F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (8 page)

Snake sat before his home desktop
Pentium.

He was still hacked into the
C&P mainframe, still sitting on Vanduyne’s line, monitoring his
calls. Two so far, both for his mother—one from a bridge partner, and one
from the doc himself. Since both had originated in the District, Snake had let
them through. The call he was watching for would originate in
Maryland
.

This little exercise in caution was
probably overkill, but it would be a damn shame if he let the whole gig go to
hell because he couldn’t hang out an extra half hour or so and keep an
eye on— There!

Snake bolted upright. A call from
the 301 area. He checked the number and it matched Holy Family
Elementary’s. Had Paulie fucked up?

He hit enter on his keyboard,
sending in a preprogrammed command that would shift the call to his phone. He
waited with his hand poised over the phone on his desk. And waited.

When it didn’t ring, he
glanced at his monitor screen.

Had Holy Family hung up? No! The
call was passing through to Vanduyne’s.

Shit!

Frantically Snake pounded on the
keyboard, entering another command to send the call his way. Two rings already
at the Vanduyne house. If the mother picked up…

He jumped as the phone next to him
suddenly began to ring. He leaned back, caught his breath, then picked up in
the middle of the second ring. He cleared his throat and modulated his voice to
a soft, even tone.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Vanduyne, this is Sister
Louise from Holy Family.”

“Yes, Sister. Didn’t
the driver arrive? I told him—”

“Yes, he’s here,
doctor. I just wanted to double-check with you before I released your daughter
to a stranger.” Snake closed his eyes and thanked the stars he’d
stayed hacked in to C&P.

“I appreciate your caution.
Sister. The driver should be Jim Anderson of Reliance Limo.”

“That is correct. Very well.
I’ll let Katie go with him then. Sorry to bother you.”

“Absolutely no bother at all.
Sister. You can’t be too careful these days.” He hung up and
slumped in his chair, staring at the monitor and relishing the furious pounding
of his heart.

No, sirree… no way you can be
too careful.

Paulie was so dazed with wonder,
trying to figure out how Mac had worked that bit of magic, that he almost
forgot to strap the kid into the backseat. He quickly pulled open the back door
and buckled her in.

Good thing too. That Sister Louise
was standing on the front steps, watching his every move.

His fingers shook a little and his
knees still felt a bit wobbly. He’d thought it was all over back there in
her office, but Mac had had it covered. No doubt about it: The guy was a genius.

“What’s this
box?” the kid asked.

“Oh, that?” he said.
“That’s candy.”

“For me?”

“For all our special
customers. Help yourself.”

“My Nana doesn’t like
me to eat candy before lunch.”

“This is a special day. Your
daddy told me to make sure I told you to eat all you want. Go ahead.
Don’t be shy. Plenty more where that came from.” He got behind the
wheel and hit the ignition.

“Wave to your
principal,” he said as they rolled toward the street. Paulie made sure he
waved too. Good-bye, you old bat. You’re one sharp cookie, but I’m
hooked up with a dude who’s even sharper.

Which reminded him… He pulled
out a cellular phone and pushed two buttons to dial a preprogrammed number. A
few seconds later he heard Mac say, “What?” He wanted to ask him
how he’d managed that phone thing but decided to stick to the script.

“Loaded up and on my
way.”

“Right,” and Mac broke
the connection.

“Who are you calling?”
said that little voice from the back seat: “That was the, uh, dispatcher.
Just letting him know I’m heading for your house. How’s that candy?”

“Deee-licious!”

“Excellent. Keep
eating.”

“Okay. What’s this
blanket for?”

“That’s for in case you
get cold or sleepy.”

“Oh. My daddy’s a
doctor, you know.”

“Is he, now.”

“Yeah. But he doesn’t
see sick people anymore.”

“Really?” Paulie had
been wondering what this was about. Maybe he could get a clue from the kid.
“What’s he do?”

“He works with other doctors.
But they’re not sick.”

“Where does he work?”

“In a big, big
building.” So much for prying information out of this one. Paulie glanced
in the rearview mirror. The kid had the box of chocolates on her lap and was
digging in.

Keep eating, he thought.

“You want some candy, mister?
They’re real good.”

“No thanks. I’m on a
diet.”

He glanced back again. Cute little
thing. Happy with the chocolates and so trusting. Complete faith in him…
because he said her daddy had sent him.

Jesus, he felt like a rat.

Before leaving the White House,
John Vanduyne stopped by the press office and found Terri Londergan in her
cubicle. Her desk was littered with yellow sheets, all scribbled up this way
and that. She had a phone receiver crammed between her shoulder and her ear and
was taking furious notes on a fresh yellow sheet.

She looked up and smiled at him,
rolling her dark, dark eyes as she pointed to the phone.

