“I can’t disagree with your logic, but it still doesn’t answer the question of what we do,” says Joselyn.
“Simple, we find him before he finds us,” says Harry.
“Unless you have a better idea,” I tell her.
“We tried that; it didn’t work, remember? Herman very nearly got killed,” says Joselyn. “It’s too dangerous. We don’t have the resources. Look around the table. There’s three of us. None of us has a gun or, for that matter, knows how to use one. Herman was your only real backup in terms of security and he’s down. Let the FBI do it.”
“We could die of old age hiding out in this hole,” says Harry. “The FBI’s got a full plate, and Liquida probably doesn’t even show up on their list of hors d’oeuvres. We could be here for years. I’m not that patient. You want to know the truth, I’d just as soon be dead.”
“If you go after him, you probably will be,” says Joselyn.
“I don’t intend to go toe to toe with Liquida. But if I can find a lead, hand it off to Thorpe, or let the local police take him down, I’ll settle for that,” I tell them.
“Only if they lock him up at Supermax and I can swallow the key,” says Harry. “On the other hand, there’s nothing more permanent than death.”
“Listen to him,” says Joselyn. “Dirty Harry wants to kill him?”
“Why not? He wants to kill us.”
“Harry is a different kind of criminal defense lawyer,” I tell her.
“And how would you go about this?” asks Joselyn.
“Well, I wouldn’t try to take him in a knife fight, if that’s what you mean,” says Harry. “But then, this isn’t a duel, and Liquida doesn’t necessarily get to choose the weapons.”
“So what’s it to be, water pistols at twenty feet?” she asks.
“Show me where he hides his coffin and I’ll rent a cement truck, fly it through his window, and run over him in his sleep,” says Harry. “That way I can take my time driving the stake through his heart.”
“Listen to this man.” Joselyn thinks he’s joking.
The fact is, Harry is one of the few people I know whose capacity to kill I would never question, not if the motivation was sufficient. And knowing Harry, he wouldn’t lose a lot of sleep after he did it.
Harry has what you call a hair trigger. Some might call it an anger management problem. Rub him the wrong way and there’s no way of telling what might come out of the barrel. More than once I have had to pull him off someone before he did serious damage. I have seen Harry kick the crap out of drunks in bars who got in his face thinking it might be fun to push the guy in the rumpled suit with the bow tie. He once pounded the shit out of a client using a casebook off his shelf when the guy started slapping his wife around in Harry’s office. The fact that the man was there on a manslaughter rap didn’t even enter the equation. Not to Harry. It was all in a day’s work.
It’s not that Harry brawls. But if you push his button, he can go crazy all over you. His victims are often stunned and defenseless in the same way you might be if you stepped on a pit viper you thought was a common variety garden snake.
In a crowded room Harry is the guy you never notice, the one holding the smoking gun.
If I got a phone call in the middle of the night telling me that my partner was in the clink on a homicide charge, it wouldn’t exactly shatter my image of who Harry is.
“Fine, now that we know how we’re going to kill him,” says Joselyn, “how do we find him? What about that address in Thailand?” She looks at me.
“What address?” says Harry.
“Herman and I found a notepad in a hotel room in Puerto Rico when we were trying to track down Thorn. You remember, Liquida’s client in the D.C. bombing.”
“Yeah?”
“The note was from an impression left on the inside cover of a notepad. It mentioned something called ‘Waters of Death’ with an address in Thailand. It was something Thorn had jotted down. To me it looked like a contact address for Liquida.”
“Was it?” says Harry.
“We don’t know. I turned the information over to Thorpe. He had two of his agents from the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok check it out. A few days later he told me they struck out. The address was for an office in a place called Pattaya. Thorpe told me his people found the office, but it was locked up and dark. There was nobody inside. There was nothing on the door or anywhere else in the building with the name ‘Waters of Death.’ ”
“Maybe they got the address wrong,” says Joselyn.
“No, according to Thorpe it was the right address. The one on the note. It even had the suite number. They had the local police check with the landlord. The office was on a year-to-year lease. The tenant was a Thai businessman. The local authorities told the FBI agents that the guy had no apparent criminal history. The cops found him, and the agents talked to him. The man told them that he used the office only to store business records. He said he never heard of anything called Waters of Death. He had no idea what it was.”
“He could have been lying,” says Harry.
“Chances are, if he had dealings with Liquida, it would have been under a different name,” I tell them, “an alias.”
“God knows he’s used a few of those,” says Harry. “All of his banking records here were under aliases, remember?”
“And, of course, they couldn’t show him a picture of Liquida,” said Joselyn. “The FBI was still working on that.”
“You’re right.”
“Do you know, did the agents actually get inside the office to look around?” says Harry. “Any kind of a search of the premises?”
“I asked Thorpe. He said he didn’t know, but that it was difficult sometimes to get local authorities to go along with a search unless there were formal documents.”
“What does that mean?” says Harry.
