Placebo (22 page)

Charlene looks at me curiously. “Philadelphia?”

“Arlington is there. He's connected with Banner, with the attempt on Tanbyrn's—and our—lives. Colette is there. RixoTray's headquarters is there. If we're going to crack this open, we need to be there too.”

“What about the police?” she asks me. “Or the FBI? Shouldn't we just go to them?”

Xavier shakes his head. He must've been thinking the same thing I was a minute ago. “And when they ask why we suspect that the CEO of one of the largest pharmaceutical firms in the world is involved in conspiracy to commit murder, I suppose we'll just tell them that we hacked into his computer and phone records after getting the information off the body of the man Jevin killed.”

That was an interesting way to put it.

I'm still on hold, waiting for someone from the charter plane company to speak to me. “Right now we have ties between all these things but no proof. Until we know more, we'd be accused of making unfounded accusations.”

“Which would be true,” Xavier points out.

She considers that.

“We do exposés, right?” I think of Abina again, of justice, of uncovering the truth. “Well, let's expose something that really matters.”

The charter service's rep picks up, apologizes for the wait, and asks how she may be of assistance to me.

So far no one had offered Riah an explanation.

At last Cyrus typed on his keyboard and a photo appeared on the projector screen.

Three people: a Middle Eastern woman in her late thirties standing beside a dark-skinned, attractive girl in her teens, and the bearded man who'd strapped on the suicide vest in the video. Riah was surprised that a fundamentalist Muslim suicide bomber would allow his wife and daughter to be photographed without their burkas' veils covering their faces.

Is it a fake?

“Malik was married,” Cyrus explained. “He had a wife and a fourteen-year-old daughter. If he'd backed out, not gone through with it, they would have been punished.”

Riah had heard enough about the culture and beliefs of Islamic fundamentalist society to know that “punished” in this case probably meant publicly shamed, or quite possibly raped or even killed.

“What do you mean if he'd backed out?”

“This way,” Undersecretary of Defense Williamson said, not answering her question, “by all accounts it looks to the other members of his group that it was an accident.”

“What does that mean: this way it looks like it was an accident?”

“We let him do it.”

Still no direct answers. “You let him do what? Detonate the vest?”

Cyrus said, “Riah, your research, your work with the twins, helped save innocent lives, protected Malik's wife and daughter from retribution had he failed to go through with his mission, and it helped eliminate a terrorist threat and take care of three members of an al-Qaeda cell.”

“I research ways to decipher neural activity related to linguistic patterns. How did my research do any of that?”

“Dr. Colette,” Daniel offered, “this man was planning to kill himself and possibly hundreds of innocent people at a mosque. People who had assembled to worship God.”

“But you're saying this wasn't an accident? That somehow you let him do it. Does that mean you influenced him to do it?”

“He was planning to do it already.”

Riah wasn't rattled by the fact that no one was giving her a straight answer, but she was becoming more and more curious about why that was the case. “You're telling me that you somehow convinced this man to kill himself?” She looked at the twins. “But how?”

It took Darren a long time to answer.

“The circumstances concerning his death are one of the reasons we wanted you here. We need you to help us put them into context.”

Okay, so that was finally an answer, but it was certainly not the one she'd expected.

“How can I do that?”

The twins rose almost in unison. Daniel said, “We'll meet you tomorrow morning at 9:15 in the R&D facility, room 27B. We'll explain everything then.”

Based on the concern Cyrus and the twins had shown earlier for Dr. Tanbyrn's condition, Riah had expected that the topic of the fire at the center in Oregon would come up again, but now it appeared that everyone was ready to leave. All of this was fascinating and intriguing to her. She agreed to meet with the twins in the morning, if only to find out what they were using her research for: “I'll be there. I'll see you at 9:15.”

And that was that.

They headed toward the door, Oriana mentioned to Cyrus that she would tell her oversight committee to extend the funding, and then she excused herself as well.

The meeting had ended in the same shroud of questions that had pervaded it.

Cyrus escorted Riah past Caitlyn Vaughn at the reception desk and down the elevator. “About last night, coming over to your apartment . . . the sleepover. Does the offer still stand?”

Riah understood that his question was a test, a way of feeling out how needy she was, how dependent on him, and she decided to show him that she was not the dependent one in their relationship. “I'll have to think about that.”

She paused, then turned to him, looked deep into his eyes, and trailed her finger across his cheek. “Say hi to Helen tonight for me, will you? Tell that thoughtful wife of yours that coffee tomorrow afternoon sounds like a wonderful idea.”

“She invited you out for coffee?”

“Good night, Cyrus.”

Then Riah left for her car.

Let him chew on that for a while.

If she'd been a person capable of feeling pleasure, she would have smiled. As it was, she tried one on to see how it felt, but it didn't make her feel anything at all.

I'm not really a fan of commercial airlines, and thankfully, my stage shows over the last decade have done well enough to give me the freedom to be able to bypass those long security lines and groping TSA employees.

It didn't take me long to book the charter plane.

