Liberty (22 page)

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Authors: Stephen Coonts

BOOK: Liberty
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“Okay.”
“First, though, an explanation. Do you recall when you took the polygraph, all the leads that were connected, including EEG leads on your head?”
“I remember the leads. I didn't know they were EEG leads.”
“The EEG leads were the important ones. The other stuff we use to make the session look like a conventional polygraph examination, but it wasn't. Polygraphs look at blood pressure, respiration rate, pulse rate and so on, trying to detect involuntary emotional responses to lying. Skillful or chronic liars can and do defeat the system. The new technology ignores emotional responses to lying—we now look for something called the P300 bump in the EEG trace. This is a characteristic bump in the trace which happens about a third of a second after you notice something significant. It's like a mental click of recognition, automatic and utterly predictable. In effect, we are looking for ‘guilty knowledge,' which is specific knowledge that
only a guilty person would have. The difficulty with the technique is constructing the questions.”
“Never heard of it,” Jake muttered.
“The theory is that the perpetrators of crimes have details stored in their brains that innocent people won't have, even people trying to confess falsely. People with secret knowledge show a P300 response to otherwise innocent-looking pictures or phrases. Our success rate is about ninety percent with no false positives.”
“So you are saying that the guilty devil may not show up as a hit, but if you get a hit, he's the guy?”
“Precisely. The beauty of this technology is that the person being examined doesn't have to say a word. We're looking straight into the cognitive processes of the brain. The right to remain silent is now irrelevant.”
Jake Grafton smiled. “I'm sure the ACLU will love to hear that.”
The FBI agent continued, “When you and Commander Tarkington took the test, both of you recognized Janos Ilin's picture. Neither of you recognized Richard Doyle.”
“Never met him.”
“One of the people we questioned also recognized Ilin—the national security adviser, Butch Lanham. He didn't name him, but the P300 bump said he recognized the photo.”
“Okay.”
“Two persons recognized Doyle. Twilley recognized him and pronounced his name. Tran didn't say his name, just laid the photo down and picked up the next one.”
“Did you ask if he ever met Doyle?”
“He denied knowing him.”
Jake looked thoughtful. “He could have seen him in the cafeteria, parked beside him a time or two, something like that.”
“That's true,” Estep acknowledged. “All we know is that there was that flash of recognition.”
“Okay.”
“Butch Lanham was really pissed that he had to take
this test—so were Coke Twilley and Sonny Tran.”
Jake Grafton said nothing.
“There's more, Admiral,” Harry Estep said. “Under questioning, while they were hooked up, both Twilley and Tran admitted telling unauthorized persons about Doyle.”
“You're kidding me!”
“Nope.” Estep scratched his face. “Could be quite innocent, of course, but admitting a small crime to hide a big one is a common technique for foiling polygraph exams.”
Jake Grafton played with his pencil for a moment, then said distractedly, “Thanks, Harry.”
Arch Foster's house was in a quiet subdivision in Silver Spring, Maryland, just south of New Hampshire Avenue and about a mile from the old Naval Surface Weapons Center. The neighborhood consisted of endless rows of little brick houses, with mature maples shading quiet yards. Foster's home had a sharp drop-off behind it, so from the street it looked as if it might have a walk-out basement. No garage. The lights were off, no car in the drive.
Tommy Carmellini parked the Mercedes a block away. He snagged the backpack containing his burglary tools from the floor in front of the passenger's seat, then locked the Mercedes. He consciously placed the car keys in his right trouser pocket. He strolled back through the neighborhood, taking everything in. At 11 P.M. there were still lights on, and through the windows one could catch an occasional glimpse of a television screen. A dog barked one street over, but otherwise the neighborhood was quiet, lit only by streetlights.
He had no idea where Arch was tonight or when he might return. If Arch came home while he was in there, things were going to get interesting.
From his left trouser pocket Carmellini removed a set of latex surgical gloves and pulled them on. He had already
dusted the inside of them with talcum powder, so they slid right on. He pulled them tight.
Still strolling, glancing around yet not obviously turning his head, he walked up the block to Foster's house, then angled across the lawn and down the hill to the back of the house. Now he looked carefully around. There was a creek back Here full of weeds and brush, not a place for joggers or walkers. No one in the adjoining yards.
It was dark back here. No, there wasn't a walk-out basement. The house must be fifty years old, built long before anyone ever thought of walk-out basements. The basement door was under a deck off the kitchen. Using a small, shielded penlight, he checked the door and looked through the single pane of glass. No visible alarms. There was a little sign from a security company, faded from the sun. It had obviously been on the glass pane of the basement door for many a year.
The smart thing to do would be to cut the telephone wire, just in case ol' Arch did have an alarm on the door, or motion detectors or infrared sensors inside the house. The power service came in from a pole near the creek. Carmellini walked over, found the telephone wire running down the brick to a hole in the foundation.
Well, if Arch had spent some bucks on a good burglar alarm, the technician who installed it would have insisted he do something about this telephone wire, which any thief could cut.
The lock on the back door was a Yale. It took Carmellini about a minute to open it with his picks. The door opened inward into an unfinished basement. He stepped in, closed the door behind him, then examined the frame with his penlight. No alarms. He scanned the room. A hot water heater, a furnace, shovels and tools on a bench, and stacks of cardboard boxes, but no sensors.
There was a light switch on the bottom of the basement stairs. He flipped it on. Better to have lights in the house than for the neighbors to see someone using a flashlight inside. The stairs creaked under his weight. He tried the
door at the top. Unlocked. It opened in his hand.
He walked through the house taking inventory. Arch obviously was a bachelor. The house was neat enough, but there were no women's things, no feminine decorations or women's clothes in the closets.
