by James, Mark
“Of course, the president can order GMA mission activations at any time,” Présage noted, “but we also know he won’t do that. And which, presently, remains preferable.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that the president and Osborne haven’t, as yet, laid down authoritative lines to the GMA. In the chaos, it’s been relatively invisible to them. It appears that they’re relying on their NSA mid-level operatives to keep an eye out. Osborne pried the Arab girl away from the GMA and it caused a bit of a flack, but that’s been about it.”
“And our possible moves?” Palmer thought aloud. “Can we peel off a piece of the GMA, bring it in-house?”
“Unknown. Again, we’ll see.”
“Let me know, then.”
This was the way that Palmer ended all of his meetings. Let me know, then.
Présage rose. “Of course.”
He walked from the building and was struck by bright sunlight, flashes from the morning rain warm on his face. He looked up.
It was a beautiful day.
†
Osborne pounded the table with his fist. Inside, he was calm.
Her eyes flinched and he observed the reaction, noting that she wouldn’t let her body show it.
Aisha’s hair was changing back into black, returning to its birth color, her face to olive.
Inside, her soul remained numb.
“Look at this!” he yelled, inches from her face.
He threw the pictures on the table and the burnt faces slid into a random, accusing pile – a frozen eye here, a blackened mouth there.
She stared straight ahead, the numbness flooding her entire being.
Osborne moved up behind her and let the room go silent. Leaning forward, he stopped at her ear. In the mimic of a distraught parent, he finally whispered, “Yes, I can see why you wouldn’t want to look.”
The interview had lasted two hours, starting with the calm, objective description of the physical damage in each small town and had moved on to the people – their names, their lives, the surviving children – and had ended with the pictures and Osborne’s yell from the sky.
His was the voice of those children, for those children.
And yet, she’d never moved. Except for the momentary flicker across her eyes, no reaction.
He offered no goodbyes, no closing remarks, made no threats. He simply walked to the door and turned the handle, like he would when he didn’t want to wake his wife, and walked from the room.
He left the pictures.
She pulled her legs up and tucked her head under, into a ball. She could feel her heart beat louder.
†
Osborne stared at Dr. Samuel Takamura, Chief Forensic Pathologist for the FBI. “Alright, Samuel, say it again. Orchids?”
It had been the normal traffic-from-hell as Osborne drove out to the new FBI headquarters in Springfield, Virginia and the entire way Takamura’s words had focused him – I think you need to see this…
Fifteen years before, Takamura had been one of the staff scientists when Osborne and O’Neill had worked the Diamond Lake serial killer case and he knew Takamura well – and knew that the good doctor was not known for obtuseness.
“Actually,” Takamura motioned, “it was one of the junior scientists, Brad Bennett, who initially saw the connection. Here, look closer.”
Osborne approached the microscope and looked down at the skin cells.
“It’s dissipating, though you can still make out the whitish coating on the epidermal cell walls. This was one of the difficulties; that some of the cells showed a staining and some not. It wasn’t until we found the reason for the dissipation-in-effect that we started looking in the right places. Otherwise, we might never have found it.”
“The detailed synopsis again, Samuel. So I have it right when I brief the president.”
“Well, it all begins in the Wehea rainforest, on the eastern tip of the Micronesian island of Borneo. You see, in 2012 an extinct species of monkey, the Miller’s Grizzled Langur, was miraculously discovered there. But what is not commonly known is that last year, in this same forest, a French botanist discovered a new species of orchid, Paphiopedilum niveusangelis, translated, the White Angel. It only exists hanging above pure flowing rivers, soaking in a precise measure of humidity, each flower the size of a pea and strung like jewels on a chain. Not a big deal, most would say – except for orchid aficionados – but the White Angel possesses a unique property: its petal resin transforms the two upper epidermal layers in a completely natural way – no bleaching, no blotching, the skin appearing as if born to the person.”
