THE WAVE: A John Decker Thriller

by J. G. Sandom

  “I got my degree at USC,” she said. “But something happened, so I came east.”

  “What happened?”

  “You really are a cop, aren’t you, Agent Decker? You go straight to the dark side.”

  “Actually, I’m a cryptanalyst forensic examiner. A code breaker. Most people join Homeland Security with visions of James Bond or Jack Ryan in their heads. In truth, most agents end up being more like something out of a Dilbert cartoon. You fight the bureaucracy more than the bad guys.”

  “I had an affair with one of my professors.”

  “What?”

  “That’s why I came east. It ended badly.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m not.” She laughed. The scotch was going to her head. “It’s quite a funny story, actually. We’d ended the affair, you see, but we were scheduled to take this dive off the New Jersey coast, in a DSV called the Alvin. That’s a Deep Submergence Vehicle, and those kinds of opportunities don’t happen along every day. Anyway, we were descending and Dubinsky . . . That was the professor’s name. E.J. Dubinsky.”

  “I think I’ve heard of him.”

  Swenson smiled. “Have you?”

  “Didn’t he write This Primal Earth? It was a best-seller.”

  “That’s the one,” she answered with a laugh. “Anyway, we were about half an hour into the dive when E.J. tried to kiss me. I pulled away and something happened to the ship. To this day, I don’t know what it was. We lost power. I thought it was some kind of trick or something, a kind of ruse to scare me. E.J. was always pulling shit like that. Anyway, I guess I kind of lost it. Haven’t set foot in a DSV since. Give me the heebie-jeebies now.”

  “Was it on purpose?”

  She shook her head. “Now, I don’t think so. But at the time . . . It would have been just like her.”

  “Her?”

  “E.J.’s a woman.”

  “Oh,” said Decker. He looked away. “I didn’t know.” He took another sip of his drink.

  Swenson laughed. It was completely unrestrained and genuine. It liberated her. “Don’t misunderstand me, Agent Decker. I’m not gay or anything. It was just one of those things.”

  “What things?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. When you get as much male attention as I do, it was probably inevitable that I should run in the other direction at some point in my life. Am I embarrassing you?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Then why are you blushing? I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. I must be drunk.”

  “Already?” Decker stood up. He strolled over to the table and picked up the bottle of Dalwinnie. Then he walked back to Swenson and poured her another drink. “Just to be sure,” he added with a grin.

  “Have you no honor, Cryptanalyst Forensic Examiner Decker?”

  “You’ve had a tough day.”

  “Oh, I see. It’s a pity drink.”

  Decker poured himself another scotch and sat back on the sofa. He put the bottle on the floor beside his feet. “Are you always this combative?” he replied.

  Swenson kicked her shoes off. She pulled her feet up on the sofa next to his. “Am I being combative?” She laughed and moved a little closer. She wiggled her toes. “I thought I was flirting.” She took the glass of scotch from Decker’s hand, and rested it on the floor. Then she leaned forward, bringing her face close, only inches away, until she could feel his breath on her lips.

  “Kiss me, Agent Decker.” His eyes were gray, dotted with blue and green.

  Decker glanced away. He reached down for his glass and placed it inbetween them. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said.

  “Why not? What’s the matter, don’t you like me? Perhaps I’m not your type. What is your type, anyway?”

  “That’s not what I meant. It’s just . . . ” He hesitated. “It’s just that I’m working on this case, and you’re a part of it. It wouldn’t be, you know – professional.” Decker stood up and walked over to the CD player on his trunk. He pressed a button and the air was suddenly filled with saxophone, piano, drums and double bass.

  Swenson recognized the tune. It was one hundred percent Charles Mingus, from the album Mingus Ah Um, but she couldn’t recall the name of the track. Goodbye something.

  Decker turned and, for a moment, the way the lamplight caught his face, the way it seemed to wrap around one side, to glaze his skin, he could have been some kind of Idiacanthidae, with photophores along the angle of his chin, equipped with bioluminescence.

  “Why did you join the FBI?” she asked him. “I told you my tawdry tale. Ever kill anyone?”

  Decker looked away. “As a matter of fact, I have. Just a few weeks ago.”

  “I’m sorry! I was only kidding.”

  “Were you? It’s okay. Really. I was picking at your wounds. Besides, I’ve never really talked about it. Not even with that shrink the Bureau assigned me. Maybe it’s time.” He offered up a smile. “It’s not that common, you know. I mean, not like in the movies. Believe it or not, most agents don’t even discharge their weapons during their careers, at least not in the field. My dad was a cop for fifteen years and he never fired his gun.” He shrugged. “I was called out to translate some telephone transmissions at a farmhouse in New Liberty, not far from where I grew up. That’s where it all began.”

  He told her the story about McNally and the White Apocalypse. When it was over, Swenson took him by the hand and, this time, he didn’t pull away. Then she reached out and ran a finger tenderly along the white scar on his brow. “Is that how you got this?”

  “No, that was a traffic accident. When I was a boy.”

  “What happened?”

  “Drunk driver. I don’t remember much. Lost my memory.” He paused. “Lost both my parents too.”

