The Kafir Project

by Lee Burvine

Shortly after that, Officer Honeycutt took the full report. Lanky and bug-eyed, Honeycutt actually looked a lot like a young Christopher Walken-though Rees certainly wasn't going to mention it.

  "So you got a phone call last night from Edward Fischer?" Honeycutt asked.

  "Yes, he called me in New York."

  "This is after he was killed in the explosion?"

  "Yes. No. Obviously he hadn't been killed. He wanted me to meet him here in San Francisco. And no, he didn't say why. Just that no one could know. I grabbed the first flight out of La Guardia this morning."

  "And were you friends? Had you worked together?"

  "No. we'd spoken before, just once. I'm a science communicator."

  "Uh huh. And what is that exactly?"

  "Well, you've heard of Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm basically in the same line of business."

  Honeycutt jabbed a finger at Rees. "Ah, yeah. On TV, right?"

  This was good. At least the officer might be less inclined to think he was just some random lunatic. "You recognize me now."

  Honeycutt shook his head. "No, sorry. I've seen those other two guys."

  "Oh. Anyway, the point is that's why Fischer wanted to speak with me. There was some science he needed to make clear to the public, to non-scientists. Something that he was working on."

  "Right, okay." Honeycutt wrote something in a spiral notepad.

  In Rees's imagination the officer was drawing a caricature of him in a straightjacket, running away while men in white suits with giant butterfly nets chased after him.

  Honeycutt asked for a description of the gunman. Rees couldn't give him much. Only that the shooter had been a white male of average height and weight, who might have had blond hair. He apologized for not being able to offer more.

  "No, that's good. It's a good start." Honeycutt put away his pad and pen, and excused himself to check in with his superior.

  Rees lay back under the mound of blankets in the busy ER, amid the beeps and pings of medical monitors, and the sharp smell of disinfectant. Pins and needles sensations pricked his hands and feet as the restored blood flow woke up the peripheral nerves there.

  He closed his eyes and tried to put it all together.

  Six months ago, when he got that first call from Edward Fischer, he thought a colleague was pranking him. The famous physicist's Brooklyn accent and staccato cadence were easy enough to imitate. Rees humored the caller, working in a few wisecracks about Fischer's well-known eccentricity, which was said to border on outright insanity.

  When he realized it really was the great scientist on the phone, he felt simultaneously thrilled and mortified. "Dr. Fischer, I'm so sorry. I really thought someone was pulling my leg."

  "Not to worry. It was a reasonable hypothesis. Also, I'm well aware people think I'm half-crazy. They're right. It's fortunate for me the other half of my mind functions pretty well."

  Fischer informed Rees that his current research, when completed, would be impactful-as he put it. He wanted to know if he could call on Rees when the time came to help make it all more comprehensible to the general public.

  "Yes, of course," Rees told him. "That's what I do, and I'd be honored. But I have to ask-when did you become concerned with what the public understands?"

  The popular press loved to compare Fischer to Albert Einstein. In temperament, however, Fischer was more like the solitary and obsessive young Isaac Newton. He made Rees, who also tended to keep people at a distance, look positively gregarious.

  Fischer replied, "I'm concerned with the public's understanding because their confidence in the accuracy of this work affects its larger purpose. Beyond that, I can't say anything right now."

  Rees wondered if perhaps all this was about some breakthrough in climate change modeling. The credibility of science and the course of public policy did intersect there. But before he could say anything, Fischer spoke again.

  "Gevin, I understand you're not a religious man."

  "I ... no, not in the traditional sense.

  "You were raised Mormon, though."

  Where the hell did that come from? Rees knew the information was out there on the internet. But it was hard to picture the twenty-first century's most famous genius seated at his desk, Googling your name.

  "Yes, I was a Mormon," Rees said. "Can I-"

  "How did you lose your faith?"

