Measure of Darkness

by Chris Jordan

  “I presume down a back stairway. I’m quite sure I wasn’t taken out through the main door.”

  “Hooding the face is psychological torture 101,” Naomi says. “Accomplishes two things: makes the suspect disoriented and instills fear.”

  “It worked beautifully,” Milton says. “I was scared to death.”

  “What was the nature of the interrogation?” Naomi says. “What kind of questions did they ask?”

  “At first, when Mr. Gatling was present, they wanted to know if I was working for the Department of Defense or for the IRS. If you’re a Pentagon contractor, the contract often stipulates that the DOD can run a spot audit at any time, without giving notice.”

  “Hmm,” says Naomi. “I find the fear of an IRS audit more telling. They must have something to hide.”

  “You mean besides torturing accountants or kid finders?” I say.

  “Yes, besides that,” Naomi says, not flinching. “Something financial.”

  “They knew I had entered under false pretenses. I could have been arrested and prosecuted,” Milton says. “They went another route, one that could put them in legal jeopardy.”

  “Will you be suing?” Naomi says. “Reporting this to the authorities and pushing for an arrest? Unlawful detention comes to mind, for starters. You certainly have cause.”

  “Do I have to make up my mind on that right away?” Milton asks. “I’d rather wait until we’ve got Joey safe and sound.”

  Naomi nods agreeably, and it’s obvious that’s the direction she’d prefer to go. “Just so you know the option remains open. Difficult as it might be to sustain in court, without corroboration.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Jack snaps. “I’m the star witness. I saw three men carry a struggling, hooded figure out the back door of GSG world headquarters and hustle him into a nearby shed. I don’t care if Milton was trespassing, technically, or even if he was, technically, committing a felony by misrepresenting himself, that doesn’t excuse an unlawful detention.”

  “We don’t know that the detention was unlawful, under the Patriot Act,” Naomi reminds him. “For all we know it might have been authorized by the Pentagon. But let’s put that argument aside for now. I’m more interested in exactly what form the questions took, once they had Mr. Bean in the shed.” She looks around, puzzled. “Where’s Dane? She should be here.”

  “At the hospital,” I tell her. “Shane is having a lucid period and nobody knows how long it will last, so she decided he was top priority.”

  Naomi nods quickly. “Quite right. Mr. Bean? Back to the shed. If you will excuse the turn of phrase.”

  “They put me on a low stool and kept kicking it out from under me. That’s how I got bruised. Doesn’t sound so awful, me telling about it. More like a prank than torture. I guess you had to be there.”

  “Who ran the interrogation? Was it Taylor Gatling himself?”

  Milton shakes his head. “In his words he ‘turned me over to the professionals.’ I assume he left the building. He wasn’t there when the cavalry arrived, was he, Jack?”

  “No, he was not.”

  Milton describes, in a fairly dispassionate tone considering what he’s been through, being questioned by interrogators who remained behind a very bright light. Having satisfied themselves that he wasn’t working for either the DOD or the IRS, they soon established that he worked for Naomi Nantz.

  “I’m not making excuses for myself, because by then I was ready to tell them anything they wanted to know. But they already knew about my arrangement here. They have this place under surveillance and they had an image of me entering the residence.”

  “This is important,” Naomi says, pushing aside her glass of iced tea. “Exactly how was the question phrased?”

  “In the form of true or false. ‘True or false, you were spying for Naomi Nantz.’”

  Naomi turns to Jack. “You realize what this means? If they have us under surveillance that means they’ve already established our connection to Randall Shane, and undoubtedly had him under surveillance, leading, eventually, to us. That makes it approximately certain that Gatling’s organization abducted Randall Shane in the first place, which is why our investigation has attracted their interest. They have confirmed our hypothesis.”

  Jack says, “It was confirmed for me the moment we made the connection between Gatling and the security guards.”

  “I have a slightly higher standard,” Naomi says loftily, “but as usual your investigative instincts are well focused.”

