by Nancy Smith
“He may have said something like that.”
The air between the two men had become thick with tension. It was only broken when Sneaky spoke.
“Got it,” Sneaky said. He’d figured out the clasps that released the bust from the wooden stand. When opened, a small light revealed a biometric safe. The safe was about the size of a gun locker. It was made of galvanized steel and had indentions for four fingers of the left hand on the top.
Sneaky gave it a try. The safe did nothing. He stepped back so that Pierce could set his fingers on the pads. Nothing.
“Can you crack it?” Pierce asked.
Sneaky put the safe in giant clamps. “Maybe literally.” He donned a mask and gloves. He picked up a blowtorch. “Eventually.”
Sneaky instructed Rory to open the frosted garage doors. “Fumes,” he said. “The zinc painted on the steel makes toxic fumes.”
“Fatal?” Pierce asked.
“Give ya a nasty headache,” Sneaky replied, obviously familiar from personal experience. “Okay now.” He torched the hinges of the safe with a narrow flame.
Pierce ambled over to the sitting area and plopped down on the sofa. He turned on the game.
Rory grabbed a soda from the mini-fridge and went to stand outside on the driveway.
Eventually, Sneaky split the hinges apart. The others walked over to take a peek. Inside was an external hard drive.
“Looks like eight terabyte of data.” Sneaky took the drive and attached it to one of the computers on the desk along the wall. An ID and password screen came up. “Encrypted. Be a while yet y’all.”
Pierce went to the sitting area and watched the game in silence.
Rory went outside and continued wondering about Isa. Where was she? What was she doing?
22
Isa religiously watched Rory on the evening news. He wore his blue suit and grimly read words off his teleprompter. He looked tired. She wondered if he was sleeping at night.
“Sad news from Creel, Mexico. The death count has reached more than two thousand in a particularly malicious outbreak of flu.”
The Newscaster website had been strangely silent. Isa noted that Rory hadn’t updated it in more than a week.
“Ironically, Doctors Without Borders representatives were sent with an experimental vaccine to Creel just days before the flu outbreak. Their ministrations of this new and effective vaccine saved hundreds, possibly thousands of lives.”
Isa wondered if Rory had moved on to another project—maybe this vaccine story, maybe another girl. Was he spending long days and evenings with her?
She had picked up a skinny, homeless orange tabby on the boardwalk that afternoon. The cat stretched out beside her legs. Isa stroked his fur nearly the same color as Rory’s red hair and looked into his green eyes. The cat made her feel better.
“The Centers for Disease Control states that this outbreak is contained,” Rory said. He looked off into the distance and added, “Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a universal vaccine available?”
Isa didn’t think it said this on his teleprompter.
Rory turned and looked right into the camera, right at her.
The cat turned its head and nipped at her hand.
23
Sneaky looked perplexed.“There’s lots of layers of encryption on some of these files.” He tapped keys for a bit. “But some are less protected.”
“Let me see.” Pierce pushed in like a petulant child. His lower lip extended in a sulk and the look in his eyes said these are mine.
Sneaky gave up the keyboard and let Pierce surf around for a bit.
“These don’t make any sense.”
“I was afraid of that,” Rory said. “We aren’t scientists.”
“Speak for ya self,” Sneaky said.
“Still, what were the chances that there would be a sign that said ‘here’s the good stuff’ and this is what it means?”
“Have ya been thinking up a solution?” Sneaky asked.
“Maybe.”
In a couple of hours, Harry McAfee had joined the three men in the bat cave. She sat at the computer reading the files that Sneaky had made available.
The men had started out standing in a semicircle around her looking like anxious students, but she took her time. Eventually, they wandered off. Rory grabbed a beer and moved to the sitting area to wait. Sneaky powered up a second computer to try who knew what. And Pierce went out to grab some sandwiches for the whole group.
“I wish that Kolli could be here. He might have some answers,” Rory said. “His understanding of this stuff seems pretty comprehensive.”
“Why can’t he?”
“I don’t know where he’s hiding.”
Harry gave him a strange look, but Rory missed it.
Rory wanted to ask Kolli for answers, but he and Isa had very thoroughly vanished. Rory had looked and could not find them. When he thought about it, a slow anger would start to build. So he did his best not to think about her.
“What’s the objective of doing this?” Harry asked. She was pulling at one of her curls in what appeared to be an anxious habit. “What do we hope to learn from this data?”
Pierce had returned just in time. He dumped three paper bags—two with serious grease stains— on the workbench. The wrapper was peeled back on the third bag to reveal an opened bottle of Parker’s bourbon. Sneaky looked at the bags with serious displeasure and moved them to the coffee table in front of the couch. Rory wasn’t certain if it was the grease or the liquor to which Sneaky objected. Sneaky made a placemat of paper towels under the bags. Ah, thought Rory, the grease.
“To find out what the Wagner Company is hiding,” Pierce said, answering Harry’s question about their purposes.
“Not to find out why they were involved in the murder of seventy-five people?”
“What?” Rory jumped up and nearly ran to Harry’s computer. “Are you sure?”
