Total Control (48 page)

She had to help her husband. She had to be there for him. Now? Her gun was at a murder scene; the tape of her conversation with Jason was there as well. Despite her coming partially clean with Sawyer, what would he think now? Now, she was certain, the handcuffs would come out. She started to sink into despair again, but she gathered her courage, turned up her collar in the face of the icy wind and entered the railway terminal.

She bought a coach ticket on the next Metroliner train bound for New York City. The train would leave in about twenty minutes and would deposit her at Penn Station in midtown New York at about five-thirty in the morning. A cab ride would take her to JFK Airport, where she would buy a one-way plane ticket on an early morning flight to some country, she wasn't sure which one yet. She went to the ATM machine on the lower level of the train station and withdrew some more cash. As soon as an APB was put out on her, the plastic would be useless. It suddenly occurred to her that she had no other clothes and that she would have to travel as much as possible incognito. The problem was that none of the innumerable clothing shops were open in the terminal at this time of night. She would have to wait until she got to New York.

She stepped inside a phone booth and consulted her small address book; Lee Sawyer's card tumbled out. She stared at it for a long moment.

Dammit/She had to, she owed the man. She dialed Sawyer's home number. After four rings the answering machine came on. She hesitated and then slammed the phone down. She dialed another number. It seemed to ring indefinitely until a sleepy voice answered.

"Jeff?"

"Who's this?"

"Sidney Archer."

Sidney could hear Fisher fumbling in his bedcovers, probably looking for the clock. "I waited up to hear from you. Must've fallen asleep."

"Jeff, I don't have much time. Something terrible has happened."

"What? What's happened?"

"The less you know, the better." She paused and struggled through her thoughts. "Jeff, I'm going to give you the number where I can be reached right now. I want you to go to a pay phone and call me back."

"Christ, it's... it's after two A.M."

"Jeff, please, just do what I ask."

After a little grumbling, Fisher assented. "Give me about five minutes. What's the number?"

Barely six minutes later, the phone rang. Sidney snatched it up.

"You're at the pay phone. You swear?"

"Yes! And I'm freezing my ass off. Now talk to me."

"Jeff, I've got the password. It was in Jason's e-mail. I was right, it was sent to the wrong address."

"That's fantastic. Now we can read the file."

"No, we can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I lost the disk."

"What? How did you do that?"

"It doesn't matter. It's gone. I can't get it back." Sidney's misery was evident in her voice. She collected her thoughts. She was going to tell Fisher to leave town for a while. He could be in danger, serious danger, if her experience in the parking garage was any indicator. She froze at Fisher's words.

"Well, you're in luck, lady."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm not only security conscious, I'm anal as hell. I've lost too many files over the years that weren't backed up properly, Sid."

"Are you saying what I think you are, Jeff?"

"While you were in the kitchen when we were working on trying to decrypt the file..." He paused somewhat dramatically. "I made a couple copies of the files on the disk. One on my hard drive and one on another floppy."

Sidney couldn't speak at first. When she did, her response made Fisher blush. "I love you, Jeff."

"When do you want to come over so we can finally see what's on that sucker?"

"I can't, Jeff."

"Why not?"

"I have to go out of town. I want you to send the disk to an address I'm about to give you. I want you to FedEx it. Drop it off first thing in the morning. First thing, Jeff."

"I don't understand, Sidney."

"Jeff, you've been a big help, but I don't want you to understand it. I don't want you involved any more than you already are. I want you to go home, get the disk and then go stay at a hotel. The Holiday Inn in Old Town is near your place. Send me the bill."

"Sid--"

"As soon as the FedEx office opens in Old Town, I want you to drop the package off," she repeated. "Then call in to the office, tell them you're extending your vacation for a few more days. Where does your family live?"

"Boston."

"Fine. Go to Boston and stay with them. Send me the bill for your transportation. Fly first class if you want. Just go."

"Sid!"

