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23
That afternoon, while he worked in the I.G. office, David’s collar com sounded, and he pressed it. “Yes?”
“Captain Gordon.” He didn’t recognize the woman’s voice. “You know me.” He shook his head, exchanging puzzled looks with Jankowsky. “You were just at my house in the country.”
Tabitha Summers! “Yes, I remember,” David said sharply, giving Jankowsky a thumbs up, and switching to the privacy of an earphone. “Speak to me, Miss Summers.”
“I heard about Ib.”
“Yes, Lieutenant Breen and I went to visit his wife earlier. Hala is—”
“I’m there now.”
“I see.”
“Hala and I spoke. She’s getting out of town with the kids. But I want to see you. I have something.”
“Stay put. Don’t say any more.”
“Yes. Line’s probably tapped. I ought to know, with my years in the business.”
David rose. “Sir, it’s Summers. I think she has the list.”
Jankowsky whistled. “Jeez, you don’t stop for a moment.”
“Where do I take her? She needs to get safe quick, seeing what happened to Ib.”
“Bring her around the back. It’s the only sure thing I can think of just now.”
David drove as fast as he legally could, arriving at the Shoob house in less than 30 minutes. Tabitha Summers stepped off the curb to meet him. He saw her—grim, wearing an off-mauve raincoat, tattered white sneakers, a scarf, and God knew how many sweaters to cover her thin frame. “Get us out of here,” she said slamming the door. She buckled up. David saw no signs of surveillance as he pulled out. “What have you got?”
“The list you’re after. Ib snatched it from the carousel. He was afraid the wrong people would get it. Like a fool, I let him talk me into keeping a copy. I kept it stored off-line.”
“Did you bring a hard copy with you?”
“Are you serious? I e-mailed the file to your boss inside an easter egg.” She meant a hidden computer file that, if its secret key was triggered, opened to play out some visual surprise, usually something goofy and fun; in this case, not.
“Are you going back home or do you feel you need protection?”
“I’d rather go home than anything, but I’m afraid to. Besides, I have work to do.”
“You’re retired.”
“No more.”
David ushered her into the I.G.’s office. After a five minute conversation, Jankowsky forwarded her easter egg program to Tony Tomasik and led them around the back to the Task Force. After they stepped through the security measures, Tomasik welcomed her. “Miss Summers, thanks for coming.”
“I can’t shake this nagging feeling that Uncle Sam needs me. Again.”
“What do you propose to do for us?” Tomasik asked.
At that moment, Jankowsky showed the printout to David. On it were several prominent names, including General Robert Montclair at the Atlantic and the motor mouth of off-the-chart right-wing causes, retired General Felix Mason. Tomasik exclaimed as he read the list. “Two dozen names,” he counted. “Prominent generals, admirals, senators, businessmen, wow.” David noticed tears in Tomasik’s eyes.
“The President needs to get this,” Jankowsky said. He waved it angrily at Tabitha. “Why have you held on to this?”
“Nobody would have believed me if I’d said anything,” she said calmly. “Look what happened to Ib.”
Jankowsky nodded grimly. “I’ll walk this up through channels right to Norcross.”
Tabitha rubbed her hands. “You need more than just the list. Ib had some really hot documents stashed somewhere. You guys got a computer here?”
“Do we ever!” Tomasik said.
“Let’s find those documents!” Tabitha enthused.
Tory slept over at David’s place.
After dinner, they shared a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, and fell asleep on the living room floor. Toward midnight, they woke up and made love. They went to the bedroom around 2 a.m. and lay quietly together, listening to each other’s breathing.
David pondered that it was scary to fall in love with a woman who’d had such a tragedy at 14. She must have been a very wild child. He could understand how some guys would not know how to relate to her, maybe seeing her as an empty vessel or something, some stupid carnivore mating standard. Her tragedy made her all the more unique to David. Yes, he must wait and be sure he would not regret having children. Then again, might they not fall out of love in two or three months? Might she move on or he move on? He stroked her cheek lovingly, grateful that she was not Kristy. Maybe the fact that she was so different, and yet so wonderful, would make her extra special for him. He’d wait and see. He could feel her puzzlement; then she responded by planting a tiny, loving kiss on the palm of the hand that was stroking her cheek. How funny this was, to be able to communicate in a language of kisses!
In the morning, because they were running late, they took separate cars—Tory to the convention center, David to the small back street that housed the I.G. office. He watched her, both waving, as she sped off in the half-mist, half-drizzle that threatened to be a rainy day. David shaved, donned his fatigue uniform and side arm, and drove to work.
“Morning, Sir.”