“See these reports.” Harry said. “They’re nearly identical to the autopsies I did for you on the remains of the family members.”
“Why would he have, much less hide, these?” Pierce asked. Everyone looked at him like he should be answering, not asking that question.
“You asked me to find out about an important meeting that happened in Florida around the time of your brother’s death,” Sneaky interjected.
Pierce was jarred by this sudden change of topic. “Yes.”
“Maybe we don’t have to decipher the files,” Sneaky went on.
“Go on,” Rory said.
“I’ve found several references to what has to be an organization, a group of people. They call themselves the Darwins.”
“I saw that too,” Harry said.
“I’ve never heard of them,” Pierce said.
“Really?” Sneaky asked. “You’ve never heard of them. You don’t know anything about them.”
“What’s going on?” Rory asked.
“Percy was going to an annual meeting of the Darwins when he drowned. This is a group I can find out absolutely nothing about. They have no web presence.”
Rory waited for the shoe to drop.
Sneaky went on, “The next annual meeting of the Darwins is in two weeks and you’re scheduled to attend.” He looked to Pierce for an explanation. He turned his computer toward the others. “Here’s your flight and hotel itinerary.”
“Dad,” was all Pierce said.
24
Jesus received his invitation to speak at the annual meeting of the Darwins. They wanted an update on the live test of the vaccine he’d conducted in Mexico. He told them he would be happy to attend. He’d love to speak with them about what happened in Mexico.
Jesus traveled by car because he didn’t want anyone messing around with his bags. He brought an overnight suitcase and an aluminum pilot case on four wheels. He liked this particular pilot case because it was square and upright in a way that didn’t force you to go left or right or upside down with it.
He checked
into the hotel a couple of days before any of the conference participants were anticipated to arrive. The hotel was ten stories tall with ten guest rooms on each floor, except for the main reception floor, the second floor where the meeting rooms were located and the third-floor suites. There were about two hundred employees, most of them from South America.
Jesus settled into his suite on the third floor. It was nice, but he had selected it because it was close to the stairwell. He gave the stairs a try, walking down to the second floor. He found the meeting room that the Darwins had reserved. It was better than he could have hoped. It was off by itself with only one set of doors for entry and exit.
He returned to his rooms and opened his pilot case. It contained ten aerosol canisters, one of which was painted red. The canisters had labels like Baking Bread, Grass after Rain, or Orange Blossoms.
Jesus pulled out a can with a label saying the scent was called Dahlia. He stepped into the hallway and nearly ran into the maid. She was mid-forties and looked tired and harried.
“Hi,” he smiled broadly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to knock you down. “
She nodded.
“Estás bien?” he asked.
“Si, señor. I am fine,” she replied.
“What’s your name?”
“Rosita.”
Jesus lifted his canister and sent a puff into the maid’s face. She jumped a bit and then took a good sniff.
“The smell of home,” Jesus said. “The national flower of Mexico. The Dahlia.”
“Very nice,” she said. “Very pretty.”
“I’m hoping the hotel might buy some of my scents. What do you think?”
“Si. Very nice,” she said.
Jesus continued through the hotel letting the maids sample his fragrances. When he finished with the maids, he went back to his room for the Baking Bread canister and went down to the kitchen. He continued this way until he had dosed every member of the staff that was working. This was the same day of the week as the day scheduled for the meeting. He hoped that most of the staff would be the same. He would do it again tomorrow and the day after that until he felt that he had sprayed all the members of hotel staff.
25
Rory entered a downtown hotel in Newark, New Jersey. He checked in and took the elevator up to his floor. Pierce had rented a suite for Rory on the third floor. The suite was modern, with lots of shiny surfaces and clean lines. It had a sitting area, two bedrooms and two baths. The rooms were small as was typical for a hotel in one of the older buildings, but also very comfortable.
Rory looked out a tall arched window. The neighborhood was a combination of classic architecture and modern buildings. Roman corbels mixed with mirrored glass.
Dark clouds rolled in. There was a hurricane due to hit the South Carolina coast. Here in New Jersey bands of heavy rain and high winds hit in waves. It would rain and then stop and then rain and then stop. Water puddled on the streets where they were flat.
Pierce had his own suite down the hall from Rory. That one registered in Pierce’s name. Rory’s suite was a secret extra that they had reserved because it was as close as they could get to the meeting room. Rory and Sneaky would share a double room with two queen-size beds and Harry would have a double room of her own.
It hadn’t taken them very long to come up with a plan. Pierce would attend the meeting of the Darwins and he would wear a camera disguised as a button. Rory, Sneaky, and Harry would intercept the live feed and listen in. In this way, they hoped to figure out what was going on. It was an information-gathering mission.
Rory’s phone rang. “Hey Harry. You on your way?”
“Can’t make it, Rory. Sorry to bail, but I’ve got Sneaky bringing in a replacement.”
“Harry. Please.” His voice sounded whiny even to him. “Don’t.”
“It’ll be fine, Rory. Trust me.”
