“Annie!” he said, grabbing Stahlman’s arm. “She—”
“Who?”
He started talking at warp speed. “Anulka—she wants to be called Annie. I’ve been working with her all morning and her invisibility is the most amazing process. It’s mediated by her Z-waves, just like the rest, but she achieves it by bending light.”
Stahlman gave him a dubious look. “Bending light? I’ve heard of galaxies doing that, but—”
“She bends it around her, letting just enough through so she can see, otherwise it never touches her, and if it can’t touch her it can’t bounce off her, and if it’s not being reflected then she can’t be seen. It’s amazing, simply amazing. I’ve only tried visible light, but I’m going to try ultraviolet and infrared and maybe even microwaves. She might be able to bend the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Can you imagine what that means?”
Finally he took a breath.
Rick put on his driest tone. “So, I gather you’re kind of excited about this.”
“Excited? I’m … I’m …” And then he got it. “I’m rattling on, aren’t I.”
“Try Ricochet Rabbit on meth.”
“Okay, but think about it: a human being bending light with her brain. It’s astonishing.”
Rick made a face. “More than teleporting?”
“Okay, no. But teleportation is like fantasy to me—magic. I’ve witnessed it but I have no sense of the process. With Annie I can understand the process of her invisibility even if I don’t know how she’s achieving it.”
Just then Adão Guerra, the big guy on the front entrance, stepped inside and handed Rick an envelope.
“Somebody dropped this off for you, Mister Hayden.”
Rick tore it open. A note from Pickens, Nelson Fife’s superior from the CIA. He handed it to Stahlman.
“Got a meeting in Midtown. Five o’clock.”
“We just came from Midtown.”
“I’m sure you were in a nicer place.”
Stahlman said, “Important?”
“The dope on this Osterhagen character.”
Stahlman’s eyes widened. “So soon? Fast work. Fill me in as soon as—”
Adão reappeared. “A Ms. Tate is calling. Says you’re expecting her.”
“Tate?” Stahlman said.
Laura said, “The forensic accountant we hired to look into that foundation.”
“Oh, right-right. She’s going to be late?”
“She says she’s here but she’s lost.”
“Let me take that,” Rick said.
“Where the hell is this warehouse?” she said without preamble.
“Closer than you think, I’m sure,” he said. He sympathized. The street numbers were insane here.
“I had Lyft pick me up and all we did was sit in traffic. The East Side is a parking lot. Finally I hopped on a subway. But now that I’m here …”
“Can you get back to the subway station?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Okay. Do that and I’ll meet you there.”
He handed the phone back to Adão. “I’ll go get her.”
He decided to walk and found Hari pacing beneath the elevated platform—a short, thick, bustling Indian woman wearing a dark blue pantsuit and carrying an attaché case
“Hello, Hari,” Rick said as approached. He gestured to the suit. “I was sort of hoping for …”
“A sari?” She offered a tolerant smile. “That’s strategic wear, dearie. For people like your mother. This is report-the-findings wear.”
“Got it. How was the ride?”
“Sartre was right.”
“Oh?”
“Hell definitely is other people.”
“Crowded?”
“Beavis and Buttheadville. Jammed with mouth-breathers, guys reeking of crotch sweat with chin hairs and backward caps and their pants rolled up to their knees, interlaced with pierced-naveled Kardashian wannabes wearing too much perfume and chewing cuds of gum with their mouths open. Did I mention the yuppies with the baby strollers? And the screaming kids who didn’t want to be in them? I did mention jammed, right? Really jammed. But did that stop the manspreading?” She shook her head. “Noooo. Where’s your car?”
“I walked. Just a couple blocks.”
“There a coffee shop along the way?”
“Why? Low on caffeine?”
“Not critical yet.”
Rick liked Hari but knew how she got when not properly caffeinated. He pointed across the street to a storefront labeled L. I. City Roasters.
“Ask and you shall receive.”
Once inside, Hari grabbed a sixteen-ounce cup and stepped up to the carafes.
