, A FALSE CEILING WITH A THIRTY-SIX-INCH CRAWL SPACE THAT PROVIDES ACCESS TO THE MAIN CONDUITS FOR THE HOSPITAL’S SUPPLY OF WATER AND PRESSURIZED OXYGEN. APPROXIMATELY TWENTY METERS WEST OF ROOM EI-1, THIS CRAWL SPACE CONNECTS WITH AN OPEN VERTICAL WELL THAT RUNS BESIDE CORRIDOR 12 THROUGH THE FIRST FOUR LEVELS OF GOLDMANN TOWER A. THE IDEAL ACCESS POINT—”

“No. I’m not leaving the lab again. Not for anything. Not even to take a piss.” He threw his athletic bag across the room, raising a shriek from Loki, who leaped out of the darkness onto the counter near the sink. Kevin made a few clicks with his tongue and tapped his finger on the desktop to summon Loki back, but the monkey only stared at him, jerking his head up and down. Irritated, Kevin opened a drawer and pulled out the bag of peanuts. He took one peanut and began tapping it on the desk. Slowly, with a few bursts of nervous chitters, Loki crept to the end of the counter. Then, like a flash, he leaped the five feet from counter to desk, and in another bound was under Kevin’s nose, stretching his little hand out toward the peanut. Kevin laughed and held the peanut above his head.

“Wait! I have an idea. Brilliant, actually! We can … we can, uh, send a little e-mail of our own. Fuck the Justice Department! Can you route a message through the server at CIA headquarters in Langley? Can you match their encryption pattern?”

“YES.”

“Okay, get me the name of someone over there who is plausibly connected with anti-terrorist operations in the Middle East. Someone with unimpeachable authority.”

“ACCORDING TO THE CURRENT CIA DATABASE, DEPUTY DIRECTOR WILLIAM J. MCCLINTOCK WAS FORMERLY THE DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN ANALYSIS IN THE DIRECTORATE OF INTELLIGENCE. HE IS CURRENTLY ON A FACT-FINDING MISSION TO KARACHI, PAKISTAN.”

“He’ll do. It’s midnight in Pakistan, so it won’t be easy to reach him for confirmation. Encrypt the following message, routing it with his URL as the return address: ‘Request for enhanced interrogation of Rahman Abdul-Shakoor Al-Sharawi is denied. No further interrogation or debriefing of this individual should be attempted. Al-Sharawi is a confidential informant of the utmost importance to national security. Advise his immediate release. Signed, William J. McClintock, Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency.’ Send that to our friend Special Agent Lee, along with a covering message from the FBI director’s office to make it look authentic.”

“DRAFTS OF BOTH MESSAGES ARE ON THE PRIMARY MONITOR. SHALL I SEND THEM NOW?”

“Please do.”

Kevin surrendered the peanut to Loki, absent-mindedly stroking the top of the monkey’s head, feeling the vibrations of Loki’s voraciously working jaws through his fingertips. He was more pleased with himself than ever. He had come back without a scratch from a climb more dangerous than the south face of Annapurna. He had re-established control. He had beaten the FBI at a game whose rules these stupid fascists had not even begun to understand.

The starship commander’s chair creaked as Kevin shifted forward, typing a command to bring the video feed from Harry Lewton’s computer-cam onto the monitor in front of him.
Any minute now.
He could hardly wait to see the look on Raymond Lee’s face when McClintock’s order came through.

1:20
P.M.

“I think we need to anticoagulate,” said Dr. Brower, the chief of the NICU.

“Anticoagulate?” said Ali. “He’s just come out of brain surgery. If his blood can’t clot and he’s bleeding, you’ll kill him.”

“It’s a calculated risk.”

“No. It’s sheer foolishness.”

Ever since he had gotten out of Recovery, Jamie’s heart rate had been slowly climbing, and his breathing had gotten faster and deeper. He had also developed a low-grade fever. At first, Brower worried about pneumonia. But a portable chest X-ray showed clear lungs, with just a trace of atelectasis, or deflation, at the bases. This was common after surgery, and was often accompanied by a slight fever. So Ali dismissed it and looked for a neurological cause for the rapid heart rate.

But while Ali’s thoughts were on Jamie’s brain, Brower fixated on the chest. He ordered an electrocardiogram, which suggested that the right side of Jamie’s heart was working extra hard. A number of things could have caused this, but Brower was most concerned about pulmonary embolism—a loose blood clot lodging in the main arteries of the lungs. Surgery greatly increased the risk of this, and it could lead to sudden death if untreated.

“Pulmonary embolism?” Ali was skeptical. “He’s been in these anti-embolism boots since he got out of the OR. There’s no evidence of it on the chest X-ray.”