"Jeff, I have to get off in a minute so don't argue with me. You have to do everything I've just told you. It's the only way you can be reasonably safe."

"You're not kidding, are you?"

"Do you have something to write with?"

"Yes."

She flipped through her address book. "Write down this address.

Send the package there." She gave him her parents' mailing address and phone number in Bell Harbor, Maine. "I'm truly sorry I had to involve you in this at all, but you're the only one who could help me.

Thank you." Sidney hung up.

Fisher put the phone back in its cradle, looked warily around the darkened area, ran to his car and drove home. He was about to park his car at the curb when he noticed a black van about a block behind him. As he squinted in the dark light, Fisher was able to discern two figures in the front seat of the van. His breathing immediately accelerated.

He did a slow U-turn in the middle of the street and headed back toward the heart of Old Town. He didn't look at the driver as he passed by the van. When he checked his mirror again, the van was following him.

Fisher pulled his car to a stop in front of the two-story brick building. He looked up at the sign: CYBER@CHAT. Fisher was good friends with the owner and had even helped set up the computer systems offered at CyberChat.

The bar stayed open all night and with good justification. Even at this hour it was three-quarters full, mostly with a college-age crowd who didn't have to get up and go to work the next morning.

However, instead of blaring music, rowdy patrons and a smoky atmosphere (because of the sensitive computer equipment, no smoking was allowed) the interior was filled with the sounds of computer games and low, often intense discussions about whatever was tripping its way across the abundance of computer monitors in the place. The age-old art of flirting still took place, and men and women roamed the room in search of companionship, however brief.

Fisher found his friend, the owner, a young man in his twenties, behind the bar and struck up a friendly conversation. Explaining enough of his situation to enable his friend to assist him, Fisher discreetly handed across the piece of paper containing the address in Maine Sidney had given him. The owner disappeared into the back room. Within five minutes Fisher was entrenched behind one of the computers. As he briefly peered out the window of the bar, the black van came to a stop in an alleyway across the street. Fisher turned back to the computer.

A waitress brought over a bottle of beer and a glass, and a plate of munchies. As she set the plate down next to the computer, she put a linen napkin next to it. Inside the carefully folded napkin was a blank three-and-a-half-inch disk. Fisher nonchalantly unfolded the napkin and quickly slid the disk into the computer's floppy drive.

He typed in a series of characters and the high-decibel dialing of a phone modern could be heard. Within a minute, Fisher was connected to his computer at home. It took about thirty seconds for him to download the computer files he had copied from Sidney's disk onto the blank disk. He looked out the window again. The van had not moved.

The waitress came over to his table. Obviously privy to his plan, she asked if he needed anything else. On her tray was a padded FedEx envelope with the Bell Harbor address typed on the mailing label. Fisher looked out the window again. Then down the street he noticed two policemen standing next to their patrol cars shooting the breeze. When the waitress reached for the disk, which had been part of the plan hastily fleshed out with the bar's owner, Fisher shook his head. Sidney's warning had come back to him. He didn't want to involve his friends unnecessarily in any of this and now maybe he didn't have to. He whispered to the waitress. She nodded and took the FedEx envelope into the back room, returning barely a minute later. She handed another padded envelope across to Fisher.

He looked down at it and smiled when he saw the metered postage label on the envelope. His friend had been very liberal in his estimation of what it would cost to mail the small package, even certified, return receipt requested. It was definitely not going to be returned for insufficient postage. It wasn't as fast as FedEx, but it would have to do under the circumstances, Fisher concluded. He slipped the disk into the envelope, sealed it and put it in his coat pocket. He then paid his bill, leaving a healthy tip for the waitress.

He dabbed some of the beer on his face and clothes and then tipped the glass back and finished it in one gulp.

As he exited the bar and walked toward his car, the van's headlights came on and Fisher could hear the engine start up. The van headed toward him. Fisher started staggering and then singing loudly. The two cops down the street turned their heads in his direction.

