No More Secrets, page 5
part #37 of James Acton Series
“What do we do now?” asked Laura, her voice quavering with emotion.
Acton faced her. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“Do you want to play it safe or do you want to find out the truth?”
She stared at them. “What do you think?”
10 |
Leroux/White Residence, Fairfax Towers
Falls Church, Virginia
Leroux stared at the photo of Charles Palmer standing in front of a theater playing a movie that didn’t come out until years after his death. “It has to be fake.”
Kane shrugged. “You tell me, you’re the expert.”
Leroux dismissed his laptop with a flick of the wrist. “This isn’t going to tell us anything. If whoever did it is halfway good at their job, I won’t be able to tell. And the fact that Tommy wasn’t able to after his own analysis tells me that either this is a really good fake or it’s the genuine article.”
“Then I think we’d better get some more powerful computers on this.”
Leroux chewed his cheek for a moment. “Do you mean your ops center?”
“No. Even my systems are probably not powerful enough, and we don’t have time to waste. The moment I was exposed to this information, my orders kicked in.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, this is not a favor for a friend. This is now an official government operation. The United States has to obtain this technology before anyone else. You call the Chief and get your team activated and assigned this case.” Kane rose and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m calling the girls back and getting our asses to Maryland. The professors are going to need security, and the sooner I get there the better, because if I know them, they’re not just going to sit back at home and wait.”
Leroux grunted. “You’re probably right about that.”
Kane gripped the doorknob then pointed at Leroux. “And make sure when you call the Chief, it’s on an encrypted line.”
“Of course.” Kane left and Leroux paused as he thought about the implications of what was happening. If Palmer had indeed continued his work for the past decade, encryption might already be obsolete.
And they just didn’t know it yet.
11 |
Acton/Palmer Residence, Overlook Village Gated Community
St. Paul, Maryland
“D ubai.”
Acton looked up at Tommy from the tablet he had been staring at, scanning through hundreds of photos, searching for any anomalies. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, the photo was taken in Dubai. Almost three years to the day after he died.”
“Okay, now we have a date and place to work from. Can you tweak your algorithm to only look for photos from, let’s say, two weeks before that onward, concentrating on Dubai?”
“Yes, but it’s going to reduce the pool dramatically, especially for the geolocation. It would have to be set in the metadata.” Tommy started working his keyboard then paused. “Um, are we good with using the university’s resources?”
Acton thought about Kane’s warning. “We’re not using his name, are we?”
“I was, but I dropped that and now I’m just using the facial recognition component. No one should know because I grab the photo, pull it down, then do the analysis locally. Unless they’ve got access to one of our systems and know his facial recognition points, no one should know what we’re doing. How hard do you want me to hit the network?”
Laura put her own tablet down. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve just been having it run in the background using up no more than twenty percent of the bandwidth.”
Acton checked his watch. “At this time of night and it being the weekend, there should be hardly anybody there. I say crank it up.”
“That’s going to set off some alarms. Whoever’s on call for IT support will be notified.”
“That’s not you?”
“Not this weekend.”
Acton cursed. “Do it, but I’ll call Greg and let him know what’s going on.”
Laura reached out and grabbed his wrist. “But what about what Dylan said?”
“I’ll be as vague as possible.”
Tommy continued his assault on his keyboard. “This is where I’d kill to have the resources of the CIA. They could get done in hours what will take us days.”
Acton rose, grabbing his cellphone. “Yeah, but what you find, we know about. What they find, they’ll keep to themselves.”
Laura leaned back, her arms folded. “You really think Dylan would hide that from us?”
“He might not have a choice. At best, he might tell us something, but we’ll never see it.” He headed into the next room, dialing his best friend’s number. Gregory Milton, Dean of St. Paul’s University, answered on the third ring, sounding a little groggy.
“Hello?”
“Hey, buddy, you hammered or did I wake you?”
“A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.”
Acton chuckled. “Listen, I need a favor with no questions.”
Milton’s voice perked up. “What’s going on?”
“We’re going to be using the university’s computers for some pretty intensive number-crunching, shall we say. It’s going to chew up a lot of bandwidth and horsepower, so your IT guys are going to be getting alerts. I need you to tell them that everything’s all right and to just let it go.”
