Frank decided no response was required to that, so he simply followed Ida as she headed for a flight of stairs. Soon, they were walking along an indoor promenade between randomly themed restaurants, with facades decorated with everything from naked torsos to a twentyfive-foot tall headless, pigeon-stained statue of Lenin. Frank seemed to be the only one in the throng who found the scenery to be a tad unusual.
He found the casino floor to be even more bizarre. Heavily made up, spike-heeled teenaged girls who had seemingly been inflated into their skin tight prom dresses strutted their way between the tables. Frank assumed they must be oblivious to the crowds of slovenly people wearing t-shirts and shorts, clutching oversized drinks in one hand and equally large cups of slot machine tokens in the other, who were clearly not as convinced of the glamour of the setting. Pudgy, bored-looking waitresses wearing ill-fitting short red dresses carried over-priced drinks away from the bar, and garbage back to the kitchen. A fleet of new, spot-lit Chevrolets completed the scene, turning slowly like mirrored disco balls above the din of the gaming tables on tall pedestals, sales prices attached.
So this is Las Vegas, Frank thought. Well, yee-ha.
After a few minutes of wandering about, Ida concluded that the dice wasn’t running right for Pappy at the Mandalay, so they made their way to the Excalibur, which turned out to be the gargantuan PlayMobil castle. Ida led them on a circuitous route that wound indoors along underground passages and outside over pedestrian bridges spanning ten lanes of traffic.
Frank continued to marvel as they passed a kaleidoscope of tattoo parlors, ice cream shops, lingerie stores, and enormous ads for a variety of entertainments the existence of which Frank had until then never suspected. Not able to help himself, he stopped to stare at a series of large, blue, sloshing tubes from which downward-facing heads extended (“Full-body water massage,” Ida informed him helpfully).
They continued, and finally Ida stopped and pointed to a wiry, grayhaired man in an unbuttoned wool shirt worn untucked over a t-shirt and old jeans. He was sitting alone at a small table in an underground food court. “That there’s Pappy.”
Earl Jenkins looked up when they reached his table. As predicted, he was holding the remnants of a burger in both hands.
“This here’s Mr. Columbo, Pappy.”
“Shit,” Earl responded by way of acknowledgment. “I couldn’t get them damn dice to break right for me no-how.”
Frank was pretty sure this didn’t require him to say, “Pleased to meet you,” so he just stood there.
“Pappy, I reck’n Mr. Columbo would like to see the truck, now.”
Frank nodded hopefully, and Earl dropped what was left of his lunch. He stood up and wiped both hands on the seat of his jeans before offering one to Frank.
“Pleased to meet you, Columbo. You bring cash, like you promised?”
“Yes, indeed. Can I see the truck now? I’d like to get on my way before dark.”
With confirmation that he’d be paid in the manner least likely to attract the meddlesome attention of the IRS, Earl warmed up appreciably. Instantly, his persona morphed from casino mark to Las Vegas hustler.
“You betcha, Columbo. And oh, she’s a dandy! She don’t have the sparkle she did when she rolled outta the factory, but then again, neither does you or me, heh?” Earl gave Frank a poke in the ribs, and favored him with a grin that revealed more good humor than teeth.
“Anyway’s, she’s still dependable as can be. Runs as good on free, used vegetable oil from a fast food joint as she does on diesel, and she’s got enough clearance you can just about walk under her. Four-wheel drive and ten-ply tires, too. What she can’t drive ‘round, she just drives over, pretty as you please!”
Frank had learned all this from the ad, and was counting on it being true, too. Now that he had succeeded in dropping out of sight, he was planning on staying that way.
Earl was on the same wavelength. “AND, she’s loaded like noth’n you ever saw when it comes to get’n off the grid and say’n ‘Kiss my butt!’ to the rest of the world. If what yer look’n for, as you say, is to get some serious write’n done without nobody to bother you, well, she’s just the ticket!”