  “I’m so sorry, John,” she said. “Who raised you, then?”

  “My mother’s sister and her husband. They took me in.”

  “How horrible. I know what it’s like to lose a parent, but not both parents. At least you were brought up by someone who cared, not in some orphanage or something.”

  Decker laughed. “You have no idea.”

  For a long time she just stared at him. Then she reached down and took another sip of her drink. “Didn’t you get along with your aunt and uncle?”

  “Well enough,” he said. “I like my uncle. Tom is a decent man.”

  “And your aunt?”

  “My mother’s sister wasn’t too thrilled to suddenly have a child to raise. She never really liked children. At least, not like a mother should. She and Tom didn’t have any of their own, and–”

  “What does that mean? ‘Not like a mother should.’”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “What happened, John?”

  “I said, I’d rather not talk about it.”

  Swenson got up from the sofa. She wandered off and stared at the books in the bookcase. He was hiding something. That much was clear. But what it was, she had no idea. Something dark. Something best left alone.

  After a moment, Swenson turned, took another sip from her drink and said, “Is that why you became a code breaker?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s no logic to a car accident. No motive. No hidden pattern or agenda. No truth, even. It’s just . . . random.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve spent your whole life solving puzzles, John, breaking codes. But some things – they can never be explained. They’re inherently illogical, unsolvable.”

  “Like the randomness of a traffic accident?”

  “Yeah,” she said sadly. “Or love.” She sat back on the sofa. She put her glass back on the floor, leaned forward and tried to kiss him.

  Decker pulled away. He got up stiffly from the sofa. He looked down at his glass, then back at her and said, “Emily?”

  “Yes?”

  He struggled, trying to locate the right words. They seemed to float
just out of reach.

  “Just say it, John. What is it?”

  “Would it be possible to cause a mega-tsunami?”

  For a moment she hesitated. The question seemed to spin up out of nowhere. “That isn’t what I thought you were going to say.”

  “Well, is it?”

  “What do you mean, cause it? You mean set one off intentionally?”

  He nodded. “You know. Like that volcano in the Canary Islands. The Cumbre Vieja.”

  “As long as it’s quiescent, the volcano isn’t dangerous.” She paused. “But to cause a volcano to erupt?” She shook her head. “You’d need a hell of a lot of dynamite. Maybe with an atom bomb or something. James has some pretty crazy theories about vulcan stimulation. I guess it’s possible.” She laughed. “Luckily the Canary Islands aren’t a nuclear power. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious,” he answered. “Never mind.” He smiled a feeble smile. He looked down at his watch. “It’s getting late,” he said, and downed his scotch. “I guess I’ll sleep out here.”

  * * *

  Decker lay on his old coach in the living room, reading the book Professor Hassan had given him that evening. He was particularly intrigued by a section on light and water. According to the book, the careful control of light in Islamic architecture had a mystical symbolism. Light was a symbol of divine unity. It also had two decorative functions. It modified other decorative elements, and it originated patterns. There was a subtle use of glossy floor and wall surfaces in Islamic architecture designed to catch light and throw it back over the facets of diamond-shaped ceilings which, in turn, reflected it again. Muqarnas – stalactite or honeycomb ornamentation, or vaulting made up of small concave segments – trapped light, refracted it. Ribbed domes appeared to rotate according to the time of day.

  Decker suddenly remembered the postcard the FBI had confiscated from WKXY-TV reporter Seamus Gallagher, the one allegedly from El Aqrab himself. It had displayed muqarnas too, within the dome of the Shaykh Lutfallah mosque in Isfahan.

  Facades, the book maintained, appeared to be lace-thin, and became transparent screens when light waves struck their stucco decorations. Mirrors, luster tiles, gilt wood, polished marble and water all shimmered, glimmered and reflected in the desert light. In this sense light – like water – contributed a dynamic quality to Islamic architectural decoration. It extended patterns, forms and designs into the fourth dimension. As the day progressed, the patterns changed, according to the angles of light and shade, like in some temporal kaleidoscope.

  Decker lay the book down on the floor. He thought about waves of light and visualized Swenson sleeping only feet away, in his own bed, right through that wall, striped by the strident streetlight filtering in through his Venetian blinds – the color of her eyes, her lips, the soft shape of her breasts, the languorous curving of her hips, fecund as the plains of Iowa.

  Before, when she had begged him for his help in finding Doris White, he would have given anything to have cried out, to have revealed the truth about the imminent disaster. The bomb. The Empire State. The Algerian mule – Ali Hammel! But he was under strict orders not to say or do anything that might cause a panic. It was bad enough Professor Hassan knew what he knew. “There’s nothing you can do here, Emily,” he’d said. “Frankly, I don’t know why you came.”

  He could still smell her scent in the air. And it occurred to him that she was only partly right. He had joined the Bettendorf Police Force and the Bureau in some strange attempt to find a pattern, to solve his parents’ death. They had been wrenched from him and – his entire life – he’d always blamed himself, at least subconsciously. After all, if it hadn’t been for his track meet, they never would have been there on that road that night, in that precise place, as that drunk had swept across and crashed into their car. They would still be alive. And he never would have gone to live with Betsy in north Davenport, never slipped into that coma, never been crippled all those months, alone and helpless in that bed. None of it would have happened.