“Just what kind of number-crunching are we talking about?”
“I can’t say, but Tommy’s the one taking care of everything on this end, so you know you can trust him.”
Milton groaned. “Is this going to get the university in trouble?”
“I can’t see how.”
“Where are you?”
“Our place.”
“And you can’t tell me what this is all about?”
“Not over the phone.”
Milton sighed. “Fine. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“I thought you said you were drunk.”
Milton grunted. “I just said that so I didn’t have to admit I went to bed at nine on a Friday.”
Acton laughed. “You’re getting old, buddy.”
“You have no idea.”
Milton ended the call and Acton headed back into the room with the others. “Greg’s going to call off the hounds and join us in about twenty minutes.”
Laura’s eyebrows rose. “Really? Wouldn’t it be better if we kept the group tight? The fewer who know the better.”
“Well, we’re using his computer infrastructure, so if we want him to cooperate, we’re going to have to let him in. Besides, we know we can trust him. He won’t go blabbing about it to anyone.”
Mai took a sip of her water. “Why are we being so paranoid? I mean, it’s been ten years and nothing’s happened. Why would we think anything’s going to happen now? We discovered that he might still be alive, but no one else knows. Well, except for, I guess, the CIA now, but who are they going to tell?”
Tommy continued to work his laptop. “You don’t understand, hon. If anybody out there suspected he might still be alive, they’d be monitoring for any activity.” He raised his hand and circled a finger. “For all we know, this place is bugged, just waiting for any conversation about him. The phones could be tapped, cellphones could be cloned.”
Acton tensed. “Do you really think so?”
Tommy shrugged. “I’d guess our phones are fine. I know mine is because I check on a daily basis. And with your CIA connections, I have no doubt they regularly inspect your lines to make sure there’s nothing out of the ordinary. Bugs, however, have to be scanned for. We should arrange for that to be looked into ASAP, but if we ignore all that, when I was putting together that montage, I was using his name as a possible filter in addition to the facial recognition points. That means hundreds of thousands of queries went out from dozens of computers over a three-week period that included his name in a lot of the searches. That’s going to trigger the trending algorithms. I doubt his name would’ve come up on any of the top ten lists, but the system would’ve noticed, and I was hitting search engines all around the world. And the type of people that would be looking for him would be governments. If the Chinese, let’s say, had managed to get some sort of tap inside Google, for example, they might have already been alerted.”
“So, what you’re saying is that they might already know that he’s alive?”
Tommy paused. “Not necessarily that he’s alive, but that somebody’s paying an awful lot of attention to a guy who’s been dead for ten years. It might make them wonder why and start to look into things themselves.”
Laura pointed at the laptop. “Then maybe we shouldn’t be pushing our luck.”
Tommy disagreed. “Like I said, I’m not using his name this time. Purely facial recognition. I’m not searching for him in a conventional sense, I’m crawling the web randomly as opposed to using search engine results to trigger starting points. It’s a lot less efficient, a lot slower, but a lot safer.”
Laura shivered, gripping her shoulders and rubbing. “It doesn’t feel safer.”
Tommy leaned away from his keyboard. “Should I stop?”
“No. I have to know. Keep doing what you’re doing, but let’s just be careful about it.” She glanced about. “Maybe we should turn on the security system.”
Acton rose. “I’ll take care of it.” He headed for the hallway and activated the perimeter security, wishing he had something a little more robust that included hardened elements rather than just sensors. He returned to the table and sat. “You know, there’s one person who might be able to help us.”
Laura regarded him, her head slowly bobbing. “I assume you’re talking about Hugh?”
“You know he’d want to be involved.”
Laura tapped her chin. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. If there’s one organization that would be infiltrated, it’s Interpol.”
Mai stared at her. “Why would you say that? Aren’t they police?”
“They’re police from all around the world. That includes countries like China and Russia. He wouldn’t be able to do any official investigation. Not even a query. Just pulling a file on a man who’s been dead for ten years could be all it takes. We can’t risk it.”
Acton sighed. “You’re right, but he’s going to kill us when this is all over.”
Laura started to say something then stopped, her mouth agape. She turned to Tommy. “I have a search criterion for you that might speed things up.”
