Mahogany's Dream Read online

  “Outside. In front of the Museum.”

  “What are you doing there?”

  “I told you. We’re waiting for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we want…because we need you to come with us. Right now.”

  “I have a job, Dyson.”

  “Quit it. I’ll take care of you forever.”

  “I though you were giving me some time.”

  “I was. And I did. But now you need to make up your mind.”

  “About what?”

  “About coming with us. Right now.”

  “Dyson…”

  “Are you coming?”

  “Where are you going? What’s the rush?”

  “I’m going someplace safe. For the last time, are you coming?”

  “I can’t just up and leave.”

  “I understand. I still love you. I always will.”

  Then he disconnected the call and drove off.

  “Is Ms. Janaya coming?” Mahogany asked.

  “Ms. Janaya is working right now,” he said.

  At the next stoplight, the vehicle’s phone rang. The LCD displayed a federal exchange. He pressed a button on the steering wheel to answer. “Hello?”

  “Come back and pick me up. I’m coming down right now.”

  He and Mahogany both smiled.

  When Janaya got in, she tickled Mahogany on the knee. Mahogany giggled sheepishly.

  “Where are we going?” she asked Dyson.

  “The Poconos,” he answered.

  CHAPTER

  49

  “And where can I find Mahogany?” Mancini asked Maris. “Can I talk to her right now?”

  Maris hesitated. “She’s with Dr. Conwell. He said that he was taking her someplace safe.”

  “What? He just took her? What kind of a school is this?”

  “He’s an official of the institution. Technically she’s on an escorted field trip until his lawyer can file the paperwork with DHS. It’s permitted under the Charter School Act. We didn’t know what else to do. We weren’t sure she would be safe here until the police find the attacker. We sent Kiara away too.”

  Mancini had almost forgotten that Maris still didn’t know the attacker’s identity.

  “What kind of paperwork is his lawyer filing with DHS?”

  “An emergency petition for legal guardianship.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “I’m not sure how long it takes under normal circumstances, but we contacted a friend of Norma’s who works in the department. We explained the situation to her and she said she would process the application right away. Was that wrong?”

  Mancini stood. “I don’t know yet, but I have to go.”

  Maris stood too. She looked like she was on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for lying to you in the beginning. I was scared. And I didn’t want to create any more problems for Blake right now. Not so close to…”

  The tears began falling again.

  “Ms. Stoddard, everything will be fine.”

  “I don’t know anymore. So many things have happened in such a short time. The kids are scared. I’m scared.”

  “You don’t have to be afraid. Lieutenant Williams said he’s going to assign an officer to the school for the next few days. And after that, the District is going to increase their patrols around the area. I’ll see to it.”

  “Thank you,” she said, gathering herself. “You know, if our students weren’t orphans, their families would’ve probably pulled all of them out of the Academy by now and I wouldn’t have a job.”

  “Well, be glad that’s not the case. Ms. Stoddard, what I need you to do right now is tell me where Conwell took Mahogany.”

  “The Poconos. He said he was taking her to his place in the Poconos.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  “I don’t. In all the confusion, I didn’t think to get it.”

  “Wonderful,” Mancini said. His star witness had left the city and no one knows where she went.

  “I’m sorry,” Maris offered again.

  “Do you have a number for Conwell?”

  “No. I just have an email address. But he usually responds right away.”

  “Give it to me.” She did.

  He handed her a card. “If you hear from either of them, find out where they are and then call me immediately. I have to go now.”

  He turned to leave, then stopped. “One more thing. Did you tell anyone else where Mahogany is headed?”

  “I told Blake,” she said.

  “Why the hell did you do that?” he yelled.

  Maris was shaken again. “Well…he called to check on me the day after Mahogany was attacked. He said that he had something for Mahogany that would make her feel better, something from Norma.”

  “Shit,” Mancini said.

  “I don’t understand,” she said meekly.

  He looked her in the eyes. “Ms. Stoddard, ask yourself a question: How would Blake have known what had happened?”

  She though about it and a sinking feeling took control of her mind.

  Mancini left her to deal with it by herself.

  CHAPTER

  50

  “Where’s your bodyguard?” Jill asked Brian as she walked into his office.

  “She quit.”

  “Get out of town. When?”

  “Yesterday, while I was on a conference call with the CTOC.”

  “She didn’t give you any notice?”

  “Yes, a post-it note on my door.”

  “Wow. What did you do, break off the affair?”

  “Ha, Ha. I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  Jill put her hands up in mock defense. “Hey, don’t take it out on me because Victoria Secret left you high and dry.”

  “Right now I have bigger problems than both of you. The CTOC call was an emergency security briefing.”

  “Really? What’s going on?”

  “Remember those miniaturized wave generators I told you about?

  “Yeah.”

  “Two days ago, the D.C. Police found one in a hotel about six blocks from the Justice Department.”

  “Then it was disarmed. That’s good news.”

