“Were you able to get a laptop?”
“Yes. It’s on hold at the hotel, and there’s a car parked there for your use. Are you sure the time you’re spending on finding this woman is worth it? You may be chasing down the wrong lead. She may know nothing that will help us recover those coolers.”
“My instinct tells me she’s in DC or New York. Maybe Chicago on the outside, but nothing smaller and her clothes don’t match the West Coast.”
“The bigger the city, the tougher it will be to locate her.”
“That’s why identifying the photo is so important. I’ll get on it the minute I reach the hotel.”
“I’m willing to let you devote a couple of days to it, but let’s not lose sight of the real goal. We need to recover those coolers.”
“I understand, but I can’t help shake the feeling that Dattar’s escape, the attack on the hotel to obtain those coolers, and the photos must be related. I’ll keep you informed.”
Smith descended the rolling metal stairs from the airplane. He saw the MPs snap to attention at the sight of him despite his casual clothes. For a brief moment he wished he’d put on his BDUs before getting on the airplane, but they were back in the Grand Royal. He returned the soldiers’ salutes and nodded to the car.
“Take me to the grilling.” The nearest soldier, a young woman with short dark hair and heavy eyebrows, grinned at him, revealing two slightly overlapping front teeth.
“Private Mercer, sir. Won’t be that bad, sir.”
“You promise to stay by my side?” He smiled at her. Her look warmed.
“Private Warren and I,” Mercer indicated the young man with an upright carriage and serious expression standing next to her, “are ordered to protect you, and that’s what we’ll do.”
“Any chance of rustling up a uniform? Mine’s back in Europe.”
“Yes, sir. There will be one waiting for you at Department of Defense headquarters.”
He settled into the backseat, which was separated from the two soldiers by a thick protective window, and hit redial on Russell’s missed call. He was surprised to see her private cell phone number run across the screen. He’d expected her to call from CIA offices.
“Are you all right?” she said, without preamble, her voice registering relief. Smith hurried to put her at ease.
“I’m fine and just landed in DC. I used a military charter. No frills and no onboard Internet so I couldn’t let you know what’s been happening.”
“I hope you took the opportunity to sleep since it was clear from your clothing that you’d been trying to when the hotel was attacked.” Russell’s voice held a tinge of humor.
“I did. Thanks again for Beckmann. Any news on the autopsy?”
“Only a confirmation that they didn’t die of any obvious wound. We’re going to have to wait twenty-four hours for the pathology report. Beckmann’s vowed to find another one before he ‘dies of fright,’ as he puts it. I hope he does because we need some information and our usual intelligence network has been silent on the attack. Still no takers claiming responsibility.” She paused. “On that note, something strange is going on.” Smith listened while Russell filled him in on the incident at her home.
“Did they swab the light?”
“They did. It’s off to the labs, but I’d feel a lot better if you could have a look at it as well. I know that USAMRIID is on the cutting edge of new bacteria.”
“Of course, but I’m avoiding Fort Detrick right now. I’m told it’s surrounded by the media, all waiting to snap a photo of me driving through the gates. I have a friend who runs the lab at George Mason University. Can you send it there?” He gave Russell the address. “Any news on Dattar?”
“Nothing. He’s just vanished.”
It was all Smith could do not to tell her about the photos, and in particular, the photo of the woman. He toyed with the idea of telling her a half truth, that he’d found only Howell’s photo and the woman’s, but he thought that would be worthless. Russell could spend a lot of time tracking down dead-end leads because she wouldn’t have the whole picture.
“I’m in town and staying at the Four Seasons after I give a press conference at the DOD. Let me know when the cultures arrive and I’ll check them out.” The car turned in front of DOD headquarters, and Smith pressed a button that lowered the window.
“Showtime?” he said.
Private Warren gave him a nod. “Yes, sir.”
Thirty minutes later Smith was dressed in a crisp starched military uniform and standing on a raised dais behind a podium, answering questions fired at him from a room full of press. Privates Mercer and Warren were positioned on either side of the room and General Randolph, his supervisor at USAMRIID, stood behind him. He’d run through the bulk of the questions and was nearing the end of the session when a journalist asked about Dattar.
“Colonel Smith, were you aware that Oman Dattar escaped from custody that evening?” Smith tensed but did his best to keep breathing. Just hearing Dattar’s name made him grit his teeth.
“I’m aware of that, yes.”
“I seem to recall that you were involved in a humanitarian mission in Dattar’s region some time ago. Were you scheduled to testify against him in the trial?”
Smith felt the mood in the room darken. “As I said, I traveled to The Hague to attend a WHO conference on infectious diseases. While I’d been notified by the prosecutor that he might need my testimony at some point in the future regarding the handling of a cholera outbreak in the region, I was not scheduled to appear before the tribunal.”
“Are you aware that several witnesses were staying at the Grand Royal at the time of the attack?”
