"It was a highly coordinated operation: Sammy abducted Portia, baited us, and drew us to Navasota so that his partner or supervisor, whoever he is, could search my dad's place," Barry writes to his boss. They intuitively feel that the other person is the boss. Sammy seems too young and inexperienced, too impulsive, to be in charge.
M2's probing of Sammy's work at FDU has pushed Barry and his boss to recognize that there are potentially two separate attacks: one prong is the attack on Amputation and UVL's role in it, and the other is the attack on the NAFRA website at the university.
"So, a best guess," Barry writes to his boss, "is that the unknown team is the major player and it's attacking UVL. Sammy is an agent who is running a separate attack on the university NAFRA deal."
The two feel that they've made real progress this afternoon. They may not know the organization or how it functions, but they are beginning to figure out how to approach the problem.
When Sammy returned from Ferndale's, he lay awake in bed on Nardath Road, any chance of sleep lost to his fears. He realized he was in a bad place, that he was vulnerable. The world had moved to restrict his options. He couldn't log on to the BME site remotely. The risk was too great. And he couldn't go to the BME building again. He'd be a sitting duck. His initial worry was that Lenny and Barry would find him. His bigger worry, he soon concluded, was his boss Biggie. He knew someone had been into his Angstrom National account. He presumed it was someone other than Biggie, and the best candidate was team Lenny/Barry. Perhaps he should reconsider the relative risks. What was unnerving him, he decided, was the one-way ticket Biggie had issued to Fareed. Did Biggie have a friends-fly-free ticket for him? He had always assumed that Biggie was monitoring him, but Fareed's disappearance meant that surveillance was more intense than he had imagined. His conclusion was simple: move. In the morning he would have to find another safe place to work from, one of his choosing and unknown to Biggie. And to Barry and Lenny. He could only survive with real independence. He wanted to get out of bed and find the briefcase stuffed with cash. Silly, it was right over there next to the desk. He knew what he had to do.
27.
The others are asleep, but M2 stares at the ceiling. She's something of the odd man out. If not exactly a hired cyber-gun, she's support staff. She's used to the collegial, egalitarian world of hackers, where you live and die by your accomplishments, mostly displayed only in the dark corridors of hackerdom. She has no problem with merit. She can compete, but here she's not sure what her role is. A UVL team seems to be displacing her. Normally she would pack up her bag of tricks and go home, but she can't leave. And for personal reasons she doesn't want to leave. She has sized up Barry, and, well, when the time is right.… When will the time be right? Will he be over Edie in three months or six or a year? She knows now is too soon. She'll force the issue anyway. Maybe not the wisest move, but one she needs to make.
She gets up and fishes out a set of bump keys and a bumper hammer from the depths of her bag—from right about where Lenny's Ruger lived on their trip to Navasota. She's no expert. She's a software type, not an ops type. But she's watched a YouTube video on using bump keys, and she's practiced at home. It's worth a try. Clad only in an oversized T-shirt, she enters the bathroom and kneels on one knee in front of the door to Barry's bedroom. The light is dim, and she fumbles with the keys. She's not sure which to choose. She picks one at random and taps it with the hammer. She needs a surprise entry, so she taps as if she were breaking an egg against a bowl. She hopes she's been quiet enough. Taps. Nothing. Taps again. Nothing. Three is not the charm. She tries a second key. Taps.
The door gives, and it seems she's been successful. In fact, Barry gently pulls the handle and looks down.
"Are you hurting or in need of help?" His manner is disarming and kind, and she sputters.
"No, I, ah, I thought, well…."
She gently pushes him backward. He is surprised, but his body does not resist. He flops onto his back on top of the covers. He starts to say something about this not feeling right. She has stretched out on top of him and wrapped her arms around him. When he starts to talk again, she puts a finger to his lips. Barry has not made love in forever, and resolve is not match for biology. He's downright horny. He looks at her. A pint-sized beauty is what he sees. And he loves her vivacity and humor.
"I don't think we should do this," he manages to get out.
