Perilous Panacea (11 page)

Closing the door to their prison, he accelerated into an easy jog, careful of his knee, which felt good, although the drug had him feeling good all over. He examined Beecher’s keys and identified the car keys and the unlock button on the digital key pad as he stepped from air-conditioned cool into a wall of heat and humidity. He bounded down five concrete steps next to a loading dock on his left and jogged toward a big car at the end of the long warehouse-like structure. Home free, he thought, a giggle about to break through the giddy feeling that suffused his body.

Behind him, the door banged open. “Stay right where you are, Reedan,” Beecher yelled as he pounded down the steps.

Curt tossed the Sam Adams toward the building and grabbed the door handle. Locked. He quickly punched buttons on the key pad; the car lights blinked. He opened the door and slipped into a plush leather seat of what he now recognized to be a Lincoln Town Car. He slammed the door. The lock, where is it? Forget it. The ignition, where’s the ignition? He felt along the steering column and located it. He jammed the key into the ignition just as Beecher jerked open the door.

“Just hold it right there, asshole,” Beecher said through shortened breaths. He shoved a gun into the lighted interior and pressed the hard steel muzzle against Curt’s temple.

Markum, his gun drawn, pounded up next to Beecher. “Thank God, you got the bastard.”

Curt stared through the windshield, sweat dribbling into his eyes. Surling would be ready with his alternate plan, and Curt was chosen—without a coin toss.

Chapter Sixteen

This time Rick Saul inhabited his home turf, a Bureau interrogation room, sitting behind a long metal table with Doyle Logson on his side. Bart Kraft sat at attention on the other side, alone, no wife’s picture to touch, no sons smiling up at him. It was time for Kraft to come up with answers about Steve Austin.

Kraft glanced around the room, the only decoration a picture of the President on the white wall behind Saul and Logson. “What did you call me down here for?” Kraft asked, unbuttoning his tan jacket and then buttoning it. “I’ve got a lot of work waiting for me at the office. Besides that, I’ve got Sheena Mosely hounding me. Somebody better figure out what to do about her, or SWISILREC will be smeared all over the media.”

Sheena Mosely was every Washington bureaucrat’s worst nightmare come true. Fortunately, she was a Washington outsider, and although she had been nosing around DOE and DOD for a week, as far as they knew, she made little progress. She hadn’t hit Capitol Hill yet—at least Mary and the Senator didn’t know about her.

“We called you down here to talk about Austin,” Logson said.

“I told Saul everything I know.”

Saul worried that Kraft might be telling the truth.

Austin, for want of his real name, they still called him that. Although Saul and twenty-one other agents now on the case in and around Washington had turned over many rocks, they had few clues to Austin’s true identity.

Austin’s social security card was obtained with a birth certificate for a long-dead baby in Detroit. Unburned remains of his wallet at the morgue held a Maryland driver’s license with a fake address and little else, such as credit cards or anything that would connect him with anybody but who he was trying to be. Although his job application at DOE stated that he worked for California Congressman Terrance Tilton, Tilton’s office never heard of him. From the congressional payroll office, they found out he worked for Congressman Clarence Morgan of Florida. They had agents questioning people in Morgan’s office, but they were hampered because Morgan and four of his top assistants were on a “fact-finding” trip to Southeast Asia.

His resume listed a PhD in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a B.S. and M.S. from Columbia University in New York City, both phonies. If he earned degrees from those schools, they weren’t obtained under the name of Steve Austin.

Regardless of his degrees, he was a computer whiz-bang, as testified to by Kraft and others at DOE and as attested to by his success in hacking the SID computer to award himself a security clearance. Then he played his hacking games in NNSA’s computer at DOE and NNSA’s supercomputer at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, and now somebody had enough nuclear material for fifteen-to-twenty atomic bombs.

After many agent days spent turning D.C. upside down, they found only two people who had really touched Austin: Kraft and Marge Alsop. Marge knew Austin, but knew nothing about him. Kraft claimed to have known Austin only as a co-worker, so there was no way he could know anything about him. Rick Saul now knew better.