It would be impossible to search a house and rearrange everything so no one knew it had been searched, so Tommy Carmellini didn't try. He quickly went through the collection of mail and brochures in the kitchen, then went straight to the spare bedroom that Arch Foster apparently used as a home office. A computer sat on the desk. Tommy flipped on the desk lamp, checked the room for sensors, then began quickly searching the desk. A bank statement … Arch was single and made a good salary. He had $27,000 in savings and about two grand in checking. He also had a brokerage account worth $137,000 at the end of the previous month. Files of bills paid and unpaid … . It all looked pretty normal. He made a conscious effort to put everything back the way he found it, as near as possible, yet he could feel time pressing on him. Breaking in without knowing when Arch was coming back was dumb, he told himself.
From the study Carmellini went to Arch's bedroom. He checked the nightstands first. Arch was obviously a connoisseur on fine fuck books. He abandoned that collection and quickly pawed through the stuff in his closets and dresser, trying to disturb things as little as possible. And found a 9-mm Walther automatic. Loaded. He left it there.
Under the bed, under the furniture … he was looking for something out of the ordinary.
He glanced at his watch. Almost 11:30. He had been here long enough. Well, he could always come back some fine day when Arch was at work and take this house apart.
Carmellini turned off the bedroom light and went back through the house, snapping lights on as required, looking at everything. Nothing attracted his curiosity.
He was in the basement, reaching for the light switch, when the cardboard boxes caught his eye. Old paperbacks?
Stuff from Arch's mother's estate? He looked at the stack. No dust on it.
A layer of dust all over this basement, and none on the boxes?
Working swiftly, he opened the top box, which turned out to be full of old pots and pans. He restacked the boxes to get to the bottom one. Opened it. Wadded-up newspaper on top. He dug down.
Currency. In bundles.
Well, what do you know! He counted bundles. Over a hundred grand.
Time to go. Carmellini restacked the boxes, turned off the lights, and headed for the basement door. He looked through the pane, then eased the door open and checked left and right. The yard was empty, no one about. He checked the door lock to ensure it would latch behind him, then stepped outside and pulled the door shut. It locked.
A minute later he was walking down the street with his latex gloves in his pocket, the backpack dangling from one shoulder.
Mohammed Mohammed was having his troubles keeping his troops in line. After two years in America, Ali, Yousef, and Naguib liked certain aspects of American culture, such as pizza, video games, and television. Products of a closed, male-dominated society in which the traditional way of life was believed to be required by God, their first impression of America had been horror, then wonder.
The brazen display by women of their faces and figures—and bare arms, legs, and stomachs—had led to the immediate assumption that they were all sluts or prostitutes. A few regrettable incidents had clarified that error, but still, the singing, dancing, and role that women played in all aspects of public life shocked them profoundly. Magazines such as
Playboy
and
Penthouse
were horrifying … and titillating, something to be perused in secret.
Ali had acquired a taste for pornography that was catholic
and insatiable. He liked all of it, and he liked it a lot. These days he made little secret of it. His job as a convenience store clerk allowed him to steal adult magazines, which he perused in the bathroom of the Smoot's Motel unit he shared with the others, with the door locked.
Mohammed braced him on it—no fool, he knew what was going on—and was told that since Ali was going to Paradise as a
jihad
martyr, why not sample a few forbidden pleasures before the day of glory?
Yousef's sin was more benign. He found music videos fascinating and watched them by the hour on MTV when he had the chance. Unfortunately they weren't available on the Smoot's television, which received only the local broadcast stations from an antenna atop the motel office, so he watched at work or in bars, video parlors, and bowling alleys, which he liked to patronize when he wasn't actually working. The sight of women crooning suggestive words and moving in sexy ways mesmerized him.
Naguib liked beer and women. He thought beer a heavenly drink. He had also managed to pick up a half dozen women in bars during the last two years; these adventures had been the high points of his life. He was fascinated by the fact that certain American women found him attractive. He attributed that extraordinary fact to his looks and his ability to say witty things in a delightful accent, even though Mohammed told him that having plenty of money in his pockets and buying drinks for any woman in sight might have something to do with it. He practiced oozing charm whenever there was a female within fifty yards. His bedroom triumphs, such as they were, had given him a fierce self-confidence that made him a poor military order-taker.
All of them, even Mohammed, liked video games. Driving games and shooting enemy space fighters for a quarter a pop kept all four amused for hours.
Still, Mohammed worried that the resolve of his troops was being subverted by the temptations of the devil's culture. He questioned them occasionally, tried to limit their
participation in sinful pastimes, and fretted. “The authorities may be watching our every move,” he told them. “We are engaged in a holy mission. It would be a sin to fail.”
“We will succeed,” Ali assured him, “
Inshallah.
” If God wills it.
“He will not will it if we are incompetent and wicked,” Mohammed snapped.
Obviously they didn't believe there was any danger. They knew no one was watching. They had lived in America for two years. No one watched, no one cared what they did. America was not Arabia.
Mohammed had a sinking feeling that this was an argument he could not win. The sooner the better, he thought. Before they ruin everything.
This evening he awoke to answer a call of nature and found that Naguib was missing. He wasn't in the bathroom either. It wasn't the first time. Mohammed dressed in the dark and closed the door to the unit behind him. He walked to the nearby beer joint and went in. Naguib was seated at the bar nursing a draft, talking animatedly to the woman beside him, a trashy sort in tight jeans and a short shirt that displayed her belly button. Frowning in disapproval, Mohammed saw as he approached that she had painted lips and short blond hair and an upthrust bosom that Naguib was openly admiring.

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