M2 ignores him. Then she is on her haunches over him, and she has him inside her. She moves as if she's done more than see a YouTube video.
"I can't believe this is happening," he says. It is not a protest, more of an observation, as if he were examining data on the relative humidity in Minneapolis.
She's up and down as if she's riding a horse at a slow canter. She leans forward and reaches down under between his shoulder blades and strokes where his withers would be if she were actually riding a horse. His face is half grimace and half ecstasy. She knows he won't last much longer. Like a jockey around the turn and headed for the home stretch, she moves him to a full gallop. Then there is a gasp and a shudder. More shuddering. His cum is violently explosive—the cum of a thoroughbred who has just won the Triple Crown.
"I can't believe we did this."
"You should believe it."
They lie next to each other, both enjoying the after-moment. He's not sure what comes next. M2 is very clear. "I know you're not ready, but I want you to know I will be here when you are." She kisses him, and before he can embrace her, she is gone.
Back in her own bed, she does not experience screwer's remorse. Remorse comes from the calculated encounter, her entrapment of him. This was a planned incursion as if she were hacking his brain and messing with his neural networks. She thought back to Lenny's story about the wife of Bath: women want mastery. The good lady was right. Emma hopes one day he will ride her like the palfrey she is, but on her terms. It really is mastery that Miracle Meripol wants, a mastery more manipulative than Emma Meripol could imagine, and one that M2 both demands and fears.
28.
Sammy fidgets in bed until he can stand it no longer. If you don't move, Biggie or Barry and Company are going to show up, and then it's game over. Tilt. Travel light is his first thought. It's pitch black out, no moon tonight; his black jeans and navy fleece will fit in well. Travel light comes back up on his screen. He takes the briefcase with its Angstrom National cash and his laptop case. He doesn't even bother with a toothbrush. With king cash you can buy anything. He stuffs his ketamine supply and syringes and his tiny emergency kit filled with code red essentials next to his power cord in the case. And one more item. The house is pitch black, but he makes his way down the stairs and to his Taurus in the garage. He pulls a pair of Missouri license plates he's been saving for just such an occasion from under the carpet in the trunk. These get slipped into his laptop case.
He heads back into the living room, but doesn't lift up the blind even a crack for a look out front. If someone is monitored him, they might pick up the tiniest change, he figures. He opens the backdoor gently, gently, and slips out, like a crocodile sliding into a lagoon. He eases the door closed and relocks it. He looks around, nothing. If there are cameras in the back, focused on the house…he lets the thought trail off. He skims over the grass in the shrubless yard—like the Navasota house, Biggie has designed the landscaping to remove all cover. In a flash he's out the back gate and moving down the alley and onto the next block.
Then a white car is coming in his direction. He freezes next to a live oak. The officer driving the patrol car misses him. He looks for the street number and calls a taxi. He wants to pay cash and can't risk an Uber. He checks the time on his phone: too early for an Egg McMuffin. Damn. Come on, you son of a bitch, show up. Finally, he can make out the trim yellow form of a Prius. Everybody's downsizing. Except the driver who is much too big for the cab. It's like pro basketball he thinks. They need to force players that big to use a bigger ball. Then the porch light comes on and a guy in a bathrobe
walks out. He sees Sammy, and the guy heads toward the cab. Sammy's standing by the cab door about to get in. Think fast. Be pleasant.
"Can I help you?" the man says.
"No, sir, I think I've got the wrong house."
"I think you do. You don't look like you live around here."
Be cool. And he is. Sammy ignores the guy, gets in, and tells the giant to drive. "Can you take me to that Denny's on Washington?
"No, problem. Say, if you don't mind my asking, what were you doing in front of that guy's house so early?"
Sammy does mind him asking. He minds a lot. "Oh, long story, I stayed over at my girlfriend's, and I wanted to clear out before her parents got up."
"Sly dog, way to go. What's her address?"
"Oh, I don't think so," Sammy says. He hopes his levity will turn this guy off.
The cabbie is right back, "You know that guy was right. You don't look like you belong around here. Exactly where are you from?"
