Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) (12 page)

Okay, so back to basics. She tried to remember proper police
procedure from all the TV cop dramas she’d ever seen. What would Columbo ask
next?

“Did they do an autopsy on the body?” she patiently asked.

“Yes. Cause of death was blood loss due to a gunshot wound.”

“Nothing else of significance from the autopsy? No drug use,
no unusual marks on the body?”

“No, nothing.”

“What about his clothes?”

“They were mostly of European make, with a wallet made in
Spain and shoes from Italy.”

“What was in his wallet?”

“He had several credit cards and several hundred Euros. He
also had a lifetime membership card for International Bird Rescue.”

“Did you check out the charges on the credit cards?”

“Yes, the last charges made were for an airline fare to
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and a stay at a small hotel there. Both made two months
before his death. Nothing after that.”

This was frustrating and going nowhere fast.

“Did you find any additional evidence related to his
murder?” she inquired in a discouraged tone, putting her glass of lemonade down
firmly on the coffee table.

“Yes,” came the matter-of-fact response. “The blood stains
on the jet aircraft.”

Capie froze in mid-motion.

“The aircraft? What aircraft?” she asked, feeling a sudden
spike of excitement running up and down her spine.

“A French Dassault Falcon 20, a business jet. We found it
crash landed in the desert forty kilometers northwest of here, not far from the
613 highway. His bloodstains, type O negative, were in the pilot’s seat and in
several places in the passenger cabin. We found other blood stains of type A
positive in the passenger cabin. There were also two bullet holes in the cabin
floor and one in the outer skin of the plane.”

“How very interesting,” Capie stated, now finding herself on
the edge of the seat. “And did you trace the registration of the aircraft?”

“Yes. It is registered to the Islamic Republic of Iran Air
Force.”

The Iranian Air Force. Yes, of course it was. The Iranians.

“I didn’t see any mention of the airplane in the case file
or the Iranians. Why is that?”

“All connections to the Iranians and the aircraft were
deleted by order of the Ministry of the Interior.”

It made sense now. Some wizard of
Errabêlu
in Iran
was up to no good. He’d convinced the wizard of
Errabêlu
in Saudi Arabia
to squash the investigation in Dammam. Logical.

So, what was her next step?

She couldn’t justify charging off into Iran. Dammam was one
thing. Iran was another order of magnitude more difficult and dangerous.

In early 2013, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL) was formed in Syria of Sunni Arab extremists to battle both government
and rebel forces in the Syrian Civil war. Despite the near universal opposition
from all of the region’s governments, the UN, the United States and all of the
region’s terrorist and terrorist leaning organizations (such as Al Qaeda, Hamas
and Hezbollah), ISIL (or ISIS) continued to grow in terms of members, weapons
and resources. All through 2015, they seized increasing amounts of territory,
spreading a reign of terror, murder and destruction across most of Syria and
into the entire northern third of Iraq.

The Iraqi Army had tried, but had proved to be mostly
ineffective in dealing with the ISIL threat.

So, in early 2016, Iran had stepped into the picture in a
big way.

In both 2014 and 2015, Iran had made diplomatic overtures
with Syria, Hezbollah, and even the Iraqi government, establishing a quasi
anti-ISIL alliance. With acquiesce of the Iraqi and Syrian governments, the
Islamic Republic of Iran Army Guard mobilized through the northern territories
of Iraq in 2016 and marched into eastern Syria, battling the retreating forces
of ISIL and pushing them in a pincer movement towards the Syrian Army in
Damascus, finally reaching an uneasy and now often bloody stalemate in western
Syria.

And that’s where the current state of affairs still sat. Going
into Iran might be exceptionally dangerous.

She sighed. It was time to go home and to discuss the
situation with Paul.

• • • •

“So, my dear,” Paul said, putting his fork down on his now
empty plate. “The question is where to go from here, right?”

Capie nodded, still toying with her food.

