Cyrus Twelve: Leona Foxx Suspense Thriller #2

by Ted Peters

  A squad car rolled up, and two policemen walked up the front steps to the house. Graham ushered them into the living room where Victoria told her story one more time. One officer took notes. He asked everyone in the room about what they knew or didn’t know.

  “We see children miss a meal every day, Mrs. Walker,” said the officer with the name “Ward” written on his uniform breast pocket. “Then, they come wandering home wondering what all the fuss is about.”

  “For the sake of Brasilia, Officer,” interposed Leona. “That doesn’t offer any comfort at this moment. We need action. We need a search. We need to know what’s happened.”

  “Now, calm down, Pastor Lee,” said Officer Ward. “We will do everything we can to find Cupid. By the way, Pastor, you are widely respected at the Police Department for your work in this neighborhood. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  Chapter 71

  Chicago

  Days passed without any word of Cupid’s whereabouts. Morning and evening Leona or Graham or both would visit Victoria Walker. Every two hours Leona would telephone one or another of her friends at the Chicago PD for an update on the investigation. Runaway? Kidnapping? Child molester? Professional hit?

  Leona kept Hillar at the computer. “Look for anything that connects Transhumanism with Intelligence Amplification with deep brain implantation with NASA with TTU with TaiCom with children with Khalid Neshat. Hack, Hillar, hack!”

  Leona prodded Graham to connect with colleagues at the CIA. Graham even called Director Gerhard Holthusen. Leona called Bernard Lee. Neither CIA officials could connect Cupid’s disappearance with what they knew about TaiCom.

  Gerhard Holthusen found that Neshat had left the US, but he could not identify Neshat’s destination. Bernard Lee said he would attempt to hack into TaiCom internal memos. Although he found no links to Cupid or to Chicago or even to Leona in TaiCom’s computer storage, he did find a mention of children in communiqués involving Buzz Kidd. He also found reference to the Dalmatian Islands. But, to Lee, nothing stood out as helpful. Nevertheless, Bernard reported all of this to Graham and Leona.

  “Bernie,” Leona ordered sternly over the phone, “please go back to your computer and trace down everything you know and the CIA knows about the TaiCom people. Background this time. Send me what you get.”

  “Hey, Lee, I thought you worked for me. Not the other way around.”

  “Get used to it, Lee. Now, the other Lee works for Lee. And, by the way, thanks Bernie.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Grammy and Gerhard,” Leona pressed in a three-way Skype call, “can you track the traveling of the TaiCom syndicate members? I want to know where they’ve gone in the last six months. Who did they talk to? Have any of them been to Chicago? Anything?”

  “Graham,” said Gerhard, “are you sure I should leave you unprotected there in Chicago?”

  “Cut the crap, you guys,” said Leona. “I’ll be nice to you when this is over.”

  “Hillar, can you trace H+ internet communications to place of origin? Can you look for anything that connects anything we know to Croatia? To the Dalmatian Islands?” The pastor pressed Hillar to keep working like a slave ship drummer beats out the rowing speed. She softened her ruthlessness with cups of hot chocolate and cold smoothies.

  In time Bernard Lee provided Leona with some scholarly papers written by both John Blair and a counterpart in Heidelberg, Germany, named Hans-Georg Welker. “I don’t know if this’ll help, but here it is.”

  It was a collection of pieces regarding a theoretical debate over the nature of intelligence. Blair was arguing that intelligence is a short quantitative step beyond computation. To be intelligent is to compute more information faster. Welker, in contrast, held that no amount of computation would lead to intelligence. To be intelligent, insisted Welker in his writings, requires a qualitative leap to insight. Leaps to insight are traits of human intelligence, but such leaps would be impossible for computers. “Artificial Intelligence simply isn’t,” said Welker.

  Lee told Leona in an email that this public dispute between scientists could indirectly harm TaiCom’s bottom line. Unless the public believes in both AI and IA, customers would be no more interested in buying expensive TaiCom products than buying cheap adding machines.