Tommy frowned. “Like I said, that could be monitored. I can’t use his name.”
She dismissed his concern. “Forget his name. Search for the latest Terminator movie. He would never miss seeing it, and the more recent you get, the more random photos there are posted on social media. He could be caught in the background again.”
Tommy smiled. “Terminator: Dark Fate. I love it. That’s perfect.” He tapped away at his keyboard and hit the final key with a flourish. “That’s going to narrow this down dramatically.”
“Now what do we do?” asked Mai.
“We wait.”
12 |
The Ritz-Carlton
McLean, Virginia
CIA Operations Officer Sherrie White sat cross-legged on the floor at the foot of her bed, sorting a handful of cards she had just been dealt by Lee Fang, probably the best female friend she had ever had, a former Chinese Special Forces officer now living in exile in the United States. If circumstances were different, the two of them might be trying to kill each other. Instead, they were overnighting at a luxury spa and now sharing a room and playing cards while gossiping and doing battle with a bottle of 18-year-old single malt scotch.
“You know, once I figure out this game, I’m going to win all my money back.”
Fang grinned at her. “You’re already into me for a quarter of a million. You better start learning fast. Something tells me you can’t cover your markers.”
Sherrie put down two cards and to her dismay, Fang snatched them up. Sherrie frowned. “Is this some sort of trick deck?”
“No.” Fang gestured toward the window. “But there is a reason I have your back facing slightly opened curtains. Jill Masterson is reading your cards to me. It makes things much easier.”
Sherrie couldn’t resist glancing over her shoulder to find the curtains closed.
Fang snorted. “I can’t believe you actually looked.”
Sherrie shrugged. “Comes with the territory. We spies are naturally distrustful.” She flashed a toothy smile. “Especially when we’re in the hole a quarter of a million.”
Fang shrugged. “You’re the one who kept saying double or nothing.”
“Yeah, it didn’t seem like such a stupid idea when we started at a buck.”
Fang’s phone rang and she leaned over, glancing at the call display. “Huh.”
Sherrie eyed her. “What?”
“It’s coming through Dylan’s secure network.”
Sherrie eyed the scotch. “I hope he’s not calling with a math question.”
Fang snickered and took the call. “Hello, darling, can I put you on speaker so Sherrie can hear?” Fang’s smile disappeared and Sherrie grew concerned. “Uh-huh. Yes, I understand, Maryland.” Fang eyed the scotch. “Yes…about a quarter of the way through a twenty-sixer…we’ll take an Uber, see you soon.” She ended the call and sighed.
“What’s wrong?”
“You know Professor Laura Palmer’s brother?”
“Never met him.”
“I’d be surprised if you did. He’s been dead for ten years.”
“Then what about him?”
“Apparently he might not be dead, and if he’s not, there could be very serious consequences.”
“Meaning?”
Fang shrugged as she rose. “Dylan wouldn’t say over the phone, but he sounded serious.”
“What does he need us for?”
“He wants us to join him to provide security for the professors.”
“Sounds like fun.” Sherrie corked the scotch. “Good thing we’re only one sheet to the wind instead of three.”
13 |
Morrison Residence
River Oaks Drive, McLean, Virginia
CIA National Clandestine Service Chief Leif Morrison entered the coded sequence into his phone, his curiosity consuming him. Chris Leroux was one of his top people, not in the hierarchy of the Agency, but in his opinion of people’s capabilities. He had been one of his top analysts, a little too bookish, but Morrison had recognized his potential and pushed him into the analyst supervisor role at a very young age, perhaps too soon, but the young man had grown into it and was now thriving. Leroux was the type of person he could see occupying the Chief’s position someday, and for him to call at this hour on a Friday night insisting on a scrambled line, meant something big was up.
Morrison checked the status indicator. “I’m green on this end.”
“So am I,” replied Leroux. “Are you alone?”
Morrison already knew the answer to the question but checked over both shoulders regardless. “Yes.”
“I got a call from Tommy Granger a short while ago. He was putting together a montage for the tenth anniversary of Professor Palmer’s brother’s death.”
“Charles Palmer?”
“Yes.”