On their way back to the parking garage, Earl told Frank how he had come to own such a wondrous vehicle. He allowed as how Frank must have already guessed Earl wasn’t nobody’s fool. No surprise then that when that Y2K computer plot came along to take down the world, they weren’t going to catch Earl Jenkins with his pants down, no sir! He’d read all about how there would be food riots and worse, so he sold his machine shop back in Tennessee and bought himself a stripped down MountainTamer Expedition Vehicle – just the truck bed with the shell on top, and then fitted it out himself. He added extra fuel and water tanks, a water purification system, and “more solar panels and gun racks than you ever did see in one place, much less on one set o’ wheels.”
Frank couldn’t help asking, “So what did you do when Y2K came and went and the world didn’t end?”
“Oh, I didn’t care ‘bout that too much. I figured that was just the wakeup call I needed to get ready for the real thing when it did come ‘round. You look like a clever guy, so you must listen to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck same as me. They really opened my eyes, sure to goodness.
“You just wait – I don’t know exactly what it’s gonna be or when, but it’s a com’in – make no mistake! Maybe it’ll be some kind of bio attack to the water supply, or maybe we can’t stop them damn Liberals from socialize’n the bejeebers outta the whole blessed country. Or maybe some of them there cyber-terror fellas everyone’s talk’n about brings down the whole house of cards. You just wait and see if I’m not right!”
Hearing that last example, Frank had to admit that maybe Earl wasn’t completely extraterrestrial after all.
“Anyway, I been keep’n this here rig up to date ever since. She’s got satellite TV, satellite broadband Internet, and more juice in her batteries from them solar cell panels than you could use if you was to host a Tea Party rally, speakers ‘n all.”
With that, they stepped out into the bright glare of a surface lot, and behold – there was Earl Jenkins’ four-wheel drive wonder. Frank had to admit, it was a sight to see.
On the back end, Earl had added a top-to-bottom rack system on which a dozen ten gallon water and gas tanks were tied down. Above the front of the shell he had mounted a tractor trailer-scale wind deflector, and behind that a multi-layer sandwich of metal and glass that Frank assumed must be the solar panels. Behind that was a nest of antennae and dishes that obviously made up the telecommunications array. Frank winced when he read the bumper stickers.
“Now you just get yourself ready to see someth’n you ain’t never seen before,” piped Earl, cackling with glee. Frank couldn’t imagine what might come next, given that he was already looking at something he had never imagined, let alone seen, before.
“Alrighty, Mission Control, stand by to deploy!” With that Earl withdrew what looked like a TV remote from his pocket, and began pushing buttons. Motors started to grind and whir, and creaking noises filled the air. The solar sandwich quivered.
With a final groan, the panels lurched into action, first opening side-to-side, like the top of a cardboard box, and then unfolding again and again lengthwise in two directions until the array was at least twentyfive feet wide. Earl punched a few more buttons, and the array pivoted on top of the truck until it was pointed at the sun, tilting at the same time until it was at right angles to the sun’s rays.
Earl watched Frank’s open-mouthed amazement with obvious satisfaction. “Hell, Columbo, you ain’t seen noth’n yet. Behold, the Solar Avenger in all her glory!”
Without waiting for Frank’s reaction, Earl hopped into the cab of the truck, and turned on the engine. Then he turned the wheel hard over, and slowly crept in a circle around Ida and Frank. As he did, the array stayed locked on the sun like a paparazzi on Brangelina. Frank felt like he was being orbited by the International Spac
e Station.
The circle complete, Earl hopped out, slammed the door and strode back until he was facing Frank, arms crossed. Behind him, the solar array whirred, creaked and groaned itself back into the stowed position. A smile of pride nearly split Earl’s stubbly face in two.
Frank reached into his pocket and took out a thick envelope. With complete honesty, he said, “Mr. Jenkins, that is one piece of work, and no mistake.”