Both Xavier and Charlene know that money isn't really an issue for me, so neither of them bats an eye when I tell them the price tag—just under six thousand dollars per hour. Plus landing fees, fuel, and overnight expenses. “It's really not that bad, actually.”

“What does that work out to per peanut?” Xavier asks.

“Hors d'oeuvres,” I correct him. “And lobster bisque. Only the best for my friends.”

Excusing myself from them for a minute, I find the restroom, then
on my way back down the hall, I call Fionna to see if she recorded the video. “I did. I'll get you a copy. Sorry I lost the connection to the laptop after it was finished. Someone on their cybersecurity team must have stumbled onto the breach. But don't worry, I got out before anyone would've been able to find out who was there.”

I tell her about our plans to go to Philadelphia.

“How can you be sure that Dr. Colette will even be there?”

Good point. “Um . . .”

“Hang on a second.”

Momentarily she gets back into their system and confirms that Dr. Colette's schedule includes some meetings in the morning there in Philly.

“So,” Fionna says, “have the charter plane swing by and pick me up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Pick me up. Here in Chicago.”

“Are you serious?”

“Sure. I'm already up to my neck in this with you, Jevin, and it'll be easier if I can work things from the inside.”

“From the inside of what?”

“With RixoTray. It looks like I have some rather troubling news to give them—their cybersecurity isn't nearly as good as it needs to be. In fact, the CEO's personal computer is at high risk of a security breach.”

There was no arguing with that.

She goes on, “That's something I should discuss with him in person. If I'm with you, I can guarantee you a meeting with Arlington. Besides, you're flying from Oregon to Pennsylvania. You'll practically go right over my house. I'm not sure, but I'd guess a charter plane will need to refuel on a flight across the country.”

“Actually, these planes are equipped to—”

“You know as well as I do”—she refuses to give up—“that you'll make more progress if I'm there. I can do a few things from here to try and access that iPad, but from what I've seen, the security on it is reasonably good. It might take me awhile remotely, but I guarantee
that if I had it in front of me, I could hash that password in two minutes or less.”

Even though I have complete confidence in her ability to work something like this from an off-site location, I have to admit that it would be good to have her there with us in Philadelphia, especially when it came to getting us an audience with Dr. Arlington.

Stopping by Chicago won't really add that much time to the trip. You could still make it to Philadelphia by morning.

“Okay, you've convinced me. I'll set it up and let you know the details about when and where to meet us.”

“And my kids come too.”

“What? No, that's not—”

“This might take a couple days. I can't leave them alone that long, and it's too late to find someone who'd be able to take in four children.”

Lonnie is seventeen and very responsible, but I couldn't help but agree with Fionna that it wouldn't be a good idea to leave him alone to watch his three younger siblings. Fionna doesn't have family in the area, and while she could farm the kids out to their friends' houses, that might be awkward. She was also right that this would likely involve a couple days of work. Still, even taking all that into account, I'm hesitant to say yes.

“I don't know, I'm—”

“They'll be safe in the hotel rooms you're going to get us, if that's what you're worried about. They'll have plenty of security. After all, we're staying at a nice hotel, right? Because it'll really be a lot easier if there's room service.”

“This isn't exactly—”

“My kids like to swim, so let's make sure there's an indoor pool.”

I wish I could tell her that there wouldn't be enough room on the plane for her and her kids, but the Gulfstream 550 that's on its way to Portland would actually have just enough seats.

I rub my head. “Really? You want me to fly your kids to Philly?”

“You're already paying for the flight, why not get your money's
worth? Besides, they're due for a field trip, and they've never been to the City of Brotherly Love.”

“You told me earlier today that you took them on a field trip this morning?”

“That doesn't really count. It was in the same state.”

Oh. Is that how it works.

“I see.”

“You won't regret having them along. Trust me. They can help me out, and from what I've seen, you could use it. I mean, this project is about as confusing as when you have two dozen gerbils running around a pet store and you're trying to catch the one with the little white tuft on his left ear, and you can't seem to find him because all the other ones are just too dang frisky.”

I knew a simile would sneak in here eventually. Or an analogy. Or metaphor. I'm not really sure what that one was.

“Where do you get these from, Fionna?”

“Sometimes they just come to me. So?”

I hold back a sigh. “Okay, they can come. But I'm not guaranteeing you a pool.”

“Hot tubs in the suites will be fine.” She turns from the phone and I hear her calling to her family, “Kids, pack up your things. We're going to Pennsylvania!”

Cyrus slipped into his Jag and took a deep breath.

Had Helen really invited Riah out for coffee? Or was that a lie? If Helen had asked her to meet, did she know about the affair?

He felt his temperature rising.

Who was the wasp here and who was the cockroach? Who was the helpless one? Riah was not the one calling the shots in this, he was. And he was not about to have her try to control him, try to seal him in a corner.

Her mention of Helen annoyed him, really annoyed him. And then, of course, there was this whole botched job with Tanbyrn.