Just the mere mention of the name had Morrison’s attention—he had read the file that he was certain Leroux hadn’t. “I’m listening.”
“Tommy found photographic evidence that suggests Palmer’s brother isn’t dead.”
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Morrison. “Have we confirmed this?”
“Not yet.”
“How contained is this?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“From a ‘heard it from someone’s lips’ standpoint.”
“Very. But we have no idea about electronic monitoring, intercepts. Anything is possible.”
“So, the fact he’s alive might not be contained?”
“It might not be. How concerned should we be?”
Morrison leaned back, scratching his chin. “Very. I need you to call in your team, get an ops center up and running, and start chasing this down. We need to know if Charles Palmer is alive, and if he is, we need to be the ones that bring him in. Our country’s very future might depend on it.”
14 |
Lot Residence
Sodom
1649 BC
Lot lay on his back with Idit draped over him, both their bodies covered in sweat and lust. “That was unbelievable,” he gasped. “I didn’t know it could be that way.”
She kissed him. “Neither did I. Do you think it was a sin?”
He stared into her eyes and thought about it for a moment. He wasn’t sure. They were husband and wife, and nothing they had done went against what was taught at Temple, though such things weren’t spoken of, so how could he possibly know whether anything they had done was frowned upon in the eyes of God? He finally shrugged. “I think anything between a husband and wife that brings them both pleasure without hurting anyone else would make God happy.”
She grinned. “Thank God you said that. We are definitely doing that again.”
He laughed. “Whenever you want.”
She hopped out of bed and grabbed her wrap. “I have to get to work. I need to find that list of names Canaan gave me. I want to see if I can work them all in this time.” She patted his cheek. “Since I’ll have two more faces that I can use.”
He rose. “I better get back to the shop. Despite this commission, the steady money comes from our regular customers.” He washed up and dressed then stepped into his wife’s studio, spotting a piece of parchment sitting on her worktable with a list of names as she drew on a new vase. He scanned the list, his eyebrows shooting up at some of the names, almost all of whom he recognized. There were some husbands and wives, though perhaps that wasn’t the best way to characterize this list. They were all husbands and wives, just not each other’s, save a few. The rest were all married men and women whose spouses were not on the list.
Acton faced her. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“Do you want to play it safe or do you want to find out the truth?”
She stared at them. “What do you think?”
10 |
Leroux/White Residence, Fairfax Towers
Falls Church, Virginia
Leroux stared at the photo of Charles Palmer standing in front of a theater playing a movie that didn’t come out until years after his death. “It has to be fake.”
Kane shrugged. “You tell me, you’re the expert.”
Leroux dismissed his laptop with a flick of the wrist. “This isn’t going to tell us anything. If whoever did it is halfway good at their job, I won’t be able to tell. And the fact that Tommy wasn’t able to after his own analysis tells me that either this is a really good fake or it’s the genuine article.”
“Then I think we’d better get some more powerful computers on this.”
Leroux chewed his cheek for a moment. “Do you mean your ops center?”
“No. Even my systems are probably not powerful enough, and we don’t have time to waste. The moment I was exposed to this information, my orders kicked in.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, this is not a favor for a friend. This is now an official government operation. The United States has to obtain this technology before anyone else. You call the Chief and get your team activated and assigned this case.” Kane rose and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m calling the girls back and getting our asses to Maryland. The professors are going to need security, and the sooner I get there the better, because if I know them, they’re not just going to sit back at home and wait.”
Leroux grunted. “You’re probably right about that.”
Kane gripped the doorknob then pointed at Leroux. “And make sure when you call the Chief, it’s on an encrypted line.”
“Of course.” Kane left and Leroux paused as he thought about the implications of what was happening. If Palmer had indeed continued his work for the past decade, encryption might already be obsolete.
And they just didn’t know it yet.
11 |
Acton/Palmer Residence, Overlook Village Gated Community
St. Paul, Maryland
“D ubai.”
Acton looked up at Tommy from the tablet he had been staring at, scanning through hundreds of photos, searching for any anomalies. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, the photo was taken in Dubai. Almost three years to the day after he died.”
“Okay, now we have a date and place to work from. Can you tweak your algorithm to only look for photos from, let’s say, two weeks before that onward, concentrating on Dubai?”
