by Jack Bowie
“Adam. It’s Susan. I heard about Amsterdam on the news. How awful! Are you okay? Please give me a call.”
Her voice had the same soft sincerity he remembered so painfully. He had shared something unique with her once, and the transformation of that relationship still left a void. It was uncomfortable having her still care so much.
He punched out of VIRNA and dialed her number at the Senate Office Building. It rang three times.
“You have reached the office of Susan Goddard, Media Relations Director for Senator Wilson Lexington. I can’t take your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone and I’ll get right back to you.”
Jesus! It was seven thirty on a Saturday. Of course she wasn’t there. “It’s Adam. Ah, Adam Braxton. I’m fine, thanks. Uh, good-bye.”
He dropped the phone into its cradle and started breathing again. His hands were damp with sweat. Maybe he still cared more than he had thought.
* * *
Karen arrived a little after eight and knocked lightly on the wall. They exchanged greetings after which she softly pulled the door closed and left him to the daunting task of catching up.
It took him an hour and a half to finish with VIRNA and sort Karen’s paper messages. Throughout the morning’s effort, his eyes would occasionally stray to the briefcase lying in the chair next to his desk. Inside were the notebook pages he had taken from the Vision One laboratory. They were like magnets pulling at his mind through the scuffed leather case. Tiny irritants at first, beckoning benignly. Then, little by little, increasing their siren’s song until he couldn’t think of anything else.
Finally at 9:45, after stumbling through a particularly difficult response to a contentious client at Accenture, he couldn’t stand it any longer. He grabbed the case, pulled out the papers and spread them over the top of the other work lying on his desk. There in front of him were the brightly colored pictures of some other-worldly object. The renderings of an infinitesimally small molecule that somehow linked Vision One with the death of Benjamin Lawson. And, he was sure, ended Megan’s life as well.
He pulled a magnifying glass out of his desk drawer and scoured the pictures for any kind of identification. All he found was the code number Marino had already spotted. And there was no way they’d get what it meant from Vision One.
Frustrated he shoved the pictures aside. What was going on in that laboratory? Were the scientists in the basement at Vision One making the molecules that had been designed upstairs?
A buzz broke his concentration and he saw the intercom light blinking on his phone.
“Yes, Karen?”
“Sam Fowler’s here, Adam. He wants to know if you have a few minutes.”
“Absolutely! Send him in.” The consultant needed the break and it might help to have a friend to talk to.
A huge black man entered the office and went straight for the refrigerator tucked in a corner behind the door. Six foot three and at least two hundred-thirty pounds, a faded green polo shirt rolled over the waistband of wrinkled khaki pants, the ex-D.C. cop certainly hadn’t slimmed down since his retirement. Braxton noticed the slight limp that he still carried from their last adventure.
“Got anything good?” Fowler asked.
“Look for yourself, Sam. No beer if that’s what you mean.”
Fowler shook his head. “Not for me. Pat ordered me to lose weight. Something diet?”
“I think so.”
Fowler pulled out a Diet Dr. Pepper and sat down in one of the chairs by the coffee table.
“I didn’t expect to see you this early.”
“Had an appointment with a client in McLean. Stopped on the way back.”
“Another roving husband?”
“Actually this one’s a roving wife. Hot shot lawyer. The husband thinks she’s got too many out-of-town clients.”
“I don’t understand how you stand it.”
Fowler flashed a wide grin. “Oh. It ain’t so bad. And it gives me an excuse to get out of the house. You doin’ okay?”
“Yeah. But I’d feel a lot better if I could ever get past all the crap that came in while I was gone.” He waved his arms over the mess on his desk.
“The bane of the working class, Adam.”
“Thanks for all the sympathy. Speaking of working, how about the stuff you were supposed to do for me? Find out anything?”
“Not as much I would have liked. I talked with Trooper Alesi, the cop that covered the Yang accident. The guy was definitely NSA. Alesi got the investigation yanked out from under him, but he checked the records for me anyway. Ruled an accident, no evidence otherwise. Yang was broadsided by a stolen two-ton pickup, no identifiable prints, no suspects.”
“Well, that doesn’t help much. How about Marino?”
“That’s a little different. A cursory check looked fine. I called a buddy on the San Francisco force, he checked her out back there. Everything was okay, at least from the time she arrived a little over two months ago.”
“What about before then?” Braxton curled his eyebrows at his friend.
“That’s the problem. There is no before then. Her references look okay on the surface but they don’t pan out if you dig. It’s like she just appeared out of thin air.”
“How did she ever get a job at a company like Vision One with a record like that?”
“Good question. Did you ask her?”
Braxton thought back to their conversation on the way to Utrecht. “Come to think of it, yes. She said something about a recommendation from someone on their Board of Directors.”
“Well, that would explain it. No one’s gonna question a Director’s recommendation.”
“But who is she?”
“I didn’t know what else to do, so I took a chance and called Slattery.” Braxton’s mouth dropped open. “Take it easy. I didn’t use your name and I didn’t know you were running an op with him.”
