Code White (13 page)

“Score one for the brotherhood of apes and angels,” Kevin would say as Loki swung from the kitchen cupboards. “Zero for the brain butchers.”

*   *   *

Back on the big wall monitor, Odin was still showing video of the Endocrinology Clinic. With Loki on his shoulder, Kevin went back to his starship commander’s seat and watched. Taking a bag of peanuts out of the top drawer of his desk, he began passing them one by one to Loki. Instead of gnawing the shells as most monkeys would do, Loki would crack them in his hands before extracting the nuts with his lips and tongue. Most of the empty shells wound up on the floor or on Kevin’s lap.

“Odin, have they started a search for the bombs yet?”

“SIXTY-SEVEN SECURITY AND MAINTENANCE EMPLOYEES HAVE DIVIDED INTO FOURTEEN SEPARATE SEARCH TEAMS. THEY ARE ADHERING PRECISELY TO THE PROTOCOLS INSTITUTED TWO MONTHS AGO BY THE CHIEF OF SECURITY. TWENTY-EIGHT UNIFORMED POLICE OFFICERS ARE STANDING BY, BUT ARE NOT PARTICIPATING IN THE SEARCH.”

“Are any of them getting warm?”

“NO. IT IS UNLIKELY THAT THEY WILL DO SO. AS YOU KNOW, I DETERMINED THE SITES FOR DEPLOYMENT AFTER ANALYZING PERSONNEL MOVEMENT PATTERNS OVER A PERIOD OF THREE WEEKS. I WAS ABLE TO IDENTIFY BLIND SPOTS WITH A MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD OF BEING OVERLOOKED BY HUMAN OBSERVERS.”

“Are the surveillance cameras at each site functioning properly?”

“YES.”

“Are all the bombs armed?”

“YES.”

“Good. Then let’s run a fail-safe check at each site. Integrity sensors, detent switches, arrest and recall circuits—the works. I want to make sure nothing goes off because of a loose wire or because some jackass sticks a screwdriver in the wrong place.”

“I AM DOING SO NOW. IN THE MEANTIME, SURVEILLANCE VIDEO FROM EACH SITE IS BEING DISPLAYED ON MONITORS A1 THROUGH A6 AND B1 THROUGH B6. VIDEO OF THE SEARCH TEAMS IS ON THE REMAINING TWELVE SCREENS. THEY CAN BE IDENTIFIED BY WHITE RIBBONS AFFIXED TO THEIR SECURITY BADGES.”

Kevin spun his chair around and looked to the left of the door, where twenty-four desktop computers were arrayed on metal shelving units, filling the entire wall. He used these small computers to work out problems in parallel processing, or as overflow units when Odin needed to expand beyond his own mainframe. Right now, they were doing service as video monitors. Kevin was delighted to see all of the search activity going on—activity that he had set in motion. He particularly enjoyed the drawn, fearful faces of the searchers, and the gingerly way in which they would peer behind closet doors or under the lids of trash bins.

“Attaboy!” he exclaimed as a plumber in gray overalls tried to remove the faceplate from a drinking fountain near the main entrance, and let it slip to the floor with a clang. “If you had really been onto something, you’d be a sticky red smear on the floor right about now. Good thing you’ll never know the real piñata is tucked safely behind an I-beam ten feet above your head.”

A pair of chimes sounded in the interval of a rising fourth—Odin’s signal for his attention. Kevin quickly pivoted back toward the main monitor.

“FAIL-SAFE CHECK IS COMPLETE. ALL UNITS ARE IN PEAK OPERATING CONDITION.”

The monitor confirmed that each device was operating at 100 percent effectiveness.

“Excellent job, my friend,” said Kevin with a grin. “Let’s make sure we stay in control.”

He looked at the names of the twelve devices on the board—twelve mountains of fiery death. To his ears, they were like music—twelve riffs, which he was ready to weave together into one razzle-dazzle, ear-splitting jam. Twelve strings, which he would play like Jimi Hendrix. Deception, disruption, destruction, death—all were at his fingertips. No one had ever heard rock ’n’ roll like this before. Not the FBI, not the bomb squad, not the city of Chicago, not the blue-nosed directors of the Fletcher Memorial Medical Center.

Any rube can build a bomb,
he told himself,
but it takes a rare man to play it like a guitar.

He put a peanut in his shirt pocket and chuckled as Loki struggled to fish it out.