“Bart, we know that you know more about Austin than you’ve been telling us,” Logson said, his Chinaman’s smile flickering on his bald face.

Before Kraft could deny it, Saul said, “You and Austin were lovers.”

Kraft’s head jerked from looking at Logson to Saul. His right hand reached out, dropped onto the white plastic table top, and then slid back into his lap, his shoulders straight. “What are you talking about?” He turned to Logson, eyes pleading. “You know me, Doyle. You’ve met my wife and family.”

Logson’s smile drained away.

Saul tried to put himself in Kraft’s position, but couldn’t. What was he looking for? He tried to picture them together naked. Why? Kraft didn’t look like someone bored with his job, someone who needed extra kicks. With guys yet. Women, Saul could understand, the wife not measuring up to the picture on the desk. But guys?

“Where did you go for lunch yesterday?” Saul asked.

Kraft’s shoulders drooped slightly; he undid the button on his jacket and rubbed his hand across his brow.

“You went to Georgetown and had lunch at Mister May, right?”

At the mention of Mister May, a light-red shadow crept from below Kraft’s collar up into his face. “You’ve been following me.”

“It’s a gay bar, and you didn’t go back to work yesterday afternoon. You went with…”

“You’ve got no right to follow me. I turned in leave time for yesterday afternoon. You can check the record.”

“Okay, Bart,” Logson said, his voice husky, his face almost as red as Kraft’s. “Let’s talk about Austin. You spent time with him, right?”

“Jesus, Doyle, it’s not what you think.” He held up his hands. “Martha and the kids don’t know anything about that part of my life. I don’t know why I do it.”

Saul wondered how many Washington bean counters spent lunchtime yesterday at a gay bar or in bed with someone other than their spouse. Only Kraft got caught. “Austin. What about Austin?” Saul said, wishing this part of the process was over.

Kraft shrugged, his head dropping onto his chest. “About two years ago, Austin came up to me at a bar. He knew who I was. I don’t know how he found out, because I was always discreet. I always made sure nobody knew where I worked. I always used a false name.”

“So you met Austin in a bar, and you had sex with him. So why did you give him a job?”

Kraft rubbed his hand across his mouth. “A few days after we met, I got a letter with his resume indicating he was a computer expert with a Q clearance. There was no direct threat of blackmail in the letter, but I could read between the lines. So I had him in for an interview.”

“There wasn’t any reason for a threat, because you gave him a job. Right?”

Kraft held out his hands, palms up. “Why shouldn’t I give him the job? He was a straight-A student, and he had good references and a Q clearance. Our security people verified it.”

“It was a fake,” Saul said. “Austin accessed OPM’s SID computer and gave himself a Q clearance. Did you check his references?”

“No,” Kraft said, his voice barely audible. His body sank slightly in the chair. He reached up and loosened his tie and undid the shirt button. “He said he was working for Congressman Tilton, but he wanted to get back to technical work because the job with Tilton was too political. Why should I check? As far as I knew, he had a Q clearance, and he knew all about computers. These days, my department’s nothing but computers, and we needed an expert. I didn’t think there was any way he could hurt our department…or the government.”

Logson shook his head and looked at Saul. “He didn’t think. So you gave him carte blanche with your computer.”

“Yes. He redid the transportation security, uranium and plutonium management, and storage programs and greatly improved them.”

“You let him visit field offices, right?”

Kraft looked around the room as if hoping for a way to disappear. He nodded and ran his hand through his hair. “When he began the revamping, he said he needed to tour some field offices to see how they operate.”

“And you continued to have homosexual relations with him,” Saul said. “I assume you found out something about his personal life.”

It turned out Kraft found out absolutely nothing that would lead to Austin’s identity or, more importantly, lead to the people Austin worked with. This, despite the fact that they had spent many lunch hours at Austin’s apartment in Rockville. He never met any of Austin’s friends and knew nothing about Austin and Marge Alsop.

“Nothing that I can remember,” Kraft said for about the sixth time.

“Our only hope is that we can turn something up in his apartment,” Logson said, “assuming Kraft can find it.”

He now had his handkerchief out and wiped his brow. “I’ll take you right to it.”

