Eileen Reed - Ground Zero Part 26

"I understand," she said in a low voice. "I agree, Admiral Kane. I'll let the Schriever case be buried as completely as all the other cases." She looked up at him. "But Fouad Muallah may be a bigger threat than we know. I would like permission to continue working on that case."

Admiral Kane considered, and Lucy's fingers clenched the armrests of her chair.

Then he nodded, and she heaved a sigh of relief.

"I trust your discretion, Lucy," he said.

"Thank you," she said. Even with that small victory, the taste was terrible. Those poor people out at Schriever. She was going to have to find a bathroom after all, it seemed.

"May I go now, please?"

"Of course," the Admiral said. Jefferson leaned toward her and spoke quietly in her ear. He was telling her the directions to the ladies' room, she realized.

"Thank you," she murmured to him, and gathered her bag.

She made it to the ladies' room with seconds to spare, but at least she hadn't lost her dignity by running.

Colorado Springs.

For a s.p.a.ce of time, in the green underwater light, nothing of blood or murder existed. Eileen asked Joe about his childhood, where he had grown up, what he had done as a little boy. Eileen loved to listen to people talk about themselves. Joe Tanner, not surprisingly, talked a great deal. Eileen had learned years before that her delight in listening to people's stories was extraordinarily useful. Everyone liked to talk about themselves.

Joe talked about his summer car trips, the swimming lessons, bright sunny days. His family was very poor, but all the children worked their way through college. His sisters and brother were all very close. He loved computers, loved the relentless logic of them and the satisfaction of making them work. He was a computer nerd with an athletic bent. He refused to turn pale and doughy like his other computer friends: Somehow Eileen found herself, during the main course, explaining about growing up on her parents' ranch, near Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Her school years were spent farmed out in the Smithsons' family home in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. She told Joe how it was to wait through that last week of school, both dreading and longing for the day when she could be home with her mom and dad.

"No brothers or sisters?" he asked.

"No," she said. "A brother I never knew. He was only a few months old when he died. A heart problem, my parents said. That was before I was born."

"I'm sorry," Joe said. "Your parents must have been very happy to have you."

"They were, really," she said. "They never clutched, as you might've supposed after that. Just let me be. I was lonely for a brother or sister, I think, but it didn't really matter."

"Where are they now?"

"My parents? On the ranch, of course. They're only in their sixties; they still run over a thousand head of cattle on the land."

"Wow," Joe said, sitting back in his chair. "I didn't really think- Hearing your stories, I guess I had an image of Little House on the Prairie, you know, your mom in a bonnet or something..."

"Not exactly," Eileen said wryly. "They come to Denver once a year at least, for the Western Stock Show, and every few years they take a trip-Canada, Bahamas, England-for a whole summer. They like to travel."

"You didn't stay and be a rancher?"

"I joined the Air Force. I wanted to fly, I thought, when I would see those contrails and hear the jets in the sky."

"Why didn't you stay in?" Joe asked.

"I quit," Eileen said. "I flew A-l0s-warthogs, they're called, ugly and fast. A friend of mine-"

"Well, h.e.l.lo," Joni said behind them, and poured more coffee. A silent busboy whisked away their plates. "Dessert, you must have dessert. Let me show this charming young man my very best."

"Dessert, of course," Eileen said, smiling at Joni and mentally shaking herself. The idea was to get Joe Tanner to talk about himself, not to listen to herself babble.

"What about your friend?" Joe asked.

"Oh, nothing," Eileen said, too brightly. "That's way in the past now. So how did you get this job at Schriever?"

Joe looked at her and grinned insultingly. "A poor segue," he said. "You're not supposed to be that obvious, Columbo."

Eileen had to smile back. "Caught red-handed," she said.

Joni came by after they'd eaten their flaky pastries. She brushed a kiss against Eileen's cheek. "On the house, my girl, today," she said. "Come back anytime, and bring this handsome devil too," and she smiled at Joe.

"You get your meals free there?" Joe asked as he held the door for Eileen. The summer night was upon them, rich and warm. A few bugs beat their wings against the porch lights.

"Not always. Not so often that I expect it, just enough so it's a treat."

"What favor did you do? You said she was robbed?"

"She was robbed and beaten and raped, Joe," Eileen said. "And I caught them, and talked her into testifying, and they are in prison for a long, long time because I did everything right. I got the paperwork all filed and I got Joni to have pictures taken of her in the hospital and I didn't violate any procedures. I won one, that time."