“Morning, David. You look rested.” Colonel Jankowsky had shadows around his eyes and a light beard stubble on his cheeks.
“I am, Sir. Have you been here long?”
“I stayed all night.”
“Oh, no, I should have—”
“No, no, it’s fine. You should get your sleep if you can. I don’t sleep so well lately. Miss Summers has been on the machine all night.”
Jankowsky nodded. He put a finger to his lips, reminding David that the task force’s existence was unknown to most of the staff; and those who knew didn’t realize its true nature; most thought it was just a library unit. “C’mon, let’s walk over.”
A light rain dripped in the alley as David and Jankowsky hurried to the task force office. Through the usual security checks, up the stairs they went, emerging into the odd atmosphere of chapel, library, and high-tech.
The atmosphere was sepulchral. It looked like a place in which light had not shone for 100 years. The usual cipher clerks and other mystery persons walked about silently. Near a computer terminal in one of the larger rooms, which echoed when people spoke, were Summers and Tomasik. The blinds were drawn, and one of the fluorescent lights flickered steadily and jarringly. Tomasik was in fatigues, wearing an o.d. T-shirt. He sat on the edge of a desk, wagging his short legs back and forth, black jump boots looking shiny and massive. Nearby sat Tabitha Summers, swathed in sweaters and gaunt with concentration. At the sound of voices, she removed her headset and rubbed bleary eyes. “Hello, Colonel. Did you bring me some coffee and donuts?”
Jankowsky looked perturbed. “I’m sorry, Miss Summers. I was on the other side, waiting for the receptionist to arrive. I would have gone, but I had to watch the store.”
“Oh never mind,” Tabitha said, “I need sleep more than I need donuts.”
“We have cots up here. We can put you in an empty room,” Tony said.
“We can send someone to get clothing, toiletries for you, “ Jankowsky added.
“Thanks,” Tabitha said, “a cot sounds good right about now, but I don’t have time.” She yawned.
“You heard about Consiglio?” Tony asked David.
David nodded. “I guess that eliminates one mystery candidate from the blank spot on top of the list.”
“That leaves plenty of candidates,” Jankowsky said. “What do you think, Tony?” He turned to Tomasik with an unspoken part of his question.
Tomasik shook his head and made a sure face. “That was no weekend patriot action, any more than Cardoza getting it. I’ll lay odds it’s our cabal.”
The list, David thought. A cabal. In America?
Tabitha laid her goggles aside and tousled her hair with her fingers. “I’m going to stretch my legs a bit. That diner you mentioned sounds good. I’ll get a cup of coffee.”
“Did you learn anything?” David asked as Summers rose reaching for her raincoat.
Jankowsky spoke for her. “Did she! Huh! She broke through CloudMaster’s defenses. Made the machines at NSSO and the Atlantic think she was the third machine that sits at the White House. Brilliant, huh? She’s had full access to their net for hours.”
David said: “What do you think, Miss Summers? Why did they pull the machine from you? Who’s using CloudMaster? And how long before they’re on to you?”
Tabitha regarded him with a smile that wasn’t a smile. “I’ve just had a few hours—twelve hours—to play with it. I’m not sure. I do know that they’re running some kind of enormous econometric program on two CloudMaster machines at once. Who is they? I’m not sure. They have their own top secret network, and it’s not tied to the Pentagon. The acronym is OIB, and I was able to figure out from context in the message traffic that it stands for Operation Ivory Baton.”
“See here,” Tomasik said, waving a long print-out before David’s face. Tony read in a frustrated voice: “It’s just gobbledygook. OIB/H, OIB/A, OIB/17.”
“Wait,” Tabitha said. She sat down at her terminal again and spoke to it without using the headwalking gear. Masses of program code streamed by until she stopped it. “There, look! I knew I’d seen those OIB’s embedded somewhere. OIB-FED-R ... Those are result codes. The machine chews off a humongous amount of data, swallows it, digests it, and spits up a result. They’ve managed to combine the weather modeling with an econometric model plus some code of their own. I can tell, because when I was in deep, I could see the data streams coming in from around the country, huge amounts, from cities all over—Cincinnati, Seattle, San Diego, you name it. And it’s all headed for their system in the Atlantic Hotel.”
Jankowsky said: “I’d never have believed it, but it’s a clincher. This is not some vague and idle threat. We were looking for only one man, Hamilton, to try and interfere with the convention. Instead, it’s the 3045th, either working directly for Montclair, or else using him as a Trojan Horse. Montclair may be working for Hamilton, or even someone else we don’t know about. CON2 is falling apart, and whoever these bastards are, they’re planning something. They’re probably getting ready to move soon. I’ve got to see General Billy Norcross again. He’ll go straight to the President. These people have to be stopped.”