Smith glanced down at the podium while he did his best to contain his emotion at this piece of information. The location of testifying witnesses was to have remained strictly secret, and he had not considered that some might have been staying at a high-profile hotel like the Grand Royal. Smith wondered how the journalist had uncovered this bit of intelligence, and he wondered why Klein hadn’t mentioned to him that witnesses might have been staying at the hotel. He looked up at the expectant faces staring back at him.
“Are you sure of that information?”
The journalist deflated visibly, and Smith thought his first question was a stab in the dark. He thought of the woman, but dismissed the idea as soon as he had it. Nothing Klein had uncovered revealed that she’d died in the attack.
“I’m asking you,” the journalist said in an attempt to parry the question.
“I’m not privy to any additional information about the proceedings against Dattar than is publicly available.”
General Randolph clapped his hands. “Thank you all. You can understand that Lieutenant Colonel Smith needs to move on from this terrible experience and reconnect with his family and loved ones. This press conference is over.”
Smith felt another pang at General Randolph’s words, well meaning though they were. As a Covert-One operative, Smith had no living immediate family, no wife, and no children. He’d always relished the complete freedom that his lack of ties gave him, but for a brief moment, standing there on the podium, he felt a pang of loneliness. He shook it off, straightened, and followed the general out of the conference room.
Smith settled back into the military transport for the ride to the hotel. Next to him on the seat was a small duffel that contained his civilian clothes. He felt his phone begin vibrating when he was nearly at his destination. It was Klein.
“Saw the press conference. I have a request out to be allowed access to every witness the prosecutor called or expected to call in the Dattar matter, as well as every witness he interviewed when preparing the case. I’ll have an answer for you before the end of the day.”
“You read my mind.”
“I still think it may be a side issue, but I respect your instincts. If you think finding her will get us closer to finding the bacteria, then I’m willing to run down the photo.”
The car t
urned into an alley located behind the hotel and stopped. Smith climbed out, still holding the phone.
Private Mercer pointed to a door located behind a dumpster. “Sir, sorry for leaving you at the service entrance, but we were told to avoid the main lobby and to let you slip in on your own. That entrance leads to a back hallway.” Private Mercer whispered the information so as not to disturb the call. Smith saluted both soldiers and stood aside while the car reversed down the alley and drove away. As he approached the door, he noted the closed-circuit cameras that monitored the entrance; his mind was engaged with his phone conversation and his concentration on the problem of the photo. He saw the glint of light that flashed from the bushes at the top of the narrow alley, but was slow to register the danger.
13
ALOUD TRUCK HORN BLARED from a nearby street. Smith jerked his head to look, but kept his hand with the phone in the same position. A searing pain entered his palm, piercing the flesh, and he reacted by dropping the phone. The bullet slammed into the metal dumpster to his right, and ricocheted off at an angle. Smith needed no further incentive to move. He sprinted to the entrance five feet in front of him, yanked the handle to swing open the door and tumbled through the opening. A second shot hammered into the metal panel. Smith kept moving, running down the narrow hallway and deeper into the hotel’s interior. The door slammed closed behind him.
Smith jogged through a warehouse area, past pallets of supplies and through another door. This one led to a quiet, carpeted hallway, with soft lighting. He slowed to a fast walk, shoving his bleeding hand into his jacket pocket, still clutching the small duffel with his other. His palm burned and he was sweating freely. He thought the presence of the cameras in the alley would keep the shooter from following him through the back area, but the lobby would be crowded and a perfect location for someone to slip up behind him and slide a knife into him before moving off.
The registration area lay before him, and he headed that way but kept sweeping his gaze around the lobby, looking for anyone suspicious. He scanned the area, looking for more security cameras, but found none. He figured he had a few minutes before the shooter made his way around the building and into the hotel. That is, if he intended to try a second time. Smith moved fast to the registration desk.
A young male employee smiled at him as he approached. Smith swallowed, and did his best to settle his jangling nerves and affect a pleasant, unconcerned attitude as he stepped up to the counter.
“Jon Smith, checking in. And I understand I have a package waiting for me?”
The young man greeted him, but Smith found it difficult to follow the conversation. He uttered some inane response to the clerk’s questions, and retrieved, one handed, a credit card from his wallet. He turned and leaned against the counter, bending his body to once again watch the room, but finding nothing out of the ordinary.
“Mr. Smith? Your keys and your package. Have a nice stay.” The clerk’s voice snapped Smith back to attention. He gave an absentminded nod and collected the room key and the small Federal Express box with his name on it. He looked at the room number.
“904? Is that on the ninth floor?”
The clerk nodded. “Yes. It’s our concierge level.”
Smith pushed the key back across the table to the clerk. “Could you give me a room on the second floor?”
The clerk got a puzzled look on his face. “But you’ve reserved a concierge level room.”
Smith gritted his teeth at the delay. “It’s a superstition of mine. Afraid the fire ladder won’t reach to the ninth floor.”
A look of understanding passed over the clerk’s face. “Oh yes. Of course. We saw the images from the Grand Royal. I do apologize. Let me just change that. I’ll put you in a suite instead.”
“But please use a different name. I don’t need a horde of reporters tracking down my room number.”
“Our system requires a name next to a room number. Is there any pseudonym you wish to use instead?”