“Spotlight’s on the stage, little monkey. And Dr. Dildo is sitting front row, Orchestra A. Somehow I don’t think he’s gonna dig the music.”

Flicking the bottom of his pocket, he pushed the peanut up high enough so Loki could reach it. Then he looked back at the status board and smiled.

“Time to make fucking history.”

*   *   *

Harry’s black deadline clock read seven hours and ten minutes.

“What about the canine squad?” asked Harry. “Don’t you guys have some dogs that can sniff out C4?”

He was sitting in his office, in his big leather chair, with Avery and Lee on either side of him, each with his own laptop. The desk was getting cramped. On his left, the bearlike Avery crowded him with sheer body bulk, pushing his elbows out like retaining walls. Lee did the same thing by stacking three neat piles of papers in front of himself. Harry was beginning to wonder whose desk it was.

“Dogs? Sure, we have ’em on standby,” said Avery.

“I think it’s a little early for the dogs,” said Lee. “We risk drawing too high a profile. Remember, the first message was explicit: ‘All operations must remain normal.’ The bomber may have an observer on the site. If he sees us going around with dogs, he may feel uneasy.”

“But he can see the search teams,” noted Harry.

“Oh, he expects us to make a search,” said Lee. “He’d probably be disappointed if we didn’t. But there’s no need to be obvious about it. Dogs represent an escalation.”

Just then, the desk phone rang. At a nod from Avery, Harry picked it up. He identified himself, listened a moment, and then handed the receiver to Lee.

“It’s for you. Washington.”

Lee spoke briskly with the party on the other end. After a couple of minutes, he put down the phone.

“That was the Bomb Data Center. The infrared scan came up positive. The C4 traces to a batch stolen from Quantico Marine Base six weeks ago. A rented van used in the theft was tracked to a credit card issued to a known member of the Al-Quds Martyrs Brigade. So there’s a confirmation of our ransom message. It’s from Al-Quds, all right. It turns out that the individual registered to that credit card had been under surveillance for some time, but dropped off the radar screen after the theft.”

“So we have a name,” said Harry.

“We have several.”

“That’s good news.”

“Not entirely. The, uh, ordnance that was stolen … Well, it was a major break-in. Over two hundred kilos of C4 are missing. Close to five hundred pounds.”

Avery raised his hands, as though he were weighing two hundred kilos in the air. “Jesus! That much explosive could incinerate a city block.”

“I think we have to assume that a large portion of that materiel may have been deployed in this medical center,” said Lee.

Harry felt his stomach sink. “Then we’ve got to find a way to speed up the search.”

“You know this hospital better than anyone, Mr. Lewton,” said Lee, a little snidely. “Did you learn anything from my course? Think like a terrorist. Your aim is to kill and destroy. Where would you want to place the bomb? Where would you have a maximum effect?”

Harry’s thoughts raced to his mother, lying helpless on the eighteenth floor. His mouth suddenly went dry. “With that amount of explosive, you could easily bring down the Goldmann Towers. That’s the heart of the inpatient hospital. You have hundreds of patient rooms, several clinics and operating theaters, probably a thousand people concentrated together.”

“All right. Focus the search there,” said Lee.

“I’m on it.” Harry was already on his feet and needed no prompting from Lee. But he didn’t get far. As he opened the office door, he was pushed back by Scopes, who charged into the room, panting excitedly.

“I found a tie-in,” Scopes announced.

“Good doggie!” said Lee.

Scopes, all grin, rustled a sheaf of papers as he pulled up a chair beside Lee. “I cross-checked our names against the Immigration and Naturalization records, as well as one or two other databases that shall remain nameless. Came up with a very interesting link.”

“To what?”

“To here. To this hospital.”

“Lemme see.” Lee grabbed the papers and rifled through them, shuffling each page to the bottom of the stack. Then he stopped abruptly and stared fixedly at a single line.

“I believe that this may be of interest to you, Mr. Lewton.”

“Oh?” Harry came back from the doorway and craned his neck toward the papers. Lee made no move to share them.

“Do you have a foreign national employed here named Aliyah Sabra Al-Sharawi?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Her.”

“Never heard of her. We have over thirty-five hundred people working in this medical center. I’d have to check the personnel register.”

“She’s married to an American citizen also employed here. He works in Computational Research. His name is O’Day. Kevin O’Day.”