  Leona thought she’d bet on Welker to win this debate. To Blair’s credit, she would need to take advantage of the encyclopedia now attached to her brain. But, to Welker’s credit, nothing could happen without a leap to insight. She’d believed in insight all along. But, for an insight to matter, it would have to employ data, facts, knowledge, and even connections between data, facts, and knowledge. Could she think her way toward the next step in chasing down Cupid’s whereabouts?

  Chapter 72

  Chicago

  “Justin Hurley here,” said the Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. His secretary told him that Leona Foxx was calling, and the bishop granted access.

  “You could’ve used my cell phone, Lee.”

  “This is official business, Good Bishop. Thanks to you I now serve both God and mammon. Mammon—that’s the CIA as you know—is sorta calling me to get back on the road. At some point I want Graham to meet me on the road. Could you by chance send a supply pastor out to Trinity for the next two Sundays? Some preacher who’s never had pastoral care, so he or she won’t ask too many questions.”

  “That’s the job of your synod bishop, Gerald Botwright. Not me,” said Hurley.

  “Didja hear me. I want a supply preacher who is carefully chosen.”

  “Oh, I get you. Yes, I’ll get a seminarian. Someone very green.”

  “Thanks, Justin,” said Leona hanging up.

  After clicking off the phone, Leona turned her head slightly because she felt something. Some kind of activity seemed to be taking place within her brain. Before her mind’s eye there appeared a drama. Like a play on stage, Leona saw herself with a gun, shooting and killing Graham. Is this what I’m being told to do? she quizzed herself. Then, she smiled.

  Chapter 73

  Chicago

  “Do you miss Pastor Lee?” Hillar asked Graham. “I guess she won’t be back before Sunday. You’ll have to preach again.”

  Graham grunted. “Actually, I won’t have to preach this Sunday. We’ve got a guest preacher. Somebody from the seminary in Hyde Park.”

  Hillar and Graham were sitting on the parsonage front steps, Graham with his PC and Hillar with his iPod. Hillar was concentrating. His right hand was moving though glued to the screen. With his left hand he was waving. He slapped his own forehead. He could be heard repeating, “Fuck off! Fuck off!” He was commanding mosquitoes to leave him alone or die.

  “Hillar!” said Graham in a judgmental tone. The teenage boy did not look up. He ignored Graham’s voice.

  Graham continued talking with the dubious assumption that Hillar would be listening. “Look, Hillar, you don’t need to be so violent. Simply wave your left hand deftly and say, ‘Shoo! Shoo!’ See how the mosquitoes fuck off?”

  Not being certain of what he was hearing, Hillar interrupted his game to look Graham in the eye. But Graham was by then focused on his computer screen.

  Both Hillar and Graham then heard a voice. “Hey there!” It was Trudy Lincoln standing at the parsonage gate. She was wearing a tank top, denim shorts, and high heels.

  “Come right on in,” said Graham.

  “Pastor Gee, I cannot reject your invitation.” Trudy opened and closed the gate. She sauntered up onto the porch and took a seat between the two.

  “Now, Trudy, you know Hillar, don’t you?” Graham said.

  “I’m Trudy Lincoln,” she said turning to Hillar.

  “Oh, Oh. I’m sitting with two famous presidents,” said Hillar grinning. “Washington and Lincoln.”

  Trudy offered a laugh of courtesy.

  “So what brings you to church, Miss Trudy?” quizzed Graham.

  “Well, I didn’t know I’d be in chur
ch, Pastor Gee,” she said in her singsong voice. “I just thought a little visit might be in order. It’s been what, two weeks, since you called on me, Pastor Gee?”

  Graham grunted. Later in the otherwise boring conversation, Graham’s ears picked up when Trudy mentioned something about strange people in the neighborhood. “Here in South Shore we’ve got white people like Hillar, here. And we’ve got black people like you and me. But, have you noticed that in the past few days some Asian looking men wandering around? I sometimes see them on Burnham. Sometimes in the alley.”

  “What do you mean, Asian?”

  “Chinese, maybe. But, not exactly Chinese. I see Chinese people every day in the Loop, but never down here on the South Side.”

  “Did you get a close look?” asked Graham.