“You ain’t just whistl’n Dixie, Columbo! And don’t you worry, I got all them boxes of stuff you sent ahead stacked inside. All twelve of them, just like you said. Say, for a writer, you sure do work with a lot of electronical stuff.”
“Oh, I do a lot of research – lots and lots of research,” Frank said hurriedly. “And you know the junk they sell these days – if I want to get away, I better bring back up equipment, right?” Frank figured this was a good time to flash his cash, and handed over the envelope. Earl snatched it out of his hand.
“No question ‘bout that. It’s all crap these days!” Earl cackled as he slowly counted the sixty hundred dollar bills he shook out of the envelope. Then he counted them a second time before finally handing the keys and remote to Frank.
“Well, Columbo, you just have yourself a peach of a time out there in the boonies. I’ll see you right back hear in a couple months, just like we agreed.”
As Frank climbed into the cab, Earl asked, “Say, where you figur’n on goin’, anyways?”
Frank stopped, half in and half out of the truck. This wasn’t a question he was normally willing to answer to anybody. But a thought had just struck him. He climbed back down and took out his wallet. Then he carefully removed an old black-and-white picture, much creased and faded. In it, a child sat on a man’s shoulders. Both were smiling, and above them soared tall, ram-rod straight trees with heavily veined bark. “Maybe you can help me with that. Do you know where I can find trees like these?”
Earl took a quick glance and handed the picture back.
“Hell! You might’s well ask me where you might not find trees like that.” He pointed across Las Vegas Boulevard. “All you got to do is head north for about as long as you feel like, and then turn yourself east or west – it don’t make a diff’rence, so just take your pick. Nevada’s noth’n but big, wide valleys and long mountain ridges – wave after wave of ‘em, one after t’ other, each one run’n north-north east to southsouth west. You cross any one o’ them suckers, and when you get up to ‘bout 8,000 feet, all you’ll find up there is them trees – Ponderosa pines, we call ‘em.”
Frank stuck out his hand to Earl. “Thanks very much, Mr. Jenkins. That’s just what I needed to know.”
His course now clear, Frank climbed into the cab, put the truck into gear, and set out on the next stage of his plan. It was time he went and found himself some o’ them there cyber-terror fellas.
* * *
14
Desperately Seeking Adversego
It was only 8:00 AM, but Carl was already having a bad day as he emailed back and forth with his detailer at the CIA.
Who can you give me today?
>Bert Tyro
Again? Can’t you do better?
>You want to tail a student?
Right
>On campus?
Right
>So who do you want, Uncle Jack?
Okay, Okay. Who else you got?
>Ernie Cazou
Cazou! The target will trip over him while he’s tying his shoelaces
This was pathetic. But what could he do? Carl started typing again.
Hell. Give me Bert
>Too late; just gave him to Phil. You got Ernie till 8:00 AM. Out.
Carl fumed as he tapped out his orders to Ernie Cazou, sending him Marla’s address and instructing him to report anything unusual. Then he turned to the boring reality of his own day.
Sad to say, he now had only two responsibilities: protecting Marla without her knowledge, which was the ho-hum job he’d just assigned to Ernie, and protecting Frank, whose whereabouts were unknown. The FBI had issued a nationwide alert a week ago, but that didn’t excuse Carl from doing his best to locate him as well. Not that he had anything else to occupy his time anyway.
Marla, of course, might know where her father was, but Carl’s orders were to keep her in the dark. She obviously wasn’t going to tell the CIA where her father was anyway, and certainly wasn’t going to tell him. Carl uneasily considered the likelihood that Marla still despised him. Given the total lack of ambiguity on that subject she had conveyed during their last conversation years ago, this seemed like a pretty safe bet. So the obvious line of attack was to covertly track Marla, and hope to intercept a message between father and daughter without either being any the wiser.
Nominally, that would be illegal, because the CIA was barred by law from eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. But the FBI was not so constrained, and it hadn’t been very hard for someone his boss knew at the Bureau to get a judge to approve taps on Marla’s phone and Internet account “for protective purposes.” After that, getting direct access to the tap had been easier than it was supposed to be, and what the judge didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him – or hopefully Carl, either.