“He didn’t say. I’m assuming maybe a search warrant from a judge in the States, an affidavit, maybe something from the State Department by way of an official request.”
“Or maybe crossing the palm of the local cops with some coin,” says Harry. “But whatever it takes, it sounds like they didn’t do it. So the fact is, they don’t know any more about what’s in that office than we do.”
“It sounds like all they know is what the tenant told them,” I say. “Thorpe told me he’d have his people at the embassy keep an eye on the place. No round-the-clock surveillance—they don’t have the manpower over there—but they’d check back in a while. I looked on Google Earth. It’s a long way between the embassy in Bangkok and Pattaya. I’m guessing maybe two hours by car; that’s if the highway is good.”
“We know what that means,” says Harry.
“They think it’s a dead end,” I tell him.
“And they’re not likely to waste their time,” he says.
“No.”
“Do we have anything else?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“So it looks like we either sit tight right here . . .”
“We’re not going to waste a lot of money, take a chance, and fly off to Thailand?” says Joselyn.
“No, we’re not. I was thinking more along the lines of Harry and me,” I tell her. “Somebody has to stay here with Sarah.”
“Don’t look at me,” she says. “Besides, Harry already has experience in that field.”
“And you saw how much good it did,” says Harry.
“Yes, but you know her. You’re almost family. I’m just a stranger.”
“Maybe she’ll listen to you,” says Harry. “An older woman and all.”
“Watch it! Those are fighting words,” she tells him.
“I’m afraid I’m going to need Harry with me.”
“That’s fine. Then that’ll make three of us. Cuz if you go, you’re not leaving me behind.”
“That means I’ve got to bring Sarah.”
“The plane’s going to be crowded,” says Joselyn. “You, me, Harry, Sarah—and the dog,” she says.
“Why not?” says Joselyn. “From all accounts, he’s the only one of us qualified to deal with Liquida.”
“You can’t take a dog overseas. They’ll impound him. Probably want to hold him ninety days, maybe six months,” I tell her. “And if they don’t take him going over, U.S. Customs is sure to hold him coming back.”
“Not if he has all his shots,” says Joselyn.
“Over there they’ll probably want to eat him,” says Harry.
“Unless he eats them first,” says Joselyn.
“Cut it out,” I tell them. “This is serious. I’m going to have to deal with Sarah, and that’s not easy.”
“One thing’s for sure,” says Harry. “You can’t take Sarah and leave the dog. He’ll tear the place apart and then eat the help when they come to clean it up.”
“You’re right. We’ll have to leave Sarah and the dog. The question is, who’s going to tell her?”
“Sounds like a father’s duty to me,” says Harry.
“Yeah, I know, but how?”
“If we move quickly, get over there and back in three, maybe four days,” says Joselyn, “perhaps you can talk Thorpe into having Sarah remain here. And she’ll have the dog. You’ll have to explain to her that that’s the reason she can’t come with us. There really is no other way. Unless she wants to put the dog in a kennel.”
“And I suppose you’d want to draw straws to see who gets to talk to the dog about doing time in a kennel?” says Harry.
“OK, you sold me. Sarah stays here,” I tell them.
“Now you just have to convince her and the dog. I hope she keeps him on a short leash when you’re discussing all of this,” says Harry.
“And you think Thorpe is going to let us go, just like that?” asks Joselyn.
“Not if I tell him we’re going to Thailand. I’ll tell him Harry and I have some pressing business to take care of back in Coronado. Something that can’t wait. We’ll be back in three or four days. We’ll be very careful. We won’t stay at the house. We’ll stay in a hotel.”
“What about me?” says Joselyn.
“I’ll just tell him you’re coming along.”
“Good, then let’s hope he buys it,” she says. “Cuz if he doesn’t, I’m telling him you’re going to Thailand.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“In a word—no,” she says.
“And what if he wants to take our passports or assign agents to accompany us to California?” says Harry.
“Then I suppose the urgent business in Coronado is somehow going to resolve itself, avoiding the need for any travel. It’s worth a shot.”
“There’s a Wi-Fi hot spot in the lobby downstairs,” says Joselyn. “I saw it on my cell phone when we were down there yesterday. If you loan me a credit card, I can book the tickets in the morning. Right after you talk to Thorpe.”
Chapter
Twelve
By the time Bill Britain got to Thorpe’s office on the fourth floor of the FBI building, he was running late. Thorpe’s secretary had called him away from a staff meeting. She told him to drop what he was doing and come up immediately.
“Go on in, they’re waiting for you.” Thorpe’s secretary gestured toward the closed door.
Britain opened the door and stepped into Thorpe’s office. “What’s going on?”
“Close the door,” said Thorpe.
Britain knew it was something big the minute he saw Herb Llewellyn closeted inside with his boss. Britain was the head of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. Llewellyn headed up the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Directorate.
