by C. A. James
“Sure it does,” said Blackwell. “If Garrett threw away a story, she’s got something bigger.”
“But what?” asked Platte. “That’s a huge story. The FBI agent in charge is buddies with the very terrorist he’s chasing. Not only buddies, but it sounds like the guy saved McCaig’s life. Christ, what could be bigger than that?”
“Maybe we could use this,” said Patterson. “Like, what if McCaig deliberately diverted the investigation so his buddy Zarrabian could escape in the fog and hide in a cabin? If McCaig gives us any more shit about Zarrabian being alive, even one little leak from an ‘unnamed source,’ we can nail his hide to the barn, say he was in cahoots with Zarrabian.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Platte, “So you’ve got McCaig by the balls. Big whoop. He’s already a nobody, and if he squeaks, you squash him. We don’t give a shit about McCaig. It’s Garrett. She’s got something up her sleeve. How does throwing away a story this big do her any good?”
Blackwell was still staring at the ceiling. “Christ. Jesus Christ.” She sat up abruptly. “That wasn’t a news conference at all.”
“Looked like one to me,” said Patterson.
“Now you’re the one being dumb. It was a message. To Zarrabian.”
“But—” said Patterson.
“Yeah, yeah. Zarrabian’s dead,” she said. “You almost had me convinced. But he’s not. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Suppose McCaig knows Zarrabian is alive. I don’t know how, but suppose he does. McCaig wants to get him a message. What’s he going to do, look up his phone number in the white pages?”
“Damn,” said Platte. “That’s it. What better way to get a message to a terrorist than to get the paparazzi drooling over it? McCaig put out a message, and it’s going to be twenty-four seven on every TV station, front page on every newspaper, and in flashing red letters on every web site for the next week. He can’t miss it unless he’s dead or blind.”
“And McCaig and Zarrabian, they know each other, right?” said Patterson. “So he said something that only Zarrabian would understand.”
“Payback,” said Platte. “He used that word. Twice. And he’s not talking about payback for the terrorist attack. Special Agent McCaig is going to pay Zarrabian back for saving his life in Iran.”
“Wow,” said Blackwell, “That’s gotta be it. It all adds up. Maybe this McCaig isn’t such a pissant after all. Maybe he’s the one using Garrett, not the other way around.”
“Or maybe they’re working together,” said Platte. “A team.”
“Yeah?” said Blackwell. “On what?”
“The questions never end, do they?” said Platte.
“No,” replied Blackwell. “But whatever they’re up to, it’s sounding more and more like a criminal conspiracy. We’ve got to get in front of this one.”
A drop of condensed fog rolled down Watergate’s mainsail, merging with other droplets in its path as it gained size and speed. Its journey ended on the back of McCaig’s neck. He looked up, annoyed. Big drops of water seemed to have an affinity for his neck lately. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head.
Christine guided her boat with a light touch as it slipped noiselessly away from its berth and past the docks. A light breeze barely rippled the gray, glassy water of South Bay Harbor. The fog dampened their hair, jackets, deck, and seat cushions. It seemed to absorb the very sounds of the city.
To the west, the gray, ghostly outline of the new baseball park loomed over the harbor, named after some phone company or other. To McCaig, Candlestick Park was the real home of the Giants, the place where he and his Dad had shared hot dogs and Cokes while huddling under their blankets in the fog and wind, cheering as the Giants beat the Dodgers.
“Not much of a day for sailing,” he said.
Christine didn’t say anything.
“It seems pretty early for a race, eh? You were pretty insistent that I be here at the crack of dawn.”
She gave a barely perceptible nod. McCaig got the hint.
They glided past the breakwaters and left the protection of the harbor. Watergate began to bob slightly with the small morning waves of the bay. Tugboats and fishing boats churned toward their dawn tasks. McCaig could see the dark silhouette of a large ship moving slowly from its anchorage.
A few minutes later, Watergate was completely surrounded by a wall of gray. Except for the fog-muffled sounds of a tugboat’s engine in the distance, they could have been in the middle of the ocean.
