Mahogany's Dream Page 21

  Dyson pushed himself up onto his knees. He lunged towards the ice pond, but then he paused, overcome by the notion that Janaya would want him to save Mahogany. He turned back towards the shed. Then he slid to a stop, reasoning that he couldn’t stop a bullet, but he could save Janaya from hypothermia if he moved quickly enough.

  He froze, gripped by indecision.

  The words of the King came back to him:

  Yesterday I was a king. Today I am but a slave to the choice that beckons me.

  A gun blast echoed from the direction of the shed, making the decision for him.

  His eyes watering for Mahogany, Dyson broke into a full run towards the ice pond. He slowed to a ginger trot just before crossing into the thin ice. He moved towards Janaya’s body swiftly, but carefully. With every step he left behind tiny cracks. The original fissure was degrading the entire surface. He dove and caught Janaya’s wrist just before it descended below the surface. The collision of his body against the soft ice gave birth to an enormous crack underneath his chest. The popping of newly formed breaks filled his ears. He hoped the ice would hold up long enough. His teeth clenched with strain, he clutched her wrist with all his might. Without leverage, pulling her body up out of the water was a Herculean task.

  But he eventually did it.

  He placed Janaya’s limp body on the ice a safe distance away from the hole. He tore off his vest and fleece top. She was already starting to lose her natural color. He wrapped the warm garments around her torso. He ran his hands up and down her clammy legs trying to create fiction. The crackle of a new break in the ice refocused his attention on the urgent need to get to a solid surface. He scooped her body into his arms and rose to one knee.

  Then from behind him, a familiar female voice yelled, “Conwell!”

  With Janaya in his arms, Dyson spun around to find Jill standing in the doorway to the shed, holding a pistol. A man in a uniform stood near her, his outstretched arms grasping a gun and pointing at every sound he heard.

  Things happened fast.

  Jesse saw Dyson swing around with a limp body in his arms. From where he stood, the pedometer jutting out from Dyson’s waistband appeared to be a firearm.

  Jill saw the young deputy’s pupils dilate. She yelled, “Don’t shoot!”

  But the bullet was already on its way.

  Milliseconds later, Janaya’s body forcefully slammed back into Dyson’s abdomen. The momentum sent him reeling backwards. He crashed through the weak ice into the water below.

  The initial sensation felt like a million simultaneous pinpricks all over his body. Then a crushing wave of pain exploded all over him as nearly every nerve ending in his body reacted to the indescribable cold of the liquid torture chamber he had plunged into. It was so cold he wanted to jump out of his skin. His nostrils burned from the rush of water. He flailed about violently.

  Something heavy fell on top of him. It was Janaya’s body. He looked up to see an expanding plume of dark blood swirling in the water all around them. He stopped fighting then and just held onto her.

  Somehow, the knowledge that they would all die together gave him a sense of warmth.

  CHAPTER

  59

  Dyson awoke to a loud thrumming sound. He opened his eyes to find himself in a small vibrating compartment. The noise was deafening. His first thought was that he was dead, but then he saw three people sitting on a small bench across from him. He recognized Jill and Brian, but the third face was new. He glimpsed the sky passing by outside the small window next to Jill’s face. He noticed that she was avoiding his stare. He didn’t care. Everything he cared about was gone. He felt empty and lethargic. He tightened the wool blanket draped around his body and went back to sleep.

  He had a dream about a little boy with no coat sitting in front of a red brick house.

  The helicopter flew on to Washington.

  CHAPTER

  60

  Counterterrorism Operations Center

  Washington, DC

  David Aldridge was in control. He orchestrated the frenetic activity swirling around him with remarkable poise. People had called him a natural leader his whole life. It was true.

  The former senator from California had become the Secretary of Homeland Security in the new administration. Widely regarded as one the President’s closest advisors, he wielded power far beyond his job description. The six foot one, fifty-two year old statesman was nearly as trim as he was on the day he graduated from Yale Law School. In the last few years he had developed the need for reading glasses, but he never wore them in front of a camera.

  The current threat posed by the wave generators was the first real security crisis during his watch. He hadn’t even had the opportunity to oversee a full scale BW/CW drill. It was a trial by fire, but he was cool in the cauldron. He was on top of everything. He had the intelligence people working in Asia to stop the satellite transmission before it ever started. He had the FBI tracking down Koxinga. He had a BW/CW containment team in full gear standing by to handle a worst-case scenario. He had the TSA ready to shut down Reagan, Dulles and BWI on his word. He had five National Guard units on high alert, ready to deploy throughout the area and maintain order. He had two F-22 Raptors with Anti-satellite missiles fueled and waiting on the tarmac at Nellis. He had written statements for the President to deliver to the public for each possible scenario.

  The only thing he hadn’t done was coax Dyson Conwell out of his grief. In his last briefing, his people had told him that Conwell had developed the encryption algorithm that the Kuomintang would most likely use to encode the signal. They said that if anyone could help them defeat the seemingly undefeatable system, it was Conwell.