“So, the question becomes,” Osborne said, “why hasn’t the world been bombarded with White Angel skin lotion advertisements?”
Takamura smiled. “Perceptive boy, and therein lies the problem. Namely, the aforementioned dissipation.”
“The researchers who were seeking commercial applications found that the staining of the cells was perfect, yet also ephemeral, fleeting. It fades in three to five days. Between this and the enormous cultivation expense, it was deemed nonviable. For profit, that is.”
Takamura squinted. “Somehow, though, Paphiopedilum niveusangelis has found its way onto the face of our terrorist girl.”
“Once we found the stain on her skin and linked it to the orchid, we began searching through the theater bombing body parts, looking for a DNA match for the orchid on the skin of the victims. Needless to say, finding a skin sample from twenty-nine false Arabs, each rended apart amidst the similar remains of 18,929 others, has been daunting. So far, we‘ve identified samples from thirteen of the terrorists. With the natural fading, however...”
They both turned to a door opening at the far end of the lab. Two FBI Agents, one in a red tie, the other blue, stood inside the door and nodded towards them.
“Ah,” Takamura motioned, “but we will let our young agents tell you about that. Hello Agents Young and Sanchez. How have you been? We’ll be with you in a moment.”
He turned back to Osborne. “The staining effect vacates the skin’s surface in three days to five days, but molecular remnants remain on the deeper epidermal layers for approximately one month. Essentially, Mac, we’re running out of time on the ID process.”
“Understood, Samuel. Keep at it. I’ll get back to you if the president has any questions, or anything else pops up.”
They shook hands and Osborne headed towards the door. One of the agents opened it and they all walked through, negotiating a series of hallways and finally entering a room with no number. They each took a seat at a table.
“Alright, gentlemen, I hear you’ve been busy.”
Six years before, directly before the first election campaign, Osborne had taught an interrogation course at the FBI Academy and vaguely recalled the agents’ names, but wasn’t able to place them until he saw them at the lab door.
Agent Young, the taller man, spoke first. “Yes sir. We were assigned to follow up on a report from Minnesota. As you know, sir, the Bureau has been inundated with reports from all across the country. Basically, everyone and their brother is absolutely certain they saw a bus full of Arabs crossing the border, or are similarly certain that the owner of the local hardware store, who’s lived in the same small town all of his life, just must be a terrorist.”
“However, day before yesterday we received a report of a parking lot full of rental cars disappearing along with its owner in Redwood Falls, Minnesota, a rural town. Needless to say, this caught the Bureau’s attention and we flew straight out. Talking to the local police chief, we determined that on the morning of the bombings the cars left the lot. The chief was also a casual social contact with the subject, the lot owner, Ron Jeevers. No one suspected because the subject told everyone he’d moved the cars to have the lot asphalted. But the paving was never done and the cars never returned. The subject has been missing ever since.”
Osborne shook his head, “Didn’t any of his friends, the townspeople, notice any of this? He
ll, it’s been almost two weeks.”
Agent Sanchez jumped in, “They saw him as one of their own, sir. He told his girlfriend he was visiting friends in California for a month and would be out camping, so he would be out of cell phone range. She spread the story to everyone else. He attended the local church every Sunday, paid his bills on time and adopted the same behavioral patterns every day. He even organized the downtown charity parade for the Rotary Club. No one noticed, or wanted to say anything until we put out the report on the possible false skin color. The chief went looking for the cars and couldn’t find them. He called it in.”
“Go on,” Osborne said.
“The logs for the cars at the rental business are bogus, the plate numbers concocted, and none of the plate entries match the license plates from cars that were excluded in the theater lot searches.”
The DNA sequencing of the theater bombing victims was proceeding at a labored pace – every domestic and European lab becoming overwhelmed with the task – with the Bureau tracing the plate numbers of the cars left in the theater lots and attempting to match them to local residents and the missing persons reports.