“Robert Koch.”
Smith steered clear of the elevator, opting instead to take the stairs. When he entered the room, he crossed to the side of the window and closed the curtains, flipping on a light over the desk. He shrugged out of his jacket, taking care to keep the injured hand steady as he went to the bathroom to check the wound.
It was an angry red slash on the fleshy part of the palm, but not deep and not serious. The pain far outweighed the damage done. Smith washed it with soap and wrapped it in a washcloth. He returned to the desk and ripped open the box, revealing a lightweight laptop and a set of keys along with a valet ticket, presumably to the car. He logged onto the Internet and sent an immediate e-mail update, telling Klein about the attack and that for security purposes he might not spend the night at the hotel. As it was, he would be hard pressed to leave safely. He weighed the idea of taking the car now, before the shooter had time to move into a new position, but decided against it. He was safe enough for the moment, and he needed some time and access to the Internet. He propped the woman’s picture next to the screen, typed in Google’s webpage and got to work.
For the next hour he stared at the display, tapping in the word “Dattar” with a list of others and reading the first few pages in the search result. He looked into the woman’s eyes in the photo. Her serious expression appeared intelligent and powerful. Her clothes—a navy suit, white shirt open at the throat, the hint of a chain around her neck, and diamond studs—gave the impression of understated wealth. Smith worked with medical professionals, biologists, and PhDs every day of the week, and this woman looked nothing like them. The female scientists that he knew had massive brain power matched with a scientific bent. Most donned lab coats for their daily uniform, and as a result they often wore simple shirts and slacks underneath. The woman in the photo was a part of the corporate world, Smith would put money on it, and while her brain power looked as massive, it appeared powerful as opposed to academic.
He picked up the phone, ordered room service, and kept typing, switching it up to Google images every time a woman’s name was highlighted next to Dattar’s. Another forty-five minutes passed with no success. His conviction that Dattar was somehow involved in the attack at the Grand Royal was faltering. Perhaps the timing of the attack and Dattar’s escape was a coincidence.
Frustrated, he started searching for software that could apply face recognition to the Internet. He found a commercial website claiming that it was testing a program that could read an image and then search the Internet for every place in which that image appeared. The software was in the beta testing stage and available only by invitation. Smith clicked the link, asked to be included, and then called the company. When a woman’s friendly voice answered the phone, he asked her to speed his inclusion.
“May I ask why you need this information?” The woman’s voice now carried a slight hint of suspicion.
“I’m a member of the United States Army looking for a business contact given me by a friend of a friend. I have the photo of her, but not her name, and my friend can’t remember her name either.”
Smith waited, hoping his white lie would be swallowed. It wasn’t.
“I’m sorry, we do have to be careful about who we allow to use the software. We have already had an incident in which a stalker contacted us and was attempting to locate a woman he was under orders to avoid. We never granted him access, thank goodness, but you can see the problem.”
“I can, but why bother to have a trailer on the Internet and invite users if you don’t intend to allow them access?”
“We’re building our subscription list to make the company attractive for a possible stock offering. We’re unable to grant access at this moment, but hope to in the next year; those on the list will get priority.”
“Would it help if I had a member of the military police contact you? I assume your company could trust them to use the information in a positive manner.”
“I’m sorry, but no. We’re in negotiations with the Department o
f Homeland Security to allow them to access the software, but those negotiations are ongoing. The fee has yet to be determined, and until then we are not granting access to any law enforcement authority.”
“All right, well thank you for your time.” Smith hung up and called Martin Zellerbach, the one man he knew who could hack into any computer, anywhere, any time.
“Hello, Jon, how nice to hear from you.” Marty’s voice sounded formal, and the sentence was delivered in a stilted voice lacking any real warmth, but Smith was pleasantly surprised. Marty suffered from Asperger’s, a high-functioning form of autism. He’d never really learned the social cues that most people took for granted, and if he answered the phone at all he often answered with an inappropriate greeting.
Smith pulled up a mental picture of the small, plump, green-eyed man sitting in the house that he rarely left, surrounded by his beloved computers. Growing up, Smith had protected Marty from the schoolyard bullies and taunts that often came his way as a result of his Asperger’s and at times was forced to protect others against Marty when he lashed back in a manner far in excess of the perceived wrong. Marty stood too close to others, sometimes thrusting his face into theirs, or made hurtful comments about them. People shied away from him and his strange, intense manner, and the man was isolated as a result. He’d never married, had few friends, and over the years had grown increasingly out of touch.
“You sound good, Marty.”
“Thank you. I’ve been working on a new form of therapy. I saw you almost died in Europe. I’m happy that you didn’t.”
Smith smiled. Marty recited the words in an almost bored fashion and didn’t sound as though he believed what he was saying for a moment, but once again, Smith appreciated the effort.
“How did you see me? I thought television gave you a headache,” Smith said.
Marty snorted. “The clip was on CNN’s website. I’ll bet you got a few hundred thousand views. Do you need my help?” Now Marty sounded eager.
The Janus Reprisal Page 8