  Jack rolls his eyes and leans back with his arms folded across his chest. Hair still damp from the shower, but dressed, as we’ve all come to expect, immaculately.

  “Oh!” says Milton, raising his hand like a kid in class. “Oh! I just remembered. They know about the program, Teddy. The one you had me install.”

  Teddy looks crestfallen, and then a little scared.

  Naomi reacts sharply. “They knew, or you revealed?”

  “No, no. They knew all about it. They accused me of installing spy software. Said I was guilty of treason and could disappear down a black hole for the rest of my life. That’s when I told them about Joey. That we weren’t trying to steal secrets, we only wanted to find the missing child. I was eager to tell them. I told them everything I knew. Everything.”

  “Milt, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Jack assures him. He again reaches out to pat the smaller man on the back, which is in itself unusual, because Jack’s not a back slapper, and from what I’ve observed, despite having mostly male friends, he goes out of his way to avoid physical contact with other men. On the other hand Milton looks way more than crestfallen and embarrassed. It’s as if something essential in him has been destroyed. Now that the adrenaline has had a chance to abate, it’s obvious that he’s been crushed by his recent experience.

  I push the plate of Mrs. Beasley’s cookies closer to him, without any real hope that they will have their intended medicinal effect.

  Naomi says, “Mr. Bean, I want to make one thing abundantly clear. My questions are intended to reveal what may be crucial clues as to what, exactly, has been GSG’s involvement in the case of Professor Keener. In no way are you to be held responsible for anything that may have been revealed under duress. Your task, penetrating through company security, is by its very nature dangerous. You were in peril from the moment you agreed to enter QuantaGate. You knew the danger and yet you persisted, which demonstrates great courage on your part. Particularly after we all learned what had been done to Randall Shane. Clearly, these were professional interrogators using proven techniques. In my book you were a hero the minute you entered the door. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mr. Bean?”

  “Sure. You’re trying to make me feel better. I appreciate it.”

  “I hope you come to accept that it is we who appreciate you. Now I’m afraid we have to get back to this business, however painful it may be to relive the experience, because a little boy is still out there and I’m very much afraid that our time may be slipping away. So, how exactly did they react when you mentioned Joey?”

  “They were surprised.”

  “Surprised?”

  “Or they did a really good job of acting surprised. I remember being surprised myself, because I assumed that if they had been investigating Professor Keener they had to know about his son.”

  “Think back, Mr. Bean. Was the boy’s existence a surprise to them, or was it our involvement in his recovery?”

  Milton puts a hand to his forehead, closes his eyes. “I don’t know. That’s my honest reaction. All I know is, once I mentioned Joey they stopped asking questions for a little while and conferred among themselves. Something had changed and the next question they asked was about you.”

  “About me?”

  “‘True or false, Naomi Nantz is acting on behalf of agents of the Chinese government.’ I said ‘false,’ and their reaction was to wheel out the gurney and tell me they were ‘going chemical,’ because they didn’t believe
a thing I’d told them. That’s when Jack broke me out of there. He’s the real hero.”

  And with that, Milton Bean nibbles at his sugar cookie, stares at the floor and begins weeping silently.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Anything Is Possible

  We find Randall Shane sitting up in a comfortable armchair, looking perky and alert. His eyes are clear. He’s clean-shaven, which makes him look younger and thinner, although the thinness may be the result of actual weight loss. He’s been given a VIP room, obviously, complete with a small fireplace and a lovely view of the Charles, but the food still comes from the hospital kitchens and according to his doctor he hasn’t developed much of an appetite.

  “If you can persuade him to eat, that would be great,” Dr. Gallagher had told us over the phone. “He’s a big guy, he needs his calories, especially when the body is healing.”

  As a consequence Naomi arrives bearing a Tupperware container from Mrs. Beasley’s kitchen.

  “We heard you lost your appetite” are her first words to the patient.

  He shrugs. “Not a big deal. I have weight to spare.”

  “Not that much, from the look of you,” Naomi says, popping the container into a small microwave. “First you’ll do me the favor of trying Mrs. Beasley’s macaroni and cheese, and then we’ll sweep the room for bugs and have a conversation.”

