Brains

  Wednesday, October 26

  New York

  Mitzi was counting on the reluctance of the CIA to talk to the FBI for any reason other than a real-time terrorist threat (and sometimes not even then), as she walked down the hall to see Mary Jane, an acquaintance in the cyber crime division.

  She pulled open the door, and without any preamble launched in. “I'm looking for a clandestine major server farm in greater New York.”

  Mary Jane looked at her quizzically. “Hello to you, too. And what, pray tell, would that have to do with forensic pathology?”

  “Nothing. I just need it for a project. It's important. Just trust me.”

  Mary Jane just shook her head. “Well, since I keep that exact list handy, just get me the authorization, and it's yours.”

  “Really, you keep a list like that?” Mitzi was interested.

  “Of course. It is currently showing three hundred and forty-four facilities. We check out about ten a week, that's all we have manpower for. This week we actually had a winner – dark web arm sales. Mostly, they turn out to be dead ends. But I can't just give it to you. How about telling me what you are looking for?”

  Mitzi was not sure how to respond. Crazy megalomaniacal super villain trying to take over the world by controlling computers with his mind, ran through her head. So she said it.

  Mary Jane just stared at her. “Fine, don't tell me, but I really can't get it for you without authorization. Let's do lunch sometime.” She turned back to her work.

  Mitzi was about to say something, but an idea popped into her head, so she turned on her heels and left.

  ◆◆◆

  “I'm really not in a position to call in any favors,” Cameron was saying. “I simply can't get authorization for anything domestic through CIA channels. Not now, not with my recent track record of supreme stupidity.” They were in a small coffee shop in SoHo.

  Mitzi was exasperated. Again. “Are you finished? Just listen for a minute. If you will pay attention, we'll have that list, no problem.” She explained her idea.

  Cameron tried to think back to his morning at TSA. Had he burned his bridges with Phillips on the way out? He really was not sure. He sighed. “Okay, I guess it is worth a try. We haven't got anything else.”

  He called the joint team office over at JFK, and asked for Special Agent Phillips. After what seemed like an eternity, the secretary came back on the line. “Sorry, he's on a site visit at Newark. Try back tomorrow.”

  “How about his cell number?” Cameron tried to visualize the woman. He had just met her once, when she had given him a packet of papers on his first day. Mid-forties, pear-shaped, mousy hair, desperate eyes. What the heck was her name? He had it.

  “Listen, Kimberly,” he said in what he hoped was his most intimate voice, “you were so helpful the day I started. You remember me, right? Agent Cameron Hansen? This is important.” He glanced over at Mitzi, who was miming gagging herself. He stuck out his tongue.

  Kimberly's voice went down a half octave. “Well, I guess that would be okay. When are you coming back to TSA?”

  “Not soon enough. How's my replacement doing?”

  “They haven't sent one yet. Here's that number.” She rattled it off.

  “Thanks a million. I owe you a coffee.” He hung up. Mitzi shook her head.

  “You are shameless.”

  “You’re one to talk. Anyway, that was the easy part. I don’t know if Phillips will be as inclined to a favor, at least one that requires work.” He dialed the number. The call went straight to voice mail. “Phillips, Cameron Hansen here, you know, from CIA. Listen, there's something I need you to check for me. Give me a call.” He hung up.

  “You know,” Mitzi mused, “it occurs to me that we might not have to do anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, when they had you, they also had your ID, right? So Perez knows your name and who you work for. Just a matter of time before one of his contacts finds your address and goons show up at your door. I doubt he is any more inclined to just drop this than we are.”

  Cameron looked at her aghast, as sweat started to form in the small of his back. Images from the videos, which had receded to his nightmares over the past week, blazed up from his memory. He stared at his phone. Perez was a telecommunication magnate. The phone in his hand would be better than any address. He started to take it out of its case to pull the SIM card, when it rang, startling him to the point of nearly dropping it. Phillips' jolly voice boomed over the speaker.