“Take a seat.” Thorpe picked up the receiver to the phone on his desk and punched a button. He waited for a second. “Nancy, I don’t want to be disturbed. Hold all my calls and clear my calendar for the rest of the morning. I’m not sure when I’ll be available. Good.” He hung up the phone. “What I’m about to tell you doesn’t go beyond the confines of this office, is that understood? I am told that any other assistance that we might need has to be cleared by the White House.”
Llewellyn and Britain glanced at each other and then nodded toward Thorpe. “Must be pretty bad,” said Britain.
“Less than an hour ago I received a phone call from the White House. I was told that a weapons program, something that DARPA has been working on with the air force and NASA for a number of years, now appears to have been compromised. We don’t know the full extent of the damage yet. NASA and DARPA are still doing an assessment.”
“When you say compromised, you mean information has found its way into the hands of a foreign power?” asked Britain.
“We don’t know for sure, but it’s a possibility,” said Thorpe.
“The White House wouldn’t get involved in something like this unless there was a top-of-the-line national security breach or the prospect of some lethal political fallout,” said Llewellyn.
“In this case it may be one and the same,” said Thorpe. “They wouldn’t give me any details, especially over the phone, other than to emphasize the magnitude. I was told that if there has been a complete breach of the program in question, the damage to national security could be on the order of the Soviet’s penetration of the Manhattan Project.”
“So it’s nuclear?” asked Llewellyn.
“No. I asked them that,” said Thorpe. “That’s the only thing they would tell me. It’s not nuclear.”
Llewellyn issued a subtle sigh and settled back into his chair, as if suddenly he was off the hook.
“According to what I was told, it could be much worse. What they said was that the loss of the information in question could be catastrophic.”
“What the fuck are they working on over at DARPA,” asked Llewellyn, “a doomsday device?”
DARPA was the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the technologic black-ops tool designer for the Pentagon. It had been on the cutting edge of every advanced weapons system from the stealth bomber to the latest generation of aerial killer drones. DARPA possessed classified futuristic projects on its drawing boards and computer screens that made Star Trek look obsolete. It might have been fiction, except that the agency had a track record for making sci-fi dreams come true. It was through DARPA that the United States maintained its edge of technologic superiority on the battlefield.
“According to the phone call, the project was right down DARPA’s alley. They simply wanted to get a handle on it before somebody else did. That’s what I was told, and that’s their job,” said Thorpe. “We’ve got a big bull’s-eye painted on our ass. So if it’s that dangerous, whatever it is, we better find it, get it, and keep it. Otherwise somebody’s gonna use it to put an arrow in our butt.”
“Point taken,” said Llewellyn.
“Here’s what we do know,” said Thorpe. “Two NASA researchers scheduled to attend a conference at the European Space Agency in Paris failed to show up. They never checked into their hotel, and nobody knows where they are. They’ve been missing for two days now.”
“Maybe they’re off having a frolic,” said Britain.
“Yeah. That’s what I said. But it gets worse. NASA has information that somebody has been downloading data from the project. There’s only a handful of people with clearance to access the data. The two missing researchers were cleared since they were working on the project on a daily basis. They don’t know how long the unauthorized downloads have been going on, so they can’t be sure how much information may have been taken. DARPA had NASA install some security software on the system. From what I gather, this was fairly recent. Immediately afterward, the software indicated that data was being copied, downloaded to an unauthorized device. NASA figured it was probably a glitch in the new security software. They thought they’d take a look at it and test it before they got all excited. It wasn’t a glitch. The data was downloaded to a device connected to a computer on the desk of one of the two researchers who is
now missing.”
“Any chance these guys might have fallen prey to foul play?” asked Britain.
“Anything’s possible,” said Thorpe. “I’ll get more information, names, and backgrounds later this morning. I’m scheduled to be in briefing at the White House in an hour. I’ll bring back as much as I can. But from what I gather, they’re going to be tight-lipped. I have a feeling it’s going to be on a need-to-know basis, and I’m afraid they’re going to be operating on the basis that we don’t need to know.”
“Find out if these two missing guys are critical to operations of whatever the device is. See if it’s just the data they’re worried about or if the two researchers could be part of a package,” said Llewellyn.
“Do we know whether either of them has any kind of ideological bent, political, philosophic, religious?” said Britain.
“I don’t know. I’ll try to find out,” said Thorpe. He made a note.
“And try and see if they’ll tell you anything about the nature of the device itself,” said Llewellyn. “If we don’t know what we’re looking for, we’re going to be terribly hobbled trying to guess who might be in the consumer pipeline.”
“That’s why you’re here,” said Thorpe. “From the telephone conversation, I got the distinct impression that that’s the one thing they’re probably not going to want to talk about. For whatever reason, unless we run into a brick wall. And by then it may be too late. I was wondering if perhaps I could get enough information as to the background on these guys, where they got their education, their field of study, maybe a résumé if we get lucky, do you think you might be able to piece together some clue as to what they were working on?”
“It’s possible,” said Llewellyn. “But it’s probably a long shot. I mean, they’re gonna have science backgrounds of some kind. You can be sure of that. It depends how much information they’re willing to give you.”
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