What if it’s the President? David thought. What about Norcross? Mattoon? We could start being afraid of our own shadows before this is over.
“I’ll go to the Pentagon with you,” Tabitha said. “But first my coffee and donuts.”
“Go ahead,” Tomasik said. He sat by the terminal, which she’d left in deep entry mode. “OIB-FED-H. OIB-FED-L. OIB-FED-A. They are result codes,” he mumbled thoughtfully, “of some conditions they have programmed in. From the way it looks, I’d say they have something running that they think will predict the fate of—something? the United States? their plot?—from one moment to the next, based on a million variables, not unlike the weather program or a modern econometric data modeler.”
“Damn!” Jankowsky said. He started to put his scarf on. “I’ll see Norcross immediately.”
Tabitha could be heard, past the sentry at the door, clattering down the stairs on hard heels. The steel-plated security door made her footfalls echo.
“Hey!” Jankowsky exclaimed waving her umbrella. “She left without it.”
“I’ll catch her,” David said. Jankowsky tossed the umbrella. David caught it and started after her. He had to wait a moment before the upstairs sentry could open the security door for him on its smoothly oiled steel hinges.
As he went down the two flights of stairs, he heard Summers’ feet crunching on gravel already, gone from the building. Then he heard a car racing by. Then silence.
He came to the last set of stairs and noticed the bulb was burned out. The lower stairwell was shrouded in darkness. There should have been another sentry—momentarily, blinded by rainy daylight shining through a door that was six inches ajar and shouldn’t have been, David stumbled and dropped the umbrella. Catching his balance, he looked.
He glimpsed the sprawled Army private. He had a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead, as though they’d shot him—silencer, David thought—just as he opened the door to peer. Then where was Tabitha Summers?
David took his 9 mm. automatic out of its holster. He clicked the safety off, raised the gun so it rested on his shoulder, and stood with his back to the steel outer door. Rain beat down in sheets now, sending in cool air. Pushing lightly, flattening himself into the shadows as much as possible, he opened the door another inch.
And another inch. There, sprawled in the gravel in the gusting rain, her legs bent at an unnatural angle, lay Tabitha Summers. From the broken limbs and the bloodied head, they’d run her down. It was no longer they now; it was Operation Ivory Baton; it was the 3045th and whoever had brought that dinosaur back from extinction. He was about to rush out to the mangled body in hope of administering CPR, when the sound of a car engine racing caught his attention, just enough to make him freeze. He heard brakes, a squealing of tires. He managed to push enough of his face through the opening in the door, without opening it any further and giving himself away. He could see out with one eye, in the opposite direction, away from Tabitha’s body, toward the wide open parking lot. Framed by a backdrop of store windows, of red and blue neon, he saw a dark car. It was hard to see, with the downpour, but there was something familiar about that car. There. Two men sat in the front seat and looked toward the Task Force in anticipation. One was blond, preppy, with steel rims; the other dark, dark...oh yes, he’d seen those two before someplace, but where?
David’s heart began to pound as an idea formed. It was a horrible idea and it caused him to remain frozen another moment, staring. He could make out the men in the car. It was the same car he’d encountered at the Naval Observatory the night Ib was kidnapped. One, the driver, had a dark complexion, with mud-colored eyes and a brownish tongue whose tip protruded like a lizard’s. Riding shotgun was the young blond man with the steel rimmed glasses and the friendly smile that began to look downright dangerous, maybe even insane, when you looked at it several times. Just now the blond man was beginning to smile broadly, his eyes lit up with anticipation.
“Oh no!” David yelled. He turned inside to run upstairs. He slipped in a puddle of the sentry’s blood and fell on the body. Springless bones and rubbery meat cushioned his fall. He scrambled to his feet and, slithering again, made it to the stairway. “Hey!” he yelled.
He made it up three or four steps when the blast caught him and threw him head over heels.
The first blast exploded under the stairs. The massive wood stairwell tilted toward David, forcing the blast upward, and saving him from the main thrust of the explosion. Deafened, he was blown backwards. The blast swirled around and ahead of him, pushing the steel door open so he flew out onto the gravel in the driveway on his back. The building wall stopped the stairwell, preventing it from landing on him outside. A split second later, as he lay on his back, about to black out, he saw the force of the second blast. Unlike the first blast, which exploded vertically, the second went off horizontally and radially. It occurred on the upper floor, blowing the beautiful stained glass windows outward in a fireball, ripping the building’s structural walls, collapsing the roof inward. Then something hit David, and the snapshot faded. His last thought was of Tory.
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