Fisher gave them an exaggerated salute and a bow before he collapsed into his car, started the engine and drove off toward the cops on the wrong side of the street.

As he hurtled by the police, his squealing tires doing at least twenty over the speed limit, the cops jumped in their cruisers. The van followed at a safe distance but then turned off when the police cruisers caught up to Fisher. His hazardous driving and the smell of beer on his breath earned Fisher a pair of handcuffs and a quick trip to the police station.

"I hope you know a good lawyer, fella," the cop barked from the front seat.

Fisher's response was completely lucid and tinged with more than a trace of humor. "Actually, I know a number of them, Officer."

At the police station he was fingerprinted and his possessions inventoried.

He was allowed to make one phone call. Before he did so, however, he politely asked the desk sergeant ro do him a favor. A minute later Fisher watched gleefully as the padded envelope was dropped into the police station's U.S. mail chute. The "snail mail."

If his techie friends could only see him now. On his way to the holding cell, Jeff Fisher actually broke into a cheerful whistle. It wasn't wise to screw around with an MIT man.

To his pleasant surprise, Lee Sawyer did not have to travel to California to speak with Charles Tiedman. After a phone call to the Federal Reserve, Sawyer learned that Tiedman was actually in Washington for a conference. Although it was almost three in the morning, Tiedman, still operating on West Coast time, had quickly agreed to speak to the agent. In fact, it seemed to Sawyer that the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank president was very eager to talk to him.

At the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown where Tiedman was staying, Sawyer and Tiedman sat across from each other in a private room adjacent to the hotel restaurant, which had closed several hours earlier. Tiedman was a small, clean-shaven man in his early sixties who had a habit of nervously clasping and unclasping his hands. Even at this hour of the night, he was dressed in a somber gray pinstripe with a vest and bow tie; a tasteful gold watch chain spanned the vest. Sawyer could envision the dapper little man wearing a soft felt cap and tooling around in a roadster with the top down. His conservative appearance smacked much more of the East Coast than the West, and Sawyer learned quickly in the preliminary conversation that Tiedman had spent a good many years in New York before heading to California. For the first few minutes of their meeting he would only occasionally seek direct eye contact with the FBI agent, usually keeping his watery gray eyes, which were covered with a fragile pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, squarely on the carpeted floor.

"I take it you knew Arthur Lieberman quite well," said Sawyer.

"We attended Harvard together. We both started out at the same banking firm. I was the best man at his wedding, and he at mine.

He was one of my oldest and dearest friends."

Sawyer took advantage of the opening. "His marriage ended in divorce, right?"

Tiedman eyed the agent. "That's right," he replied.

Sawyer consulted his notebook. "In fact, that was right about the time he was being considered to head the Fed?"

Tiedman nodded.

"Lousy timing."

"You could say that." Tiedman poured out a glass of water from the carafe on the table next to his chair and took a long drink. His thin lips were dry and chafed.

"I understand the divorce started out being really nasty but was soon enough settled and really didn't affect his nomination. Guess Lieberman lucked out."

Tiedman's eyes blazed. "You want to call that lucky?"

"All I meant was he got the Fed job. I assume that as a close personal friend of Arthur's you probably know more about it than just about anyone." Sawyer looked at Tiedman with frank, questioning eyes.

Tiedman didn't say anything for a full minute, then he let out a deep breath, put his glass down and settled back in his chair. Now he looked directly at Sawyer.

"While it's true that he became chairman of the Fed, it cost Arthur just about everything he had worked for over the years to make his 'nasty' little divorce go away, Mr. Sawyer. It wasn't fair after a career such as his."

"But the chairmanship paid good money. I looked up the salary.

A hundred thirty-three thousand six hundred dollars per year. He was much better off than most."

Tiedman laughed. "That may be true, but before Arthur joined the Fed he earned hundreds of millions of dollars. Consequently, he had expensive tastes, and some debt."