“Yes, he will,” she
said into the receiver. “Yes, I’m sure he will…” John
watched her as she did her deputy press secretary thing, fielding questions
from some far away newspaper or magazine editor. He loved the way her blunt-cut
raven hair fell across her face when she tilted her head and how she’d
toss her head to flip it out of the way. Her sharp nose and strong jaw were
softened by her full-lipped smile. Oh, that smile. It had drawn John the length
of the executive offices when he’d spotted her talking to Stephanie
Harris last year. And he’d stood there like a dummy until Stephanie had
introduced him.

A few minutes of conversation with
Terri and he’d been completely taken by her. After that he’d made a
point of running into her on his regular White House visits, but it
wasn’t until a few months ago that he’d mustered the nerve to ask
her out. They’d been dating ever since.

Terri was in her
mid-thirties—about ten years younger than John—but had the poise
and self-assurance of someone older. She and Katie had met and spent a few
evenings together—in the neutral territory of restaurants—and
seemed to get along fine. Katie was always asking when they were going to see
Terri again. John was ready to admit to the possibility that he might find
someone else, that there might be life and even love after Mamie.

“… of course,”
she was saying. “He’ll answer all those questions at the press
conference. That’s right. Right. Have a nice day. Goodbye.” She
hung up and then cradled her head facedown in her arms on her desk. She spoke
into the chaos of papers under her nose.

“No more calls! Please, no
more calls!” John placed his black bag on her desk, moved behind her, and
began massaging her tight shoulder muscles, working a thumb along each
trapezius. She groaned and the sound excited him.

“Ooooh, that feels good. You
do, know what a girl needs.”

“Rough morning?”

“The roughest. Ever. Times
ten. I—there… oh, yes right there. I was in a hundred percent
agreement when I listened to him last night.”

“You were?” That
surprised him. He knew she didn’t use any drugs, and with her strict
Irish Catholic upbringing he’d assumed she would oppose legalizing them.
But then, she’d already proved herself to be remarkably liberated
regarding sex, so why not the same attitude toward drugs?

“Yeah, I were. But now
I’m not so sure.”

“Why the change?”

“The phones! The calls from
Europe
were already backed up when I walked in at six this morning. They’ve been
going wild ever since. Anyone with a newsletter, a local radio show, a fanzine,
an online chat nook, everybody in the western world wants more
information.” She lifted her head. “And oh God the West Coast is
just waking up. I’m going crazy!”

He laughed. “Now
there’s a good reason to change your principles.”

“I have my principles,”
she said, turning and smiling up at him. “But you learn quickly in this
town that you’ve got to be practical too.”

“In other words, if this is
going to cause you extra work, drugs should stay criminalized.”

“You got it. Doc,” she
said, still smiling. She pulled on his tie and drew his face down to hers.
“C’mere,” she murmured. “Gimme a kiss.” And kiss
her he did. On the lips. He loved the feel of those lips on his. He started
thinking about—

The electronic warble of her phone
jumbled his thoughts. She picked up without breaking the kiss and held the
receiver to her ear. John heard an indecipherable staccato buzz.

Terri pulled away from him.
“Go ahead,” she said into the receiver. “Oh, great! Yeah, put
him through.” She turned back to John. “I’ve got to take this.”

“Sure,” he said.
“We still on for tonight?”

Her expression became pained.
“Oh, I don’t think so. The boss has called a meeting and God knows
how long it’s going to run. I could be here till ten or eleven. Maybe later.”

“I understand.”

She smiled. “You’re an
angel. Let’s make it same time, same place tomorrow.”

“You’ve got a
deal.”

She smiled and turned back to the
phone. “Hello? Yes, this is she.” She blew John a silent kiss as he
waved and left her.

He allowed himself a rueful smile
as he headed for the outside. If he hadn’t been in favor of this
decriminalization stuff before… he was really against it now.

By the time Paulie returned the
Lincoln
to the bottom-level of the garage, the kid was sound asleep, thanks to the
Valium-laced candy. Great idea. Maybe he’d keep the leftovers for
himself.

He wound around the entire lower
level, checking it out, looking for people leaving or retrieving their cars. He
found none. All quiet.

He pulled to a stop behind the
panel truck, lining up his passenger-side rear door with its back end. Then he
got out, opened the panel truck’s rear doors, leaned through the
Lincoln
’s
rear passenger door, and wrapped the kid in the blanket.

Now the hairy part. Now something
could go wrong.

He straightened up and scanned the
level again. No one in sight. He set his jaw and bent to it: quick—one,
two, three—he transferred a limp, kid-size, blanket wrapped bundle from
the car to the truck. He closed and locked the truck’s rear doors.

He was breathing hard and not from
the exertion. Done. The worst was over. All he had to do now was leave the
Lincoln
in the panel truck’s spot. Mac would come by later and take care of the
car.

