Seven Unholy Days (10 page)

“How so?”

“They’re not making any progress.”

“These things take time, right? Not everyone has your level of expertise.”

“I appreciate that, but let me be honest. This team is bad weak, not up to Bureau caliber at all.” Never hurts to blow a little sunshine, especially when it’s based in truth.

“I don’t know what to say, Decker. Keep an eye on them and if they don’t start making progress maybe we can get another team assigned.”

“Fair enough.” Rowe turned to leave and just before he stepped out the door I said, “Oh, one more question?”

“What?”

“Just wondering how this particular team got assigned. Have you worked with them before?”

“No, I don’t know anything about them. I signed off on the paperwork and turned it all over to Potella.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“No problem.”

He was wrong, of course. There was indeed a problem, and it reeked of the malodorous stench of rotten fish.

              “Agent Reynolds, what were you talking to Decker about?” Rowe said.

“Nothing much, small talk. Why?”

“I don’t need to remind you he’s a civilian, do I?”

“No, you don’t.”

“Good. If you can get something useful out of him, so much the better. Just remember that the flow of information is a one-way street. Are we clear?”

“I don’t think—”

“Are we clear, Agent Reynolds?” Rowe’s face had hardened, his eyes locked onto hers like a laser.

“Clear.”

“Always remember that the Bureau is a team, Julie.”

“I got it, Bob.”

“Good.”

16

9:38 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

HENRY ROBERTS’s LAND

              “Henry, why you want to come walking out here every night?” Missy said as they strolled along the only clean-cut area on their six acres of weeds and briars, the strip maintained by Great Central Electric because of the fiber optic line buried across the property.

“I like to look at the lights flashing in this little box up here. When I was a kid my mama bought me a toy called a Lite-Brite for Christmas one year. It had all these little things that you poked in holes and they lit up real pretty.”

“Yeah, I remember them things too. I didn’t never have one, though. What the hell’s that got to do with this box on a pole out here?”

“It reminds me of my Lite-Brite. That’s about the best Christmas I ever had. Daddy run off that next spring and it was harder than all get-out after that.”

“Hmmph,” Missy said, as she tucked a pinch of Copenhagen in her bottom lip.

Henry stopped at a square metal pole with a metal box fitted on top. A bright yellow label on the outside of the box that said

GREAT CENTRAL ELECTRIC COMM CHECKPOINT C47. TAMPERING WITH THIS EQUIPMENT IS A FE
DERAL OFFENSE PUNISHABLE BY A MAXIMUM PENALTY OF ONE YEAR IN JAIL AND/OR A $10,000 FINE.

He opened the cover on the box and pointed inside. “See what I mean, ain’t that pretty?”

“If you say so.”

“Lot of blinking lights tonight. Usually ain’t that many.”

“What happened to the lock that used to be on that box?

“I tore the damn thing off so I could see inside.”

“I’ll swanee, Henry, you’re gonna get yourself throw
ed back in the lockup if the light company finds you out here messing with their stuff.”

“Aw, to hell with them bastards. They ain’t even got enough sense to keep the lights on.”

“Wonder why them little lights is still blinking when the lights in the house or nowhere else ain’t working.”

Henry cocked his head to the side and pondered the que
stion for a few. “Hell, I think I’ll go over there tomorrow and ask them sumbitches about that.”

11:00 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

HART COMPLEX

After spending the day locked in a spacious suite, Jana was once again taken by Dane Christian to Hart’s living quarters. Three hours had passed without him saying a word to her. He walked the room, talking on a headset telephone, and made dozens  of calls.

He spoke in various foreign languages during some of the calls, but on the ones in which he used English, she gathered enough information to know what he was doing. Jana had a Roth IRA that she managed herself, and in so doing she had learned the basics of the stock market. Hart was executing stock transactions, many of them. She recognized many of the co
mpany names as global blue chips, and also took note of the fact that every transaction he made was either a sell or a short sell. He was unloading in a huge way, hundreds of millions of dollars worth, if not more.

The calls finally stopped and he sat down in front of a co
mputer. “Do you live here all the time?” Jana said.

“This is but one of many homes I own, my dear.”

“I see. Where are the others?”

“You will see them all in due time. I am too busy to converse this evening.”

“Sorry I bothered you.”