“Kevin O’Day? Are you serious?”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes, I know him. Or of him.”

“And his wife?”

“I don’t think we’re talking about the same man. O’Day’s already married … I mean, he
is
married … to one of our most prominent neurosurgeons. Ali is her name. Dr. Ali O’Day.”

“Aliyah.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me!”

Lee’s face was Mount Rushmore. “Do you know her whereabouts, Mr. Lewton?”

“Yes. Yes I do,” he said, a little indignantly. “She’s been on television all morning, in fact.”

“We need to talk to this woman. Immediately.”

10:55
A.M.

With light footsteps, Ali slipped into the family lounge on the second floor—a small room with flowered curtains, oak bookshelves, a wide plasma screen TV, and a sofa and chairs arranged to look like the living room of the average patient of the Department of Surgery. Jamie’s legal guardian, Mrs. Gore, was sitting on the sofa, next to Kathleen Brown. She wore a pink satin dress with a high waist that artfully underplayed her middle-aged plumpness. Her short bottle-blond hair suffered a little from the excessive curliness that follows a fresh perm.

Dr. Helvelius, in his surgical scrubs and a long white coat, leaned forward from a chair and listened attentively while Mrs. Gore extolled the virtues of the Grossman School.

“We’re on a par with the best private schools, with a complete K-12 live-in program, accommodating students from all over the Midwest, even from Canada. Two-thirds of our teaching faculty have master’s degrees. We have a fully staffed counseling division, with weekly case review conferences. We have to be ready to deal with anything, you know. Not all of our students are strong like Jamie. Many have other issues, like attention deficit disorder, cerebral palsy, developmental delay, or autism.”

“Not surprised,” said Helvelius.

“Do you work with adults, too?” asked Kathleen Brown.

“Oh, yes!” said Mrs. Gore, her eyes lighting up. “Our mission goes far beyond the two hundred and forty-seven students who formally study with us. We conduct training seminars for teachers in the mainstream school system. We operate a senior learning center to help older people adjust to life with sight problems. And then, of course, there’s the Braille and audio book library…”

The conversation broke off as Ali approached. Kathleen Brown scooted over on the sofa, opening up a place, but Ali sat down in an armchair next to Helvelius. She was annoyed to see a cameraman crouching behind a low tripod where a coffee table used to be. Alas, there was no escape from the relentless, all-prying lens.

“Good morning, Mrs. Gore,” said Ali.

“Is he doing okay?” asked Mrs. Gore with a quavering voice.

“He’s doing fine. He came out of anesthesia and we spoke a bit.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He’s just eager to see what SIPNI can do, that’s all.”

“Naturally!” Mrs. Gore snapped her fingers. “We’re all eager for that. Will we be able to talk to him soon?”

“After we move him to the Intensive Care Unit. Right now he’s in recovery until the anesthesia wears off.”

“He’s a brave boy, isn’t he, Doctor?”

“Yes, he is.”

Kathleen Brown looked at Ali with the same put-on thoughtfulness that she had displayed in the operating room. “Dr. O’Day, is there any evidence that the SIPNI device is working?”

Jamie had asked almost the same question. Ali did not have the answer for him then, nor did she have it now. “It’s too early to say,” she replied.“At this point, SIPNI’s sending out recruitment pulses, scanning Jamie’s brain to find all the loose ends, and working out a map of possible connections. In our animal experiments, it took several hours for the first functional neural nets to reorganize. Complete restoration of function took a couple of weeks. But those were dog and monkey brains. Jamie’s brain is more complex, and his version of SIPNI is more complex, too. It could take more time or less time. We’ll have to wait and see.”

As Ali spoke, Kathleen Brown suddenly seemed to lose interest in her, and turned to look toward the door. Ali followed her gaze. She saw a tall man at the threshold, dressed in light brown pants and a midnight blue blazer that fit closely about his burly shoulders and chest. He was well-tanned, his skin finely creased like an outdoorsman. His neatly combed black hair showed flecks of gray, making him seem about forty years of age. But the most striking thing about him was the way he stood—at ease yet purposeful, like a captain at the helm of a steady ship, or a country squire surveying his manor. The mysterious man did not speak, but after catching Ali’s eye he nodded, signaling that it was for her that he had come. Ali was puzzled, for she had never seen him before. Offering apologies to Kathleen Brown, she got up and went to the door.