Christine took her cell phone out of her pocket and turned its power off. She pointed at McCaig’s pocket. McCaig cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Yours. Is it off?” she asked.
He retrieved his cell phone from his pocket showed her that it was off.
Christine pulled a folded sheet of aluminum foil from her pocket and laid it on the cockpit seat, then smoothed it flat. She held out her hand toward McCaig’s phone.
“What?” he asked.
She gestured at his phone. He finally understood and handed it to her. She wrapped both phones in a sheet of foil, then wrapped another sheet of foil around that. Satisfied, she dropped the whole shiny package in her pocket.
“OK, we can talk now,” she said.
“A bicycle courier banged on my door at five AM,” he said. “He handed me hand-written note saying I had to go sailing, but to turn off my phone and walk. For Christ’s sake, did you know it’s three miles from my apartment to the harbor? Then you sneak us out in the fog like thieves before the fish are even awake. What the hell?”
“I know, it seems ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous? Since I have no idea what we’re doing out here, I couldn’t say whether it’s ridiculous or not. All I know is you’d better have some coffee.”
“We’ll get some soon.”
“Soon? That means no, right? No coffee?”
She pulled a postcard out of her pocket and handed it to him. It was a picture of Yosemite Park’s Half Dome mountain.
“How do you send a message these days that the government won’t intercept?” she asked.
“Snail mail?”
“Yes. Postmarked yesterday from Fresno.”
McCaig flipped it over. The back was covered with youthful handwriting in blue ink.
“Pretty ordinary looking, right?” she asked.
“I’m sure if I answer ‘yes,’ you’ll point out what I’ve overlooked. It looks pretty faded, though.”
“Look at the copyright.”
McCaig squinted to see the tiny print. “Nineteen fifty five? This card is older than me!”
“I’ll cut to the chase. It’s from Zarrabian. No telling where he found a postcard that’s more than a half-century old. Read it.”
He scanned through the message. “It looks like a letter from a kid named Zane thanking his uncle Grant for sending him to a summer camp for his twelfth birthday.”
“Check the address,” she said.
“Lake Street? Isn’t that over in Sea Cliff? Pretty Ritzy neighborhood.”
“Right. He sent it to Grant Petri’s place.”
“Wow. Nice digs.”
“And see the part about ‘Tell Chris he’ll have to pay me back’?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s obviously me. Even Grant figured that out.”
“Obviously?”
“Don’t you think so? ‘Chris’ and ‘pay me back?’ Doesn’t that tell you he saw us on TV and wants to meet?”
McCaig’s eyes scanned over the card again. “Wow. I think you’re right. And ‘Zane’ is Zarrabian, right?”
“You’re catching on.”
“Why a postcard? Why not a text message or an email? We did our press conference two days ago. He could have been in touch the same day.”
She stared at him for long moment. “Seriously, TJ? Have you not picked up a newspaper in the last ten years?”
“Is this a trick question?”
“Internet spying? Viruses? Key loggers? Malware? The NSA scanning y
our email? Edward Snowden? Phone metadata? Do these words mean nothing to you?”
“Ah. You mean an email might get intercepted by the feds.”
“Not might. Would.”
“But Congress passed laws prohibiting that.”
“Right. And if you believe our nation’s spooks care about some niggling little law when there’s a terrorist on the loose, I can sell you that bridge over there.”
“OK, OK. But why all the drama with our cell phones? You don’t believe that conspiracy crap about how they can listen in even when your phone is in your pocket, do you?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. But why take a chance? Either way, as long as the phone is even powered on, they can triangulate the phone’s signal and figure out our exact location.”
“So? We’re just two citizens out for a sail. Besides, you left your phone on until we were out here on the water, so if they wanted to track you, they could.”
“Yeah, but they don’t know you’re with me. As far as they know, I went for an early-morning sail and turned off my phone to get away from the job. And maybe your phone ran out of juice and you’re still asleep in your bed.”