He could relax. Just drive back to
Falls
Church
and transfer the kid to the house and—
Oh, shit! Poppy! He’d forgot about her. She was going to go bug-fuck nuts
when he showed up with this kid.

The worst part over? Not even
close.

It took John a while to extricate
himself front the area around the White House. When he finally reached HHS, he
had to wade through a seemingly endless gauntlet of friends, colleagues, and
vaguely remembered bureaucrats stretching from the lobby, into the elevator,
and down the halls, each with an opinion about last night’s announcement.

Finally he reached the relative
sanctuary of his office.

Phyllis, his secretary, handed him
a cup of coffee and said, “Where do you want me to begin?” She was
fiftyish, thin, with very black skin. She wore her hair in a short, frizzy
natural style that framed her narrow face. Despite regular lectures from John,
Phyllis still smoked—on the coldest day of the year she’d be out in
the courtyard on her break sucking on a butt. She rarely smiled and usually
looked as if she’d just bitten into a lemon. This morning she looked as
if she’d found a particularly sour one.

“How about with anything that
hasn’t to do with decriminalization? Like OPC, maybe?” The main
thrust of his post here at HHS was a program called Operation Primary Care. Its
purpose was to stimulate medical schools to emphasize primary care in their
curricula and encourage medical students to enter family practice and general
internal medicine training programs. So far it was being well received.

“Well…” she said
slowly, shuffling through the blue message slips in her hand, “a couple
of schools that have been on the fence about having you speak to their stuents
have called, looking to firm up a date.”

“Now there’s some good
news.”

“But they want to know if
you’ll also address the issue of drug decriminalization.”

“Yikes.” He rubbed his
jaw. Like it or not, he too was caught in the spotlight. “All
right,” he said. “Sort them out and set up the dates.”

“And about drug
decriminalization?”

“Be as vague as you can. Just
set the dates.” He’d duck those. He was no expert on drugs or drug
laws. He had no business talking about the issue. What he did want to talk
about was the crying need for primary-care physicians, and to do that
he’d shoehorn himself into these medical schools anyway he could.

John dropped into his desk chair
and found his monitor on and waiting for him. Good old Phyllis—the soul
of efficiency. The e-mail envelope was blinking in the lower right corner of
the screen. That was the one thing Phyllis couldn’t check for him.

He punched in his password and
found thirteen letters waiting. Let me see if I can guess what they’re
all about. He ran quickly through the queue: no surprises. They all had one
thing on their minds…

Except the last. This wasn’t
internal. It came off the Internet…

Item
4321334
10:31

From:
[email protected] Internet Gateway

To:
J.VANDUYNE01 John Vanduyne

Sub:
Katie

From
[email protected]

Received
from: anon.nonet.uk by relayl with SMTP (1.37.109.11/15.6) id AA0803 80591;
16:13:11
GMT

Return-Path:
Received: by anon.nonet.uk (5.67/1.35) id AA 26085;
10:31:16
+0200

From:
[email protected]

Message-Id:
<[email protected]>

To:
[email protected]

Subject:
katie

We
have Katie. She is being well cared for. We do not want money. We merely wish
you to perform a service. If you perform that service, Katie will be returned
unharmed.

!!!BUT!!!
You will be unable to perform this service if anyone knows that you are under
duress. Therefore, no one must know that Katie is missing.

!!!NO-ONE!!!

Is
this clear??? We sincerely hope so. If you inform any local or federal
authorities of your plight, you will no longer be of value to us. And,
subsequently, neither will your daughter. And we will dispose of her like any
other useless object.

***ARE
WE MAKING OURSELVES CLEAR?***

Please
do not doubt our determination or resolve. Your daughter’s life depends
on it. Don’t do anything stupid. We’ll know.

You
will be contacted again soon.

Snake

END

John sat staring at the screen. If
this was someone’s idea of a joke, it was not funny. Who the hell—?

He checked the return address and
noted the
UK
suffix.

It had been sent from
England
.
Who did he know in
England
with a sick sense of humor?

And then he realized that the
message had come through one of those anonymous remailers he’d read
about. E-mail routed through the remailer server was stripped of its origin
data and forwarded anonymously.

A chill washed through his
arteries. He grabbed his phone and hit the speed dial for Katie’s school.
When the receptionist answered, John said he wanted to check on his daughter.

“Oh, she was picked up a
while ago,” she told him.

His office tilted. He had to clutch
at his desk to keep from toppling backward. He tried to speak but could not
find a sound that even approximated the horror that filled him. Every vowel and
consonant had deserted him.

“Dr. Vanduyne?” the
receptionist said. “Is anything wrong?” When he still
couldn’t answer, she said, “I’ll get Sister Louise.”

On hold, he sat and trembled,
gasping for breath. His heart seemed to have quadrupled in size and threatened
to burst from his chest.