  “No, it’s bad news. Very bad news. The one they found was even smaller and more advanced than the prototype we obtained last year. This one had some kind of satellite transponder hooked up to it. And the dish it was connected to was coated with a heat resistant polymer. Our guys say the polymer can be sprayed on and enables any standard satellite dish to temporarily withstand the intense heat generated by millimeter waves, effectively turning it into a parabolic targeting antenna.”

  “Now you sound like Conwell. Can you repeat that in English?”

  Brian huffed. “We have someone on American soil with the potential capability to turn any run-of-the-mill satellite dish into a remote controlled directed energy weapon. But that’s not all. Apparently, the satellite signal can be tweaked to overload the wave generator’s maximum bandwidth, triggering a subroutine that causes the device to explode.”

  “Christ,” Jill said.

  “That was my reaction, too. But the real humdinger is what they didn’t find. According to the guys at the CTOC, Benjamin Lui, a communications engineer at the Star Satellite regional office in Taiwan, brought the generator into the country. They say Lui brought a box full of wave generators into Dulles a week ago.”

  “And he got past security with that?”

  “From the outside the generators look like cable modems. I even heard that they actually modulate a cable signal if you screw a coaxial cable into one of them. Lui’s box didn’t raise any eyebrows because half the world’s cable modems are manufactured in Taiwan. The customs guys claim that it’s not that uncommon for Taiwanese sales reps to bring prototype modems for their best U.S. customers. Anyway, how they got in is not the issue. Our immediate problem is finding the rest of them. They could be anywhere. And they could already be armed
.”

  “Jeez,” she said. “Doesn’t the D.C. field office track incoming foreign nationals like we do? How could this guy get out of the airport without being tailed?”

  “You’re doing a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking. Of course they track them. Apparently Lui had help. The agent assigned to tailing him was found dead in an airport supply closet. Broken neck, no prints.”

  Jill’s blood pressure rose. “They killed one of our guys? Who was it?”

  “An agent in the D.C. field office named Olivett. Why, do you know somebody over there?”

  “A few of the guys in my class at Quantico went to the D.C. office. But that name doesn’t sound familiar. What about Lui? Is he in custody yet?”

  “He’s in the custody of the D.C. Coroner. The Hotel Manager found his body in the same room where they found the generator. He was killed the same way as Olivett.”

  Jill was disgusted. “In other words, we have a cache of deadly weapons floating around the country and no leads.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Brian said. “Based on the frequency the generator’s transponder was set to, we already know which satellites are capable of sending it a signal and which areas of the country those signals can reach. And we have a description, fingerprints and hair samples from the person staying in the hotel room. It’s only a matter of time before we get him.”

  “If time doesn’t run out on us first. Which areas of the country can the signals reach?”

  “A better question would be: What can’t they reach? Using signal relays in space, they can reach all of North America. But when you factor in the time it would take to transport the generators by ground before the satellites pass overhead, the threat radius is basically limited to the Washington area.”

  “When will the satellites pass over?”

  “The first one will pass over two days from now.”

  Jill mulled it over for a few seconds. “Wait a minute, if the threat radius is limited to the D.C. area, why are you telling me all this. I’ll bet the farm this is classified.”

  “Damn straight it is. And don’t forget it this time. The transponder on the generator they found was fitted with an interferometer. Our tech guys think that means the signal will be encoded with photon-based encryption.”

  “Conwell,” Jill said.

  “Right,” Brian acknowledged. “There are more than one hundred thousand satellite dishes inside the threat radius. Searching even a fraction of them would be a logistical nightmare. We considered asking the public to disable their own dishes, but the satellite TV lobbyists would have that blocked before the ink was dry on the press release. And even if that request did get out, it might create a panic. If no attack came after that, there’d be political hell to pay. Some of the guys in D.C. think that Aldridge’s head would roll.

  So that brings us to Plan B, which is to prevent or disrupt the satellite transmission. The CIA is working on stopping it—by force if necessary—at the potential points of origin in Asia. As a backup plan, a separate CTOC team has been setup to disrupt the signal at the relay points in space before the birds pass overhead.”

  “And you think Conwell can help the second team?”

  “We hope so. We’re guessing the signal will be encoded with some variation of his encryption algorithm and that he knows a way to defeat it, or at least a way to jam the signal. If he doesn’t, and we can’t find another way, we’ll have to go with Plan C.”

  “Which is?”

  “Shooting the satellites out of orbit with missiles. I don’t think I need to explain the risks of that approach, especially if they’re Chinese birds. The sad part is that there are certain idiots in Washington who think that should be Plan A. I’m hoping we can avoid that. But to even have a shot, the first thing we need to do is find Conwell.”

  “Which is where I come in?”

  “Yes. We need to find him and get him down to Washington ASAP.”

  “I’ll find him, but what if he refuses to go? You heard what he said at the proffer.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Just find him first.”

  “I’m on it. Any suggestions on where to start?”

  “Start with Janaya.”

  “Come again?”

