Old Poison (12 page)

The first file cabinet held only insurance
papers; the second was dedicated to weather and global warming.
Nate had been doing his research for years. A wooden cabinet held
what I was looking for, video tapes. I was determined to retrieve
the ones of my apartment and searched through his neatly organized
cabinet with careless abandon, dumping the tapes on the floor.

I did not hear the door open, but despite
the surprise, I managed not to jump when Nate said, “Good
afternoon, Diana.”

Without taking my hands from the file
cabinet I replied, “Hi ya, Nate.”

He shut the door and punched in a code on
the security control panel, then hung his jacket in the closet.
Moving to his desk, he pushed a button that closed the drapes on
all the windows. Then he opened a gadget on the top of his desk
revealing a flat video screen and a number of controls. When the
screen lighted it showed one small blinking red light. He
compressed his lips slightly as he considered the light. Looking at
me and at the mess I had made on the floor, he said, “I think
you’ll find what you’re looking for in the out-basket on the front
of my desk. I had them out to give to you this morning.”

As I walked around the desk, he watched the
little blinking dot on his screen. I could see that when I moved,
it moved. Leaning over the top of his desk to get a better view, I
could see that the screen contained a floor plan of the office and
all of its furnishings. My red dot and I were now directly in front
of his desk. As I leaned forward, so did Nate. Speaking in the
general direction of my lapel, he said, “And good afternoon,
Sam.”

“Neat gadget,” I said.

“Yes, it’s a helpful tool, and those drapes
are of a special, very expensive material that prevents anyone from
picking up the vibrations of our conversation on the window pane.
So now that we know that Sam is the only one listening, we can
talk.”

From his out-basket I picked up four video
tapes with my initials and a date. Well, that eliminated any
question in my mind as to whether or not he knew I was coming
today.

“Over in the hall you said there were
watchers. Now I see you’re serious about that. Who’s spying on you,
Nate?”

“Let’s eat, shall we? We don’t have much
time. Sorry I can’t invite you to join us, Sam, but I only ordered
for two.”

We settled in at the small round table, and
Nate played mother and served us. It looked and smelled delicious,
and like the picnic lunches he had served me, was completely
vegetarian. As he filled our plates he said, “I don’t have time for
chit chat, Diana. I need to know if you found the diary.”

“I’ll have answers before I give any. Who is
spying on you, Nate?”

He shrugged. “Just standard corporate
security.”

“Right, and I suppose you’re going to tell
me that your corporate security has access to the Big Brother chip
you put in my TV.”

To my amazement, Nate lost it. He slammed
his fork down and his face went red. His eyes were red and watery.
Fatigue? Or had he actually been having a good cry? Whatever cool
he had managed this morning was gone. In a loud voice he said, “No,
the guy I had sweep my office for bugs found that chip in that
video surveillance camera over the door, just like Sam found it in
your TV.”

He leaned forward and touched both of my
arms with his hands. His voice changed to a plea as he asked,
“Diana, please don’t ask any more questions. I can’t answer them,
and believe it or not I am trying to protect you as well as myself.
The only way to do that is to pass that damned diary on to its next
Caretaker and forget we ever saw it. If we don’t do that, and do it
fast, we are in as much danger as Evelyn was.”

Stunned, I sat a moment evaluating him and
deciding on my response. “That’s a very convincing performance, but
then you have played all of your roles well,
Mr. Borson
, and
played me for a sucker. I don’t care if the very hounds of Hell are
chasing us. I don’t intend to play blindman’s bluff anymore. I want
the facts. First fact: Did you kill Evelyn or have her killed?”

He was silent, examining me. “Would you
believe me if I told you no?”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know.”

I slammed my closed fist down on the pine
table, rattling the dishes. “Whoever killed her had to have read
the diary. You must have at least a short list of suspects. Who
else knew about that diary?”