  “I walked up and introduced myself.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. What did you notice?”

  “None of them would talk to me. I wondered if they knew English. They just waved me away. Then I noticed something interesting.”

  “What?”

  “On their left hands they had an identical tattoo. It was a dragon with a tail as long as a snake. The tail pointed down towards their wrists. Under the dragon was something in Chinese. What do you think it means, pastor Gee?”

  Chapter 74

  As soon as the gate closed behind Trudy, Graham went straight to his laptop. Graham opened his email. He’d love to connect with Leona, but how?

  Perhaps checking his in-box would be a useless effort. Whoever was tagging him would be randomly if not systematically monitoring his emails, looking for signs of communication with Leona. This means whatever Leona selected as a disguise might fool Graham as well.

  He glanced at the return addresses. None were obviously from Leona. His eyes fixed momentarily on one curious item: spamfilterinc. Now, he thought, why didn’t my spam filter filter out?… With his finger on the delete button, he paused. Would someone sending spam use the word ‘spam’? He clicked. On his screen appeared an email. No greeting. Just a series of phrases.

  Miss you.

  Find Croatia on the map.

  Šibenik.

  Ferry to Prvićć Luka (pronounced per-vich-looka).

  Overnight at Maestral Hotel.

  Wednesday, August 18…

  By 7:00pm make dinner reservation at Stara Makina for 8:30pm

  Order ispod peke with octopus for two to be served at 9:00pm

  Arrive at 8:30pm

  Order a bottle of Graševina with three glasses

  I will meet you there.

  Miss you.

  Graham sat back and paused, repeating to himself “miss you.” Twice? He looked again. Yes, twice! Graham was unaware of the smile decorating his face. Moments passed before he re-focused his attention on the email contents. Then, he went into the house to make. a hardcopy.

  Graham quizzed himself. Might the spies have spotted this? Might they have intercepted it? Might they have disregarded it as spam? Or, might it be from someone other than Leona, someone setting a trap? No mention of Cyrus Twelve. No secret password or private indicator that could assure me that it was from Leona and not an imposter. If only Leona and I had a secret life, then she’d know just how to tip me off. Mmmmmm. What shall I do?

  Chapter 75

  Croatia

  His plane touched down at the Split Airport, north of Dubrovnik yet south of Zagreb. Croatia is an ancient country, recently separated from its neighbors in the old Yugoslavia. Graham took a harrowing hour taxi ride around hair pin turns up a mountain side. On one side before him lay the sun crested splendor of the Adriatic Sea with its twelve hundred island archipelago. On the other side he could see strata of rock outcroppings, stone ribs holding up scrub bushes and dwarfed trees. During the miles crossing the apparently waterless plateau he noted how the bowling ball sized rocks had been carefully arranged into waist high fences, protecting acre sized squares for…what? He could see no farming. No goats. Nothing but sand and brush and, of course, more rocks. On the descent to Šibenik he spotted vineyards, olive trees, fig trees, and signs of human habitation once again.

  King Petar Krešimir IV’s memoirs of 1066 AD mention Šibenik. He’s regarded as the city’s founder. This small Adriatic town had missed the influence of the Greeks and Romans in antiquity; but later Venetian and then Ottoman rule left a lasting imprint. In Šibenik Graham found a ferry departing at 3:30pm that would take him to the island of Prvićć Luka, about a forty-five minute boat ride, he was told.

  His ferry, the Tijat, operated by the Jadrolinija company, carried fifty passengers along with Graham westward between some of the Dalmatian islands. Graham could remember what Dalmatian dogs looked like: a white coat with black spots. Could there be one spot for each of the twelve hundred Dalmatian islands? Maybe?

  He didn’t need to be told the temperature was thirty-six degrees Celsius to know it was hot enough for him to remove his safari jacket and roll up his shirt sleeves. Despite clusters of conversation, Graham’s ears picked up no English. The guttural sounds of what to Graham were unpronounceable syllables gave him that linguistically orphaned feeling. So many Croatian words looked like they consisted of all consonants. Where are the vowels? Did the Scandinavian theologians steal Croatia’s vowels? Dane Søren Kierkegaard could certainly send them an extra ‘a’. So could the Finn, Tuomo Manermaa.

