The Final Veil: Who had kidnapped America's favorite belly dancer?

by Pat Powers

  "They're looking very good to me right now," I replied. "I didn't get a thing out of their public contact, but the fact that she's on the phone with someone who uses top-grade CIA encryption is a telltale. It's really too bad we can't break it."

  "I will try to break it," said Andrew. "It will be a pleasure. I just don't think it's gonna be easy. I BARELY think it's possible, and I could be wrong about that."

  "I understand," I said. "Y'know, my clients' Gorean friends might have some people with access to some big iron. If I could hook you up with them, would that help?"

  "Yes, especially if any of them know how to program for the big iron," said Andrew. "Lots of Goreans are programmers, y'know."

  "I'll look into it," I promised. "Now, can you play me the tape of Sandy Wrathbottom?"

  "Sure," said Andrew. He walked over to a tape player and dropped a cassette in.

  "Sandy. Salome," said Wrathbottom.

  "Just a moment, I'll see if she's available," came a professionally neutral female voice -- in fact, an almost mechanical female voice.

  There were a few moments of silence.

  "Apparently, Sandy's not on Furnsome' A-list," said Thomson.

  "I'm not sure anyone is," I said. "She's old, rich and retired. No reason she should give a damn about anybody or anything if she doesn't feel like it."

  "So did she seem out of things when you talked to her?" Andrew asked.

  "No," I said. "I have no idea what she's into, but she's into something big time. Thing is, it could very well be the retirement community she founded."

  "Damn strange way to start a phone conversation," said Andrew.

  "Gotta be code," I guessed.

  "Hold for Ms. Stimson," the mechanical voice said.

  "Hi, Sandy," came a voice that wasn't at all mechanical.

  I knew that voice, and Andrew must have seen my expression.

  "You know her?" Andrew said, pausing the tape. He was an observant guy when he wasn't in front of a computer screen.

  "Yes," I admitted. "It's Furnsome."

  "Well, well," said Andrew, flipping the tape back on.

  "Hi, Renny," said Wrathbottom. "Listen, I had a detective here to see me, he's on our trail."

  "Name of Bowman?" Furnsome asked.

  "Yes, how...?" Wrathbottom asked.

  "He's been to see me, too," said Furnsome. "Lemme guess, he had some story about having heard that some of your group had written nasty emails to Salome."

  "Not exactly," said Wrathbottom. "It was more like, the losers at the bookstore fingered us because their idiot members have been writing nasty emails to Salome."

  "Exactly," said Furnsome. "He had a very similar story for me. Did he bring up any other reasons for choosing to interview you?"

  "Just that I was called a leader of the Sisters by somebody or other," said Wrathbottom. "Even though I'm not really a leader."

  "Don't worry about it, then," said Furnsome. "Obviously Salome has been saving her hate mail for some reason, this detective has been through them, and he's just following up the leads. He doesn't have a thing on you or me or even on the women who've written nasty emails to Salome, whom he'll also be interviewing, believe me. Or the police will."

  "He said the police would be coming for me, too," said Wrathbottom.

  "They will," said Furnsome. "But they're not going to have anything more on you than this detective does. Just being unhappy with someone doesn't establish criminal intent. The cops and this detective can follow all the leads of this sort they want, so long as you and your sisters remain strong and tell them nothing, there's not a thing they can do to any of us. They have to have actual evidence to charge you with a crime, and I never heard a word from Mr. Bowman to indicate that they have any. He's strictly on a fishing expedition. If anybody looks or acts very guilty or admits to anything, the police will be all over us. Otherwise, we're just a few of many, many people who are unhappy with Salome."

  "I didn't give him a thing, and I am sure my sisters won't, either," said Wrathbottom.

  "OK, just don't give him anything, but watch it, he's good at reading body language," said Furnsome.

  "Betty, we're dancers," said Wrathbottom. "Body language is our native language."

  "OK, just make sure your friends know," said Furnsome. "We can get through this just fine if they stay strong. Remember, it's just a matter of hanging on long enough."

  "Right," said Wrathbottom.

