by Dan Willis
“Where was the Chicago going?” Alex said.
“Madrid,” Tennon said with a nod of understanding.
“So when the Chicago didn’t sail on time, Leavitt had to make a new plan,” Sorsha said.
“He kept the money the Chinese paid him in Admiral Tennon’s safe along with Dr. Burnham’s notebooks,” Alex said. “All he had to do was wait for the Admiral to end the lockdown and he could just walk out the front gate.”
“But then he learned that the fog might combust and burn the city down,” Vaughn said. “So he had to escape before that happened.”
“Commander Vaughn,” Tennon said, standing up straight. “Would you call over to the duty officer in the infirmary and ask him to escort Lieutenant Leavitt back here under guard.”
“Don’t bother,” Alex said. “There was a big leather folio in your safe the last time I was here. It was the only place big enough to hide the notebooks and whatever cash Leavitt got from the Chinese...and it’s gone now.”
“And so is Leavitt,” Sorsha guessed.
“No,” Tennon said. “The base is still on lockdown. He has to be somewhere.”
“He probably tried the Tyler McCormick trick again,” Vaughn said. “He has access to the base clerks; he could easily have forged records for another new seaman and had him assigned to one of the outgoing ships. All he would have to do is show up at roll call.”
“How many ships have you sent out in the last few days, Admiral?” Sorsha asked.
“Eighteen,” he responded.
“Eleven of them are just waiting outside the fog,” Vaughn said, “but the remaining seven are bound for other ports.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tennon said. “Now that we know his game, we’ll find his forged orders and have him arrested as soon as the ships make port. He won’t get away with this.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be good enough, Admiral,” Sorsha said. “I spoke with Andrew Barton today. He informed me that his generators have been losing power ever since the fog appeared.”
“It’s taking more and more power to keep the fog together,” Alex guessed.
Sorsha nodded at him and continued.
“If the drain on Empire Tower continues at the current rate, Andrew believes his generators will fail sometime around noon tomorrow. If we don’t find Leavitt and Dr. Burnham’s notebooks very soon, this city will burn.”
30
The Notebook
“We need to search those seven ships right now, Admiral,” Sorsha said. “There’s no telling how long it will take Dr. Burnham to formulate his counter agent to the fog.”
“I’m afraid that won’t help, ma’am,” Commander Vaughn said. “Each of those ships have hundreds of men on board; it will take hours to search them.”
“And if Leavitt’s really been planning this, he will have figured out how to avoid a search,” Admiral Tennon said.
Alex reflexively checked his watch. If Andrew Barton was right about his generators, then the city had less than eighteen hours of life left to it.
He knew the feeling.
Still, there were only a limited number of places Leavitt could have gone. All he needed to do was narrow the list down to a single ship.
“What about your finding rune?” Sorsha said, turning to Alex.
He shook his head.
“He would have boarded whatever ship he’s on right after calling in sick this morning,” he said. It was a guess, but it made sense. “There’ll be too much water between him and us for the rune to work.”
“Well what can we do?” she asked, looking pointedly at him. “Finding missing people is supposed to be your specialty, after all.”
“I’ll order those seven ships back to base,” Tennon said.
“We’d still have to search them when they got here,” Vaughn said. “It’s the same problem.”
“You said he had to fake some kind of paperwork to get on whatever ship he’s on, right?” Alex asked Vaughn.
The lieutenant commander nodded.
“He’d have to have orders in whatever name he’s using,” Vaughn said. “He could fake those pretty easy with his access, but the ship would have to have that name on its crew list. That list comes from the base clerk’s office.”
“So how would he get his fake name on that list?” Alex pressed.
“He’d have to create a fake file for that sailor and slip it into the base records office,” Vaughn said. “Then he’d send a letter from the Admiral’s office ordering that sailor to report for the ship he wanted. The clerk would pull the record and make sure it was in order, then add the name to the ship’s official list.”
Sorsha gasped.
“You can use a finding rune to locate the file.”