  “I’m really not hungry.”

  “That’s why I brought this particular dish. It has been known to stimulate an interest in food.”

  Naomi carefully dishes a portion into a white crockery bowl, supplies it with a fork and hands it to the reluctant patient. Shane places it on the table beside him but makes no move to eat. Naomi, persisting, removes a small shaker of salt from her purse. “Sea salt,” she announces briskly. “It makes a difference. I checked your chart, you have no prohibition against salt.”

  “Really, Miss Nantz,” he says, looking annoyed.

  “Call me Naomi or Nantz, but never Miss Nantz.”

  “Okay, Nantz. Thanks for the food. Maybe I’ll try it later.”

  “By then it will be cold and it won’t reheat well for a second time. Let me describe the contents, which are exceedingly simple but nevertheless not like any similar dish you may have had in the past. Certainly not like whatever glop the hospital, or indeed most restaurants, calls macaroni and cheese.”

  “Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done, really I do, but—”

  “No buts. Allow me to finish,” Naomi says, overriding his protest. “Mrs. Beasley first makes fresh pasta according to her own recipe, in this case rotini in shape, and boils it to a precise state of al dente. The steaming pasta is then transferred to a casserole pan. Over the pasta she grates a precise quantity of truly exceptional aged cheddar, sharp but not too sharp. On the top, a crust of toasted bread crumbs moistened with drawn butter. The dish is then baked for thirty minutes at three hundred and fifty degrees so that the cheese melts and achieves a kind of magical balance with the pasta. As a last touch the casserole is taken from the oven and the bread-crumb crust is browned with a hand torch and lightly sprinkled with select parmigiano. The result is simple, nutritious, delicious and easy to digest. I dare you to take one bite and prove me wrong.”

  Shane grimaces. “You don’t give up, do you, Nantz?”

  “Never. Be glad of it.”

  He sighs and reluctantly lifts a small forkful to his mouth. His pale blue eyes brighten. Without saying another word he adds a few shakes of sea salt and empties the bowl in about three minutes. He then heaves a sigh and says, “Oh my God. Who is Mrs. Beasley?”

  “A woman of many mysteries. Shall I dish out another portion?”

  “No, I’m good. You’re right, it was delicious. Familiar but at the same time not like anything I’ve ever tasted before. Wait, wait. Changed my mind. Yes, please,” he says, handing her the bowl.

  In the end he empties the Tupperware. I’m not one of those women who derive any particular satisfaction from watching a man eat, but there’s something about Randall Shane that makes me want to pay attention to whatever he happens to be doing at the moment. Not my type, not my type at all, but still. Interesting is how I’d put it. Like watching a pacing tiger is interesting. Makes you feel sorry for the cage, if he ever wants to escape.

  When he’s done Shane pushes himself back in the armchair and flexes the ankle that has the plastic monitoring device attached. “We need to talk about Kathy Mancero,” he says.

  Naomi stops him. “Not quite yet. Sweep first.”

  She steps out of the room and returns with Dane Porter and a gentleman, a consulting expert who shall not be named or described in this narrative, per his explicit request. Suffice to say that he’s the same gentleman who designed and implemented the electronic-surveillance shielding system at the residence, and checking a hospital room for bugs is something he could do in his sleep. The process takes about fifteen minutes, wanding his detector over every square inch of the room, and in the end he pronounces the place bug free.

  “Excellent,” Naomi replies.

  “That being said,” the expert continues, “my concern is the windows. Glass transmits sound vibrations, which can be detected from a considerable distance by a laser microphone. Before leaving I’m going to place a small, battery-operated device on the windowsill that generates random masking vibrations, but even so I suggest you keep the conversation as quiet as possible and be sure to face the wall, not the windows. Any questions?”