Kraft stood, his hair mussed, tie undone, and started toward the door. Halfway there, he stopped and turned to Logson. “Doyle, what about me? The job…Martha and the boys?”

Logson looked as if he could barely stand the sight of Kraft. “The first thing you should do when you get back to your office is prepare your resignation. Somebody will let you know when it’s wanted.”

“You can’t fire me because of my sexual preference.”

“Nobody’s going to fire you, Bart. You’re going to resign.”

- - - - -

Kraft led Saul to an old, red brick duplex in Rockville. After dropping him at a Metrobus stop, Saul went to see the landlady, who lived in the adjoining apartment. In her late sixties, she was only too happy to talk about “that nice young man. Such a tragedy.”

“Who told you about the accident?”

“The men who took his belongings away. They showed up two days after Mr. Austin was killed. They had a letter from a lawyer that said they could take his personal belongings and return them to his folks.”

“Did they tell you where his folks lived?”

She shook her head. “If they did, I don’t remember.”

“Did Mr. Austin have a roommate?”

“No, sir. He had friends who visited him a lot. Quite a few times they stayed overnight.”

“Men or women?”

“Both.”

“Can I see the apartment? Maybe he left something behind.”

“There’s nothing of Mr. Austin’s in there. A nice young couple moved in three weeks after they moved Mr. Austin’s things out.”

Chapter Seventeen

“You’re crazy, Bob,” Reedan said. “Me and Drafton? No way!”

Surling wanted to scream at the futility of Reedan’s argument. Over and over they examined all possibilities; there was no other way. That, or wait for the end. Getting another escape chance like the one Reedan fucked up last night was increasingly unlikely.

“Goddammit, Curt, we’re not talking about turning you into a queer. We’re talking life and death, namely, ours.”

Although they sat at the oak table eating dinner, Surling thought Reedan looked sick—sick of the idea and the argument, and also sick of him. “We’ve got to do something. They’ve got your wife scared shitless, and they made me call my wife again yesterday to tell her everything’s okay. Drafton is our only chance.”

Surling shook his head. He began agitating for the alternate plan after Reedan’s screw up: he hadn’t even gotten a look at a license plate to see what state they were in. He saw a sign on the building that said they were working for General Nuclear American Company. So it wasn’t Margine Nuclear Technology, like he was told when they were “recruiting” him and like the website they gave him to look at. Big goddamn deal, Surling thought. He spends his time before the escape attempt drinking beer and smoking pot, and then has the gall to say that if he had been five seconds faster getting the key into the ignition, he’d have been out of here in a Lincoln Town Car. And now he fights their only other plan.

Reedan pushed his half-eaten meal aside. “Why can’t we just play on Drafton’s sympathies?”

“We don’t mean anything to him. He’s young and naive, too, and he still believes they’ll pay us and let us go. If you mean something to him, we’ll be able to convince him they intend to kill us.” Surling sipped coffee. “If you two, you know, get it on, he’ll have a stake in you…and me.”

“What about AIDS? We’ll get out of here, and I’ll die of AIDS.”

Here we go again, Surling thought. The guy was great at thinking of all possibilities for why something shouldn’t be done. “How many times do I have to tell you, it won’t come to sex. Besides, he and I talked about AIDS. He said he hadn’t been with anyone since Derek, and they had safe sex.”

“Safe sex doesn’t mean anything.”

“It’s a chance we’ll have to take.”

“We’ll have to take?”

“Okay, if it ever comes to sex, you’ll have to take the chance. Safe sex or not, we’re dead for sure if you don’t take it.” Safe sex, Surling thought. As he was coming in the blonde in Philadelphia, the thought had flicked across his mind: You’re supposed to use a rubber, not that this was the first time he didn’t use one or that he thought about it after the fact.

“What am I supposed to do, seduce him?”

“Why go over it again, Curt? Seduce him, or let him seduce you, what’s the difference? For now, just be friendly, play it as it comes. I’ve been telling him about you, and he’s interested.”

“Yeah. He’s been in the computer room a few times. He never says much, just stands behind me and watches the monitor while I work. He talks about how good Derek was on the computer. Once or twice he touched my shoulder, rubbed it.”

