Perilous Panacea (18 page)

“I’ll have the Philadelphia office check on what happened to him up there,” Saul said. “If he’s missing, he’s been kidnapped. If he was in on it, he’d have made sure nobody reported him to the police.”

“Now all we need is a missing computer expert, although maybe they don’t need one if Austin’s alive.”

“Sukiomo thought the most likely place they’d need a computer expert at this stage was for machining the nuclear material. Although Austin was a computer expert, we should still assume he was not an expert in computer-controlled machining.” Saul outlined how they were tracking down experts on computer-controlled machining. They started with government facilities that machined radioactive material to find out who their experts were and determine their present status. Once those government possibilities were exhausted, they would expand the search to other industries.

Spanner stood. “This Surling thing might mean we’ve lucked out. If they had to kidnap somebody, they couldn’t go right out and make a bomb. The longer it takes to make a bomb, the better chance we’ve got to catch them before they can do whatever they intend to do with it.”

- - - - -

Applenu hunched himself into the small phone compartment, his back to the cramped lobby of the hotel as he listened to Sherbani congratulate himself on getting Applenu’s family out of Iran as promised. “They are on a plane to Amsterdam at this very moment. Just remember, there will be a place for all of you in your homeland when this is over. You will be a hero, my friend. A man with friends always has a refuge.”

Not my homeland, Applenu thought.

“One other thing,” Sherbani said, “we deposited the two-million in your account, since you reached the third goal, completing the first unit of our product. We always live up to our promises. Is there more progress to report?”

“Five units are complete,” Applenu said. He explained the progress as he contemplated his money, now six-million dollars. He could disappear, and then reappear with another new name, in Paris say, or Berlin, Munich, Tokyo or Seoul, or South America—a big world to disappear into, but he still hoped to stay in the U.S. as Dr. Ian Deby. He told Sherbani they would ship the eight units in two days. He knew he had no other choice.

Sherbani changed the subject and talked obscurely about how they would soon give the government some false leads, referring obliquely to Hearn’s strategy. “We have a saying in our country: Set your enemy on the path of the wind, and you will be safe in your home. So, my friend, everything will work out.”

Everything worked out for Drafton, too, Applenu thought. At least Drafton didn’t have to worry about his picture in the paper or worry about what to do when they finished the project. Although he and Drafton had nothing else in common, he liked him, and sure didn’t want to see him peg out the way he did, even if his head was cocked a little off center. That business with Reedan and Surling toward the end could have caused trouble. Drafton asked twice what the plans were for the two of them. Applenu told him they’d be turned loose when it was over. That’s what he’d do, if it was his decision. He would talk to Lormes about it.

Other problems to worry about now, he thought, waiting for Sherbani to conclude his discussion on diversionary tactics to keep the FBI off balance. Sherbani finished, saying, “We will persevere. As the Koran says, ‘But they who believe, and who fly their country, and fight in the cause of Allah, may hope for Allah’s mercy: and Allah is gracious, merciful.’ Always remember, that is our strength.”

Applenu waited. His gut burned with the annoying feeling of being in a desperate race, but the finish line had been moved and he had no idea to where. How could he ever hope to win?

“We need to make a video to go along with the photos you’ve been collecting,” Sherbani said. “We will use them in the diversionary scheme to keep our pursuers chasing the wind while you finish the rest of the product.”

“Why do we need that now?”

“Our strategist will be in contact with you to talk about it. One more thing, my friend. Do not try to take the money and run out on your commitment now that your family is out of Iran. We would track you down and deal with you…and with your family.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Applenu said goodbye to his mother and father, shoved the cloned cell phone into his pocket, and sat back and smiled. They talked for over an hour, and his father could not stop thanking him for what he had done for the family. His father had been overwhelmed to find his brother Behrouz waiting for them at the airport.

In Applenu’s plan, Uncle Behrouz could be there because Sherbani and his people knew about him. By design, BahAmin was not at the airport to meet them, although she and her husband, Malcolm Wilson, were waiting for them at the Kinkerstraat apartment. They filled his parents in on the elaborate disappearance plan that Applenu, BahAmin, and Uncle Behrouz had put together. The plan was not mentioned in the phone conversation.

Suffused with the happiness and satisfaction for having been able to play the good son, Applenu detected a sadness lurking in this happy ending. How, he wondered, would he ever be able to go to Europe and see them? Would that require him to also disappear?

- - - - -

“Ricky, boychick, my nephew the FBI agent, what can I say?” Uncle Nathan crooned on the other end of the phone. “Your father, may he rest in peace, he would be proud of you for what you have accomplished, and for your great future. Now, haven’t I treated you like the son I never had? And after all I’ve done for you, the time has come for me to ask for your help. This thing is getting hotter, and our Senator is completely frozen out. He needs the information you’re sitting on.”

Saul knew he owed much to Uncle Nate, but not this. Spanner’s news about the Administration being upset about Hughson’s statements to the press and TV made it imperative that Saul didn’t give them anything. If they were looking into how Hughson got his information, they would soon enough find out that Mary worked for the Senator. He needed to be extra clean.