McCaig waved the post card. “What’s this all mean?”
“Look at it again.”
McCaig scrutinized it.
“Notice that there are several numbers?” she asked. “Like ‘Cabin 38’ and ‘392 kids at camp,’ and so forth?”
“Yeah? What, is it a coded message?”
“It’s a location. You put the numbers together and they’re a latitude and longitude.”
“Seriously? Who figured this out?”
“We’ve got a whiz-kid intern who fancies himself a latter-day Sherlock. Loves to solve cyphers and puzzles. I see him in the café at lunchtime working the New York Times crossword. In ink.”
“And he figured out that these were latitude and longitude?”
“I showed him the card and told him there was a hidden message. It took him about two seconds to give a derisive snort and ask what sort of dumb-ass spook would leave map coordinates in plain sight like that. That’s today’s mission, to meet Zarrabian.”
“Damn. That’s about the last thing I expected when I got out of bed. But OK, this is good. Our plan worked.” McCaig glanced at the navigation computer. “So we’re meeting Zarrabian in the middle of the bay. Phones off and everything. Surrounded by fog. Pretty clever.”
“No, wrong again.”
“Of course. Silly me.”
“The map coordinates are somewhere near Modesto.”
“Modesto? Then what are we doing out here on the water?”
“Making sure we’re not followed.”
“Who would be following us?”
“TJ, for an FBI agent you can be pretty dumb. Where have you been for the last two days?”
“Reading some great fiction on my couch. Jogging in Golden Gate Park. Watching old Humphrey Bogart movies. Enjoying retirement.”
“Seriously? You need to turn on the news.”
“OK, yeah. I know what’s going on. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”
“That little charade we did for the cameras the other day is attracting a lot of attention. You basically admitted that you know the terrorist you were chasing. The conspiracy nut-jobs and tinfoil-hat crowd are already going crazy over this. Reporters are digging through every news article, leak, and probably even some classified stuff trying to figure out where and when you met Zarrabian. And I’ll bet there are people in high places who think you violated some pretty serious rules about disclosure.”
“Yeah, I know all that. But I’m trying to enjoy my retirement.”
“Try to think just a little harder, OK?”
“So what about Modesto? I don’t know much about sailboats, but I’m pretty sure we can’t get to Modesto on this thing.”
“You might be surprised. Historically, most of the rivers in California’s Central Valley were navigable, but . . . never mind. We’re going to dock in Berkeley. A friend is loaning me a car.”
“And where exactly do these map coordinates point to?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look it up.”
“What? Why not? Can’t you just Google it and get a satellite picture? I found my own house and could see my barbecue grill.”
“Again, TJ, do you even live in the twenty-first century of law enforcement? You don’t think the CIA and the NSA are monitoring my Internet searches? Yours too? If you or I or anyone I work with enters latitude and longitude coordinates into a search engine, it will take the feds about two minutes to dispatch a team to check it out.”
“Yeah, I’m usually on the other side of the law, catching the idiots who make those mistakes. My partner, former partner, I guess, was pretty good at that stuff. OK, so no Internet searches, so how do you know it’s near Modesto?”
“A good old-fashioned paper map. I could only tell within a couple miles, but I know roughly how to get there.”
“So what, we just wander around knocking on farmhouse doors asking if anyone’s seen a terrorist?”
“We use GPS, TJ. Ever heard of it?”
“Oh. Right. And the car’s GPS isn’t connected to the Internet.”
“Right.”
“But we’ll still be going in blind. We’ll have no idea what’s there until we drive up to the place.”
“Just like the good old days, eh TJ? You should be right in your element.”
“In spite of your sarcastic barbs hinting that I’ve joined the Luddite movement, I actually know what the internet is and how to use it.”
Ahead, the dim outlines of the Berkeley Marina started to emerge from the fog.
“We’re almost ashore,” said Christine. “There’s one more thing.”
McCaig gave an exaggerated sigh. “Of course there is.”