Braxton scowled at his friend. “I was not running an op, Sam.”
“Okay, whatever. Anyway, he’s a friend and he owed me a favor.”
“So what did he say?” Dammit, Sam. Get to the point!
“Stonewalled me completely. No information.” He took a swig of the soda. “My bet is he ran across a red flag.”
“Red flag?”
“An alert on a dossier or background check. Usually means the target’s undercover.”
“Undercover? Marino is a cop?”
“A cop or a spook. Could be in a protection program but from what I’ve heard, it didn’t sound like this was anybody trying to hide out.”
Marino is a spy? Maybe it was her with Slattery! What were they doing in Amsterdam? Checking on him?
“Adam?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Sam. I don’t believe it. What the hell is going on?”
“I think that’s my question, buddy. How about you start at the top for me?”
Braxton related his first meeting with Marino, and his suspicions around his ex-wife’s death. Then the request from Slattery to contact Yang’s brother. And finally the meetings in Amsterdam and the discovery of the laboratory at Vision One.
“You have been a busy boy,” Fowler commented when his friend had completed the story. “You’re damn lucky you weren’t hurt worse. Made any sense of it yet?”
“Not a bit, Sam. I know Megan’s death is tied to that lab, but I don’t know how. I was trying to work something out when you came in. You’re a hotshot detective. Maybe you can find something I couldn’t.”
Braxton motioned his friend over to the desk and showed him the papers.
“Jesus, Adam. What is all this?”
“Pages I took from a lab notebook at Vision One. They’re pictures of some kind of molecule.”
“Looks more like some kind of Walt Disney Rorschach Test.”
“That’s just the false-coloring of the modeling program. Each colored sphere represents a different type of atom: black for carbon, white for hydrogen, and blue for oxygen.”
“I didn
’t think atoms were just simple balls.”
“They’re not. This is just an easy way to represent the way they link together. The size of each sphere has something to do with the density function of the outer electron shell. It approximates the average bonding length so you can tell how far apart the individual atoms are.”
Fowler’s eyes glazed over. “Right. If you say so. Chemistry was a lot easier when I was in school: a molecule was just a floppy handful of balls connected by springs.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m not so up to date myself. That’s part of my problem.”
“So you don’t know what this thing is?”
“Nope. All we have is the ID number. This ‘Lawson 423V85’.” He pointed to the marking in the corner of the page.
“Okay if I take a look?”
“Sure.” Braxton stepped back and let Fowler examine the pages. He picked up each one, turning it over in his huge hands, holding it up to the morning light coming through Braxton’s windows.
“Have you looked on the back of the pictures?”
“The back? Yeah. I’ve gone over every inch of those pages.”
“Jesus, Adam. I hope you’re a helluva lot better consultant than you are a detective. You’re too used to your damn computers. These pictures are pasted on the pages. Just like the good old days. We need to look on the back of the pictures, and under them. Someone could have written something there.”
“You mean like ‘put picture of molecule so-and-so here’?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
Chapter 43
Cerberus Consulting, Tysons Corner, Virginia
Saturday, 11:45 a.m.
Braxton grabbed one of the notebook pages from Fowler and held it up. The color printouts had been pasted onto the notebook pages. Why hadn’t he seen that?
“Have you got something sharp?” Fowler asked. “A knife?”
“Yes! In my desk.”
Braxton pulled open his desk drawer, reached in and handed Fowler a red Swiss Army knife that had to be at least an inch thick.
“Normal consultant fare?” Fowler asked, turning the instrument over in his hand.
“Well, you never know when you might need to break open a computer.”
Fowler completed his visual analysis, then deftly pulled out a thin blade. Carefully working from one corner of the torn page, he began to peel back the picture.
“Anybody gonna miss these?” Fowler asked as he slowly cut through the adhesive.
Braxton hesitated. He hadn’t really thought about his break-in as having any ramifications. They seemed to get away fine. But what if there were surveillance cameras inside? Did Vision One know he was there? Could that have been what happened in Amsterdam?
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Well, too late to worry about that now.”
A minute later Fowler had extracted the picture. He turned it over.
“Damn,” Braxton said. There was nothing on the back of the drawing nor on the facing page.
Fowler took the next page and performed the same operation. Still nothing. One page left.
When the last picture had been freed, they slowly turned it over. There on the back, in neat hand printing was: “Chlamydophila Pneumoniae.”
“What the hell is that?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Now it’s my turn to do some detective work.”
Braxton sat back down at his desk and began typing.
“Let’s try PubMed first. It’s the web interface to the National Library of Medicine. They index every major medical journal article and monograph.”
The search produced a list of eleven citations. Braxton clicked on the first, a year-old New England Journal of Medicine article.
As he waded through the medical-ese of the article, the buzz of his intercom again interrupted his plans.
“Yes, Karen?”
“There is a Mr. Smith here, Adam. He says he has an appointment with you.”
Smith? Shit. Braxton had forgotten all about the appointment he had made in Amsterdam. It seemed like a century ago.
He turned to Fowler and whispered “It’s Slattery.”
