Twenty-four Days (Rowe-Delamagente series Book 2)

by Jacqui Murray

  For no particular reason, he started with USS Princeton. He drove to the base, parked in a public lot near Princeton’s dock, and trained a set of powerful binoculars on the gangway. When a group of officers left for the day, he followed them to a downtown bar called Trophy’s. The males trolled for women leaving the lone female by herself. He knew he should approach her, but Al-alah had not yet taught Mohammed how to talk to a female.

  Back in his apartment, he rolled this problem around in his exceptional mind. Allah provided an idea. Mohammed would copy what men did on the television to attract females. One show featured young people at a beach, laughing, romping, and talking to strangers. Since San Diego had an ocean, he would start there.

  An hour later, he was sitting on a bench by the ocean surveilling couples. They laughed, held hands, kissed, shared meals, chased each other into the water, swam, sunbathed, and rubbed lotion onto each other’s bodies. After enough time, Mohammed went to the local mosque. There, he prostrated himself, asking Allah for guidance. How could he do what he had seen?

  When he returned to his bachelor apartment, he found a beautiful green-eyed whore awaiting him. That night, she taught him how to talk to women, touch them, and seduce them. The next day, they walked along the beach hand in hand, laughing, giggling, whispering—all the activities he had witnessed yesterday. They even shared an ice cream cone. As they drove back to his apartment, he found himself hoping she would continue his instruction. When she explained their time was over, he told her he had something for her inside. She smiled and started to walk away, but he stopped her.

  “It is a bonus. You have done well. I wish to express my gratitude.”

  Her brow knitted in confusion, but curiosity prevailed. She allowed Mohammed to lead her inside. Once there, he slapped her so hard she crumpled to the ground, green eyes shocked, beautiful blue-black hair spilling over the red welt blossoming on her cheek.

  “Do not yell. You will be safe.” When she started to scream, Mohammed punched her in the stomach. Hard. She curled inward and vomited.

  “No more noise or I must do something you will not like.” Mohammed pointed to a chair. “Sit,” which she did without hesitation. He tied her in place and slapped a piece of tape over her mouth. Now, it no longer mattered if she knew the truth.

  “I cannot risk you talking.”

  She shook her head frantically, eyes wild, but he ignored her as he laid out a plastic sheet on the living room carpet, lifted her chair from behind to avoid her kicking legs, and placed her in the middle of the plastic. There he left her while he retrieved a knife that was as long as his forearm with a thick razor sharp blade that gleamed purity. Al-alah had provided it and Mohammed was eager to test it. He yanked the whore’s head back to expose the smooth alabaster neck and sliced from ear to ear. Blood spewed, narrowly missing the edges of the plastic. He needed a larger sheet next time. Within minutes, she bled out, the stink of excrement mixed with her jasmine perfume and a yearning Mohammed had never experienced. He wrapped her carcass in the plastic, rolled it in a large rug, trundled it to his car and drove east into the Cleveland National Forest to a place called Loveland Reservoir where he dumped her body. By the time someone discovered her, it would not matter.

  He cleansed himself as required after touching a female and then went back to Trophies, hoping to again find the female officer. As before, she sat alone. Mohammed sent her a drink as the whore had suggested and smiled when she came to thank him. Within minutes, she was telling him her life story. He asked questions, expressed interest, winked at her piggish eyes, and bought more drinks as he had been trained. Much to Mohammed’s surprise, it worked.

  Until he asked for the ship’s roster. Even after six drinks and a promise of sex, she refused, reminded him he might be a terrorist plying her with drinks to get information. Then she giggled and kissed him. No matter how he ingratiated himself, she told him nothing. Mohammed had to stop himself from grabbing her by the throat and forcing her to speak. They arranged to meet later in the week. He would persuade her to be more open then.

  The next night, he repeated his efforts with a female officer on USS Bunker Hill, failing again. Back in his apartment, he bowed low with his hands on his knees and began prayers.