“You are forgiven.”

At precisely eleven o’clock, Hart looked away from his computer long enough to say, “You may go.” Dane Christian met her outside the door and escorted her to an elevator.

When the elevator door closed, she said, “I’d really love to know how much you’re getting paid to work for this maniac.”

“A hundred million dollars.”

“I see. And is that money going to make you happy when you lie awake at night thinking about what you’ve done?”

The elevator door slid open with an airy hiss and Dane led her down the corridor toward her room without answering.

“Please help me get out of here. Please.”

Dane stopped and turned to her. “I’m sorry I brought you here, but what’s done is done. Nothing I can do.”

“You mean nothing you will do.”

He continued to her room and unlocked the door. “Have a good night.”

“Yeah, it’ll be a blast. Thanks a lot.” She slammed the door, walked to her bed, and fell onto it.

             
Just as Dane locked Jana’s door, Hart’s voice came over his radio. “Return to my chambers, Mr. Christian.”

“Yes sir.”

Hart was working at his computer when Dane arrived. “You wanted me?”

“Status update, please.”

Dane felt detached from himself, as if he were hearing someone else speak. “D-E-two exceed—”

“I am not a soldier and I loathe soldieresque abbreviations that butcher language. Do not use them in my presence again.”

“Excuse me,” Dane said, dramatically enunciating. “Distraction Event Two exceeded expectations. Over two million dead in Los Angeles proper, and we got lucky with wind distribution. Several million more were affected. The medical system is completely ineffectual. To put it bluntly, the entire region is in chaos.”

“Outstanding,” Hart said through a brilliant smile. “And the upcoming events?”

“I assume you handled Number Three tonight yourself?”

“That is correct. Continue.”

“Number Four is on schedule, as is Six.”

“And the Premier Event?” Hart stood up and leaned fo
rward in anticipation.

“I received the updated data today. The professor says it will be accurate for at least a week, so we can start programming the target packages.”

Hart’s eyes lit up like a child at Christmas. “Wonderful. Where is the data now?”

Dane pulled a thumbdrive from his pocket. “I have a copy of the entire package here. Would you like to see it?”

“Indeed.” Hart eagerly took the key and plugged it into a USB port on his computer. A high-resolution map of Israel filled the screen. A few keystrokes later, the image appeared on a large flat panel display mounted in the wall beside the computer. On the eastern edge of the tiny country, a jagged blue line running north-south marked the Jordan River, and underneath that, the bulging Dead Sea. Running roughly parallel to this border was another line, this one a transparent, glowing red. At the bottom of the screen, with an arrow that pointed to the red line, was a label: Jordan Fault.

Hart walked to the display and slowly traced—to call it a c
aress would not have been inaccurate—his finger from top to bottom along the red line on the display. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, then opened them. “You are confident the data is accurate?”

“Absolutely. This data was intercepted directly from the sa
tellite downstream and interpreted by Doctor Hilton.”

Hart smiled. “And what of the good professor?”

“He won’t be teaching anymore.”

17

11:12 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

YELLOW CREEK

             
“Decker, we both know your past isn’t quite the All-American story it’s made out to be. You’ve made a ton of money legitimately, but I know about the other business you ran on the side for years.”

It took me much of the day to get Potella cornered for a talk, but we were finally having it. I would’ve normally spent the time and energy to deny what he was saying, but I didn’t have any of either to spare, so I shrugged and said, “I’ll tell you what else we both know, Potella: You don’t have one thing that will stick. If you tried to do anything, it’d be for pure spite.”

“Oh you were slick with it, I’ll give you that. But don’t get cocky. The people you dealt with have the loyalty of snakes. They’d turn on you in a heartbeat if it benefited them, and while I might not be able to get a conviction, I could damn sure end your days as a high-paid government contractor.”

“That’s a reach, but let’s get to it, Potella. What do you want from me?”

“Three things. First, I want to know if there’s anything to suggest this psycho is someone you’ve dealt with before. Second, I want to know what ‘filthy secrets’ he referred to in that message.”

“And the third?”

“I want to know why you dealt with those bastards in the first place.”

“If I answer your questions, what then?”

“Answer them honestly, and unless I find out you’ve done something totally treasonous, your case will be closed as far as I’m concerned. Forever. You have my word.”