  Shane has several, all geeky technical stuff—he knows a lot about bugs and bug prevention—but in the interests of not boring the reader, I will refrain from mentioning anything that involves interferometers, beam splitters or microprocessors. With the geeky stuff concluded and our consulting expert having taken his leave, the conversation resumes at just above a whisper. The three of us, me, Naomi and Dane, as close to the big guy as we can get without sitting in his lap.

  “Kathleen Mancero,” he begins. “You looked her up, right?”

  “We have everything available from published sources. What can you add?”

  “Only that her involvement is my fault. I want that to be on the record. Whatever Kathy’s done, it’s because I was never quite able to say no to her. Not absolutely. She desperately wanted a mission, much like the one I’ve made for myself, and for similar reasons. They took advantage of that. If she’s helping them with Joey Keener, it has to be because she thinks she’s helping me. That’s the only explanation.”

  “We assumed as much.”

  “You did?” He looks much relieved. “Well, good then.”

  “I notice, Mr. Shane, that you’re still referring to the kidnappers as ‘they.’”

  “Just Shane, please, no mister. I say ‘they’ because I don’t know who ‘they’ are.”

  “Because you can’t remember?”

  “Because I never knew. Professor Keener believed that his son had been taken into custody by agents of the Chinese government, in an attempt to persuade him to share secrets. That was my assumption, too, until I saw the video of Kathy and the boy. That changed everything. If the Chinese were involved they’d have used one of their own, not gone prospecting for a nanny in Kansas. So it has to be domestic. One of our own spy agencies.”

  Naomi nods in agreement. “Did he share?”

  “Keener? You mean was he complicit in an act of treason? No, I don’t think so. He said not, and in my judgment he lacked the ability to lie convincingly. Then again, I’ve been wrong about so much, maybe I was wrong about that, too.”

  “Possibly,” Naomi says. “That has yet to be determined. Tell me what you recall of your interrogation.”

  He grimaces. “Not much is clear. I was with you, in your office. There’s a lot of noise and then something hits me and I pass out. When I come to I’m strapped to a gurney. Someone asks me about Joseph Keener and I tell them everything I know, but that isn’t enough. They beat me, they drug me some more and then it all gets very vague and blurry
.”

  “Could you identify any of your interrogators?”

  He shakes his head. “Never saw them.”

  Naomi sits up straight, takes a breath. “We have news to impart. As yet we have no line on who has Joey, precisely, or what they hope to gain by holding him after his father’s death, but we do know who abducted you.”

  Naomi delivers a succinct description of the events of the day, in particular the threat to “go chemical” on Milton Bean, and the convenience of a nearby airfield with professional interrogators on-site. Midway through the account something relaxes in Shane’s expression, and when Naomi concludes, he says, “Taylor Gatling, I’ll be damned. Haven’t heard the name in twenty years, but that explains it.”

  “How so?”

  “Keener told me he was under surveillance by his own security guards, but I never made the connection between Gama Guards and Taylor Gatling, Jr. Now it all makes sense. Or some of it does.”

  “Gatling is previously known to you?”

  Shane shakes his head. “His father was. I had no idea his son owned a security firm. This all happened so long ago, he must have been a kid at the time. I have no recollection of him at the trial.”

  “Trial?”

  “The father, Taylor Gatling, Sr., was an embezzler. A very bold and clever one, too. Owned a chain of automotive dealerships, had his face all over the local television stations promoting sales. Get the Taylor-made deal on the car of your dreams!—that was his pitch. Very successful, but it wasn’t quite enough to sustain his lifestyle, or his many mistresses, and Gatling came up with an elaborate scheme to defraud the finance company that floorplanned his cars. I won’t go into the details, which involved a confederate at the Department of Motor Vehicles, but basically he sold cars while pretending to still have them on one of his many lots. Because it was interstate fraud, the Bureau got involved. I was a newbie with a computer background and they decided to put me undercover as a car salesman, where I might get a chance to examine the paperwork, find out how he was doing it. Which was kind of a joke, me as a car salesman, since I never managed to sell a car. Not one! But I did collect VIN numbers, and figured out who was assisting at the DMV—one of his girlfriends—and we were able to put it all together and prove the fraud.”