  “She’s with him. Three people saw her get in his Rover yesterday.” He handed her a post-it note. “This is her mobile phone number. Call Verizon and put a trace on it. The next time she uses it, triangulate the signal to her location. Whatever you do, don’t issue an APB for Conwell or Hoffman will have our asses in a sling.”

  “Got it.” She headed for the door.

  “Jill,” he said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Enough excitement for you now?”

  She grinned. “Fucking A.”

  CHAPTER

  51

  Blake needed a shower and a shave. But going back to his house was too risky. Besides, he was hoping that a beard might make him harder to recognize. He was in survival mode now.

  Two days had passed since his botched attempt to eliminate the one person he feared could connect him to Norma’s murder. After he’d fled from the dormitory, he went back to his house. He stopped there just long enough to retrieve Norma’s files and the cash that Damien had never come back for. He took Norma’s car because he was afraid the Police might be looking for both of his. That night he slept in the Foreman’s trailer at the Franklin Towers construction site.

  The next morning he bought a prepaid wireless phone so his calls couldn’t be tracked.

  After Maris told him that Conwell had taken Mahogany to the Poconos, he had searched Norma’s files, desperately hoping to come across the address of Dyson’s house there. He had no such luck. Everything associated with Conwell was listed under the auspices of Terraced Bay Holding Corporation.

  But then he remembered something. When Norma had first introduced the two of them, Blake was still CEO of the bank. He had hounded Dyson about giving CSB some of his banking business. To placate Norma, Dyson had allowed CSB to refinance the mortgages on two of his homes. Blake recalled that in both cases the borrower was Terraced Bay Holding Corporation. At the time he thought that was odd, but now he was ecstatic about it.

  A light tap on the car window startled him. It was Carla, his ex-secretary from the bank. He rolled down the window and she handed him a folder.

  He said, “Carla, you’re a lifesaver.”

  She smiled. “I haven’t heard that since you left.”

  “I can say it again if you like.”

  “No. The only thing I want you to do is remember that I never gave you that.”

  “Gave me what?” he said mischievously.

  “Blake?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You look like shit.” Nonetheless, she kissed him on the cheek before she departed.

  The papers inside the folder listed all of the bank’s borrowers whose first initial was “T”. Two addresses were listed under Terraced Bay Holding Corporation. The first one was a Philadelphia address in Mt. Airy. The second one was an address in Pocono Valley, Pennsylvania.”

  He gassed up the car and headed west on 76.

  CHAPTER

  52

  Maris was right. Messages sent to Dyson’s email address received an immediate response. Unfortunately, Mancini’s response had come in the form of a phone call from Reed Hoffman, who gave the detective a blistering warning to stay away from his client. The warning hadn’t deterred Mancini one bit. But when he tried to get a search warrant for Dyson’s Mt. Airy house, Hoffman squashed it flatter than roadkill at a monster truck rally.

  So he had to get creative.

  _________

  The doorbell rang and Rock got up to answer it. When he got to the foyer, he saw a stapled, tri-folded sheet of pink paper stuck under the door. SEARCH WARRANT was printed on the top in big bold letters.

  Rock opened the door to let the search party in. He was surprised to see that Detective Mancini had come alone.

/>   Mancini walked in the house like he lived there and sat on the couch.

  Rock closed the door. “Ain’t you supposed to be searchin’?”

  “I though we would have a little chat first.”

  “About what? I don’t have nuttin’ to say that my lawyer can’t say for me.”

  Mancini stretched his arms on the couch. “As you can see Mean Joe Green, your lawyer can’t protect you from me. Nobody can do that.”

  “I don’t need protectin’,” Rock said.

  “We’ll see about that. Why don’t you take a load off?”

  “You offerin’ me a seat in my own house?”

  “Suit yourself,” Mancini said. “Hey. Those wouldn’t happen to be a pair of those new Lebron James sneakers would they?”

  Rock looked down at his feet. “Naw man, these are Air Force Ones.”

  “See that? Shows how much I know about fashion. Doctors say we’re all the same color on the inside, but I tell you, I’ll never know sneakers the way you people do.”

  Rock felt a spark of anger ignite inside him. “What you tryin’ to say, man?”

  “Don’t get upset, buddy. That was a compliment. I mean, when an old lady can pick out a pair of sneakers from across the street in the dark, that’s a talent to be proud of. It’s almost like she has built-in binoculars.”

  “What you talkin’ ‘bout?”

  “Geraldine Wallace, your neighbor across the way. Nice lady, even though she’s a bit nosey for my tastes. Geraldine—that’s what she told me to call her, said that two weeks ago she saw you dump a trash bag into your trunk at four in the morning. She swore the trash bag was wearing a pair of those new Lebron James sneakers just like her grandson has. Now I told Geraldine what an upstanding member of the community you are. I told her it was probably just her imagination. But she insisted she knew what she had seen. Me being the public servant that I am, I told her that I would check it out. Can’t hurt, right? So I take a look around your backyard and lo and behold, what do I find? Footprints frozen in the mud that I’ll be damned weren’t made by a pair of Lebron James Nikes.”