At the last second, Sammy suppresses Fresno and says, "Bakersfield. And by the way, I'm Hispanic."
"Makes sense."
Sammy is worried. He doesn't like all this interaction. The homeowner is going to remember a yellow cab in front his place. The cab driver is alert to him and wants to know about him. Even if he pays cash, the driver will have a record of his pickup. Suck it up. There's nothing to be done.
Denny's is mostly empty. He orders a coffee. He's jittery. Even this small encounter bothers him. He checks the time. There's a McDonald's on Washington not too far from here. An easy walk. By the time he gets there, they'll be open.
When he sits down under the Golden Arches, he thinks, This feels better. He orders the Egg McMuffin he's thought about and fries. Next stop, wheels, but it's way too early to show up at a used car lot. Through the window he sees the cars leaving the drive-through. They are a different mix from those he served at his upscale Starbucks—more trucks, more junkers here. Is it that different types of people prefer different kinds of stores? Or maybe it is the neighborhood.
Then Mrs. Babcock comes flooding back, wonderful Mrs. Babcock with her bunched ponytail. He knows she is Naavah Ben David. But he likes the fantasy of Mrs. Babcock. He's sorry he hooked her, that his angel dust made her crazy and a security risk. He was working his way up to an exchange: his services for hers. Even up. That way she would not have had to rifle N.K.'s pockets for money. He knew she liked him. That's why it would be easy. Would have been easy, he corrects himself. Now she's locked away in some Israeli detox center. Crazy. She would have been to him what Anne Bancroft was to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. Oh, how he loved that movie. Maybe when he found a place, he could find the flick on cable.
Now he's focused again. Wheels. He calls a cab, this time not a yellow cab, from his burner and has the driver take him out to used car row on Shepherd. They all have bright streamers to attract attention and signs that say they speak Spanish. Well, he thinks, if at this moment he was buying in Bakersfield, maybe Spanish would come in handy.
He walks on to one of the lots and tells the only salesman there this early that he'd like to have a look around. "Suit yourself." He doesn't want to attract too much attention, so he's decided not to bargain too long or too hard. Toward the back he sees an old Kia. It must have been fire engine red at one time, but now it's more like a faded radish. It's been driven long and hard. They are all manner of dents, pocks, and scrapes. It's a four-door sedan with a trunk. Necessary, he thinks. Not that he's planning any more abductions. He looks on the ground beneath the thing. No oil, but who really knows? It will do fine.
A little sparring and they settle on $2,800. "What if I give you cash?" The price comes down ten percent. The salesman thinks Sammy has been had. He doesn't want to know too many details. Sammy buys the car with an identity he has held in reserve: Spencer Altwater. He drives to a big box store, buys some pliers and a screwdriver, and puts on the Missouri plates from his computer case in an out-of-the-way corner of the parking lot. He's worried that he is in shit city if he gets stopped, but he figures it is better than temporary plates and being in the DMV system. He puts the pliers and the screwdriver in his computer bag. He has a plan for them.
He also knows where he's going to hole up. And it's not too far from his office in the BME building. He is certain to be invisible in the sea of student apartments that have flooded much of the land near the old Astrodome. He drives over and has a look around. The choices are overwhelming, and there are many that meet his criteria: multistory, external fire escape, and a closely adjacent building. He imagines that with a running start he might leap from one building to the next. (He's seen too many police procedurals on Netflix.) He needs street parking as an option. No sense being trapped behind an exit gate that creeps at glacial speed.
He works with a student who has a part-time job in the front office of the complex. When Spencer wants to pay cash, the student pauses and checks with his supervisor. Spencer hopes there is no problem. He is in town from St. Louis. He's got cash, tips from his job as a waiter. It turns out to be fine. He's got a driver's license and a Visa. He explains that he's not enrolled in school yet and has no job. That is fine too with an extra month's deposit.
To Spencer it's the Ritz. Two bedrooms, carpet, with a fridge and a stove. He'll buy a microwave, an air mattress (two it turns out), a TV, and he'll siphon cable from a neighbor. He's not going to be here forever.