  "I saw Allah's Messenger—may peace be upon him—perform ablution like this ablution of mine. Then Allah's Messenger—may peace be upon him—said he who performs ablution like this ablution of mine and then stands up for the Prayer and offers two rak'ahs of the Prayer, without allowing his thoughts to be distracted, all his previous sins are expiated."

  He sat up, feet folded under his body, turned left and right, saying, "Peace be upon you and God's blessing."

  Mohammed remained seated, enjoying the feel of Allah around him. He offered a final Peace be upon you, and God's blessing, rose, and called Al-alah to report his failure.

  "We will use Shalimar. The process has succeeded many times. Set up a Facebook account under Shalimar’s name. In her profile, say she seeks consultants for a book she’s writing. Find the right officer and Shalimar will handle it from there. If the officer resists, blackmail him. Believe this, once he provides one piece of information, he will provide the rest.

  “Here is the address and password of a friends-and-family website for Bunker Hill. Find men and Shalimar will meet them.”

  Mohammed set up Shalimar’s Facebook account and then logged into the Bunker Hill friends-and-family site. Each name he searched on Google, trolled their social media accounts, and dug into all online activity for details of their life. Two hours later, he had no promising officers. Today apparently was not Allah’s time to reveal himself. Mohammed stretched, got a drink of water, and decided to try one more name.

  The next on the list, Executive Officer Lt. Commander Kevin Taggert, was single, no children, parents dead, with many short-term girlfriends, and love of thrill-seeking activities such as skydiving and dirt bikes. Studies concluded these types of adrenaline-producing activities were favorites with traitors. Mohammed’s chest tingled as he read. At eighteen, Kevin Taggert enlisted in the Navy. Two years later, after graduating from Officer Candidate School, he rose through the ranks until he achieved the second highest position on a warship.

  Since then, nothing. Mohammed trolled the wealth of public documents available and many others hidden behind security walls made available by Nasr Al-alah’s connections. Taggert had been reprimanded twice for tardiness in the last year and warned several times about credit issues. Small Claims Court records included five cases settled for non-payment of contractual obligations, the latest two months ago.

  Mohammed tamped down his excitement and backhacked Taggert’s online profile, located the man’s personal IP address, and found the passwords to his financial records (in a file labeled ‘Passwords’). His credit cards were maxed thanks to expensive restaurants, Las Vegas weekends, and large purchases at liquor stores. Bank records revealed a checking account balance of $142.03.

  Money problems poised to sink Taggert’s personal ship.

  Though it was five in the morning, Mohammed friended Taggert under the guise of Shalimar and asked for his assistance with her novel, The XO. She needed the perspective of a successful, charismatic Executive Office. Anything he could share about his responsibilities, the price he paid with family and friends, and the risk to his life serving on a warship would be appreciated. She assured Taggert she wanted no national secrets—only what you can post on the internet. She ended with a smiley face as Mohammed had seen other females do.

  Within five minutes, Taggert accepted the friend request. ‘Shalimar’ asked him to provide his PayPal email and she would send a stipend ‘for expenses’. Within an hour of receiving the money, Taggert divulged Bunker Hill's current position (in dock), crew level (full), and deployment (wouldn’t be ‘for a while’).

  Mohammed smiled. The arrogance of Americans was predictable.

  Chapter Seven

  Day Five, Friday, August 11th

&nb
sp; Columbia University Office of Kalian Delamagente

  Eighteen hours to go before Man vs. Machine and Kalian Delamagente had yet to complete the programming to transfer Otto from the wall-mounted device that had been his world for two years to his sleek new mobile android bot.

  If it were a simple matter of copying operating systems, she would have finished days ago, but Otto was an experiential learner. Because he modeled Kali’s logical sensibilities, his arguments always made sense to her. For example, early on, Otto asked to be referred to as ‘he’ rather than ‘it’ explaining he had more in common with humans than the dumb computers with which he interfaced. He insisted on being called ‘Otto’ because palindromes symbolized his complex personality.

  Kali’s stomach growled. She checked her drawer, even though she knew the last of her emergency granola bars were long gone. She had lost ten pounds in the race to get Otto ready for the contest on time.