“Diana, I don’t know which group did it, and
knowing anything about them will just put you in danger. I won’t
have another death on my hands if I can help it. I’m so sorry I
involved you in this, but I didn’t know . . . so you might as well
stop with the questions. I won’t answer them.”

I had imagined several possible scenarios
for this interview, including ones that had made me bring both my
stun gun and my Walther. This, however, wasn’t one of them. His
fear seemed genuine, but I was determined to have some answers. It
was time to play my trump card. From my wallet I pulled out the
business card for Special Agent Neal Camas. Handing it to him, I
said, “In Arizona I had a very interesting talk with Agent
Camas.”

His eyes moved slowly from the card to my
face. “Did you tell him about the diary?”

“No. I told him about my disappearing
clients, the ones I met in city parks and on bicycle trails, and
failed to get their address or phone number. He got a good chuckle
out of that. Somehow, he seemed to think it reflected rather poorly
on my professionalism. And you know what? I had to agree with him.
I did promise him that if I ever heard from
Mr. Borson
again, I would get back to him with the address and phone number. I
believe he is quite eager to talk with you about Evelyn’s death.
Now, as much as I disliked this little prick, either you answer my
questions or I call him up and answer his questions, all of them:
diary, red stuff and all.”

Nate put both elbows on the table, folded
one hand over the other, and rested his chin in the cup formed by
his thumbs. His eyes strayed in the general direction of the
drapes, and he sat silent for a full minute. Finally, looking back
at me, he said, “Okay, Diana, you give me no choice. I’ll tell you
the whole story and hope to hell it keeps you from doing something
that would sign both our death warrants.”

* * * * *

He opened his office safe, took out a large
manila file, and placed it on the table. As he pulled out his first
exhibit, I was astonished to see that it was an
eight-by-ten-picture frame with three pictures of himself and
Evelyn, looking like happy lovers. One picture was in front of
Niagara Falls, one in front of an enormous glacier, and one on a
tropical beach somewhere.

“We met two and a half years ago at a global
warming seminar in Costa Rica.” His voice cracked with emotion and
he paused. I sat absolutely spellbound. Nothing he could have told
me would have surprised me more. What was wrong with my people
reader? I hadn’t had a clue.

Regaining control, he continued in a
matter-of-fact tone. “We had a lot of common interests and spent as
much time together as possible. She always worked it so we met
outside the United States, except for that one time that we took a
quick trip to Niagara during a holiday in Canada. Eventually she
told me about the warrant for her arrest after her protest at Blue
Morpho Petroleum, but not until her lawyer had succeeded in getting
all of the charges dropped. She still didn’t tell me about Mars and
Red 19---not then, anyway.

“We were on our last trip, the one to
Tahiti, when the house in San Jose, Costa Rica, burned. Evelyn and
her colleagues had used the place as a headquarters for their
environmental movement. Everyone inside was killed, and Evelyn
later told me that they were all dead before the fire started.

“She was totally changed after that:
haunted, paranoid, distant, distracted. Half the time she wouldn’t
even hear what I was saying to her. Finally she began to tell me
about this secret society she belonged to, the Caretakers of the
Martian Diary
. It was upsetting to see that she believed
this tale about Martian pollution destroying that planet’s
atmosphere and Martians migrating here. I told myself that the
deaths of her friends, and her accidental escape, had just
temporarily unhinged her mind. I was trying to be supportive and
protective and humor her until she got over the shock. I didn’t
know then that she had started with the Martian stuff years
before.”

He had been staring at the drapes but now
hesitated and looked into my face. “By that time I was hopelessly
in love with her and would have done anything she asked. So, when
she told me that she had been ordered to pass the diary on and
wanted me to be the new Caretaker, I agreed without asking too many
questions. My mistake.