  But the disoriented young black guy in the CTOC briefing room neither looked nor acted the way Aldridge had expected. When he’d first saw Conwell earlier that day, Aldridge had briefly wondered if the wrong person had been brought to him. Dressed in oversized army fatigues and wrapped in a wool blanket, Conwell was clearly out of it. He wasn’t sure what had provoked Conwell’s detachment from reality. The two FBI agents from the Philadelphia field office had started to explain, but he had cut them short. He didn’t want to be distracted by nonessential information during a crisis. All he needed to know was that Conwell was the man whose help the country needed. Everything else was irrelevant. Unfortunately, Conwell hadn’t shown any inclination to help. The physicist had responded to all their pleas by burrowing his head deeper into his blanket. In his present condition, Aldridge didn’t think Conwell could break an egg, much less a quantum encryption system. Despite this, Aldridge still decided to call in his secret weapon.

  _________

  Brian had never seen so many important people in one place before. Every decision-maker connected with domestic security except Carl Dunleavy was there. As he and Jill sat quietly in the back of the humungous Situation Room, he thought about the fact that his boss was unaccounted for. It wasn’t any kind of mystery; Aldridge despised Dunleavy.

  When Aldridge was still in the Senate, Dunleavy had cut some backroom deals to keep Aldridge off the Senate Intelligence Committee, the body that had oversight authority over all I.I.D. interrogations. Aldridge had been a fighter pilot in Vietnam and Dunleavy had a deep conviction that combat experience turned people into closet pacifists who were reluctant to authorize operations that might provoke a military confrontation. Aldridge had never forgiven Dunleavy for his political maneuverings or his wrongheaded views. Now that Aldridge was the head of Homeland Security, he exacted revenge by consistently excluding Dunleavy from important domestic security events, ensuring that the Machiavellian FBI Director would never be given the chance to join the President’s inner circle.

  _________

  The room wasn’t cold but Dyson still felt a chill. He wondered if it would be there for the rest of his life. It didn’t help that his clothes didn’t fit. He felt a draft up both pants legs.

  When the helicopter landed at Andrews Air Force Base, Dyson had
still been wearing the surgical gown from the hospital. The passenger he hadn’t recognized turned out to be an Army medic. The medic had told him that the emergency room staff at the hospital had cut away the clothing he had been wearing into to make sure the bullet hadn’t passed through Janaya into him. The mention of Janaya and a bullet in the same sentence had brought another round of grief cascading down upon him. The medic told him that their bodies had been pulled from the water after only a few minutes, but due to Janaya’s gunshot wound and the hypothermia that already set in, there was nothing that could be done for her.

  Right before Dyson was whisked away from the blustery landing pad and hustled into the back of a waiting SUV, the medic had looked as if there was something else he wanted to tell him, but didn’t know how to say.

  Inside the SUV, Brian had handed him a drab green military uniform to put on, explaining that the outfit was all that could be found at the Base.

  After a brief drive with sirens blaring, they drove into the underground garage of a white building that was six stories high and two blocks long. On every side, the building had rows of tinted windows recessed in protruding cement frames, giving it the appearance of a gigantic rectangular beehive. Dyson immediately recognized the architecture of downtown Washington, DC.

  When they had first arrived, the gray haired guy that Dyson recognized from T.V. told him that they were in the National Counterterrorism Operations Center. The gentleman had given him a quick summary of the situation and then asked for his help in defeating an HMC style data encryption system. Dyson had just stared at the man, who hadn’t offered his condolences or apologized for defiling a period of mourning. Eventually, the man gave up and went away, trailed by a flock of starch shirted aides. Afterwards, Dyson had huddled in the corner for a long time, trying not to think of Janaya and Mahogany.

  _________

  Dyson was on the verge of asking to go home when President Clinton walked in.

  “Madam President!” someone shouted.

  The whirlwind of activity in the Situation Room came to a halt as everyone stopped to stare. A gaggle of people orbited around her, including five unsmiling secret service agents.

  Aldridge told everyone to get back to work. Then he strolled over to the President and had a brief chat with her, during which he pointed at Dyson twice.

  When Hillary Clinton began walking in his direction, Dyson perked up. Despite the weight of his grief, he felt butterflies in his stomach. He’d never seen the President of the United States in person. She was shorter than she looked on television.

  “Dr. Conwell,” she said, extending her hand.

  “Madam President,” he replied, offering his own.

  She opened her mouth to say something else, but then paused to survey the crowd that had gathered around them. She turned to Aldridge, “Is there someplace a little more private we can do this, David?” An aide whispered in Aldridge’s ear.

  “We can use the Briefing Room,” Aldridge said.

  “I’m right behind you,” the President responded.

  In the Briefing Room, Dyson discovered that “private” had a relative meaning when it came to meeting with the President. Besides the two of them, the small room was occupied by Aldridge, Vallery Romanksi, the President’s Chief of Staff, Howard Covington, the National Security Advisor, and strangely, a beautiful Asian woman in a maid’s uniform.

  Right off, the President said, “I’m very sorry for your loss, Dr. Conwell.”

  “Thank you,” Dyson said gratefully.