We walked the sidewalk around the control building, ne
ither of us saying anything for the next several minutes. Mississippi in August is a miserable place to be. It was almost midnight and the air was still so hot and heavy that it clung to me. I wiped a film of sweat from my forehead and thought about Potella’s offer. I could put myself in a precarious position by talking to him without the benefit of a written guarantee of immunity, but things like contracts and legalities seemed so unimportant at the time, almost surreal. What mattered was survival, and not just my own. I needed this guy off my back and on the same team. There was also the insurance of my growing cache of information on Mr. Potella. If he got carried away, it could probably be used to rein him back in.

“Well,” I said, “first let me say that I can’t imagine any co
nnection between this situation and my work history. My competitors are ruthless but they’re not killers and I have positively no idea who this guy is.

“As for filthy secrets, he can only be talking about the things you tried to bust me on and—”

“This is a waste of time. Didn’t take you long to start lying.”

“What?”

“I know what the secrets are, Decker, and they don’t have squat to do with what we tried to bust you on. We were after you for hacking into databases and cleaning up things for politicians and anyone else who had the green to buy your time.”

“I know damn well what you were after me for, Potella, and I hate to disappoint you, but that’s all there is.” That wasn’t quite accurate but there was no way he could know about any of the things I cleared from my own record.

“You make me sick. Did it ever occur to you that you were not just breaking export regulations but also betraying your country?”

“I’ve never betrayed my country, and I have no idea what you’re talking about when you say ‘export regulations.’”

Potella stopped walking and whirled angrily to face me. “You developed, among other things, an arms-trading network for terrorist groups, so secure that the C-I-frigging-A couldn’t track it. Before your little exercise, we knew what they were buying and a lot of the time how they planned to use it. Once your little project became operational, we were blind as bats. That didn’t create a problem with your patriotism?”

“Whoa, chief! You have some seriously bad information. I’ve never written a line of code for any arms-trading network. I think you and I are on entirely different pages here. In fact, I know we are.”

“I have a strong trail of evidence that says I’m right and you’re wrong.”

“Like what?”

He opened the file folder and handed me a sheet of paper. It was a copy of a bank statement from Suisse Banc Geneve, dated a week earlier. The account number was redacted but the account was in my name. With multiple large deposits posted in it. “Potella, I know nothing about that bank account.” I spoke truth. Switzerland doesn’t come close to the Caymans in the no-questions-asked genre of banking.

“This came straight from the bank.”

“I don’t care where it came from, it’s not my account; I am not and have never been involved in anything like this. Like I said, you have bad information. How long have you had this?”

“It was faxed to me today,” he said.

“Look, I agreed to be honest with you and that’s what I’m doing. Can’t you see that somebody’s trying to set me up?”

“I see you backpedaling, Decker, and I don’t like it. It’s obv
ious from the way you were talking two minutes ago that you’re guilty of something. Now this song and dance—”

“Do what you want, Potella,” I said as I walked away. I sized up the situation, deciding whether to drop a hint about the information I had on him. I decided to keep my cards close.

11:48 PM CENTRAL DAYIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

Tark tracked down someone he knew at a nearby bedding factory and talked them into bringing over several mattresses. They were spread across the floor in the lounge so we could catch naps without leaving. He was sound asleep on one of them. Abdul Abidi was a machine that needed neither food nor sleep.

I lay down on one of the mattresses, but even exhausted, sleep was slow to come. My mind wouldn’t shut down. I knew intellectually that I made the right move by bringing the power back online, that there’s no way I could have known a lunatic would barbarically murder a multitude as a result. But knowing it intellectually didn’t assuage the guilt. I had been a party to the deaths of two million innocent people. Hitler killed six million and is held by history—rightfully so—as one of the worst monsters to have ever lived.

Innocent intentions or not, what conclusion would the world draw about Matt Decker? Should I have considered the cons
equences more carefully before being so gung-ho to prove what a genius I was? Did I want the power back on to help other people, or was it just one more battle for me to fight and win for the thrill of it?

In addition to the guilt, it had been a frustrating day. B
etween digesting the horror of the news from Los Angeles, then having to bring all the grids back down, and dealing with Potella, the day had been consumed. That meant 69 was still out there, and I was no closer to knowing who or where he was.