“This Cuban blend says ‘bold.’ Bold is good.”
But the well proved dry.
“Hey,” she called, “your Cuban roast is dead—dead as Che and Fidel.”
The guy behind the urns, a twenty-something sporting hairnets over his bushy head and even bushier beard, gave her a blank look. “Whuh?”
“Never mind.”
“Actually Che was Argentinian,” said a tweedy guy to her left, pouring hazelnut.
“I knew that!” she snapped, then turned to Rick. “Do you believe this? Caught between Grizzly Adams and Sheldon Cooper.”
Grizzly replaced the empty urn with a full one and soon they were back on the sidewalk heading for the warehouse.
“Yuck!” she said after a sip. “My mother made coffee like this. My father died young. ‘Cuban blend’? Tastes like Castro’s socks.”
She tossed the cup in a trash receptacle.
“Speaking of Castro,” she said, “I hate to sound like an old fart complaining about the younger generation, because I’m not old. I’m forty-two. But don’t these kids know anything? How can you draw a blank on Fidel Castro? I mean the guy was dictator of Cuba forever.”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t show you my favorite T-shirt.”
“Why not?”
“It’s got that iconic portrait of Che with a caption that goes I have no idea who this is.”
She laughed. “That’s smart and ironic. But what I’m bitching about has nothing to do with intelligence. I’ve got very intelligent people working for me, and yet when I walked into a meeting yesterday hauling two big briefcases and said, ‘I feel like Willie freakin’ Loman,’ you know what kind of response I got?”
“Crickets?” Rick said.
“Not even. Willie Loman is not an obscure reference. Death of a Salesman has won every award except the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet these kids had no idea.”
“Maybe they’re developing their own culture.”
“What? Miley Cyrus and the Kardashians? Spare me.”
Rick put on a hoarse codger voice. “Damn young’uns! They’re draggin’ the country to hell, Hari. Straight to hell at a hunnert an’ two miles an hour.”
“Oh, shut up.”
4
Laura wasn’t sure why, but she gave Hari a hug. She liked her attitude and sometimes wished she could be as upfront with her opinions. Sometimes. Rick then introduced her to Stahlman.
“Helluva place you’ve got here,” Hari said, shaking his hand.
“You like it?”
“Not at all. And it’s pure hell to get here. What sadist came up with this insane way of numbering buildings? I aged twenty years trying to find this place. Finally had to give up.”
“The system has its own logic,” Stahlman began. “You see—”
Hari held up a hand. “I’m sure it’s fascinating, but since I’m never coming back here, do I care? No. And anyway, what I have for you trumps any numbering system in the fascinating department.”
Stahlman looked at Rick. “Is she having a bad day?”
Rick grinned. “No. This is Hari.” He nodded toward her. “The floor is yours.”
“Okay. Let’s do this.” She pulled yellow legal sheets from her attaché case. “You asked me to look into the Horace B. Gilmartin Foundation, and I did. Unless it’s something hinky
like the Clinton Foundation, poking through the innards of a foundation is about as exciting as watching a bunch of grapes turning to raisins. In Pasadena. On a Tuesday. Expect my bill to reflect that.”
“Duly noted,” Stahlman said. “What did you find?”
“Nothing.”
Stahlman straightened in his chair. “It doesn’t exist?”
“Presently it exists on paper only. Same with its founder, by the way: Horace B. Gilmartin exists only on paper as well. As for his foundation, hold it up to your ear and you’ll hear the ocean roar.”
Stahlman looked baffled but Rick got it. “You’re saying it’s an empty shell.”
“Bingo. It hasn’t got a penny and was only a shell to begin with, a conduit for funds to Modern Motherhood, which it fully funded until it pulled the plug. It never did anything before and has done nothing since.”
Laura said, “Is that as weird as it sounds?”
“Weirder. There’s no record of who was supplying the funds.”
“They had to come from somewhere,” Stahlman said. “Contributors to a U.S. foundation have to identify themselves. No anonymous donations allowed.”