  “Hey,” Cameron choked out, “thanks for calling. Listen, it looks like there is a lot of high volume data flowing through a Paris cell that seems to be coming from the New York area. We figure there is a big server facility here that is being used to encode and scramble the communications. Can you shoot over the FBI's list of possibles in the metro area so we can cross check it? Sure, just email it to me. I'll look for it tomorrow.”

  “Make it Friday morning. I'm stuck over here today and tomorrow.”

  Cameron opened his mouth to argue, then decided to quit while he was ahead. “Thanks. Oh, and this number is going off service, so don't try calling back on it. Bye.”

  As soon as the call ended, Cameron extracted the SIM card and snapped it in half. He turned to Mitzi. “I'll get a burner and leave you the number.” He paused. “Actually, if they get into my phone records, they will be able to see which numbers I've been calling. You could be at risk.”

  Mitzi pulled out her brand new phone. She shook her head, and pulled out her own SIM card. “Let's go. There's a CVS across the street. They'll have burners.”

  ◆◆◆

  Ten miles away in Queens, Blaylock got a call. “Those two phones you've been having me watch both just stopped transmitting.”

  “Where?” Blaylock asked.

  “Somewhere in SoHo, within about two blocks of the intersection of Mercer and Broome.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Yep. The guy's phone had just had calls to a land line at JFK, and then both outgoing and incoming from a cell which looked to be at Newark airport. Their only other calls this morning had been to and from each other.”

  Blaylock hung up, and immediately called Perez, who listened to the information and turned to Santiago.

  “I should have done as you suggested. Looks like Agent Hansen and Dr. Lenz are getting smarter. Send people to watch their apartments. Don't worry about being gentle. Just get them both and bring them here. You stay here and make sure everything goes okay with Cabrera. That is the number one priority. I can settle with Hansen whenever the opportunity presents.”

  ◆◆◆

  Halfway down the block towards CVS, Mitzi grabbed Cameron's arm, stopping him. “Why do you think that Perez has not already made an attempt on you?”

  “I don't know, maybe he hasn't traced me yet.”

  “More likely he has been watching you. I think that our phones going dead may have just put targets on our backs.” She pointed down the street at a Key Bank. “Change of plan.” She hurried towards the bank, pulling Cameron along.

  Once in the bank, she asked for the manager, and made a substantial withdrawal. Twenty thousand dollars in hundreds made a stack almost an inch thick. She handed it to Cameron. They then went to the CVS, where in addition to the phones she bought two runners' carry-all packs. They each kept a couple of hundreds out and put the rest inside their pants in the packs.

  “I’m due back at work,” Mitzi said. “The FBI lab should be safe enough, but we need a plan for later.”

  They hailed a cab and rode uptown, watching the surrounding traffic carefully. Cameron was brooding when they pulled up at the Federal complex. “Don’t leave until I get back to pick you up,” he instructed, and Mitzi hurried into the building. After she went in, Cameron dove into the subway and went up to the Bronx. Cash was not what it once was, and he needed a certain type of establishment if he was going to hide out.

  ◆◆◆

  Cabrera had
initially been indignant. “I am a veterinarian! I don't operate on people!”

  Perez had tried to be patient. “You have implanted over a dozen dogs. This will be the same. In fact the subject is about the size of a large dog. You are an excellent surgeon. The bonus will be considerable, say two million dollars, and then you can go back to Buenos Aires a rich man.” Perez's tone softened, “Or you can refuse and go back to Buenos Aires in a box. And of course, I would not want your large and loving family to grieve, so I would be forced to eliminate them all as well. Not to mention the subject and his mother. Relax. Everything is ready. You will do well.” He rolled smoothly out the door and down the hall.