  "All right, then," said Furnsome. "Call me if you or any of your people have any problems. Let me know especially if any of them gives anything away to Bowman or the police. Even if they get something out of you, we can still manage it if we know what they got."

  "Don't worry, they won't get a thing out of us," Wrathbottom promised, "and if any difficulties do pop up, I'll be sure and let you know."

  They exchanged "byes" and then there was nothing on the line.

  "Great job getting that tap in so fast," I said. "That I think is the break we needed."

  "Furnsome and Wrathbottom weren't connected before now?" Thomson asked.

  "No, in fact, they're working for two separate groups, as you know," I said. "I would be a little suspicious if they even knew each other. Well, they're working together, and that's damn strange, because one group is likely to regard the other as perverted sinners, and the sinners are likely to regard the other group as a bunch of self-righteous prudes. And yet they're working together on this April Dancer thing -- I'm betting we're listening to her kidnappers, and that Salome is Dancer."

  "Salome WAS a dancer," said Thomson.

  "And a very wicked one," I agreed. "Not a very good code name."

  "I wonder what Furnsome meant by 'we can manage it' when she spoke to Wrathbottom," Thomson mused.

  "Whatever it was, I doubt if it was the same thing Wrathbottom thought it was," I said. "Wrathbottom and her sisters may be in more danger than they realize. I'll give Jenkins a call and fill him in on all this."

  "The cops are going to want to know about the CIA spooks," said Thomson. "They'll probably give Langley a call and ask them about that code."

  "Yeah, they just might," I said. "And while I don't ordinarily like to tip my hand, it might shake something loose up at Langley, especially if they don't know how much we know, or don't know."

  "Yeah, what it'll probably do is shake loose is a bullet for you," said Thomson. "Remember, these are license to kill guys, they do drone strikes and kidnappings and shit, and if you're right about them being rogues who are working on their own time, they are probably going to be willing to hit you even if they don't have a license."

  "It's a chance I have to take," I said. "Dancer is out there somewhere, going through God knows what, probably in the hands of these spooks or their allies, and sooner or later someone may think killing her is a very good idea, and there won't be a thing April will be able to do to prevent them."

  "They could have killed her already," said Thomson.

  "They could have," I admitted, "but this doesn't smell like a simple hit. There are a lot of much safer ways to kill someone, especially someone who doesn't have any protection. Frankly, now that it doesn't look like a psychosexual nutjob, I feel a lot better about April's chances."

  "I wonder what Furnsome meant by "hanging on long enough?" said Thomson.

  "Yeah, I caught that, too," I said. "It's another indication that April may be alive. There's some time-limited thing going on and I bet April will be alive so long as it's going on. They may even plan on releasing her after a period of time, though of course it would be foolish to pin too much hope on that thought."

  "Yeah, since they may plan on killing her after a certain period of time," said Thomson.

  "I doubt that," I said, maybe with a bit more hope than logic. "If it's just a matter of time, why wait? She's a witness, you know. Now, they may be planning to kill her in a certain WAY that has a time element, and that may be a productive train of thought ... maybe there's some event that someone has pl
anned, or which THEY have planned, which is relevant. Hell, if the CIA is involved, it may even be political. Do some research, if you would, Andrew, and find out if any events relating to women and feminism which would be of interest to the Mopus Deim crowd AND the lesbian feminists, especially lesbian feminist dancers, is in the offing."

  Chapter 26

  At the Sizzling Skillet

  After the meeting with Andrew, I thought Jeff could use a little good news, so I fired up my phone out in my van, along with the air conditioner. In Atlanta in summer, you started to need air conditioning around 10 a.m. if you were sitting still. If you were rolling and you were used to the heat, you'd be all right with the windows down, but I didn't like to do that because of all the electronics I carried in the van. I'd had moisture problems with an expensive spycam once and that dissuaded me from letting are into the van all willy nilly.

  I didn't want to talk much with Jeff over the phone -- it might be tapped -- by the cops or by whomever was using the Greyman9 encryption that had Andrew's back so far up. It had my back up, too. I had both my taser and pistol strapped on. Just in case.