  “I know this is a terrible time to put you in this situation,” she went on, “but we really need your help. If that gas is released into the environment, a lot of innocent Americans could die. And I’m told you’ve spent some time in Taiwan and still care about some people there. If we can’t diffuse this attack before it happens, a lot of people over there may die as well. I’ll have no choice but to retaliate.”

  Dyson’s mind was racing. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  The President looked at Aldridge with a quizzical expression that said, He doesn’t know?

  _________

  Wayne Thompson, the CTOC Director, received a call from his liaison with the D.C. Police. The liaison officer told him that they had found something in Koxinga’s hotel room that the CTOC might be interested in. Thompson asked a CTOC agent named Brett Skoloff to go check it out. Skoloff invited Brian and Jill to tag along.

  Brian demurred.

  “What do you mean you’re going back home?” Jill asked her boss. “How can you go back to Philly in the middle of a crisis like this?”

  “Because that’s where I can be the most useful,” Brian said. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not the most popular guy around here. Aldridge associates me with Carl. I’m a black sheep by default.”

  Jill had noticed. “Fuck him,” she said. “This is bigger than any one person. We all have to pitch in to get this thing under control. It’s your job.”

  “My job,” he said, “is in Philadelphia. Besides, I have a hunch about something back in Philly that could change this entire situation. I’m going back to follow up on it.”

  Jill was interested in Brian’s hunch, but not enough to leave Oz to go back to Kansas. “Suit yourself,” she said. “But I’m staying here.”

  “Go ahead. I’m not forcing you to come back with me. I think they could use your skills right now.”

  “They could use yours too.”

  “Keep me posted,” he ordered, ending the debate.

  Jill headed out with Skoloff, and Brian headed for the Beltway.

  At Koxinga’s hotel, a D.C. detective name Harrison handed Skoloff a large brown envelope marked EVIDENCE. “We found these on the victim,” he said.

  Skoloff opened the envelope, which contained a set of photographs. As he cycled through the pictures, Harrison said, “We though they might’ve been vacation pics. But then we found these taped under lid of the toilet tank.” He gave Jill a second set of photos, which appeared to be reprints of the first set. “We ran the prints on both sets,” Harrison went on. “The prints on the first set belong to the victim. The prints on the second set match the ones we lifted off the toothbrush and the laptop, which we presume belong to Mr. Wang, the guest who was staying in this room. I doubt that’s his real name though.”

  “It’s not,” Skoloff said.

  “That’s why we called you guys. We figured the photos might mean more to you than they do to us. Maybe you’ll recognize a face or something. Based on the number of feds who have been through here in the last two days, I gather this is more than just another homicide in D.C.”

  Neither Brett nor Jill took the detective’s bait.

  “I’ll get these to an intel analyst,” Brett said. “But on initial inspection, they don’t look helpful to either of our investigations.”

  “Wait,” Jill said, squinting at one of the photographs.

  Almost all of the photographs were shots of the same young Asian woman posing in various scenic locations. Jill peered closely at one of the photographs, then at another. “Look at the bra strap,” she told Skoloff.

  “Why?” he asked.

  Jill walked over to the window to look at the pictures in better light. “Either she wears the same bra everyday, or she changed her outfit six times in one day to give the impression that these pictures were shot on different days.”

  “Let me take a gander at those,” Harrison said.

  Jill spread the photos out face down on the desk next to the window. She placed two photos side by side. “And I think I know why,” she said. Skoloff and Harrison hunched over her shoulders, watching Jill rearrange the photos. They were surprised when the backs of six of the photos appeared to form part of a diagram. The partial image she had formed featured shapes and symbols typically found on architectural schematics.

  “Can you guys finish this jigsaw puzzle for me? I want to look around some more.”

  While they worked on that, she sc
oured the rest of the room.

  Because the FBI had intervened early, the room was still largely in the condition it was when the Police had found Lui’s body. On the nightstand next to the bed, the charging base for a cell phone was knocked onto its side. The base was the type that could charge two batteries at once. Jill got down on her hand and knees to look under the bed. There she saw a small, thin object. She retrieved it and held it in the air. It was a cell phone battery.

  “Oh shit,” Skoloff said. He suddenly realized that the back of the photos fit together to form a schematic layout of the CTOC.

  _________

  “He’s on a need-to-know basis,” Aldridge was saying to the President. “He’s just a civilian. He doesn’t have the clearance to know the full extent of the threat.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, David,” the President said. “Why would he agree to help if no one bothered to explain the situation to him?”

  “Are you authorizing me to tell him?”

  “Yes,” she said with clear annoyance.

  Aldridge turned to face Dyson. “The Chinese have developed a new strain of Soman, a nasty nerve agent that causes the muscles of the body to spasm uncontrollably. It’s one hundred percent lethal unless the victim is treated with atropine or pralidoxime within fifteen minutes of initial exposure. Convulsing to death is an ugly way to die.”

  “If it’s a gas, then you can probably detect it with lidar spectography,” Dyson said.

  “Right,” Aldridge replied. “Except for two small problems: One, you have to know where to look. And two, by the time you detect it in the air, it’s too late.”