  Pablo Cabrera was trembling with fear and rage. He had come to the research facility in Queens to run the dog lab several months ago. He had known the research was secret, but he thought that was just an industrial thing, trying to get ahead of the competition. His key card did not get him to any of the floors in the building not directly involved in his work. It was obvious that the mesh was being developed for eventual use in humans, but, until just now, he had had no inkling that there was anything remotely close to being ready. And now they wanted HIM to work on humans! Not just on a human, but on a child. He had only been in human operating rooms twice, for the C-section births of his last two sons. Now, here he was, about to be forced to do something contrary to his training, illegal, and, worst of all, offensive to God.

  He had no choice. There was no doubt in his mind that Perez would fulfill his threat. After Perez left, that oaf Santiago had roughly torn his ID/keycard from his pocket clip, and told him that, from now on, he would only be able to go from room to room accompanied by him or one of his men. El jefe did not want him to consider running. As if he would risk his family by challenging Perez. No, he would get things ready. I am a fine surgeon, he told himself, and really, how much different could it be?

  ◆◆◆

  In a regular operating room, everything is designed for the safety of the patient, with an anesthesiologist armed with sensitive monitoring devices, carefully sterilized instruments, a whole crew with routines as carefully worked out as a pilot's pre-flight check list. Nothing was even close to being as important as the patient.

  In the dog lab, although the animals were certainly valuable, or would be after the mesh was successfully implanted, the truth was that dogs were plentiful, cheap, and easily disposed of and replaced if there were complications. Cabrera had no anesthesiologist, he put the animals out himself, put in a breathing tube, and just left them on a ventilator, counting on the anesthetic gasses to keep them still while he worked. His palms sweat as he thought of the breathing tube. Dogs were notoriously easy to intubate – you could literally open their mouth and shine a flashlight down their tracheas. Piece of cake. Humans, he knew, were different. He had worked some with monkeys, which he thought would be similar, and they were very hard to get tubes in, requiring special laryngoscopes. If he could not get a breathing tube in, that would be game over right there. Dead patient, and, he had no doubt, dead Cabrera. He did not even know what settings to use for the ventilator. He did not want to blow out a lung, but also needed to get enough oxygen in. He did not have sophisticated gas analysis on his machine, did not have any but the most basic EKG for a monitor, and he did not know enough about human heart tracings to even know if there was a problem. It was usually just him and his tech in the room, none of the support staff he really had only seen in movies and on television.

  He was actually less concerned about the procedure itself. He expected that he would be able to pull it off. He had, in fact, successfully implanted fourteen dogs, but he had also lost another six perioperatively. That had been good enough for all concerned. He just needed to take his time, get it done.

  He went down to his office, intending to look online for some information regarding anesthesia in children. His access to the internet, however, was blocked. Finally, after a very heated discussion with Santiago, he was allowed to open a browser, but Santiago stood at his shoulder, alert for any attempt to make contact with the world outside. After researching the basic parameters, he felt better, and found that his heart rate came back into the normal range. Although he was still sweating, his palms were now dry.

  He spent about an hour in the dog lab, which would soon be his operating room, making sure he checked everything. He had a short list of items he absolutely needed, mainly the correct-size tubes for a ten-year old's trachea, and the special laryngoscope he would need to get the tube in. He would use the ketamine that worked on the dogs to put the subject to sleep, as he simply did not have time to learn about more human-friendly techniques. Santiago took the list, and made a call to a contact at the nearby Elmhurst hospital. Everything would be there by six o'clock.

  ◆◆◆

  Cabrera was sweating profusely, and no matter how much he swallowed, the bile kept rising in his throat. It had not started well. Right from the start, he saw that, despite all of his hasty research, he was unprepared. Santiago had indeed made good on getting the equipment, so that was not an issue. Everything else was.

  First, the IV. Dogs' veins are about as easy to get into as could be imagined. Not so the flailing, chubby-armed Jorge. He tried and tried, but could not seem to get it in. No problem, he thought, just give him the gas. With the help of Santiago and another guard, he was able to keep the mask on the boy's face until he calmed down, but by then, his hands were trembling from the effort, and it still took him three tries before he finally got the IV.