“Most X-rays are actually normal in pulmonary embolism. When a positive finding does occur, it’s very commonly a small pleural effusion or subtle atelectasis, like what we see here. I think we should get a pulmonary ventilation-perfusion scan.”

“Fine, fine.” Ali had had no success with her own hypotheses. Her greatest suspicion was that Jamie was experiencing an unusual type of seizure activity that was affecting the heart-regulating center in the brainstem. He had had one seizure that morning that she had witnessed herself. But the electroencephalograph monitoring Jamie’s brain electrical activity wasn’t very helpful, because the presence of the SIPNI device itself was distorting the signal in that region. Interpreting it was like reading Chinese written by a sloppy calligrapher on the back of a galloping horse. So all she had to go on was watchfulness and intuition. Unwilling to trust Brower or the nursing staff, Ali stayed on in the ICU, monitoring Jamie’s vital signs herself, poised to administer new anti-seizure drugs if things got dramatically worse.

While Ali waited for Patient Transport to take Jamie downstairs for his ventilation-perfusion scan, Mrs. Gore stole into the ICU for a ten-minute visit permitted by ICU rules. Fortunately, Jamie was resting quietly when she came in. Mrs. Gore went directly to his bedside, where she touched the back of her hand to his forehead, and lifted up his blanket to make sure that his sheets were dry.

Ali had been escorting a small group of surgical interns on their rounds through the ICU, but she excused herself on seeing Mrs. Gore.

“His eyes aren’t moving, Dr. O’Day,” said Mrs. Gore when she saw Ali approaching. “Usually when he sleeps I can see his eyes move a little. And his breathing doesn’t seem right.”

“He isn’t sleeping, Mrs. Gore. He’s in a light coma.”

“Coma? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“It’s partly because of the medication we’re giving him. But he’s not progressing as well as we would like. I need to be honest with you about that.”

“Is he going to—”

“It’s too soon to tell what will happen. I believe he’s going to do just fine, but this was a very complicated surgery he’s just been through. There can be a lot of speed bumps on the way to recovery. We talked about that, more than once, over the past few months.”

“Yes. Yes, I remember.”

Mrs. Gore bent close to Jamie’s ear and whispered. As she straightened up, she reached over and sharply pinched his cheek. “Was it okay to do that?” she said with a guilty look.

“Sure, sure,” said Ali, smiling.

“I do that to him and all the other boys in the dorm at bedtime. If part of him is awake now, he’ll feel it, and he’ll know that I’m here with him.”

As Ali nodded, Mrs. Gore scrutinized the plastic bags of solutions that were dripping into Jamie’s IV line.

“Really, Doctor,” she said, “it’s so dark in here I don’t know how you can read the labels on these things. Are you sure he’s getting the right medicine?”

“Yes, he’s getting exactly what I’ve ordered for him.”

Just then two attendants showed up and parked a gurney parallel to Jamie’s bed.

“What’s happening?” asked Mrs. Gore.

“They’re taking him downstairs to Nuclear Medicine,” said Ali. “We’ve ordered something called a ventilation-perfusion scan. It’s a test to make sure that he hasn’t got a blood clot in his lung. I don’t think he has, but we want to make sure.”

“Will the test hurt?”

“Not at all. We’ll inject small amounts of radioactive tracers to map out the patterns of air flow and blood flow in the lungs. A blood clot disrupts the flow of blood, but not of air. So we look for a mismatched abnormality on the scan.”

“Well, you know what you’re doing,” she said, stepping aside to let one of the orderlies get next to Jamie’s bed. “I trust you because Jamie trusts you. ‘Dr. Nefertiti would never let anything happen to me,’ he says. ‘Dr. Nefertiti’—that’s what he calls you. ‘You’ve got to trust her, Mrs. Gore, ’cause she’s like one of the smartest doctors in the world.’”

“Mrs. Gore,” said Ali, suddenly lowering her voice, “does Jamie’s mother know he’s in the hospital today?”

“We haven’t had any contact with her. It’s by court order, you know. His mother insisted on it.”

“I don’t see how a mother could do that. How could she not want to know?”

“She’s given him up, Dr. O’Day. Sometimes you have to make a clean break. The human heart can only stand so much.”

“Did she surrender her rights irrevocably?”

“Yes, she did.”

“What if he gets his sight back?”

“That won’t make any difference.”

“That … that’s horrible. He needs a mother now. He needs her to be right here with him. I know you’re doing your best, Mrs. Gore, but it’s not the same. Look at him lying there in the bed all alone.…” The orderlies had just slid down the railings of Jamie’s bed. One of them turned Jamie on his side, while the other slid a plastic transfer board under him.