“Right. Its one and only donor was a Canadian foundation called the Foundation for Reproductive Progress.”
Rick shook his head. “What does that even mean?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, dearie, but it’s in the same shape as the Gilmartin Foundation: an empty shell. And, as you may or may not know, Canadian foundations can accept anonymous donations. Whatever came in was funneled straight to the Gilmartin account as a donation.”
Laura said, “Wouldn’t somebody somewhere notice that? I mean, wouldn’t that raise a red flag and trigger an audit or investigation or something?”
“Not if the Canadian contributor wanted to remain anonymous and never filed for a charitable deduction. And here’s something else: You know the doctor who ran those clinics, Emily Jacobi? She’s a fiction.”
Shocked, Laura looked around for a place to sit but found nothing. “How can she be a fiction?” She looked at Stahlman. “Just this morning we spoke to a man who met her.”
“He may have met someone, but he didn’t meet Emily Jacobi, M.D. When the foundation proved bogus, I decided to do a little checking on her. And guess what? I couldn’t find any record of an Emily Jacobi at Harvard or Brigham and Women’s Hospital, or anywhere else.”
“How is that possible?” Stahlman said. “She was involved with ten city governments. Somebody must have checked on her.”
“I’m sure many somebodies did. And I’ll bet her legend held up under the closest scrutiny.”
“ ‘Legend’?” Laura was beginning to feel like she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m sure Rick can give you a much more detailed explanation. But in a nutshell, it’s what they call a fake background. But that was back in 1990 when most records were kept on paper. Everything’s been computerized over and over since then. She’s been dead for more than a decade. With nobody updating her legend, it fell apart.”
“She’s a fiction?”
“Total fiction—and an expertly crafted one, I’d say. Whoever invented her really knew what they were doing.”
Laura looked at Rick and saw his eyes going flat and his lips tightening into a thin line. That couldn’t be good.
She shook her head. “I can’t believe this.” And yet she did.
“Believe it, dearie. And believe something else: Emily Jacobi wasn’t fashioned by amateurs. Whoever created her got her name added to research papers, to hospital staff lists, the whole deal. The clandestine services are experts at fashioning legends with this level of sophistication. It’s the kind of thing they do really well.”
“Clandestine services?” She looked at Rick. “Really?”
His expression was grim as he said, “CIA, KGB, those sorts of folks.”
Hari put her hands on her hips and made a slow half turn. “What have you folks got yourself into?”
5
MANHATTAN
The 7 train stopped a few blocks from the warehouse and also at Times Square. Rick hated Times Square, though he rather liked the painted desnudas who were still out in force with the continuing warm weather, and didn’t mind the costumed panhandlers hustling for photo ops.
The crowds … the crowds got to him.
And Fridays at five P.M. were the worst. The usual crush of people released from their jobs for the weekend was augmented by the international tourist horde, the weekend bridge-and-tunnel rats, and the theatergoers in for drinks and an early dinner before the eight o’clock curtain on Broadway. A madhouse.
None of them seemed to know how to navigate urban sidewalks, especially the out-of-towners. They walked four across and stopped without warning smack dab in the middle of the pavement to stare up at a sign or a building and take photos, blocking anyone else who had someplace to go.
The address Pickens had sent him led to an underground parking garage in the theater district—West 46th Street. He’d included a parking ticket in the envelope. A note below the address had said, Wear a hat and keep your head down.
Rick had picked up an I ♥ NY cap on his way through Times Square. When he reached the address, he pulled the brim low. He strolled down the ramp, passed under a sign that read PULL ALL THE WAY UP TO THE STOP SIGN, and headed for a tall fellow with very dark skin and linebacker shoulders. He wore overalls and smiled as Rick approached.
“Do you have a ticket, sir?”
“I do.”
He handed it over, wondering what happened next. One quick look and the smile disappeared.
“Follow me.”
The fellow led him to a shadowed corner where a middle-aged white man waited in the rear compartment of a big black Jimmy SUV with tinted side windows.
Arnold Pickens.