  One out of every three men reminded Graham of Serbian president and war criminal Slobodan Milošević: dark short cropped hair with patches of gray. This made Graham wonder how large the Croatian gene pool might be. It appeared that both men and women bore the same mesomorphic even ursine physique. The smokers quarter near the bow hosted four women, three with cigarettes and one puffing on a cigar.

  The second stop would be Prvićć Luka. The ferry dock was located on the east side of a narrow harbor, where the crystal clear water was calm and nearly waveless. As the Tijat approached the concrete pier jutting a football field out from shore, Graham saw it peopled with teenagers lounging in their swim suits. The bikinis on the full figured young women especially caught his attention. What he didn’t notice at first was the glint in the teenage boys’ eyes.

  After coughing up the arriving passengers and drinking in the departers, the Tijat began to pull away from the pier. By then Graham could see that the mischievous boys had tied ropes at various places on the ferry. As the boat’s engine roared and it began its journey to the open sea, the boys clung to the ropes for a free speed ride in the water. The ship’s staff harangued the youngsters and severed the ropes. The interaction of sun, water, and mischief was met with considerable teenage glee.

  Graham pulled his wheeled Briggs and Riley across the miniscule town square and between scampering dogs to the Maestral Hotel. He showered and put on shorts and a tee shirt. Then the new visitor took to walking about the tiny fishing village. No automobiles allowed in this seaside town. Bare feet were augmented only by sandals and a few bicycles. Due to the heat, people were scantily clad. Many men were shirtless. Women wore no bras. Graham could not help but notice sagging breasts beneath tank tops, succumbing to age and gravity. Both genders carried years of fine food and cold beer in beach balls of fat right behind their navels. Should I walk back to the pier and its bikinis?

  The bell on the four century old Roman Catholic church rang on the hour and the half hour. Houses were square with walls of stone. Roofs were sandy red tile. Fig trees adorned the walk ways. A rooster, apparently unable to distinguish evening from morning, crowed.

  The crisp Adriatic waters were met not by a beach but by a stone wall. The soft lapping stopped only a foot or so below the rim of the paved embarcadero and its foot traffic. Occasionally someone would dive between the moored sail boats into the very inviting clear water with its rock floor visible eight feet underneath the surface.

  Graham found the Stara Makina and dutifully made the reservation. He noticed how the outdoor kitchen included a large grill fueled by logs. The ispod peke would sit in its bri
ck cast iron oven with coals piled on its top for two hours later that evening. No wonder Lee told me to make advanced reservations. But, where is she? Graham allowed himself to think for a moment that the life of a spy could not be all that bad.

  By 8:30 Graham was seated on a wooden chair adjacent to an olive press table within ten feet of the point where the water lapped the stone wall. The sun had just set, but the afterglow was sufficient to see the surroundings as if in daylight. As instructed, he asked for three wine glasses. He poured himself a glass of Graševina, the celebrated local white wine. Reminds me of Pino Grigio, he said to himself. Nice. He sipped and wondered. How the hell is Leona going to arrive here? Will she be on time? Who is the third person? What is this all about? Am I a fool to read an unsigned email and then travel a third of the way around the globe just to eat octopus?

  Graham looked around, trying to find something to occupy his mind while waiting. He noticed a head a hundred feet out from shore. Must be a swimmer. Once the head was close enough, it spoke to a Croat friend standing on the stone wall. Again, Graham could understand nothing of the guttural grunts.

  “May I have a glass of vine? Yes?” said a strange voice in a thick accent. Graham turned to see that across from him was sitting a woman, someone he’d never seen before. She was holding up her wine glass, one of the three he’d put on the table top. Her darkish blond hair was pulled back in a French twist. Her white tank top loosely covered nothing that was sagging; rather it uncovered a cleavage magnetic to Graham’s eyes. Before he could decide whether she would be in her thirties or her forties, he was hastily pouring Graševina into her glass.