The assassin was dead and the doctor was not.

Cyrus pounded the steering wheel.

How could you have been so stupid to hire an inept goon like him!

Frustrated, he drove toward the drop-off point at First Central Bank, the place Akinsanya had told him to leave the DVD of the footage in Kabul.

Earlier, while they were waiting for Oriana to show up, Cyrus had decided that if the police came knocking, he would tell them the truth: yes, he had been in touch with Banner, had spoken with him on several occasions.

And he would also tell them a lie—Banner had been blackmailing him from the beginning, threatening to expose his affair with Riah.

The conversation played out in his head:

“How did he find out about you and Dr. Colette?” the cops would ask him.

A lie: “He told me he had a tip. That's all he said. He had photographs. Compromising ones.”

“What did you pay him?”

The truth: “So far, $12,500. He wanted more. Another twelve five.”

“Then why would he burn down the building where they were doing research related to RixoTray?”

A lie: “I have no idea. Dr. Colette is in charge of the research project. She might be able to help you with that.”

The blackmail angle worked. It explained the money, the fact that Banner had been in touch with him, and the reason Cyrus had kept it all a secret. Admitting to the affair might not help his marriage, but he could work through all that, play the repentant husband, reconcile, move on. Or maybe go back to Caitlyn. She really was a fine little office helper.

But for now there was still the issue of Tanbyrn.

Put quite simply, he knew too much.

You never know—he might already be dead.

Cyrus put the DVD in the mail slot of First Central Bank. The bank was, of course, closed. He had no idea who Akinsanya was, had never met him, only spoken with him on the phone.

He didn't know why Akinsanya had chosen this location, but he was not going to question him, not after the photos Akinsanya had sent him of what he'd done to the people who'd betrayed him or failed him in the past. All using a needle and thick, black thread.

Back in the car, before starting the engine, Cyrus considered his course of action.

He had a meeting tomorrow morning at nine with the vice
president at the White House. Papers to verify, a myriad of details to arrange.

Cyrus took out his cell phone, surfed to a dozen news sites, one after another, to see what details had emerged about the fire at the Lawson Research Center.

He found out that the famous Nobel laureate Dr. Tanbyrn wasn't dead yet. Some guy had gotten him out of the building just in time. But the doctor was in critical condition with carbon monoxide poisoning and had slipped into a coma within the last twenty minutes or so.

Well, that was a bit of good news.

The circumstances surrounding Banner's death were still sketchy, but apparently he was killed while fighting one of the people at the center.

Some professional he turned out to be.

Tanbyrn's in a coma. Nonresponsive. If he ever does recover, he'll probably have brain damage. Just get through until tomorrow night. There'll be time to deal with Tanbyrn later, once things have settled down.

After thinking things through, Cyrus decided to go home, get everything ready for tomorrow, and keep an eye on the situation with Tanbyrn. Yesterday he'd briefly considered contacting Atabei. Maybe, with Tanbyrn in a weakened condition like this, that would be the best route to take after all.

Yes, keep tabs on his condition and make a decision in the next couple hours regarding Tanbyrn.

After contacting the charter flight service again and making arrangements for us to stop by to pick up Fionna and her children in Chicago, I put in a call to make our hotel reservations. With people streaming to central Philly to hear the president's speech in the morning, there aren't many vacancies, so it takes a little time to find some rooms, but finally I do.

Because of our early morning arrival, I book the rooms for both tonight and tomorrow so we'll be able to check in immediately when we get there and not have to wait for the normal check-in time later in the day. It's only a couple thousand dollars more for an extra night for the four rooms, and it would save us the hassle of stowing our luggage until the afternoon. I figure it's worth it.

I return to Charlene and Xavier and ask him if he can give us a ride back to the Lawson Center so we can get our car and our things from the cabin.

“What about your X-rays?” he asks.

“Only if they can get me in quickly. Our flight leaves from Portland in less than four hours, and with the drive back to the center, it's going to be cutting it close.” I watch Xavier carefully to see how he responds to the next bit of information. “We'll be meeting up with Fionna and her kids in Chicago on the way. They're coming with us.”

“Fionna?”

“That's right.”

“And her kids?”

“Uh-huh.”

He's quiet for a moment. Despite his unwavering support for people living off the grid and his suspicion of the federal government's role in just about every evil of modern society, he's surprisingly never been a big fan of homeschooling and has made the mistake of mentioning to Fionna that he thought she should've sent her kids to a charter school or a private academy of some type.

Families who homeschool usually have pretty strong convictions for why they do it, and Fionna was no exception. I'd seen her and Xavier really get into it a few times.

All good-naturedly, of course.

I think.

I pat him on the shoulder. “Just don't bring up the homeschooling thing and you guys will do fine.”

“Uh-huh,” he mutters. “As long as she doesn't try out any of her similes on me, we'll do even better.”

I'm tempted to tell him about the gerbils-on-the-floor analogy but hold back. “Let me get those X-rays, and then I want to check on Dr. Tanbyrn again before we leave.”