  I met Jeff at his house and we drove to a nearby restaurant called the Sizzling Skillet, after I ran a metal detector over Jeff to check for bugs. I didn't find any, and hadn't expected to, but better safe than sorry.

  What's with the bug detector?" Jeff asked.

  "We've got some new players in the game," I answered, "people who just might use bugs. I'll tell you about them at the place."

  "Why not now?" asked Jeff.

  "Because it's very easy to bug a moving vehicle," I said.

  "Isn't just as easy to bug a restaurant?" Jeff asked.

  "Yeah, if you know which one to bug," I said, grinning.

  So we didn't say much until they were in the Sizzling Skillet, which was a classic meat-and-three that also provided a carbo-loaded breakfast of grits, hash browns, bacon, biscuits and country sausage.

  I loaded up on the breakfast, since I wasn't sure when I'd eat again. Jeff got a plateful but he just picked at it, as he was much more interested in what I had to say than eating, so I spilled it out between forkfuls.

  "So, this Wrathbottom woman or the Furnsome woman knows where April is," said Jeff. "Why not just bust them and sweat her location out of them?"

  "Because it's not a sure thing that they know," I responded. "The people who actually did the deed could be the guys who are at the other end of that CIA-encrypted phone call. If it's them, it's very possible that they would not have told Furnsome where they have April stashed. They're very much need-to-know kind of guys."

  "What the hell is the CIA doing in this anyway?" Jeff exclaimed, irritated. "April has never been political. Hell, the Goreans aren't political – we've got a lot of conservatives but we are all over the map politically. So how is this a CIA thing?"

  "It probably isn't a CIA thing," I said. "We're thinking it's maybe some rogue agent or agents working through that Mopus Deim connection. Mopus Deim is known to have had members in the CIA and other intelligence organizations. It could be that there's some splinter group within Mopus Deim that's gone around the loop."

  "Well, ROGUE CIA agents, that's all better," Jeff said. "I still don't understand why they went after April," said Jeff.

  "I don't, either," I said. I didn't want to tell Jeff about my insights into the potential subversiveness of April's dance just yet, and I didn't want to talk about culture war either. I wanted something more solid to go on before I started speculating. "The important thing is, we do have some idea who has her, which gives us an enormously greater chance of finding her."

  "That is good news," said Jeff. "but I still don't see why we can't just haul this Furnsome woman in and work her over until we find out what we need to know."

  "One, because it is illegal," I said. "Really illegal. Major prison time stuff. Two, because Furnsome is a tough old bird and I don't think she'll crack easily, if at all. Three, and most importantly, if we bust Furnsome, it might lead whoever's holding her to decide we're getting too close to them. Time to dispose of the evidence, which would be April. They think they're safe right now, they think we're just on a fishing expedition. Which we were. They don't know we bugged them. Let's let them keep thinking they're safe while we close in on April. I mean, if I were going to do this to anybody, it would be Wrathbottom. Furnsome is just too close to the main action."

  "So you don't think Wrathbottom's crew has her," said Jeff.

  "I didn't say that," I said. "I think it's very possible that Wrathbottom's crew has her. I think the CIA guys, if there are really CIA involved, are probably the most dangerous of the bunch. They're used to dealing in situations where people get kidnapped, tortured, killed, etc. Killing April would not be a big deal to them."

  "But these CIA guys are also very prone to want to handle their dealings at a distance," I added. "They like to have others do the kidnapping and so forth. It's very likely that they're using Wrathbottom and possibly Furnsome as well, as patsies. So Wrathbottom and her committed lesbian dancer friends may well be holding April in a plot engineered by the CIA guys and transmitted through Furnsome. Of course, we're not even sure it's rogue CIA, it could be some group that has a hacker like Andrew who got hold of a copy of the CIA encryption code somehow. That's not a LIKELY scenario, but it's a definite possibility. Which reminds me, any of your Gorean friends have access to any really big supercomputers?"

  "I don't know for sure, but it's very likely given all the programmers we have," said Jeff. "Why?"