That had been the simple part. The hard part was figuring out how someone as savvy about security as Frank would go about communicating with Marla, if he contacted her at all.
How indeed? Carl would just have to be as observant as possible as he prepared to spend the better part of another boring day shadowing Marla’s activities on the Internet.
* * *
It was a sunny day on the Georgetown campus, so Marla set her coffee on one of the tables that lined the windows in Leavey Center. She took care to sit with her back to a wall as she opened her Mac and connected to the campus WiFi network.
Feeling rather voyeuristic, Carl watched on his computer as Marla scanned the headlines at the New York Times website, skimmed her email, and then checked out a few Facebook pages. Next, she opened her Twitter page.
Carl had no reason to know it, but Marla’s previously meager Twitter account had become remarkably active since she learned that her father might have to skip town. Every day she had started following a few more people. Many of those people obligingly began following her as well. Her Twitter page now displayed a bewildering and constantly expanding array of messages from rock bands, political figures, friends, environmentalists and whomever.
A Twitter alert the day before, for example, had informed Marla that someone named bieberfan457 was now following her. Sure enough, as she scrolled down through the endless column of today’s blindingly inane Tweets, a message from bieberfan457 caught her eye: it read:
>bieberfanXYX OMG! If only!!!!! http://bit.ly/CXAacb OMG!
The OMG!s beginning and ending the Tweet were just what her father had instructed her to look for before he left, but she forced herself to ignore the message for now. Instead, she scrolled to the end of the page, and then returned to the top and began randomly clicking on links and reading what she found as she moved down the page. Eventually she was back at the OMG! Tweet and clicked its embedded link. Marla suppressed a smile when she found herself reading the top item in a thread at the Celebrity News message board of Oprah Winfrey’s website. That message read:
Who thinks JUSTIN BIEBER should be on the Oprah Show?
>I do!!
Marla was surprised that her wonkish father had any idea who Justin Bieber even was, but the display of his trademark (i.e., warped) sense of humor made her feel closer to him. Not being into “tweener-pop”, Marla barely knew who Bieber was, either, but she appreciated the fact that mimicking adolescent Web comments would make it easier for her father to code a message without being obvious.
Just as expected, she found a comment from bieberfan457 towards the end of the page. It read as follows:
13. Re: JUSTIN BIEBER Dec. 21, 7:32 AM In response to: homey20
>Oh, that would be SO TOTALLY COOL! He’s got to know he’d get an AWESOM
E reception.. OMG! Very upbeat greetings from every true lover! Really, my TOTAL, most FANTASTIC feelings! WOW!!
>I can’t wait!
>PS: NO! He’s not GAY!!
Casually, Marla opened a spiral bound pad of paper and turned to the last sheet of paper, just above the hard plastic cover, so that the pressure of her pen wouldn’t leave any impression on the pages beneath. Writing quickly, she wrote down the first letter of each word between the doubled period after “reception” and the double exclamation point after “WOW”: OVUGFETLRMTMFW. She also scribbled down the word “NO” after the “PS:”
Marla closed the Oprah page and went back to randomly clicking links at the Twitter site for a few minutes before closing it down. Setting her laptop aside, she picked the pad of paper up again and created a chart that looked like this:
Then she compared the letters she had copied down from the message to those in the chart. The first letter in the series was “O,” which was directly above the number 15 in the first line of numbers in the chart. And the number in the second line was 12. That meant that “O” was to 15 as 12 was to the real letter in the message. And the letter directly above 12 in the first line of numbers was L. Hardly the most sophisticated encoding scheme, but then again no one would know which message board comment contained the encoded message to begin with.
It took only a couple of minutes for Marla to convert each of the first letters from her father’s Bieber comment into other letters. Now her pad looked like this:
The Alexandria Project: A Tale of Treachery and Technology (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 1) Page 12