One thought raced through the
circuits of his brain in an endless loop: Not my Katie! Please, God. Not my
Katie!

His darting eyes found his monitor
and locked on the e-mail message still on his screen… one particular
paragraph seemed to expand in size:

You
will be unable to perform this service if anyone knows that you are under
duress. Therefore, no one must know that Katie is missing.

!!!NO-ONE!!!

Sister Louise came on the line.
Concern was etched in her voice.

“Dr. Vanduyne? Is something
the matter? Isn’t Katie home yet? It’s been more than half an hour
since your driver left with her.” John swallowed quickly, trying to find
a little moisture.

He had to be very careful, but he
had to say something.

“My driver…”

“Yes. That
Anderson
fellow from Reliance Limousine.

I called you about him just before
he left. That was you I spoke to, wasn’t it? Great heavens, don’t
tell me—“

He wanted to scream at her: How
could you let her go?

“No-no!” he said
quickly. “Everything’s fine. My… my allergies are just
kicking up.”

“Thank the Lord. For a moment
there… but she should be home by now, shouldn’t she? If you want I
can call the police and ask them—”

Oh, Christ don’t do that!

He forced a laugh that must have
sounded ghastly.

“Well, what do you
know… here she is now… just pulling in the driveway. Must have got
stuck in traffic. Thank you. Sister. Sorry to bother you.”

“No trouble. I’m just
glad she’s safe. And have a safe trip to
Atlanta
.”

“Yes… thank you.”
John fumbled the receiver back into its cradle and leaned on his desk.

Atlanta
…
Atlanta
?

He stared at his monitor screen.
Despite the e-mail, despite what Sister Louise had said, he still
couldn’t believe it. This whole thing had an unreal feel about it. He had
to be dreaming. That had to be it. Soon he’d wake up and— He jumped
as his phone rang. He snatched it up.

“What?”

“Secretary Grahmann is on
twenty-two. He wants—”

“Tell him I’ll call him
back.”

“Yes, but—”

“I’ll call him back,
Phyllis.” He wanted to scream at her. How could she disturb him now?
“And hold all my calls. I’m not speaking to anyone right
now.”

“Are you all right?”

“No calls!”

“Yes, sir.”

John lurched from his chair and
staggered around his desk. He had a strange, floating sensation. His office
seemed to have shrunk. The walls pressed in on him.

Katie. Oh, God, Katie. Where was
she? What were they doing to her? What did they want with her? What did they
want from him?

He rushed back to the screen and
reread the message.

We do
not want money. We merely wish you to perform a service. If you perform that
service, Katie will be returned unharmed.

A service. What kind of service?
What did that mean? He didn’t have any special skills. What could they want?

But he couldn’t think about
that. All he could think of was Katie, alone, surrounded by strangers,
terrified…

Christ, if he lost her…

He stopped at his window, looking
up at the overcast sky. Hasn’t she already been through enough, God?

He needed help. He had to call the
FBI. They were headquartered right down on
Pennsylvania
Avenue
. Hell, he could call Tom and Tom would call
the director and the whole goddamn agency would be combing the country for this
Snake creep.

But then another section of the
message burned into his retinas.

If you
inform any local or federal authorities of your plight, you will no longer be
of value to us. And subsequently, neither will your daughter. And, we will
dispose of her like any other useless object.

But he couldn’t handle this
alone. What did he know about dealing with kidnapers? Maybe with Tom’s
help he could keep the FBI’s involvement ultrasecret.

Don’t
do anything stupid. We’ll know…

And that was the really chilling
part. We’ll know. Obviously this Snake already knew plenty about
Katie’s schedule, and about his own. He knew John’s e-mail address
and—what had Sister Louise said? “I called you about him just
before he left.” That meant this Snake had been able to intercept a call
to him from Holy Family.

Was his line tapped? Did they know
everything? What about… ?

A sudden thought struck him like a
sledge hammer: Katie’s Tegretol! She needed it twice a day. If she
didn’t get it—

“Oh, Christ!” he said,
and dropped back into his chair.

He hit the function key for reply
mail and banged in a message. He wanted to spew every obscenity he knew at this
scum, but he held back. If he angered Snake, who would suffer the brunt of that
anger?

Be calm, he told himself. Be cool.
Think this out. Don’t let the bastard know he’s made a basket case
out of you. Stroke the slimy son of bitch.

Snake—
Your message received and understood. I have told no one. I will follow all
your directions to the letter. You are in control. Please do not hurt Katie.
But please listen. THERE IS SOMETHING YOU MUST KNOW! Katie has a seizure
disorder. A form of epilepsy. She needs medicine twice a day, every day. If
not, she will start convulsing. She’ll have one convulsion after another
until she’s…

His fingers paused over the keys,
balking at the next words. He forced them to type on.