  She tugged at an errant strand of hair, waiting for Otto to boot up, wondering how she had gone so far afield. Otto started as a tool to integrate technology into education, but became the world’s most effective data mining system—which started her problems.

  Well, it also brought Zeke Rowe into her life. In the past year, she went from dislike to respect to love for a man who spent most of his adult life doing things she didn’t want to think about.

  "Hello, Kali. How nice to see you. Did you have a pleasant evening?"

  When Kali added Otto’s verbal protocols, she included social graces she hoped would make people comfortable interacting with an artificial intelligence.

  “Wonderful, Otto,” she encouraged with a calm she didn’t feel. Truth, Rowe had another bad night. He never spoke of his torture, but judging by his missing fingers and the limp, he gave much to his country—her country. He tried once to explain why he missed the SEALs, something about God-given talents and an obligation. According to James, the man was a human Otto, able to pull together incongruent scraps of information and draw the right conclusion.

  It may be a God-given talent, but it tortured him.

  Despite everything, she loved him. His humility and kindness, how he accepted everything without judgment, but lately he’d become distant. Though he promised never again to risk his life, she had become to doubt that was a promise he could keep.

  “Kali? You were going to tell me about your evening.”

  She hurried through the details knowing Otto would continue prodding for one-point-five minutes—the amount of time she had programmed for the hello-how-are-you chit-chat people engaged in before getting down to business. Try as she might to tweak him, Otto failed to replicate the human ability to balance brevity with hospitality when necessary.

  Ninety seconds later, she asked, “Are you ready, Otto?”

  “Yes, Kali. I know tomorrow’s competition against Dr. Sun is important for your thesis.”

  What Otto didn’t know was literary agents had contacted her about a book deal if Otto defeated the nation’s foremost problem solver. The event had become the geek version of chess’s Deep Blue vs. Kasparov and the dollars discussed would pay off her grad school loans.

  "I’m copying your operating system to the bot."

  The bot would be Otto’s foray into a three-dimensional world, one he’d only experienced from the flat vista of his monitor.

  "When I’m mobile, the first thing I want to do, Kali, is touch something."

  One of Otto's appealing characteristics was his zest to learn. He would ask questions, find holes in her theorizing, play Devil's Advocate, and offer suggestions until the initial hypothesis became bullet proof. She encouraged him to communicate using the cultural anomalies of his listener, such as when talking to Americans, use contractions.

  Kali laughed. "Personally, I’d like to walk through walls as you do."

  "Everyone does that in Second Life,” the online world where Otto spent his free time. “I want to see what's outside your office, Kali. People race by, lights come and go. You disappear there each night and return in the morning. This room with its four walls, two desks, three chairs, nine hundred eighty-seven books, four hundred six magazines, six-thousand three emails—six-thousand four, six-thousand five—” A ding marked new email in her mailbox, “has been my home since you created me."

  "Ms. Delamagente?"

  The woman who stood at the office door, one knee bent, dressed for success in a navy blue a-line skirt, crisp white blouse, low pumps and a string of pearls around her slender neck, carried an Overnight Delivery box and wore a frown. Many serious students objected to Kali's cut-off shorts, curve-hugging tank top faded from too many washes, and the dime store thongs destroyed by Kali’s dog Sandy’s boundless appetite for chew toys. Kali didn’t care. She had dressed for digging through wires and circuits this morning, not the weight of an intern’s expectations.

  And her head ached. It started this morning as a low rumble, one Kali expected to gut out. An hour ago, it had exploded like coffee in a microwave. She tried four aspirin to no avail.

  Kali forced a tepid smile. “Give me a minute,” she glanced at the intern's badge, “Martha.”

  She didn’t. "This is from Berkeley Geochronology Lab, in California? The one that dates events using geology?" She sniffed. "It’s important?"

  Kali rubbed her temples, annoyed at how Martha posed each statement as a question. "It hasn’t even been a week."