Timing, that's the problem in a nutshell. Now the game is to wait and think. The timing of his next move is up for grabs. A while back he despaired, sure that he was dead in the water without access to university computers, working alone, and unaided. He's past that.
The plan is clear and simple. If he keeps his nerve, he's home free. If not and he can't deliver, he and Fareed are going to be roommates.
29.
Barry looked at his iPhone. Eight a.m. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept so well or so deeply. It was not what road warriors did. But then before last night, in this war there had been no camp followers. It was hard to think of M2 as a, well, she wasn't anybody's follower. Somewhere between the afterglow and the stark light of morning, he decided she was a warrior too. He knew he was supposed to feel guilty. Edie and his son deserved more. More what? He wasn't sure. Could his actions in any way change the tragedy, the senselessness of their deaths? Could he bring them back? Would his dalliances dishonor them or was he worried that they would dishonor him? Was he to be the perpetrator of his own dishonor? What was it that M2 had said? "When you are ready, I will be there."
He was caught. He realized he was ready, and the rest of the world might not be ready for him to be ready. Every road warrior needed a place to go when he came off the road. He was no exception, but home could no longer be Edie and their son. He was both moved and suspicious of M2. Was her action a genuine reaching out, an expression of caring? Or was it manipulation for her own ends? What ends? Was there a difference? Were any motives pure?
He had a non-original thought: one door closes and another opens. If you don't walk through it, it's like being caught between cars on a fast moving train on a rough roadbed. Step through the door, but carefully.
He was brought back by the buzz of his phone. A message: See your email. Which meant his double encrypted secure mail. He smiled. It was from his boss: Don't shoot the messenger, but a guy named Snorri says that it's urgent that your father contact him. I'm a day late and a dollar short, but if anybody can, you can understand that I've been busy.
Barry walked into the bathroom and tapped softy on M2's door.
"Good morning. Are you feeling better?" she said.
"We have to talk."
She anticipated him: "No, we have to move forward quietly and out of view." She hugged him. He felt himself stirring. "What's up? I mean besides you know who?"
He smiled. "You don't miss much. Anyway, something besides you know who is stirring. I got a message from my boss. Snorri needs to talk to my dad. He says it's urgent. I guess the
only way he could find him was through me."
"It's early to call a bartender, but I'm going to take him at his word," Lenny said.
He picks up a burner and calls.
"Jesus, Lenny, it's eight fucking thirty in the morning. I work nights. I've been trying to get you for two days." When he was done with the mock tirade, Snorri retold the tale: their remarkable good fortune that Sammy A. turned up night before last at Ferndale's, that he didn't recognize Snorri, and that he had followed him home. "He lives on Nardath Road, 1427. It's a quiet street in Piney Point, in case you don't know. The guy is driving an old Taurus. It was hard to tell in the dark, maybe tan or beige. Who says Icelandic bartenders can't be operatives?"
"Not me. Thanks, friend."
"Where are you and why can't I reach you?"
"You now know how to reach me. We're in hiding. We were too vulnerable at my place." He did not elaborate. "Thanks, Snorri, I owe you."
Lenny went through the conversation with the others. "I say we go have a look see and figure out what that bastard is up to. Or maybe wait till tonight when the Sammy's likely to be home asleep."
"Let's have a virtual look." Barry pulls up Google Earth. What the four of them see is a two-story white brick house with green shutters and a three-car garage. The street is narrow, and with parked cars it might be difficult for traffic to flow in both directions.
"So there are two pieces to this," Barry says. "First, we can't simply show up in suits and say 'Hi, can I interest you in a Bible?' We know Sammy is not in this alone. I hate to say put it this way, dad, but this is above your pay grade. It's above my pay grade too." Lenny tries to interrupt, to explain to Barry that he is underestimating his father. "Let me finish. The other problem is I'm in the midst of working through something with my boss, and I don't think he'll let me leave, even if I thought it was a good idea."
The Nano-Thief: A Lenny D. Novel (Lenny. D. Novels Book 1) Page 15