Saul sipped his beer and batted down Nate’s requests as soon as he set them up. He had beaten Mary home and was waiting for her so they could go out to eat. He heard Bob Dylan singing from the living room:

There must be some way out of here,

Said the joker to the thief.

There’s too much confusion,

I can’t get no relief.

He began playing the CDs of Dylan’s old songs two weeks ago when his disjointed memories of some of the bizarre lyrics began to make more sense than the real life craziness crashing around him.

“I can’t give it to him, Uncle Nathan,” Saul said again. “Eventually, somebody would figure out where it came from. If I wasn’t directly involved, then…”

“So now he’s directly involved? A few days ago, he didn’t know from nothing about the case. Hey, the government’s got more leaks than there are urinals in the Pentagon. So why should they blame you? Better you should take a chance and give the Senator something he can use. Go talk to him. That way the rest of us can relax a little bit.”

Directly involved, Saul thought. And for sure, he had information the Senator could use. They now had an Austin pseudonym, and they also knew Austin was a pseudonym; they were also more convinced than ever that Austin was still alive. Since they left the trap door open for the present and filled it with bogus information, someone had used it twice. They were trying to track down the computer using the trap door, but that did not appear possible. One time they traced the origin of the computer accessing the file to Italy, and another time the computer was in Russia. They concluded that Austin or whoever was at the other end was going through several computers to keep from being traced. They were now waiting to see if the false information of the arrests in New York would be published by Mosely, assuming Austin was feeding her the information she published.

Did he have information the Senator could use? Earlier today, he and an expert on ethnicity and craniofacial identification had interviewed Patricia Hunter in Congressman Morgan’s office to try to narrow down the nationality of the British-accented dark-complected Brian Applenu she met through Austin. Based on her viewing of about 200 facial sketches and photographs, the origin of Mr. Applenu’s ethnicity was narrowed down to the countries of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Iran, which in Saul and Spanner’s opinion meant Iran was behind it all.

Mary walked in, decked out in a silky white dress covered with a red floral design and red shoes to match the flowers. At least the dress was long and full. Saul smiled and waved at her, expecting her to come over and kiss him, since she had not seen him for two days. She ignored him and headed toward the bedroom. Oh, shit, he thought. Now what?

“Relaxation I could use,” Saul said to Uncle Nathan.

“Like you think I want to make like an utz. It’s politics.”

“And you want me to get into politics.”

“Mainly, it’s okay. Hey, a mentch Hughson’s not. But we’re on the same side…at least most of the time.”

When he finally got Uncle Nathan off the phone, he turned up the stereo and headed for the bedroom. Dylan sang about Frankie Lee and Judas Priest.

Mary lay across the bottom of the bed, staring at the ceiling, the end of the spread doubled over her, and her dress draped across a chair.

He crossed the room and bent down to kiss her. She turned away.

“Was that Uncle Nathan? Are you going to talk to the Senator?”

“Let’s forget work.”

“That’s fine for you to say, you bastard! You know how much shit I had to take the last few days because of your Sheena Mosely’s latest story, the one you gave her?”

In the other room, one Dylan song ended and a new one began. Dylan sang:

When your mother sends back all your invitations…

“Who says we gave it to her?”

“Just forget it, Rick.” She pointed toward the living room. “I see you’re regressing to your drug music again. Did you go back to smoking dope, too?”

His face burned, but he choked back his anger. It still pissed him off that somehow she had associated Dylan with drugs well before he ever mentioned discovering Dylan during a summer of smoking dope and listening to his records. She didn’t know anything about Dylan, and she knew less back then. Nevertheless, she called it drug music on one of their first dates when he played a B.D. tape on his car stereo. She said it jokingly that time. Thank God, he never mentioned Diane Fosbury, who had introduced him to Dylan. “Where do you want to go for dinner?” he asked.

“Leave me alone.”

“You have a nice lunch with one of the boys from the office, so you don’t need to eat with your husband? Your husband’s okay, as long as he supplies information for the office, is that it? If you don’t get any information from me, maybe the boys will shun you, is that what’s the matter with you? Will it cause a short circuit in the old career trajectory?”

“Fuck you!”

“I like it when you use government talk.”

The phone rang in the other room.

She stared directly at him, her blue eyes dark with anger. “Rick…Oh, the hell with it! Answer the goddamn phone.”

He didn’t bother to turn the music down this time, he just sang along:

Sweet Melinda,

The peasants call her the goddess of gloom.

She speaks good English,

And she invites you up to her room.

And you’re so kind and careful,

Not to go to her too soon,

And she takes your voice

And leaves you howling at the moon.

“Hello, Mr. Saul,” Sheena Mosely said, her British accent in full bloom. She paused a moment, then said, “Hey, did the big FBI man find Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota, who was missing and presumed renamed?”

“You a Dylan fan?”

“Sonny, I was around when he first sang about a rolling stone, about the times they are a-changin’, back when you were still in diapers—or more likely not even born. Back then, we sat around and drank wine, blew smoke, and listened to Baez and Dylan and thought we’d change the world by singing songs and talking about peace and justice. Now we know the world isn’t changed by long hair, love-ins, and peace signs.”