“On that basis,” Young said, “we concluded that the plates from the rental lot in Minnesota were changed after the rental cars left, or were bogus from the beginning. We then began canvassing locals. Everyone said Jeevers was their best friend, always volunteering time, visiting sick church members in the local hospital, Meals-On-Wheels every Tuesday. One fact stuck out, though. He went fishing, and always alone. The chief, who’s an avid fisherman, always wondered why Jeevers didn’t invite him along. And Jeevers didn’t seem to understand lure lingo when the chief tried to talk to him about it. What’s more, the subject’s girlfriend said she’d asked to go along a couple of times, but the subject always begged off, saying he liked the meditative time alone. But assuming he’s one of our guys, sir, you have to realize, Desert-Arabs-Don’t-Fish.”
“We reported it to the Bureau and, in the meantime, grabbed some of the chief’s men and their gear and headed down to the local fishing haunt, Lake Minear. Twenty yards from the shore and into the woods, the metal detectors went positive and we located one of the rental cars hidden over in a makeshift hole. Slide marks led from the hole to the lake. We sent divers in, but it was already night and the lake was too deep. At dawn this morning, we dredged the lake and pulled up Jeevers, chained to concrete blocks, not a mark on him. Pending tox screens, we’re assuming he’s a suicide. A rowboat – matching the slide marks – was found abandoned in the reeds on the other side of the lake. No ID yet, but he’s definitely one of them. Since he wasn’t a bomber, it appears that his role was to ensure delivery of the cars.”
“I was briefed, but I wanted to hear it from you both. Good job. So, where are we at now?” Mac had been a senior agent and could sense the old feelings coming back.
“The body was on the plane. We landed an hour ago and Dr. Takamura should have it soon.”
Osborne thought of the White Angel orchid. He looked down and saw Young holding a file. “That for me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Osborne opened the file and turned to the photos – the rental lot, the diner, Lake Minear.
He came to the photo of a man, whom they would one day identify as Abdul-Aziz Kahleel, code named, The Fisherman, a/k/a Ron Jeevers.
The skin was leached, the ancient lake having turned the face sharp white.
Eternally white.
†
The president sat at his desk and leafed through the papers. In the opposite chair, Osborne did the same. It was an old habit between them.
“What were we talking about?” the president asked. “For heaven’s sake, I can’t find anything in this file.”
“Something about the Saudis. Hell, I can’t remember anything anymore either.”
The president chuckled, “As the cliché goes, a small plot in the south of France is starting to look pretty good…I guess that’s why it’s a cliché.”
If a camera had been in the Oval Office it would have caught the president chuckling with an old friend. And yet, that same morning a newborn had been kidnapped from a family picnic outside of Toledo and the story led off the evening newscast. A news segment then followed on the impending “soft” depression. And late last night, unknown to the citizenry, the president had been roused from sleep and briefed on a terrorist threat nullified in Mali, the mission a full success and ten Americans dead. The world was too serious to chuckle along with. And yet the president did so, needed to do so. He just couldn’t let it be seen on a camera; he couldn’t let the people see that he was human.
“Okay, that Saudi thing can wait,” President Walker said. “Anyway, it’s the same story every day with those guys.”
“Well,” Osborne continued, “we’ve gone through the White Angel orchid info. Nothing much has changed, we’re still sifting through the victims. Making progress, but it’s slow going. Fortunately, polling shows that we have the public’s patience there. And, on the suspect from Minnesota – well, he’s not a suspect, he’s one of them – the autopsy should be completed later this evening. We’ll see. I’ll let you know after I hear from Dr. Takamura. And, on the Surveillance-Net deployment, the Europeans are balking, especially the French, no big surprise there, but in the end they’ll do it.”
“Tell me about that again.”