“Yes, but it’s going to reduce the pool dramatically, especially for the geolocation. It would have to be set in the metadata.” Tommy started working his keyboard then paused. “Um, are we good with using the university’s resources?”
Acton thought about Kane’s warning. “We’re not using his name, are we?”
“I was, but I dropped that and now I’m just using the facial recognition component. No one should know because I grab the photo, pull it down, then do the analysis locally. Unless they’ve got access to one of our systems and know his facial recognition points, no one should know what we’re doing. How hard do you want me to hit the network?”
Laura put her own tablet down. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve just been having it run in the background using up no more than twenty percent of the bandwidth.”
Acton checked his watch. “At this time of night and it being the weekend, there should be hardly anybody there. I say crank it up.”
“That’s going to set off some alarms. Whoever’s on call for IT support will be notified.”
“That’s not you?”
“Not this weekend.”
Acton cursed. “Do it, but I’ll call Greg and let him know what’s going on.”
Laura reached out and grabbed his wrist. “But what about what Dylan said?”
“I’ll be as vague as possible.”
Tommy continued his assault on his keyboard. “This is where I’d kill to have the resources of the CIA. They could get done in hours what will take us days.”
Acton rose, grabbing his cellphone. “Yeah, but what you find, we know about. What they find, they’ll keep to themselves.”
Laura leaned back, her arms folded. “You really think Dylan would hide that from us?”
“He might not have a choice. At best, he might tell us something, but we’ll never see it.” He headed into the next room, dialing his best friend’s number. Gregory Milton, Dean of St. Paul’s University, answered on the third ring, sounding a little groggy.
“Hello?”
“Hey, buddy, you hammered or did I wake you?”
“A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.”
Acton chuckled. “Listen, I need a favor with no questions.”
Milton’s voice perked up. “What’s going on?”
“We’re going to be using the university’s computers for some pretty intensive number-crunching, shall we say. It’s going to chew up a lot of bandwidth and horsepower, so your IT guys are going to be getting alerts. I need you to tell them that everything’s all right and to just let it go.”
“Just what kind of number-crunching are we talking about?”
“I can’t say, but Tommy’s the one taking care of everything on this end, so you know you can trust him.”
Milton groaned. “Is this going to get the university in trouble?”
“I can’t see how.”
“Where are you?”
“Our place.”
“And you can’t tell me what this is all about?”
“Not over the phone.”
Milton sighed. “Fine. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“I thought you said you were drunk.”
Milton grunted. “I just said that so I didn’t have to admit I went to bed at nine on a Friday.”
Acton laughed. “You’re getting old, buddy.”
“You have no idea.”
Milton ended the call and Acton headed back into the room with the others. “Greg’s going to call off the hounds and join us in about twenty minutes.”
Laura’s eyebrows rose. “Really? Wouldn’t it be better if we kept the group tight? The fewer who know the better.”
“Well, we’re using his computer infrastructure, so if we want him to cooperate, we’re going to have to let him in. Besides, we know we can trust him. He won’t go blabbing about it to anyone.”
Mai took a sip of her water. “Why are we being so paranoid? I mean, it’s been ten years and nothing’s happened. Why would we think anything’s going to happen now? We discovered that he might still be alive, but no one else knows. Well, except for, I guess, the CIA now, but who are they going to tell?”
Tommy continued to work his laptop. “You don’t understand, hon. If anybody out there suspected he might still be alive, they’d be monitoring for any activity.” He raised his hand and circled a finger. “For all we know, this place is bugged, just waiting for any conversation about him. The phones could be tapped, cellphones could be cloned.”
Acton tensed. “Do you really think so?”
Tommy shrugged. “I’d guess our phones are fine. I know mine is because I check on a daily basis. And with your CIA connections, I have no doubt they regularly inspect your lines to make sure there’s nothing out of the ordinary. Bugs, however, have to be scanned for. We should arrange for that to be looked into ASAP, but if we ignore all that, when I was putting together that montage, I was using his name as a possible filter in addition to the facial recognition points. That means hundreds of thousands of queries went out from dozens of computers over a three-week period that included his name in a lot of the searches. That’s going to trigger the trending algorithms. I doubt his name would’ve come up on any of the top ten lists, but the system would’ve noticed, and I was hitting search engines all around the world. And the type of people that would be looking for him would be governments. If the Chinese, let’s say, had managed to get some sort of tap inside Google, for example, they might have already been alerted.”