Rick entered the other side of the rear compartment.
“You’re calling yourself Hayden now?” Pickens said without preamble.
A fat, florid, balding guy in a suit, typical Company desk jockey. Rick doubted he’d ever been called “Slim.”
“That’s my name.”
“Wasn’t always.”
His tone annoyed Rick. “And this is what? A point of information? As if I don’t know?”
“Just sayin’. And I’m telling you this meeting is a one-time thing. You will not ever contact me again.”
Rick didn’t bother with a reply. He wondered if Pickens felt guilty about Nelson Fife. If not guilty, at least uneasy. As deputy director of the Office of Transnational Issues in Manhattan, he’d been Fife’s immediate superior during Rick and Laura’s hunt for the ikhar. Scotland had to be upset—understandably—about those Hellfire missiles detonating in the Orkneys. He was probably portraying Fife as a rogue agent who went off the reservation without Pickens’s knowledge or authorization. Probably felt lucky to still have a job, but that could change.
Pickens no doubt wanted to see all this simmer down and go away. And it might very well be in the process of doing just that.
But Pickens had known damn well that Rick and Laura were the intended Hellfire targets. He’d pretended not to know who Rick was when Rick called yesterday, but that bullshit hadn’t lasted long. No way Fife wouldn’t have told him an ex–field agent had been involved. Rick wanted nothing more to do with the Company, and had kept quiet … so far. That gave him some leverage with Pickens. If he started making waves—say, emails to certain people up the Company chain of command or to agitated politicos in Edinburgh—the Orkney mess could all come to a boil again.
Rick made a show of looking around the garage. “Company own this place?”
“Not your concern.”
Which Rick translated as Yes. Pickens didn’t want to be seen with Rick and this was the best way to eliminate unforeseen variables—like showing up together on some tourist’s YouTube video. Rick had hidden his face from the security cameras on the ramp, and this car was no d
oubt parked in a blind spot.
He handed Rick a thumb drive. “It’s all on here.”
“How do I know that?”
“You’ll have to trust me.”
“What a concept. Interesting stuff?”
“Fascinating.”
Rick detected no sarcasm.
“You read it then?”
“Couldn’t stop. How’d you hear about this guy?”
“It’s complicated. What say you give me a quick rundown—an abridged version? I’m a good listener.”
“What am I? Your fucking tutor?”
Rick had expected that sort of response and had asked simply to annoy Pickens. But now he detected something unexpected. He sensed that Pickens, despite the snarling bluster, was dying to talk about Maximilian Osterhagen. Something in the scientist’s story had wormed under his skin.
“You can give me a rundown or I can pull out the trusty old tablet I carry everywhere, plug in this nifty thumb drive you gave me, and read it here. You know, just in case I have questions.”
He had no such tablet, but it sounded good.
Pickens growled. “All right, all right. Anything to see your back. You know anything about World War II? The V-2 rockets?”
“Some. I know they were blowing the hell out of London.”
“The V-2 factories were hidden inside a hill in the center of Germany called the Kohnstein. All the rocketeers like von Braun had labs there. Maximilian Osterhagen had one too, but he wasn’t a rocketeer. He was a physicist and his project was called Lange-Tür, which translates as Long Door.”
“ ‘Long Door’? What—?”
“Don’t ask what it was about because I don’t know and I couldn’t find anyone who does—or would admit it. Anyway, the Allies learn about the Kohnstein and start bombing the hell out of it, stalling a lot of the research. As soon as the war ends we start a program called Operation Paperclip to round up all the rocket scientists. Because he was in the Kohnstein, Maximilian Osterhagen gets rounded up along with the rest. But when the U.S. learned he wasn’t a rocketeer, they quickly lost interest in him. They were readying to cut him loose when this army major in the Jet Propulsion Section interviews him about what he was working on under the Kohnstein, if not rockets. Whatever Osterhagen told him about his Lange-Tür Project must have impressed the hell out of the major and those above him because he was immediately moved to Fort Dix.”
The Void Protocol Page 14