“There’s your chance. I told him you and your wife are having trouble and might split.”

“What?”

“You said you argued about your job change and moving to Boston. I figured if Drafton knows that, he won’t think we’re trying to pull something.”

“My wife and I are doing fine.”

“Goddammit, Curt, you’re not going to Boston or Colorado, but to an early grave unless we do something. Now.”

“It’s just that I don’t think I could ever… What would I actually do?”

Reedan’s question took Surling by surprise, since it was the first time they’d spoken about the act. What did he want to hear? “I guess you blow him and he blows you. That and anal sex. You have had a blow job, haven’t you?”

Reedan hesitated and then shook his head. “I’ve been rather…conventional…I’ve been busy.”

“You’ve never had a woman go down on you? You’ve never gone down on your wife? I guess you never had another woman besides your wife either.”

Reedan stared at him.

Surling smiled. “I’ll let you get in a few licks on me.” He began to laugh.

Reedan didn’t laugh.

“That was crude,” Surling said quietly. “I can see there are some pleasures you haven’t experienced, my young friend. And a whole lot of pain.” He smiled. “But why are we talking about sex? It won’t get that far. What’s he going to do, tell Applenu he wants to take you back to his apartment so you two can sleep together? Or will they move me out of here, so you two can be alone? At worst, you might have to hug him a few times.”

Reedan nodded. “I know. It’s just that…Hey, I told you we’re going to have a baby. I’d like a son, but another daughter would be fine.”

Surling marveled at Reedan’s naiveté as he remembered his own son, who was about Reedan’s age when it happened. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, Curt. You’ll see your son.” He smiled. “I had a son once, too.”

- - - - -

Lori picked up the phone after the fifth ring.

“Hello, Lori. I’m checking to see how you are doing all by yourself.”

She recognized the leering voice of the tall one. This was the second time he called.

“If you are lonesome, Lori, I’ll come and keep you company.” He cackled.

She cringed at the way her name sounded with his foreign accent. “I’m fine.” She had to get a gun.

“Just don’t get any ideas about going to the police, because we’re watching and listening.”

What good was a gun? Could she have him come over and then shoot him? What would she tell the police?

“I won’t tell anyone.” She said.

“You better not, or else it’s the end for your old man and little girl. It will be the end of you, too.”

- - - - -

Curt was behind the keyboard in the computer room when Drafton walked in and sat on the chair at the other end of the long table. After a few awkward moments, Drafton began talking about the work Curt had been doing. Although he would rather break his leg again, another compound fracture of the tibia and fibula, his foot pointing ninety degrees in the wrong direction, Curt knew Surling was right. Reluctantly, he changed the subject to Derek.

Drafton’s face lit up, and he began to describe Derek Hearn the computer genius, how Derek put the project together, how he had known Derek in college and Derek contacted him to work on it.

“God, I miss him,” Drafton said.

“So why didn’t you get out after he died?”

Drafton tugged at his bushy brown beard, his eyes glistening. “They convinced me to help finish what Derek started. Besides, I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Ever since high school, homosexuals were queers, fags, and fairies to Curt, the butts of locker-room jokes. Face-to-face with a real one, all he wanted was to get away from the sad sack, get back to his quarters. But like the escape attempt, it was again now-or-never, life-or-death time if he were to believe Surling.

“You know what it means to lose somebody you love? Yes, love.” Tears surged but did not flow. “I loved him. You might not understand. Most people don’t. I’m not sure Derek did.” Tears flowed.

Curt remembered a joke. Drafton didn’t talk like that, his voice about the same pitch and tone as Curt’s. He had to get out of there, but in his mind, he heard Surling: “Make a move. Now.”

Drafton rubbed his right eye with his index finger and talked about how there was nobody he could talk to about Derek, certainly not his parents, since he had fought with them about his lifestyle ever since they found out. Large wet drops rolled into his beard and disappeared. “Why can’t people understand?”

Parents, Curt thought. What would Mom think of this? Dad would shoot him. “Screwed up his basketball career out on that farm, and now he turns queer.” Where were Mom’s prayers? He sat, unable to move, Surling’s voice rattling in his brain: “You make the move.”