  Perhaps that’s why he relished this assignment in the field, the danger, the risk of death. The guilt lay like a stone against his heart. But he knew that it was more than that. He hadn’t joined the Bureau just to decompose the randomness of his parent’s death. He had joined to build a wall around his heart, to insulate himself through work – especially this work, with its odd hours and insufferable realities, its intrinsic secrecy.

  The life of a special agent required a man to set himself apart from the world, from emotion, to seal the heart. On some level he had joined the Bureau so he would never have to feel again.

  He reached up and turned off the light. A blanket of darkness settled on the room, enshrouding him. Once more he was invisible. He sighed, turned on his side. It had been fifteen years since the accident and, despite appearances, he was still crippled. He still bore scars . . . and not just on his face. Perhaps he was too old to change. Perhaps he would never feel again.

  As Decker fell asleep, he slipped into a dream. It began with Sampson dying once again, the white supremacist in Iowa. As Sampson choked, he turned into Bartolo, his ex-partner, spinning out of sight. Decker could see the faces of the Sloane twins, the two state troopers in their uniforms. Then, he saw the face of El Aqrab. He was looking up into the dome of a great mosque, like the dome of the Shaykh Lutfallah in Iran – the one on the postcard sent to Gallagher. Then it was Decker who was in the mosque.

  He began to spin and fall against the geometric tiling until he was trapped within the pattern, half swallowed by the maelstrom. It was like quicksand, the net of a trapeze artist. And there was Betsy’s face again, his mother’s sister, above him as he lay there helplessly. There were her hands. Light waves reverberated. At first they shimmered through muqarnas, gold honeycombs of vaulting. And then the waves exploded into cavalcades of crimson, cobalt blue, light green and burnt sienna. The muqarnas turned to glass, became stained panels that seemed to oscillate and hum, that burned just like the fires of El Aqrab’s calligraphy, the leaden muntins casting shadows on his face like scars.

  Chapter 31

  Wednesday, February 2 – 6:54 AM

  New York City

  Decker got up at his customary time to stretch, work out, and shower before heading off by subway to the office. He had left a note for Swenson on the dining table, letting her know that he had booked her on the ten o’clock shuttle back to Boston, with a connection to Hyannis near Woods Hole. He’d even reserved a car to take her from the airport to the Institute. It had cost him a small fortune but it had also given him great pleasure; more, frankly, than he’d anticipated, and this worried him.

  Ever since falling asleep with Dr. Saad’s book in his head, Decker felt he knew the answer. When he arrived at the office, he brought the fourth wallpaper image up on his computer screen, and printed it out. Next, he removed an X-acto knife from his top drawer. He stared down at the printout. Very carefully, with the very tip of the blade, he began to cut out each of the black spaces in the wavelike arabesque around the words: on the ocean like mountains. When he had finished, he folded the edges together and fastened them with tape so that it looked like a kind of lampshade. He plucked two straws out of his desk and taped them at right angles across the top of the structure for support. Where they intersected, he made a small incision. Then he picked up a pencil and stuck it in the little hole; he balanced the structure on the tip. Next, he took his desk lamp and focused it inside the shade. The object cast a shadow on the desk. Decker held his breath. He began to spin the structure counter-clockwise. At first, given the fluorescents overhead, he couldn’t really see. The shadows were vague and indistinct. But then, as the wallpaper began to pick up speed, he saw the words begin to coalesce before him. Arabic text. No doubt about it. A full phrase, or a sentence. He began to translate the shadow script. Once again, it appeared to be a quote from the Qur’an.

  That’s when Warhaftig suddenly appeared.

  Decker turned off his desk light and
slipped the structure back into his drawer. “What’s up?” he said, trying to look distracted. He spent a moment writing down the words he had translated.

  Warhaftig dropped a stack of papers on his desk. “I believe you’re looking for these,” he answered flatly.

  Decker scanned the documents. “What is all this?”

  “What you asked for,” said Warhaftig. “You were right. Apparently, there has indeed been increased traffic through the Canary Islands by Arab nationals over the last few months. More break-ins too. A construction camp was robbed of two cases of dynamite last week. And I got you that list of prisoners Miller had contact with while working at Ansar II in Gaza.” Then he shook his head and said, “But, surely, John, after the confession of Al-Hakim in Egypt, after you found that picture of the Empire State Building behind the wallpaper, you gotta believe the target is New York.”

  Decker gawked at the documents on his desk. “I don’t know what to say. Thanks, Otto.”

  Warhaftig smiled. “One hand washes the other.”

  “If you two lovebirds are finished,” SAC Johnson cut in. He was approaching them down the aisle. “I want you and Warhaftig to help Novak coordinate the field teams, and to–”

  “Sir, excuse me, sir,” said Decker.

  “What is it now?”

  “I’d liked to chase down that Canary Island lead.”