“So, what you’re saying is that they might already know that he’s alive?”
Tommy paused. “Not necessarily that he’s alive, but that somebody’s paying an awful lot of attention to a guy who’s been dead for ten years. It might make them wonder why and start to look into things themselves.”
Laura pointed at the laptop. “Then maybe we shouldn’t be pushing our luck.”
Tommy disagreed. “Like I said, I’m not using his name this time. Purely facial recognition. I’m not searching for him in a conventional sense, I’m crawling the web randomly as opposed to using search engine results to trigger starting points. It’s a lot less efficient, a lot slower, but a lot safer.”
Laura shivered, gripping her shoulders and rubbing. “It doesn’t feel safer.”
Tommy leaned away from his keyboard. “Should I stop?”
“No. I have to know. Keep doing what you’re doing, but let’s just be careful about it.” She glanced about. “Maybe we should turn on the security system.”
Acton rose. “I’ll take care of it.” He headed for the hallway and activated the perimeter security, wishing he had something a little more robust that included hardened elements rather than just sensors. He returned to the table and sat. “You know, there’s one person who might be able to help us.”
Laura regarded him, her head slowly bobbing. “I assume you’re talking about Hugh?”
“You know he’d want to be involved.”
Laura tapped her chin. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. If there’s one organization that would be infiltrated, it’s Interpol.”
Mai stared at her. “Why would you say that? Aren’t they police?”
“They’re police from all around the world. That includes countries like China and Russia. He wouldn’t be able to do any official investigation. Not even a query. Just pulling a file on a man who’s been dead for ten years could be all it takes. We can’t risk it.”
Acton sighed. “You’re right, but he’s going to kill us when this is all over.”
Laura started to say something then stopped, her mouth agape. She turned to Tommy. “I have a search criterion for you that might speed things up.”
Tommy frowned. “Like I said, that could be monitored. I can’t use his name.”
She dismissed his concern. “Forget his name. Search for the latest Terminator movie. He would never miss seeing it, and the more recent you get, the more random photos there are posted on social media. He could be caught in the background again.”
Tommy smiled. “Terminator: Dark Fate. I love it. That’s perfect.” He tapped away at his keyboard and hit the final key with a flourish. “That’s going to narrow this down dramatically.”
“Now what do we do?” asked Mai.
“We wait.”
12 |
The Ritz-Carlton
McLean, Virginia
CIA Operations Officer Sherrie White sat cross-legged on the floor at the foot of her bed, sorting a handful of cards she had just been dealt by Lee Fang, probably the best female friend she had ever had, a former Chinese Special Forces officer now living in exile in the United States. If circumstances were different, the two of them might be trying to kill each other. Instead, they were overnighting at a luxury spa and now sharing a room and playing cards while gossiping and doing battle with a bottle of 18-year-old single malt scotch.
“You know, once I figure out this game, I’m going to win all my money back.”
Fang grinned at her. “You’re already into me for a quarter of a million. You better start learning fast. Something tells me you can’t cover your markers.”
Sherrie put down two cards and to her dismay, Fang snatched them up. Sherrie frowned. “Is this some sort of trick deck?”
“No.” Fang gestured toward the window. “But there is a reason I have your back facing slightly opened curtains. Jill Masterson is reading your cards to me. It makes things much easier.”
Sherrie couldn’t resist glancing over her shoulder to find the curtains closed.
Fang snorted. “I can’t believe you actually looked.”
Sherrie shrugged. “Comes with the territory. We spies are naturally distrustful.” She flashed a toothy smile. “Especially when we’re in the hole a quarter of a million.”
Fang shrugged. “You’re the one who kept saying double or nothing.”
“Yeah, it didn’t seem like such a stupid idea when we started at a buck.”
Fang’s phone rang and she leaned over, glancing at the call display. “Huh.”
Sherrie eyed her. “What?”
“It’s coming through Dylan’s secure network.”