Thoughts were Curt’s domain, everything in the mind. Ever since the summer after his sophomore year in college, physical action held little appeal. After his recovery he quickly connected with the computer and the metallurgy department at school. He sometimes wondered if he lived too much inside his head or in the wrong part of his head to understand sex. During his junior and senior years in college, a portion of his brain was occupied by sex, at least when he was with Lori, although they never went all the way until they were married. Surling got a laugh out of that and the fact that Lori was the only one. Maybe he was queer.

He wanted to believe Surling was right: nothing sexual would happen. He knew he should go to Drafton. Can’t do it, he thought. Why didn’t Surling do it? Surling needed sex. Surling started him thinking about his own sex life, which was as limited as his thoughts on the subject. Like Surling asking him if he’d ever had a blow job. Lori wanted to experiment; she bought a book and wanted him to read it. She teased him in bed a few times, kissing his penis and playfully licking at it, asking if he wasn’t up for something a little different. They never got there, because he quickly steered her back to the tried and true. He wasn’t ready for this.

By the time he and Lori married, he was entrenched in the mental life. MIT wouldn’t have it any other way. At first, five times a week, with no time wasted. He liked everything about it. After two years at MIT, he was always busy, and they were down to twice a week: Saturday night or Sunday morning; Wednesday or Thursday after dinner. Quickly over and back to the lab or the computer, where he immersed himself in mathematical modeling of alloys during deformation and sought computer solutions of three-dimensional stress equations. Same thing now, but the average had deteriorated to below twice a week. Well below. Sex still occupied a corner of his mind, especially at night in a hotel room his mind often turned to Lori. When he was home, he was always too busy getting ready for the next trip. When he finally got to bed, Lori had been asleep for several hours, and he didn’t feel he should wake her.

Drafton said, “Since Derek got killed, I’ve been lonely, and there’s nobody I can talk to.”

Curt nodded, still glued to the chair. Since the first year of their marriage, only once did he have an irresistible urge that could be satisfied only by sex. That came with Lori nine months pregnant, waiting for her day, and…What an ass! Maybe he was queer.

Time to get out of here, he thought. Now. He stood and forced his legs forward, mentally swatting away thoughts that would trigger the nausea primed just below his Adam’s apple ready to explode like coke from a shaken bottle. Think of robotics equations. He held out his arms. “I understand, Eric.”

Drafton stood and rubbed at his flooded eyes, the tears tumbling down his cheeks and soaking into his beard. He lurched forward, arms encircling Curt. He buried his face in Curt’s shoulder, his body shuddering. Warm tears soaked through Curt’s khaki shirt.

Curt held him. “I’m sorry, Eric. I understand.” He understood nothing, least of all himself. Only doing a job, he thought, a life-and-death job.

After an eternity, Drafton’s body quieted. He pulled back, their faces inches apart. Tears glistened on his beard like dew drops on grass. “I knew you’d understand, Curt.”

He forced himself to look into Drafton’s flooded blue eyes. Lori’s eyes were brown, dark brown, and he wondered when he last looked into them.

Then it happened. They kissed, mouth to mouth. No way should that happen. He didn’t know who made the first move—Surling would say Curt should have. He tried to remember the first time he kissed Lori or the first girl he’d kissed. He couldn’t remember.

He thought of Maxwell in the hall beyond the door. At least the window in this door was translucent, and he could not see in.

They kissed again, quick, almost natural. Drafton’s wet mouth covered Curt’s lips, both their mouths open. Before Curt could react to his emotions, Drafton hugged him and pulled back, a pathetic smile smeared onto his tears.

Still in each other’s arms, Drafton’s eyes probed the depths of Curt’s. “You do understand, Curt, you really do. We’ll get together soon.” He turned and hurried out of the room.

Curt scrubbed at his mouth, erasing the taste of the salt from Drafton’s kisses, now indelibly etched onto the surface of his brain. It all happened so fast, too fast to get sick.

Only after his numbed mind recovered from the shock did he realize he had a partial erection. “Oh my God! No! No!”