“High resolution cameras at all public and transit locations, stealth insertion of the technology, stealth operation, advanced biometric facial recognition and computer modeling. It’s pretty impressive. All data is then collated and run through the CIA and NSA databases, with the new quantum-parallel computing technology. Some in the Pentagon and CIA were pushing for secret DNA testing of the U.S. population, but that’s way over the edge. Besides, we’d be impeached if anyone ever found out. And, of course, it’s simply not warranted. Hey, some things have to remain sacred, right?”
“What did you say to them?”
“In my nicest voice, I told them, again, to shut up and be happy with the extent of the Surveillance-Net deployment. They grumbled, stuck their collective tails between their collective hindquarters and sauntered off to their next paid luncheon. As we know, they’ll be back. On the G-20 summit next weekend, our not cancelling it was a good idea. It’s a risk, no doubt, but the internal polling shows no public blowback, as it seems the American people actually like that we’re not holing up inside the White House. As I’ve often said, everyone wants a leader on a white horse rearing up with sword in hand. The other side of the congressional aisle is screaming about the evils of anything French – once more not realizing that the French never invented french fries – but, politically, they have zero traction and the public wants them to shut up too. Unfortunately, our ever-wise party leaders have decided to run negative, wave-the-flag television push ads in some of the competitive congressional districts. I told them it was a waste, but, as we painfully know, Cro-Magnon skulls over there too.”
The president looked down at his notes, “We miss anything?”
“One last thing. I didn’t send you anything on it. On the Arab girl, I’m considering bringing someone in, from the outside. Need to run it by you.”
The president laughed, “The dreaded outside?”
“Yeah, I know, but I have this gut feeling. I could pound away at her for the next ten years and some things would come out, but there might be a better way.”
“Hey, old pal,” the president jibed, “I thought you were the best?”
“Hey,” Osborne jested back, “between my official White House bio and yours, a ten thousand page fictional novel could be written, right?”
They shared a good laugh at everything they knew about each other until the president looked over, “Come on, Mac, I know you’re the best. And I’m not the only one who says so. How many times have you seen this girl, two or three, tops?”
Osborne leaned back. “Granted, ninety-nine out of a hundred interrogations I’d get there. Once
in a while, though…”
He paused. “You remember my old friend, Jack O’Neill, the prosecutor from Chicago? I went to the FBI academy with him.”
“Sure,” the president said, “he wrote that book. I’m still not sure why we all didn’t get together at some point – he was there, I was off someplace else, always something like that. I still regret missing out on that Hilton Head golf weekend you guys put together.”
“Hey, you were off traipsing across Europe. None of us felt too sorry for you. Here we were in South Carolina drinking beer and you’re off playing Hemingway with all of those Parisian girls, remember?”
“Yeah, a good summer...So, you think O’Neill is our one-in-a-hundred?”
“I’ve seen it up close. At the Bureau, we worked together on white-collar fraud cases, high-level criminal suspects, serial killers, for Christ’s sake, every form of creep you can imagine. But he has a different touch for some people.”
“You mean, women?”
Osborne smiled. “Well, true enough. It’s something more, though, hard to explain. He goes…deeper.”
“Alright then, what’s his background? You know what I mean.” The president liked to know who was around him. It came with the job.
Osborne thought for a moment, “Well, as you mentioned, he had the best selling book after catching the Diamond Lake serial killer – made a ton of money and then had a percentage in the movie. But Jack isn’t the Hollywood type. He then moved from the FBI to prosecuting. Still not sure if the move had anything to do with the death of his wife, he doesn’t talk about it much. They were close and it hit him pretty hard. Never any alcohol problems or anything like that – he worked straight through it – but he did close up a bit. Most would never have noticed. The last couple of years he’s seemed like his old self. Then again, who ever comes all the way back from that?”
“Bad car wreck, wasn’t it?”
“Ten years ago. A truck, some guy texting. Middle of a sunny day.”
Osborne looked down, remembering his Hawaiian weekends with Jack and Maura, her easy smile over dinners, the way Jack looked at her, the funeral.