“Roger’s here?” Fowler asked.
“Sorry, Karen,” he said into the intercom. “I forgot to mention it. Give me a minute and then send him in.”
Braxton gathered up the Vision One papers and stuffed them in his top drawer.
“You want me to go?” Fowler asked.
“How’d you like to be a little bird on the wall?” Braxton replied. “I could use the backup.”
Two minutes later, Braxton was sitting calmly at his desk as the CIA agent came through the door. Slattery walked toward him and Braxton could see his eyes scanning the room. The door to the adjoining conference room was uncharacteristically ajar.
“Agent Slattery,” Braxton said as he came around the desk.
“Mr. Braxton,” the agent stiffly replied as they shook hands. His eyes shifted from the consultant and began roaming over the top of the desk. “How are you feeling after the trip back?”
Braxton suddenly thought of his computer screen. The NEJM article was still there! Stealing a look, he saw the streaming star field of his security wallpaper.
“Fine,” he replied with a sigh. “Just fine.” He motioned for the agent to take a seat on the couch. “Actually, I have a ton of work to get caught up on. I’d like to get this over with as soon as possible.”
“Of course. You seem to have recovered from the, ah, accident quite well.”
Jesus. He didn’t have time for the spook to start playing mind games with him. “Look Agent Slattery, we both know my history and we both know Dr. Yang’s death wasn’t an accident. I’m not about to dwell on what happened. I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What I’d like to know, however, is if my actions had anything to do with his murder.”
“I really don’t know, Adam. Did you do anything that might have caused anyone to worry?”
“How am I supposed to know? Isn’t that more in your field of expertise? I had a couple of conversations with one of my peers at a scientific convention. That’s what it was supposed to look like, right?” He realized he had leaned forward in his chair and begun to shout at the agent. His heart was pounding in his chest. Calm down. It won’t do any good to yell. He took a deep breath and sat back.
“Your emotion is certainly understandable,” Slattery replied. “I hope you realize we had no idea there would be violence involved.”
I’m sure you didn’t. You might not get the information you want.
“Of course, Mr. Slattery. Has Klaber found out anything about the murder?”
For the first time, Slattery hesitated, holding Braxton’s attention. “Nothing yet. But it’s still very early for any breakthroughs. I’m sure they’ll locate the guilty parties.”
“I’m sure.”
“Well, what did Mr. Yang have to say, Adam? I can call you Adam?”
“No. You cannot. Unfortunately, I don’t think I was able to find out very much about Dr. Yang’s work.”
“Had he been in contact with his brother recently?”
“He said they had exchanged some electronic mail over the past few weeks.”
“And these were about?”
“Family conversations mostly, according to Tak. Catching up on news, that kind of stuff. They did encode their messages with Kam Yang’s programs, but Tak assured me he did not have knowledge of the algorithm itself.”
Slattery took no notes. He just sat, seemingly relaxed, watching his informant. Braxton wondered how many others the agent had approached in this way. Were any of his friends spying on him in the name of national security?
“I see. And this was the extent of their communications?”
“Tak did say that his brother would occasionally mention something about work. Recently, he said that his brother was concerned that his information was not being handled properly. He was afraid his boss was wi
thholding things from the higher-ups. Is that possible?”
“I can’t imagine that would happen. And we certainly did get the information from his decodings.”
“All of it?”
“Yes, Mr. Braxton. That’s why you asked me about Yang’s supervisor?”
“That and one more thing.”
Slattery cocked his head. “Yes?”
“Yang was sure his brother would never hold anything back from the NSA. Patriotic was the word he used. Who told you Kam Yang withheld the decryption algorithm?”
“I don’t think that is relevant, Mr. Braxton.”
“Of course, just asking.” Braxton wished Fowler could be watching the agent’s face. He didn’t see a slip. But the old detective might have been able to pick up something he had missed.
“Is this the kind of information you wanted, Mr. Slattery?” Braxton continued.
“We had obviously hoped for a more positive result, but intelligence is hardly ever that straightforward. We will certainly take Dr. Yang’s comments on his brother into our analyses. You are aware, Mr. Braxton, that everything he told you might not be true. He could have had any number of reasons for coloring the truth: jealousy for his brother’s life in the United States, revenge for his untimely death, or even protection of his position if he thought you could be an agent for the Chinese government. I wouldn’t dwell too much on trying to figure this all out. We’ll take it from here.”
“That’s fine with me.”
“I hope the remainder of your trip was less harrowing. Was the conference valuable?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I learned a lot of very interesting things. But if that’s all, Agent Slattery,” Braxton rose to emphasize the point, “I really must get back to work.”
Slattery stood to face the consultant. “Certainly, Mr. Braxton. Again, on behalf of the government of the United States, let me express our thanks for your help. I’m sorry your trip had such a traumatic end.”
“I suppose you’re welcome, Agent Slattery. But I must tell you I am not interested in any more cooperation with your employer. This has not been a pleasant experience.”
“Of course. I understand. I don’t believe there will be any further need for us to contact you.”