  And it gets even weirder. "Okay. Well, as you yourself are fond of saying, the theory didn't fit the evidence. Israelites in the Americas. The 'reformed Egyptian' and the Anthon transcript. It just doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny."

  "And did it stop there?"

  Rees wasn't sure exactly what Fischer meant, but the conversation was making him increasingly uncomfortable. "Can I ask what all this has to do with the work you want me to help popularize?"

  "Thank you for your time, Dr. Rees."

  Fischer disconnected then without even giving him a chance to say goodbye. Was he offended by something Rees had just said? The whole call had been exceedingly strange. He remembered it had left him wondering for days whether there was something he missed.

  He opened his eyes at the sound of approaching footsteps in the ER.

  Officer Honeycutt was returning. Something in his demeanor had shifted. It was subtle, but Rees picked up on it right away.

  Honeycutt reached Rees's bedside and stood looking down at him, eyes probing. "Sir, are you currently under the care of any physician or institution we should notify?"

  Tactfully put, but the meaning was clear enough. Rees sat up in the hospital bed. "I know how crazy this sounds. But one of those poor people back by Pier 35 really is Edward Fischer. The Edward Fischer. Was anybody still alive there?"

  Honeycutt paused a moment. "I just spoke with my supervisor, sir. The units that responded to your report didn't find anything at that location."

  "What do you mean, 'anything'? No bodies?"

  "No bodies. No blood. No bullet holes or shell casings. On the chance that you may have misremembered or been confused about which part of the wharf you ... jumped from, officers checked the nearby piers. Nothing there either."

  The rainstorm.

  It had poured down buckets as Rees swam for the marina. The rain must have washed away any blood. As for bodies and shell casings, well, obviously the gunman didn't want to leave any evidence behind. And apparently he did not.

  "So what now?" Rees asked. "Someone killed three people today. And tried to kill me too. Dr. Fischer said I was in danger. And that gunman is still out there."

  Officer Honeycutt nodded along, as if he agreed completely. "What we'll do, sir, is we'll file a suspicious incident report. My supervisor will be looking into this thoroughly."

  "A suspicious incident report?"

  "Yes, sir. That's really about all we can do at this point. Would you like us to contact your family?"

  "No, thank you."

  Officer Honeycutt finished by asking if Rees was staying in town and if so where? Rees gave him the name of the hotel Fischer had instructed him to use. He was too tired and mixed up to attempt to fly back to New York right now anyway.

  Honeycutt produced a business card and handed it to Rees. "You can reach me at this number if you have any questions."

  Rees read the card and looked up again. "I'm not crazy, Officer Honeycutt."

  "I didn't say you were, sir."

  "I know how this sounds. If I were you, I don't guess I'd buy it either. But just ... please. Just take this seriously. Because something very strange and terrible has happened here. And someone needs to get to the bottom of it."

  Honeycutt nodded with a solemn expression. "We'll do everything we can, sir."

  And that was it. Officer Honeycutt left.

  Rees looked around at the controlled chaos of the ER.

  Nearby, hospital staff cut the bloody clothes off the victim of a car accident and prepped her for emergency surgery. It brought back an un
welcome memory from Rees's teens, images of his late sister. He felt a pang of sadness mixed with resentment, and turned away.

  The room was buzzing with life and death crises. And as was the case with many big city ER's, the resources here appeared to be strained to their limits. If someone walked in off the street, claiming to suffer from a severe allergy to leprechauns, not a lot of staff time and energy would be assigned to him.

  The San Francisco Police Department was in exactly the same boat. Rees didn't think they were really going to investigate the shooting of a man who had already died the day before.

  The two Japanese tourists, the only other eyewitnesses, had to be dead now too. If they were foreign nationals here on vacation, it could be days or maybe even weeks before the SFPD received any formal inquiries regarding their disappearances. Would someone then connect two missing tourists back to Rees's "suspicious incident" report? He didn't know, but it didn't seem very promising.