Joe put his arm through hers and hugged it against him. He didn't look at her. "I'm glad," he said. "I'm glad you won that one."

When his headlights lit the small dark shape of her car, she felt regret that the drive hadn't been longer. The Garden of the G.o.ds was very dark, and the monoliths loomed over the narrow asphalt of the road. Joe got her door and took her hand to help her out, and for a moment they stood, listening to the crickets.

"Look at the stars," Eileen murmured. They were brilliant, made more visible by the stone spires blocking the light of the city around them.

"Let me follow you home," he said at last, dropping her hand with a regretful little squeeze.

"You don't have to do that," she said sharply.

The fizz abruptly went out of the night. Joe blinked and dropped his head to look at the ground. He rubbed his hand across his forehead.

"Well, that was a dumb thing to say," he said sadly. "I forgot everything. I just wanted to make sure you got home safely, that's all. I'm sorry."

"That's all right," Eileen said. She felt as sad as Joe looked. Under other circ.u.mstances ... She held out her hand. Joe shook it warmly and tried on a version of the sunny grin he'd had earlier.

"Maybe when this is all over we could try another dinner," he said.

"That's a promise," Eileen said. She knew Joe Tanner wasn't the murderer. She knew it with all her heart. But she still waited until he had driven out of sight before starting up her own car.

25.

Great Falls, Virginia.

Ted Giometti held his wife and thought pa.s.sionately about murdering that skinny WASP pipsqueak, that washed-out pale-eyed rat-faced creature, that Steven Mills whose headstone he would deface after he was buried, whose entire family he would...

"I can't tell you why," Lucy sobbed, grinding her flushed face against Ted's shoulder. His s.h.i.+rt was already damp from the flood of her angry tears. "I can't tell you why. I-" Here she broke down again, crying out her rage and striking at her husband's solid chest with her fists. Ted was not a huge man, but he was strong enough. He scooped up his pregnant wife and carried her to bed, managing not to stagger. He knew he wouldn't be able to do that soon. She'd weigh more than he did if she kept up her weight gain. He laid her on the bed and gathered her up in his arms.

She cried for a long time, long enough that he became worried. They were Italian Americans, he and Lucy, and their culture knew about grieving. Italian men didn't hold back their emotions, didn't absorb the poisons of grief into their system. Leave that to the pale WASPs like Steven Mills. Ted comforted himself with imagining Mills stumbling around his house, clutching his chest or his head as the heart attack struck or the aneurysm burst in his brain, blood flooding from his mouth and ears. Lucy's crying tapered off and finally stopped. Her breathing slowed and her body relaxed. She'd wept it out. She slept.

Ted held her, glad that she was all cried out. He kissed her damp forehead and slowly extricated himself from her sleeping grasp. He'd wake her in an hour, after he'd fixed some good pasta for her. After her cry, she'd be famished.

He paused at the door and looked at the rounded sleeping curves of his wife. Then he turned away to make his way to the kitchen and start supper.

Mashhad, Iran.

A decade ago, Ala-ad's report would have been painstakingly typed, photographed, and mailed through various tortuous channels until it reached Langley, Virginia, weeks after it was written. Even after it reached the CIA, an a.n.a.lyst might never look at it; there was always too much data and too few a.n.a.lysts.

That was before the Internet. Ala-ad's boxy IBM computer had a pitifully small processor and a painfully slow modem, but for Mashhad he was far ahead of the times. Ala-ad used his computer to run his business accounts, print out his employee paychecks, and keep track of his aircraft fuel. He sold all types of aircraft fuel at the Mashhad airport.

Ala-ad typed his reports with two fingers. He had only two fingers on one hand, three on the other. His fingers were the least of his losses during the Iran-Iraq war. His wife and son were dead, used by the Ayatollah as human s.h.i.+elds during the most desperate years of the fighting. Ala-ad should have been grateful to dedicate his wife and son to the glorious Ayatollah. He was not.

Ala-ad had some funny ideas for an Iranian, ideas that his wife, an Oxford graduate, had filled his head with during the short, sunlight-filled years of their marriage. The idea that all men are created equal, that Ala-ad should be able to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These goals were reconcilable with the religion of Islam, Ala-ad knew. In fact, the Prophet Mohammed himself was the originator of the concept that each man is his own religious leader, not a sheep in some leader's flock. Somehow through the centuries Mohammed's ideas had been corrupted. Ala-ad had lost his wife and his child because of that corruption.