  The girl’s eyes turned to saucers. "Oh wow. You're working with them? My brother received a grant there, researching tectonics? He—"

  "Thank you.” Kali cut her off. She had no interest in Martha's brother's life story. "Where do I sign?"

  "Right here?" and Martha stuck a clipboard forward. "Umm, what's in it?"

  Kali scribbled her name. "Good news, I hope," and turned away before Martha asked more questions.

  The girl left, whispering into her phone, "Jake! I delivered that box...” and melted around a corner.

  Kali fixated on the package, afraid to open it.

  "Is it bad news, Kali?"

  Kali smiled at Otto. He was a kinesics expert, thanks to a body language module she installed when he told her how much the ability to grasp the unspoken word assisted in his research. His programming included programs from Jung, Briggs-Myer, and Keirsey so the AI could tailor conversations to personality types. He now asked people about their families and jobs, and commiserate over problems. No surprise, people liked talking to him. In Kali's case, even though she knew it was manipulation, he became a friend.

  She had few of those.

  “I’ll know when I open it, which I’ll do when I finish your modifications."

  "The package is distracting you. If you open it, you’ll work faster."

  As usual, her body language was as subtle as face warts. "You're right," and she ripped open the box. It contained the ancient bones she had sent BGL, all carefully wrapped and labeled. Underneath she found an envelope.

  "I can make out words, Kali. Would you like me to read them? We are—"

  "No, Otto. Thank you.” She tore it open using her finger as a letter opener.

  And smiled. "The bones are 800 thousand years old, Otto."

  A beep proclaimed the completion of Otto’s upload. "And the rest can wait. I must install your senses."

  Before she could begin, Taps announced a call from her advisor, Dean Porter Manfried. Her head throbbed. Time was running out.

  "Hello, Dean. How are you?" She imagined his petulant face, the glistening dome of his forehead with a few straggled hairs, the portly figure stuffed into the confines of a University-issued desk chair, doubtless dressed in a suit in case a prospective donor appeared.

  "Glad you're back. How did it go?" Without waiting, he continued, "Kali, you've been ABD far too long."

  Kali personally knew many PhD candidates who were ABD—All But Dissertation—longer than she. Her shoulders tensed and throat tightened. "Dean—"

  "I cut you slack because of your status,” as a No
bel Prize short list, “though I’m beginning to think that was a fluke. True, we received some nice grants thanks to your notoriety.” He forgot to mention the publication of her article last October on how Otto found submarines using geomagnetics. It was the first time a PhD candidate had ever been published in the prestigious Journal of Scientific Research. “But you must finish. I will give you one more month. Please, publish or leave."

  "Did you get the letter from Bobby James?"

  "Yes, of course. He said you’re serving your country. Is he a boyfriend? Never mind. I don’t care. Columbia’s grad committee expects you to finish what you promised without the involvement of international criminals."

  Kali started to hang up when he continued.

  "And I am not your secretary. The next time you need Mr. James admitted to your office at one in the morning, do it yourself,” and the line went dead.

  The thought James lied to access her office made her headache throb. "Otto, did James talk to you?"

  "Yes, at 12:58 this morning. He asked for the location of a British submarine, but failed to supply the correct passcode."

  That did it. Breaking into her office and trying to trick Otto crossed the line. On a good day, she distrusted James. Today, an apology tied around his neck with a box of donuts wouldn’t be enough.

  "You appear upset, Kali. Should I have allowed him entry? I know humans have different rules for friends."

  "I'm not upset at you.” If only her head would stop pounding. “I'm trying to understand his purpose."

  “I can help,” and Otto proceeded to share every detail of the unauthorized visit, right down to James's phone call to his superiors explaining his failure, which of course, Otto overheard once James activated him. While he talked, Kali checked her voice mail. Nothing from James, but she had received a half dozen messages from someone at MI-6. Was that related?

  “Thanks, Otto,” she interrupted. Otto’s ability to collect data outstripped anyone's ability to listen and the concept of irrelevant so far made no sense to his scripts.