  You're in serious danger, Fischer had told him.

  Three thousand miles away from home, in a city where he knew virtually no one except a colleague or two he might see at a scientific conference, he felt completely alone. Ordinarily, that was a condition Rees immensely enjoyed, even cultivated.

  Today, he would happily make an exception.

  He lay back down in the bed and tried to think productively. Somebody wanted him dead. It might help to know more precisely...

  Why?

  He needed to plan his next move. But it was no use theorizing without any real data to work with. Somehow, on his own, he would just have to generate it.

  How he'd do that, he didn't have a clue.

  An orderly appeared then, carrying Rees's wet clothes in a clear plastic sack. And something else.

  Fischer's waterlogged leather pouch.

  CHAPTER 3

  TERRY SABEL DIDN'T have to wait long to move the bodies. Night fell early in Northern California this time of year. Even earlier than usual with the day's overcast sky.

  Not that Sabel minded waiting. He didn't mind anything, really. It was part of his special talent.

  You gotta find your special talent, and when you do, that's what you do. And nothing else. That's what Sabel's old man always said.

  He piloted the rented boat on a heading due west. The Point Bonita lighthouse beacon drifted back lazily on the starboard side, as a chill wind tousled his light blond hair.

  Sabel thought about his own special talent. It had taken him thirty three years and four tours of duty to find and fully engage it. But he had. Just a matter of applying his unique assets where they produced the most results.

  He learned that you got some leverage when you could do things other people can't. Turns out you got even more when you could do things other people won't.

  The boat's engines thrummed steadily as the Golden Gate Bridge and the lights of San Francisco receded behind him. The smell of diesel smoke mixed in with the living scent of the sea brought back pleasant memories. Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico with his father.

  Sabel's old man was a shrimper with a small, two-man operation out of Carrabelle, a pissant town in the Florida panhandle. When Sabel was old enough, he started helping out with the family business. By the time he was seventeen, he'd learned all there was to know about the ship itself and the fishing end of the whole deal. He replaced the second crew member permanently.

  Sabel was out at sea with his old man on the day he died.

  They got caught in a furious rain squall. His father was out on deck, hauling the nets when he lost his footing and fell overboard.

  Sabel grabbed a life preserver and ran to the rail.

  His father looked up and spotted him there. "Terry. Throw it!"

  That's when it happened.

  Sabel's father was a violent drunk. And though he hit his son pretty regularly after getting sauced, the old man saved the real beatings for Sabel's mother. He wasn't mad at his father for any of that stuff-at least he didn't think so. He wasn't sure what anger felt like, but he knew what it looked like and he'd never behaved that way.

  But Sabel's father had got to be a real problem for their family and its little shrimping business. His drinking reached the point where he missed good fishing days. The beatings were getting worse too. Sabel's mother feared for her life, and with good reason.

  And Sabel didn't understand the business end of shrimping at all. That was entirely her thing. For that reason, he needed her to stay well and functioning.

  What they both didn't require any longer was Sabel's alcoholic dad.

  As his father sputtered and thrashed in the rough seas, Sabel stopped there at the rail and set the life preserver down on the deck.

  "What are you doing?" his dad shouted up. "Throw me the damn thing!"

  The rain hammered down thick and heavy-a gray curtain, cutting them off from the eyes of the world.

  Sabel could barely even see his dad out there in the water. But it looked like he'd managed to catch hold of a section of the net. Yes, he was pulling himself in toward the boat now.

  Sabel ran aft, found what he needed, and returned to the rail.

  By then his father had made his way to the side of the boat. He was using the shrimp net like a rope ladder. Already halfway back up.

  Sabel extended the gaffing hook down to his father.

  His father stretched his hand out for the pole. It was just out of reach. "Lower, Terry. Hold it lower. I can't-"

  Sabel lunged down and gaffed the side of his father's neck. Then he pulled back hard with both arms, levering the pole off the gunwale.