He sent reports that might be interesting to the CIA not because he had any real hope that Iran might someday be an Islamic democracy, but because it was something to do to pa.s.s the time until he could join his Liah and his beautiful little boy, Adda. There wasn't much in Ala-ad's idea of the future. That had ended with Liah.

Today he wrote about a.s.sad and his precious Hind. a.s.sad was worried that they would get shot down over Uzbekistan as they tried to take over some old Soviet silo. They were going to stage some sort of terrorist event, Ala-ad figured, but a.s.sad didn't come right out with the plan. a.s.sad loved his Hind and was worried he would have to leave it behind if there were no fuel reserves at the missile silo.

Before Ala-ad finished his report, he wrote down all the names a.s.sad had mentioned, as he'd been trained to do by his dead wife's Oxford professor who had, in turn, been trained by the CIA. Ala-ad wrote down the names he remembered: Rashad, Ali, and the leader, Fouad Muallah.

Ala-ad sent his report via modem to a number in Tehran that was actually a rerouted number to Berlin. The Berlin office forwarded the electronic report automatically to Langley, Virginia, where it joined hundreds of thousands of doc.u.ments from around the world in the huge databases of the CIA computers.

Within the computer Lucy's search engine was still running, looking for information about George Tabor, missing dogs in Paris, and the name Fouad Muallah.

Colorado Springs Investigations Bureau.

For an entire morning, like a child stuck with homework during a beautiful day, Eileen sat at her computer. She was in Harben's office at seven-thirty, and from eight o'clock until noon she was embroiled in paperwork. Rosen briefed her on his investigations the night Arthur Bailey was murdered. Could it have been only a day ago? Eileen felt the sense of time slipping away. She was nearly frantic by the lunch hour.

"Everything we need is here," Rosen said sensibly. "You wouldn't learn anything more by driving out there."

"I haven't spoken to Sharon Johnson again," Eileen said, rubbing at her temples and glaring at Rosen. He was easier to glare at than Harben, although he seemed to be as unaffected by her impatience.

"Why would you need to speak to her?"

"Well, look at my notes. Every single d.a.m.n one of them hated Terry Guzman. Every one of them had a good reason to wish her dead."

"How about Lowell?"

"Lowell particularly. Maybe he knew about 'Berto. Jealousy?"

"Could be," Rosen admitted. He was sitting across from Eileen and his long legs were propped up next to the keyboard. He wore sensible dress shoes that, like Eileen's, were actually running shoes. "But we have no indication he found out. You want to go talk to him? He's not out at Schriever today."

"No shards of metal found anywhere," Eileen muttered, changing the subject.

"No shards. No blood on any clothing in any of the Gamers' houses or apartments."

"Did you read the autopsy report from Rowland? I skimmed it, but I didn't see anything in particular."

"I didn't see anything either," Rosen admitted. "Nothing that would point a finger toward the suspects. I skimmed your Procell file, too."

"And?" Eileen prompted. Rosen had fallen silent. His face was turned to the windows. The ma.s.sive flank of Pikes Peak showed the shadows of the first of the afternoon thunder-showers.

"In my opinion they are murders," Rosen said flatly. Eileen was surprised.

"Really?"

"Yes, really," he said, and shrugged. "Nothing we can do about them. I don't think they're related to Guzman or Bailey. This case doesn't fit Procell's pattern."

"But you think they're related to each other."

"Yes," Rosen said. He glanced over at Eileen. "Nothing we can do. Scientists are being murdered in the Defense Department, and if the Defense Department chooses to do nothing, that's their business."

Eileen felt chilled. She'd removed all references to the Ballistic Missile Defense program before she'd placed the file on disk. The file was uncla.s.sified now, but what would Rosen have said had he seen the complete set of information?

"What we need to do is solve these murders, is what you're saying," Eileen said. "Do you know the OSI is going to be here in two days? I'd bet you my pension there will no longer be an investigation in two days." She ran her fingers through her hair. "We can't let that happen. We just can't."

"Well, that may be," Rosen said. "And may not be. Right now I think we need to blow off some steam and think things over. How about blowing away some targets at the range?"

Eileen glared at him for a moment more, then sighed and grinned.

"Lead the way, Ros," she said. "That sounds like heaven to me."