“No, nothing bad. I want to take a slight detour. It’ll be really nice.”
“Do I have any choice?”
“Have you ever been to the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton?”
“That’s where that huge telescope is, up on the mountains southeast from San Jose, right? I remember you can see some white buildings up there on a clear day.”
“That’s the place. There’s a guy up there I want to talk to about eclipses.”
They docked in Berkeley and found the two-seater Mercedes convertible left by a friend—Christine wouldn’t say who—then made their way south to San Jose. They chatted a bit as they left Berkeley but soon fell silent, each absorbed in thought under the gray overcast that blanketed the Bay Area.
Once they left the freeway behind, the road started to climb and the scenery changed from urban sprawl to the sparsely situated mini “ranchos” of Silicon Valley’s high-tech executives. Past these, there was nothing on the mountain but waving golden grass and huge old California Oaks.
About halfway up the narrow, twisting road that climbed the shoulders of Mount Hamilton, they broke through the foggy layer of clouds into bright blue sunshine. Christine pulled into a tiny turnout and lowered the convertible’s roof. She pulled a bottle of sunblock from her purse and handed it to McCaig, then put the car into gear and continued their slow crawl up the winding mountain road.
Hawks circled in the bright, blue sky. Squirrels scampered across the narrow road at the sound of their approach. A huge black crow squawked and flapped into the air as they interrupted its meal of roadkill. McCaig spotted a rattlesnake warming itself on a rock in the early morning sun, probably eyeing the very same squirrels that had the interest of the circling hawks.
Below them, civilization was hidden by the flat layer of fog and clouds that had dampened their morning sail. From San Jose to San Francisco, and up the East Bay from Milpitas to Oakland and Berkeley, civilization was hidden. Only the brown, grassy mountains, dotted with oak trees, stuck up through the clouds. There was little sign of the seven million people who lived below. It probably looked just as it had a century or so ago, when the first engineers were surveyin
g the mountain for a road to the proposed Lick Observatory.
The huge, brilliant-white domes of the observatory finally came into view. Christine parked the Mercedes.
Inside, a wiry, gray-haired old man manned the counter of the observatory’s visitor center. He was showing a brochure to a young couple and talking to them in an animated voice. His shoulders were stooped, but his movements were filled with energy. He seemed to have a perpetual twinkle in his eye, and gave the impression he’d just heard a good joke. McCaig had the strange thought that if you put a hundred pounds on this guy, he’d be Santa Claus.
The young couple thanked him and took their leave; the old man turned to McCaig and Christine. “Welcome to Lick Observa—Chrissy!”
“Hello, Uncle Carl!”
“My God, girl, is that really you?” He rushed out from behind the counter and the two embraced. “You’re all grown up! My goodness, Chrissy, I hardly recognize you!”
“And you look as good as ever, Uncle Carl!”
“Gosh, I haven’t seen you in, it must be ten or fifteen years!”
“Thirty years, Uncle Carl.”
“Oh, my.”
“They’ve got you manning the visitor’s desk now?”
“Oh, I enjoy it, and they let me use an office, too. Sometimes I even squeeze in some time on my old telescope. And who is this gentleman with you? You never were one for manners, Chrissy!”
“Carl, this is TJ McCaig. He and I are, uh, investigating a story. TJ, this is Carl Wirtanen. Uncle Carl’s an astronomer, retired now, but he spent his career up here on the mountain.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. McCaig.” Carl shook McCaig’s hand with a surprisingly firm grip.
McCaig looked the old man up and down. The guy was ninety years old if he was a day, yet he had more vigor than most men half his age.
“Likewise, Dr. Wirtanen.”
“So you’re issuing PhDs, Mr. McCaig? Please, just call me Carl. I worked at this observatory for thirty-six years, but that ‘doctor’ stuff is for the professors. My job was to point the telescopes, take pictures, and count stars and galaxies.”
“Oh, don’t let him fool you,” said Christine. “His sky survey is still the gold standard for quality astronomy. He’s the best!”