There was a faint knocking at the door. He opened it to Sneaky and, behind him, Kolli and Isa. Rory sucked in air.
“See,” Harry said over the phone. “Only the best for you.”
“Gotta go,” Rory said as he disconnected.
Rory held the door open as the three entered. Isa held his eyes for a moment, and then slapped an envelope to his chest.
“Where have you been?” Rory nearly shouted.
“We’ll talk later,” she said. “First, Dad needs to lay down. It’s been a hard trip for him.”
Kolli looked much better than he had the last time that Rory had seen him at the hospital, but he did not look as good as he should. He was pale and his breathing was raspy. Rory helped Kolli into Harry’s bedroom and settled him on one of the two beds.
Isa rolled in a mobile air tank and she handed the hose to Kolli. Kolli gratefully took it and placed it over his head and into his nostrils. He did a few deep intakes and leaned back against the pillows.
“Thank you,” he said.
While Kolli rested, Isa and Rory returned to the living room. Rory moved to the window to watch the rain pelting the glass.
Sneaky set up equipment on a small two-top table.
Isa stood in the middle of the room, unnerved, alone.
Sneaky handed her a pad of newsprint and a roll of blue painters tape. “Tape sheets to the wall,” he said. “I think at least ten sheets. As people enter the room, we’ll figure out who they are.”
Isa moved to do his bidding.
“It would help to have an agenda and any packet of materials they plan to hand out,” Sneaky said.
Rory shook his head without turning around from the window. “Pierce asked. Nothing on paper. No laptops in the room and the participants have to give up their cell phones at the door.”
Rory needed to get ahold of himself. He shook his head as if that might help. Something on the street below caught his attention. Black SUV. He wasn’t surprised. They had expected this.
“I guess that means no guns too,” Pierce said.
“I don’t think they’re worried about guns.”
“Why?” Isa asked.
“Peabody and his merry men are here.”
“Who’s Peabody?” Pierce asked.
“Hired security,” Rory said.
“Thugs,” Isa said.
“With a group called DSG,” Rory added.
“Darwins Security Group?” Pierce asked.
“Could be,” Rory said. He hadn’t thought of that. Of course, the name Darwins was new information.
“I guess it’s room service for us until after the meeting,” Isa said.
“Order a carafe of coffee,” Sneaky said. “Maybe some burgers.”
Rory nodded.
“With fries,” Sneaky added.
They had set up their equipment and tested it a couple of times. They had eaten their burgers and fries. Isa had ordered a rich, hearty soup for Kolli, which she said was much easier for him to swallow with his raw throat. She sat with Kolli while he ate in his room.
“I’m done for,” Sneaky said. “I’ll see ya in the morning.”
Rory felt certain that Sneaky was a night owl and that he was just leaving Rory and Isa alone to resolve the palpable tension in the room between them.
“Night,” he called to Sneaky’s retreating back.
Rory pulled out the letter that had been burning a hole in his pocket ever since Isa had given it to him. It was unsealed, with two sheets of plain white paper. The envelope looked battered and frayed, so he looked at the date on the paper—the day after they last saw each other.
Isa spotted him reading and stopped at the door. Rory knew she was there, standing silently, waiting for him to finish. When he was done, he folded the paper and returned it to the envelope. He set the envelope on the coffee table.
“You’ve had your hands full,” he said.
Isa came and sat down with him.
“Instant regret,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
He’d felt tortured, abused by her. Rory wasn’t sure he was ready to forgive her yet. He was angry and reli
eved, happy and upset.
“Where’d you go?” he asked.
“Harry’s sister’s husband’s parents’ condo in Galveston.”
“That would be hard to track.”
“That was the point.”
“Harry was in on it.”
“I don’t think she realized until a couple days ago that you didn’t know where we were.”
“Are you covering for her?”
“No.” There was a bit of tone to that answer. It would be easy to move into a fight from here.
“You don’t trust me,” he said instead, his voice hushed.
“I do. With my life, but Dad wasn’t ready for that yet.”
“Here I am helping you again. You show up right when I can do something for you.”
“I thought we were helping you.”
Rory didn’t know what to think. His brain was shutting down. He couldn’t process.
“I’m going to bed,” he said. He pounded out of the room and slammed the door.
26
When Kolli woke in the morning, he found Isa sleeping fully clothed on the living-room sofa. Through an open door he spotted Rory, also in yesterday’s clothes, in the other bedroom. Kolli guessed that Rory and Isa hadn’t worked out their unhappiness.
The small suite was beginning to look cluttered and it had the smell of too many people in too small a space. It had stopped raining, so Kolli cracked open a window. The morning looked calm and peaceful.
Sneaky was already in position at his equipment, which included two computers and two tablets.
“Anything?” Kolli asked Sneaky.
“The troops have already done a sweep for electronics. Didn’t find anything. And then they all went into the room for a little strategy meeting. While they were all occupied, I was able to sneak down and slip a little camera in the atrium.” He pointed to one of two views on his tablet screens—a wide shot of the atrium.
“And the other camera?”