They were at a back table in Truluck’s Restaurant in University
City near San Diego, celebrating Capie’s successful return from the Mid-East. She
had just finished giving him her detailed version of the trip and answering the
tons of questions he had. And he was doing his best to restrain himself and not
disparage or reprimand her for not keeping him informed on her whereabouts and
also charging off to Saudi Arabia on her own. But Paul was an engineer, not an
actor and despite his best efforts to hide his feelings, he was aware that she
sensed his mood.

“I can tell that you are still mad with me, aren’t you?” she
asked, cocking her head to one side while studying his countenance guardedly.

Paul leaned back in his seat and sighed gently before
looking up to meet her gaze.

“Yes,” he admitted grudgingly. “I am, my love, a little.
Okay, I know what you are going to say. You went all the way to the Middle
East, you were very careful, you did your investigation, you learned a lot and you
returned. All in complete safety. No harm, no foul. But try looking at this
from my point of view. You promised to keep me informed and you promised to be
careful. And here I sat, half a world away, not knowing where you were or if
you were in trouble or not.” He bit down on one lip before continuing. “Being
left in the dark that way—the anguish, the pain, the fears. You are the love of
my life.” Paul smiled, reaching out to stroke the side of her face with his
hand. “Not knowing scared me to death.”

Capie frowned, reaching out with one finger to toy with the
edge of a napkin.

“I’m sorry,” she replied. “But I didn’t think you’d miss me
all that much. I mean, I could see that you were tied up with your quantum
computer project.”

Paul gulped, feeling as if he had been gut-punched. He
looked away, trying to collect his thoughts. Of all the things she could have
said, her words cut him deeply.

“I need to go back to the Middle East,” she announced,
before he could say anything in reply. “To Iran this time, to continue the
investigation.”

“I am still not convinced,” he declared, as he deliberately
did not look back in her direction. “I admit the situation looks suspicious,
but there is no evidence that there’s any conspiracy in play here, let alone
that there are a lot of Normals about to be killed. And I especially don’t care
for the risk that you would be in while running around in Iran.”

“And you really can’t go with me this time either, can you?
Just where do you stand with your qubit processor?”

He sighed, taking a sip from his water glass and setting it
back down none too gently on the table. “I finally worked out the problems and
built a successful four qubit processor. I am halfway through the design build
of an eight qubit processor.”

She nodded, deep in thought. “So, no. You shouldn’t leave
your work right now. I will be very careful and keep all of my energy
expenditures low.”

Paul rubbed one hand through his hair, a pinched and tension
filled expression on his face. “That’s not going to be good enough,” he
muttered mournfully.

Capie licked her lips. “What does that mean?”

“I want to be reasonable about this,” he said with a frozen
smile. “If something happens…if you disappear or get hurt—then I want a way to
find you. I don’t want to have to search the whole planet looking for you.”

She forced a short laugh. “And how do you propose to do
that? Do you want me to take the Raconteur with me?”

Paul looked thoughtful for a minute. “No, that wouldn’t
help. We only have one of them. But I have another idea. Remember the
subcutaneous transponders with the rubindium crystals in the
Star Trek
episode “Patterns of Force?” Or when Data scanned the planet Angel One for
platinum in order to find the survivors of the starship
Odin
? Something
like that.”

“Something specific that you could scan for with a magical
spell?” Capie noted slowly. “Something that
Errabêlu
wouldn’t know to
look for.”

“Exactly.”

“I can see that,” she responded with a furrowed brow. “But I
would expect you to do the same thing. Insert something in your body that I
could track if I needed to.”

“Agreed,” he said, briefly closing his eyes in relief. “In
addition, I expect at least two emails or phone calls a day from you updating
your progress. And your whereabouts.”

She smiled at him slyly. “Agreed. And I apologize about
that. I got so caught up in travel and there really was nothing to report until
near the end.”

“Then send me an email that says ‘nothing to report,’” he
said, giving her a firm eye.

“Yes, that does seem fair, Dom. Okay, I will do that on this
trip. Anything else?”

“And, as an added precaution, CB, I will get us each a
satellite phone, probably one of the new Iridium models.”