  With the boy asleep, he tried to get the breathing tube placed. From the time he stopped ventilating with the mask until the boy's blood oxygen fell to dangerous levels was only about three minutes, and what with the difficult human anatomy, he ended up with the tube down the esophagus and had to start over. And over, and over. Finally, he used all of his force on the instrument, and got the tube in, breaking off the two front teeth in the process. Grimly, he thought that at least this patient would not be suing him.

  Finally, he was ready to start.

  A dog's skin, even on the skull, is much looser than a human's, and the head is much more devoted to jaws and snout than on the child. Cabrera had watched some videos on YouTube, and knew that he should make an incision from ear to ear over the top of the head. As he did so, it became obvious that blood loss was an issue. Despite his attempts to cauterize the wound edges, there seemed to be blood everywhere, and by the time he got it controlled, he thought he had lost maybe ten percent of the child's total blood volume. Then, instead of basically pulling the skin back as he did with the dogs, he had to get his fingers under the scalp and almost tear it from the underlying bone. He stretched and strained, cursing his lack of experience, cursing the fact that his tech was less than useless, cursing everyone and everything related to this whole mess. Most of all, he cursed Santiago, who stood in the corner of the operating room, impassive, eyes fixed on him. He had been told that either the patient survived, or else he would be joining him in the cremating furnace they used for the dogs they sacrificed.

  The skull itself was much thinner than the dogs', and he nearly cut through the brain's dura with his initial saw cut, which sliced through some dural artery, spraying the room with more blood for the few seconds it took him to control it.

  From that point, however, it was just like the dogs. He placed a large needle through the dura and withdrew 300 milliliters of cerebrospinal fluid, taking tension off the bulging tissue, which he then opened cleanly with sharp scissors, exposing the brain. Bigger than the dogs, but that was really all. He placed the mesh, sewed and glued the dura shut, and then put the top of the skull back into place, cutting a notch in the back to bring out the wire bundle. The plates he used to fix the bones were large, clumsy, canine items, a far cry from the fine titanium plates used by neurosurgeons, but they worked just fine. He stapled the scalp incision closed, and was done. He turned off the gas, and after what seemed like hours, but was really only a few minutes, Jorge woke up,
opened terrified eyes, and tried to scream. The breathing tube stopped that, of course, and it wasn't until Cabrera was sure he was completely awake that he dared take the tube out. By then, Jorge was more whimpering than screaming.

  They did not have an actual stretcher, just a rolling stainless steel cart, which they put him on to roll him to the attached main lab, where he was left in the recovery area, surrounded by the dog cages, whose residents barked enthusiastically.

  Marta was brought in. She had been told nothing about an operation, Jorge had simply been taken from her. She had sat alone, weeping, for the five hours he had been gone. Now she saw him, head shaved, staples across his crown, bruises already forming under his eyes, and wires protruding from the back of his head. She was broken, and could do no more than sit in a chair next to him and hold his hand, as he cried in pain and confusion.

  Santiago continued his vigil.

  ◆◆◆

  Cameron had gone into the FBI forensic lab to meet Mitzi around seven. He was carrying a large black garbage bag, and they spent several minutes getting ready, before they had flagged a cab and headed cross town. Even in the chill of late October, they were hot to the point of overheating.

  They jumped out near Times Square, and ducked into a doorway where they dropped their raincoats, leaving them in evening wear. They walked briskly to the theater, where they went in one door, into the bathrooms where Cameron had been earlier that day, pulled off their formal wear, leaving jeans and sweatshirts with watch caps, then went out the back into an alley. Soon they were on the #1 train headed to Van Cortland Park in the Bronx, which they walked across. The park afforded no cover to hide anyone who might be following, and by the time they reached the far side, Cameron was satisfied. They jumped onto the #4 train back south, and got off at Burnside. He got Mitzi settled into the rooming house where he had bought a week of no-questions-asked accommodations for a couple of hundreds. He handed her a gun. “Do you know how to use this?”