“You don’t think so?” Over the years he hadn’t met many fans besides Diane Fosbury. Although Dylan was still around, most people Saul’s age and younger never heard of him.

“That world Dylan sang about back then hasn’t changed for the better for many people in places like Central America, Northern Ireland, and the Middle East, but him and the other people from back then don’t give a shit anymore. They turned into the over-thirty people they didn’t trust.”

“And you haven’t changed? You’re still out to reform the world?”

“No, not really. Maybe I’m just bitter because I sold out cheap. Remember I told you the last time you need to be exposed to a mature woman. Maybe we could get together and listen to Mr. Zimmerman. Then, if you could momentarily forget that you’re the big FBI man, we could do some smoke.”

Saul’s thoughts wandered back to that summer job in Silicon Valley after his junior year; his memories were mainly on the after-work activities: Dylan, dope, and Diane Fosbury’s hands and mouth all over his body, and his hands and mouth all over hers. Did Sheena Mosely have good hands and mouth? He wondered what happened to Diane, a mature woman way back then, five years older than him.

The music clicked off in the living room, and Mary appeared in the doorway in black bikini panties and bra. Saul clamped his hand over the receiver, waiting for her to say something. She just stood there.

“You didn’t have to turn it off on my account, love,” Mosely said. “I called to see if we could maybe exchange information. I received more from my source.”

“What did he say?”

“You know, if the government admitted they lost the material, you could have tapped my phones, and you would already have the information. Can we make a trade?”

Saul looked at Mary, posing, her bare legs at just the right angle.

“What did he say?”

“He said they have a prototype bomb they’d like the government’s bomb experts to see. They figure if the government sees what they’ve got, then the government will know they’re serious when they get around to making their demands.”

“You mean he isn’t a government informant? You’ve been in touch with the people who’ve got the material? Where and when are they going to give us this demonstration?”

“He mentioned Saint Louis or Indianapolis, or a city like that. You can read all of this in your morning paper.”

After they discussed Saint Louis and Indianapolis some more, he remembered Mary and glanced back at her. She stared back at him, a slight smile on her face.

“Now, what do you have for me?” Mosely asked.

He rummaged his brain for something Mosely would find out soon enough anyway, assuming the White House went ahead as planned. “We found out Dr. Steve Austin also goes by the name of Derek Hearn.”

Mary’s smile disappeared, and her face reddened.

They had a call from a Philip Jarome who ran a computer refurbishing shop in Newark, New Jersey, and Saul had just returned from spending almost two days there. Jarome recognized Austin’s picture in Mosely’s first story as someone who came to his shop six months ago looking for servers and data processors. Austin called himself Derek Hearn, and he told Jarome he was setting up a computer cluster at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience on the Rutgers-Newark campus so they could do modeling studies on Parkinson’s disease and memory disorders. Unfortunately, that was all the information Jarome could provide. Hearn paid in cash and did not give an address. He picked up the CPUs himself, rather than have them delivered.

Saul spent this morning on the Rutgers-Newark campus, but nobody in the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience could identify Hearn-Austin’s picture.

“I know about Hearn being Austin,” Mosely said. “You got the information from a guy that reconditions computers in Newark. That’s already part of tomorrow’s story. It was…”

“What? How did you get that?” That information was not in the Trojan file, so how could they have gotten it? He e-mailed the information Jarome gave him to Spanner yesterday. Did whoever used the trap door previously have other ways of finding information in the FBI computer? Or was there really a government source? Spanner?

“That information was in the e-mail from our inquisitive friend that I got a few minutes ago. I forwarded a copy to you.” Mosely said. “How will knowing Austin used the name Hearn help you? Austin…Hearn…whoever, is dead.”

“That is a problem. It looks like I don’t have anything to trade.”

“I guess you’ll have to owe me.”

“One more thing,” he said. “Could you please keep Indianapolis and Saint Louis out of the story? Something like that could panic a whole lot of people real fast.”

“I could probably do that, at least for the time being.”

“Also, if you want to keep up with this story, you’d better be in Washington tomorrow.”

“You mean the government’s finally going to come clean?”

“They might. I’d check at the White House about a news conference. After that, you’ll hear from us about the phone taps.”

When he put the phone down, Mary blasted away. “What kind of shit is this, Rick? You can’t give me anything, but then you turn right around and broadcast information on the phone,” she said, her arms flapping as if trying to fly away. “Who were you talking to? It was Mosely, wasn’t it? You are giving her information. You bastard.”

Seeing her in panties and bra, her legs bare, he wondered if she had come in here to seduce information from him after he got off the phone. Jumbled thoughts as chaotic as Dylan’s lyrics tumbled through his head.

“Mosely gave us information, so I had to give her something in return, but she already had it. I’ll tell you exactly what I told her and what she told me.”

“Who are they? Who’s behind it all?”

He repeated the information he gave Mosely, all the information she’d overheard on Austin.

“What was that about Indianapolis and Saint Louis? Is that where they’re making bombs?”

“No, nothing like that.” He was not about to give her that information.