Capie cocked her head to one side and smiled smugly. “Subcutaneous
transponders
and
a satellite phone? Isn’t that overdoing it a bit?”

“Don’t you remember all those
Star Trek
episodes
where their communicators were taken away from the landing parties?”

She shrugged, conceding the point. “Why a satellite phone
and not a cell phone?”

He chuckled. “Don’t get me wrong. Cell phones are great and
they have a lot of bells and whistles that satellite phones don’t have. But
cell phones don’t work everywhere. Like in lots of mountainous terrain, deserts
and out at sea. A satellite phone solves all of that. They can even do limited
texting as well. I’ll get you a good one before you leave.”

“If it will make you feel better, then yes, I will take one
with me,” she said, smiling reassuringly.

“Good!” Paul said, with a light slap on the table. “That
makes me feel a lot better about your trip. Now, I can know where you are and
come track you down, if need be. So, okay, a change of subject here. Your
timing is good. Before you go back, I suggest that we enjoy a weekend at the
San Diego Comic-Con. You can leave for Iran on Monday.”

Her smile was contagious. “I hereby approve your plan
enthusiastically. But tonight I want some cozy time with you. Okay, big boy?”

“My thoughts exactly, CB,” Paul admitted with a lecherous
grin on his face. “And I know just the place. Ready to go?”

• • • •

This time Capie took the shortest Great Circle route, which
took her over the North Pole and over central Russia, east of Moscow, and then
a central line down the middle of the Caspian Sea. A small dogleg to the east
allowed her to avoid the capital city of Baku, Azerbaijan. Her dogleg also took
her around Tehran as she headed for the city of Esfahan, Iran, home of the 8
^th
Raptor Air Base and home station for the Dassault Falcon 20 in question.

The skin between her shoulder blades still itched from the
implantation of a single gram of platinum of isotope 190. According to her
husband, that isotope of platinum was extremely rare in the Earth’s crust,
something on the order of 0.7 parts per trillion. According to the tests he had
quickly run, that one gram was detectable up to 800 miles away!

Once she crossed the beach of Iran, near the border of
Turkmenistan, she kept her portal jumps short, only five miles a hop, keeping
the energy levels as low as possible. A hundred miles out of Esfahan, she chose
to fly instead at a fairly high altitude, keeping her exposure to a minimum.

Since she was exhausted from the very long trip, and the morning
sun was already up (precluding any nightly avatar interrogations for at least
several hours), she therefore disguised herself as a local and found a small
hotel on the outskirts of Esfahan, as far from both the airbase and the
downtown sector as she could get. There, she crashed for a ten hour sleep,
getting up in time for dinner.

Refreshed, she headed out, taking a cab to the Shahid
Beheshti International Airport. The Air Base lay beyond, only a couple of miles
distant, close enough that she was able to walk to it in the cooling night air.

On the outskirts, she found the military air terminal operations
building. Using a cloaking spell, she passed through the open lobby area to the
rear of the building to the offices where all the rooms were already locked for
the day. A small spell took care of that problem and she was soon powering up a
desktop computer and logging in.

Yes, she was able to quickly identify records for the Falcon
20, including flight plans and maintenance schedules. Hmm, the last few records
for the plane were minimal with no flight plans at all, only maintenance and
fuel consumption reports. Odd. The pilot’s name, however, was the same for all
of the last flights, a Lieutenant Javad Hosseini.

She logged into the personnel records and discovered another
odd item. Lieutenant Javad Hosseini, deceased, body shipped somewhere…apparently
back home for funeral services and burial. Date of death. More odd. The same
day that Kuzmin died.

Was Hosseini’s some of the blood in the Falcon? It seemed
likely. According to his medical records, his was type A positive. Perhaps he
and Kuzman had exchanged gunfire on the aircraft? Hosseini died but not before
mortally wounding Kuzman?

The base commander. He would know the answers to these
questions. His name was Brigadier General Ebrahim Ahmadi. Hmm, another further
check…yes, he had quarters on base and he was scheduled for an early morning
meeting so he should be in his quarters.