  His father's full body weight now held him dangling on the hook, which ran behind his trachea and exited his neck under the right ear.

  Sabel's father gurgled horribly and grabbed for the pole. He tried to free himself, but it was no use. The gaffing hook did exactly what it was designed to do. Keep a flopping catch from working itself loose.

  When his father finally stopped struggling, Sabel lowered him back into the water until he floated there on the surface. With the weight off the hook the gaff slid out easily, like it should. That's why you don't ever want to use a barbed gaff.

  It was something the old man had taught him.

  As the rains continued to drench him, Sabel silently thanked his father for being a good instructor, and always providing the right tools.

  * * *

  HE'D REACHED HIS destination and cut the engine. This was far enough off the coast for the corpses to sink deep and rot in peace and privacy.

  He dropped the bodies into the dark waters one by one, in no special order. Whatever rank they'd reached in life, they were all on equal footing now. The fish and crabs certainly weren't going to taste any difference.

  Sabel restarted the engine and steered the boat back toward the mouth of the bay. As the lights of the city grew brighter, he considered his next objective.

  The ambulance had taken Gevin Rees to San Francisco General. The hospital itself would not do as a working location. Too many witnesses. Security cameras to boot. You could go in disguise, but that sort of Mission Impossible shit worked better in movies.

  Rees's background information indicated no close contacts in the Bay Area, so the man was likely to end up in a hotel somewhere. That would do just fine.

  The boat's engine thrummed on. The smell of the ocean and the diesel smoke once again returned Sabel's mind to those teenage days back on the shrimp boat with his father.

  Fond memories, all.

  CHAPTER 4

  WHILE THE HOTEL desk clerk processed his credit card, Rees watched CNN on the lobby's TV monitor. No sound, but the chyron beneath the picture displayed the headline: BREAKING NEWS.

  The scroll beneath that summed up the story. DNA analysis of body parts confirmed it, and federal investigators had made the official announcement. Edward Fischer died in yesterday's blast at Fermilab.

  Yesterday. At Fermilab. Federal investigators.
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  Rees didn't want to follow the line of thinking this news story suggested, but he couldn't stop himself. Whatever was going on here, it reached into the US government. Those DNA tests had obviously been faked.

  What the hell have I gotten myself into here?

  A decidedly upper class clientele passed through the lobby, paying no attention to the TV monitor. The Mark Hopkins on Nob Hill provided by no means the most affordable hotel rooms in the City. But Fischer had absolutely insisted Rees should go there and nowhere else.

  Rees finished checking in, grateful that he still had his wallet. The cell phone was a goner, though. And he'd abandoned his overnight bag out by the pier. If the killer didn't take it, someone else certainly would have by now.

  San Francisco General Hospital had dipped into its clothes bank-items left behind and laundered along with the hospital's linens-to provide Rees with shirt, pants, jacket, and a pair of very new looking Nike running shoes that fit reasonably well.

  He politely passed on the secondhand underwear and socks.

  Once Rees finished checking in, he headed straight up to his suite.

  The first thing he did there after he dead-bolted the door and attached the security chain (did those little brass links really stop a determined intruder?) was to take a long, hot bath.

  He did his best thinking in the tub. A personal quirk that left him feeling let down whenever business travel landed him in a hotel room with only a shower.

  As condensation fogged the bathroom's gilded mirrors, Rees soaked the remaining chill out of his bones and debated with himself on whether he ought to call someone back in New York.

  Who? And what exactly would he tell them?

  That Edward Fischer wasn't really dead, except now he was? That a dark conspiracy was underway at the level of the US government, by persons unknown, for reasons unknowable?

  "Yeah," he said to the bathroom ceiling. "That would go over well."

  His assistant was aware of the impromptu trip to San Francisco and would hold down the fort as usual. Per Edward Fischer's instructions, Rees had made up a vague story about a relative's medical emergency. He'd given no timetable for return.