Sherrie eyed the scotch. “I hope he’s not calling with a math question.”
Fang snickered and took the call. “Hello, darling, can I put you on speaker so Sherrie can hear?” Fang’s smile disappeared and Sherrie grew concerned. “Uh-huh. Yes, I understand, Maryland.” Fang eyed the scotch. “Yes…about a quarter of the way through a twenty-sixer…we’ll take an Uber, see you soon.” She ended the call and sighed.
“What’s wrong?”
“You know Professor Laura Palmer’s brother?”
“Never met him.”
“I’d be surprised if you did. He’s been dead for ten years.”
“Then what about him?”
“Apparently he might not be dead, and if he’s not, there could be very serious consequences.”
“Meaning?”
Fang shrugged as she rose. “Dylan wouldn’t say over the phone, but he sounded serious.”
“What does he need us for?”
“He wants us to join him to provide security for the professors.”
“Sounds like fun.” Sherrie corked the scotch. “Good thing we’re only one sheet to the wind instead of three.”
13 |
Morrison Residence
River Oaks Drive, McLean, Virginia
CIA National Clandestine Service Chief Leif Morrison entered the coded sequence into his phone, his curiosity consuming him. Chris Leroux was one of his top people, not in the hierarchy of the Agency, but in his opinion of people’s capabilities. He had been one of his top analysts, a little too bookish, but Morrison had recognized his potential and pushed him into the analyst supervisor role at a very young age, perhaps too soon, but the young man had grown into it and was now thriving. Leroux was the type of person he could see occupying the Chief’s position someday, and for him to call at this hour on a Friday night insisting on a scrambled line, meant something big was up.
Morrison checked the status indicator. “I’m green on this end.”
“So am I,” replied Leroux. “Are you alone?”
Morrison already knew the answer to the question but checked over both shoulders regardless. “Yes.”
“I got a call from Tommy Granger a short while ago. He was putting together a montage for the tenth anniversary of Professor Palmer’s brother’s death.”
“Charles Palmer?”
“Yes.”
Just the mere mention of the name had Morrison’s attention—he had read the file that he was certain Leroux hadn’t. “I’m listening.”
“Tommy found photographic evidence that suggests Palmer’s brother isn’t dead.”
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Morrison. “Have we confirmed this?”
“Not yet.”
“How contained is this?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“From a ‘heard it from someone’s lips’ standpoint.”
“Very. But we have no idea about electronic monitoring, intercepts. Anything is possible.”
“So, the fact he’s alive might not be contained?”
“It might not be. How concerned should we be?”
Morrison leaned back, scratching his chin. “Very. I need you to call in your team, get an ops center up and running, and start chasing this down. We need to know if Charles Palmer is alive, and if he is, we need to be the ones that bring him in. Our country’s very future might depend on it.”
14 |
Lot Residence
Sodom
1649 BC
Lot lay on his back with Idit draped over him, both their bodies covered in sweat and lust. “That was unbelievable,” he gasped. “I didn’t know it could be that way.”
She kissed him. “Neither did I. Do you think it was a sin?”
He stared into her eyes and thought about it for a moment. He wasn’t sure. They were husband and wife, and nothing they had done went against what was taught at Temple, though such things weren’t spoken of, so how could he possibly know whether anything they had done was frowned upon in the eyes of God? He finally shrugged. “I think anything between a husband and wife that brings them both pleasure without hurting anyone else would make God happy.”
She grinned. “Thank God you said that. We are definitely doing that again.”
He laughed. “Whenever you want.”
She hopped out of bed and grabbed her wrap. “I have to get to work. I need to find that list of names Canaan gave me. I want to see if I can work them all in this time.” She patted his cheek. “Since I’ll have two more faces that I can use.”
He rose. “I better get back to the shop. Despite this commission, the steady money comes from our regular customers.” He washed up and dressed then stepped into his wife’s studio, spotting a piece of parchment sitting on her worktable with a list of names as she drew on a new vase. He scanned the list, his eyebrows shooting up at some of the names, almost all of whom he recognized. There were some husbands and wives, though perhaps that wasn’t the best way to characterize this list. They were all husbands and wives, just not each other’s, save a few. The rest were all married men and women whose spouses were not on the list.
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