“Before she could give me the disc, we had
to meet with one of her society members, who put me through weeks
of indoctrination. Sometimes I could hardly keep a straight face.
Other times I thought about cults like Jonestown or that group that
believed they were going up to join the mother ship when the comet
came by. I often worried about what I was getting into. Perhaps the
most frightening moments were when part of this tale actually began
to sound plausible. Then I questioned my own mental stability. The
bottom line to the indoctrination was that I was to guard the disc,
find a safe hiding place for it, and never reveal its existence to
anyone unless told to by the society. The society teaches that for
eons this information has been handed down in some form: parchment,
verbal memory, and now, CD ROM.” He laughed self-consciously at the
ludicrous statement he had just made.

There was another pause “Soon after I was
confirmed as Caretaker, Evelyn began working on me, relentlessly.
She was absolutely convinced that Blue Morpho was very close to
developing the type of fuel that produced Red 19 as a byproduct,
some chemical combination that I think was supposed to include
helium and lead. She was determined that I should publish the diary
and her Blue Morpho information electronically– transmit it all at
once to every insurance company, every scientist, every
environmentalist in the world. If I didn’t do it like that, zap it
instantly over the Internet, ‘they’ would stop me.”

I was trying not to interrupt but had to
ask, “They who? Blue Morpho or the Martian cult?”

“At the time I thought she was talking about
her Caretaker friends. Lately, I haven’t been so sure. My Caretaker
contact tells me that the persons who killed her friends and burned
the house were thugs associated with Blue Morpho.

“Anyway, when she told me that part about
the helium and lead, I made some quip about it going up like a lead
balloon. We had the biggest fight we ever had. Her reaction was so
crazy, I had to promise her I would help before I could calm her
down. I never made light of the subject again, never questioned her
at all. The one thing I insisted on was that we could not email
such an accusation unless we had more information about Blue
Morpho’s fuel experiments. It seemed like a good compromise, but I
know now that my plan was not good enough for her.

“The day after I agreed to help her, I
started getting very angry admonishments from Caretakers warning me
not to reveal the diary. There were mysterious messages on the
phone, the computer, right on my desk, even after the office had
been locked. The security video showed no intrusion. They seemed to
know everything I did. Scared the hell out of me.”

I couldn’t resist the sarcasm. “Gee, I seem
to know exactly what you mean.”

He paused long enough to acknowledge the
rebuke. “I know, it’s not much of an excuse, but I’m trying to
explain why I . . . I hired a man from Sam’s line of work to find
out how they were spying on me and to set up counter measures to
protect myself. Victor, my spy versus spy guy, debugged my office,
took the chip he found in my surveillance video camera, and planted
it in your TV. He also helped me set up the computer program.

“I told myself at the time that I was
protecting both of us by making sure you didn’t reveal the
information. It was a vile thing for me to do. I am sorry, Diana.”
He looked into my face, expecting forgiveness.

His expectation made me furious and
triggered my outrage. “Oh, right! There’s always a good reason to
invade another’s privacy, and the James Bond glamour of the Cold
War removed any worry about illegality, immorality, or principle.
From Nixon’s Watergate crew to the database the local supermarket
keeps on all its customers, to the illegal wire taps now going on
in the name of national security, we all think our need overrides
the law. But in the final analysis, that’s just the quickest way to
loose our freedom.”

For a moment he seemed taken aback by my
rant, then conceded, “You’re right. Once you allow the end to
justify the means . . . but it started so innocently. All I wanted
was a thorough and careful investigation so I could show Evelyn
there were no Martian conspiracies. I wanted to convince her to
drop out of the society and continue the wonderful relationship we
had started. I was hoping your report would do that for me. I was
dumbfounded when you found Evelyn. It never dawned on me that you
could do that. When I read the first paragraph of your report and
saw that Evelyn had been attacked, the whole world changed. All of
a sudden it was real and dangerous and I–”

“Wait a minute. How did you know about the
attack? The report I sent you on email came back as a bad
address.”

“Actually, I sent that error message. Those
emails were never really on any Net server. Too public. The program
I installed on your computer captured your mail to me. The minute
you typed in my address. Every letter of the message was captured
and encrypted and sent directly to my computer by direct phone
line.”