  "Andrew's trying to crack the CIA code, but he doesn't have the kind of computing horsepower the guys at Langley have," I said. "We were thinking he might be able to work with a Gorean programmer on some big iron and crack it."

  "Sounds like a long shot, if it's CIA code," said Jeff. "I imagine it's tough stuff."

  "Yeah, but Andrew's hot stuff, to hear him tell it," I said. "It would be VERY nice to crack that encryption."

  "Some of the Gorean programmers are hot stuff, too, to hear them tell it," Jeff said thoughtfully. "Might not be a bad idea to give them a chance to prove it. I'll make some inquiries."

  "And I'll continue tracking down the kidnappers," I said. "Listen, don't spill anything to the police. Some nitwit detective might decide to haul Furnsome in and give her the third degree. Or Wrathbottom. And the CIA guys might decide to kill all of Wrathbottom's crew along with April. They call it "rolling up a network." Used to happen all the time in the Cold War. Somebody would leak the name of a spy on one side or the other, the spy would be picked up and pressured to talk in various ways (depending on what side they were on) and the names of other spies would come forth. In the Soviet Union there would be arrests, followed by executions or imprisonment. In the west, people just died of mysterious causes or disappeared. Nasty stuff either way. My point is, these people are hardened to ending people's lives with a phone call. We don't want that to happen to April."

  "No, of course not," said Jeff.

  "In the meantime, I have some very good ideas on how to find April now," I said. "I'll put them into effect and hopefully we'll have more good news for you soon. What you can do best for me right now is sit tight and act distressed and don't spill a word about what we know about that phone call."

  "The cops already know about Mopus Deim and the Sisters of the Sand," said Jeff.

  "That's OK, they don't know they're connected, and they don't have any hard evidence about them being in on April's kidnapping," I pointed out. "They'll be on a fishing expedition, just like I was, but they're going to be a little late with their phone taps. So we still have a lead."

  "OK," said Jeff. "I'll do what I can."

  "It's all any of us can do," I said as he left to pay his bill.

  After Bowman left, Jeff sat at the table for a long time, sipping coffee and playing with his food. He was thinking hard about what Bowman had said. Bowman was an ex-cop, a stickler for the law. While Jeff generally obeyed the law, he wasn't really w
hat you'd call a stickler for it. There were a lot of laws out there that made no sense, and a lot of real-life situations that the law covered badly, if it covered them at all. This was one of them.

  The thing that was really bothering Jeff was Bowman's point about April being killed if Furnsome or Wrathbottom got pulled in. It was so tantalizing, knowing that these women knew where April was, but not being able to touch them. And Jeff knew some people who would really, really touch them. There had to be a way ... Jeff pulled his cell phone out of his shirt pocket. Time to make some calls to the people Bowman had asked Jeff to contact ... and to some other people.

  Chapter 27

  They're planning to slut the place up

  In the parking lot, I got on the phone to Andrew.

  "Are we safe?" I asked.

  "We're safe on my end, not yours," said Andrew.

  "OK, I'll bear that in mind as I speak," I said. "I need you to do some research on the associates of one of the women we were discussing. The one who called."

  "I know who you mean," said Andrew. "Wrathbottom."

  "Exactly so," I said. "Do the same for the other one, but it'll be tougher as she has more friends."

  "Furnsome," said Andrew. "What kind of research do you have in mind?"

  "I want to know if they are where they are supposed to be," I said. "If they were involved in what we discussed."

  "You want me to check out the locations and activities of Wrathbottom's associates ... the Sisters of the Sands ... to see if they might be actively involved in April's kidnapping. If they're 'away on vacation' or 'visiting friends' or some such thing."

  "Exactly," I confirmed.

  "Same with Furnsome, except I may have to narrow the search artificially since she has a lot of contacts," said Andrew.

  "I assume that what you say about her is true," I said. "I don't know. You'll have to exercise some judgment. Also, the relationships that are superficially real might be deeper or have tangents we don't know about yet," I said.

  "Her cook might not be JUST her cook, that sort of thing," Andrew said. "She might also be the head of Furnsome' crew, who might seem to be someone else entirely."