“I doubt it,” Alex said. “Even if we had something that was important to Leavitt to use as a catalyst, I doubt the file was anything other than a means to an end. Finding runes require an intimate connection to be effective. That said, I think Leavitt’s fake file is our best chance of finding him.”
“And how do you propose to do that, Mr. Lockerby?” Admiral Tennon said. “We have over twenty-thousand records here. Searching the ships would be faster.”
“But can’t we narrow the search?” Sorsha asked, turning to Vaughn. “You said that the names of everyone on each of those ships was on a master list, right.”
Vaughn nodded.
“The crew manifest,” he said. “But if we only pull the records for those seven ships, that still leaves us with over a thousand men.”
“Then we’d better get started,” Sorsha declared. “Unless anyone has a better idea.”
“I’ll round up the clerical staff and get them started pulling the records,” Vaughn said, turning toward the outer office.
“Tell them not to start until we get there,” Alex said. “I think I can narrow our search even further, but I’ll need some equipment first.”
Vaughn shrugged and nodded, then headed out to the telephone on Leavitt’s desk.
“What are you thinking?” Sorsha wondered as Alex pulled a vault rune from his red book.
“Leavitt would have made that file himself,” he said, chalking a door shape on the Admiral’s wall. “He wouldn’t have trusted work like that to anyone else.”
“What are you doing, Lockerby?” Tennon protested.
Alex ignored him and lit the rune, stepping back as the polished steel vault door melted out of the wall. He unlocked it with his heavy skeleton key and pulled it open. Heading inside, he opened the secretary cabinet where he kept his kit bag and spare investigation equipment.
“So you’re thinking that since it’s the only file Leavitt handled, you’ll be able to use a finding rune after all?” Sorsha asked, following him inside.
Alex grinned at her but shook his head.
“No,” he said, topping off his silverlight burner from a stoppered bottle on a nearby shelf. “But we don’t need fancy runes to find Leavitt’s new identity.”
“What is this place?” Admiral Tennon asked, his voice full of wonder. He’d followed Sorsha inside the vault and was looking around with an astonished expression on his face.
“Some runewrights can create extra-dimensional spaces for themselves,” Sorsha explained.
“I didn’t think runewrights had that kind of power,” he admitted.
“Most don’t,” Alex said, pulling a box full of mismatched work gloves from a box on the bottom of a shelf.
“Do you have any idea of the size of the Captain’s cabin on a warship?” he growled. “You could fit six of them in this room.”
Alex chuckled.
“There’s a bedroom and a kitchen down that way,” he said, pointing to the hall.
Tennon gave him a hard look.
“I hate you,” he said with no trace of a smile.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to get in line for that one, Admiral,” Sorsha said with a raised eyebrow. “Alex tends to have that effect on people. Now,” she said, fixing A
lex with her steely gaze. “How are we supposed to find Lieutenant Leavitt’s counterfeit file among a thousand others?”
“Like I said,” Alex explained, leading everyone back out of his vault. “Leavitt would have made the doctored file himself. Now a clerk might have checked it before putting that sailor’s name on the manifest, but all the other records would have been handled by dozens of people.”
“So you’re going to use your fancy lamp to find the one folder without fingerprints all over it,” Sorsha said as she figured out Alex’s plan. “Very clever.”
“That’s why the clerks will need to wear these,” he said, holding up the box of gloves. “We don’t want any new prints on those files.”
The clerical office and records depository for the base was in a large building a short walk from the Admiral’s offices. Unlike Tennon’s shoddy building, the records were housed in a very solid-looking brick structure. When they arrived, a dozen grumpy-looking sailors were already gathered in the front office.
Admiral Tennon told them what to do, and had them don gloves from Alex’s box, and soon there was a steady stream of personnel records flowing out of the back room.
Alex strapped on his oculus and lit his silverlight burner, examining each of the folders and the files inside carefully. Most were obviously not new, and he put them in a pile to be returned to the long line of file cabinets where they were stored. Occasionally one would look newer than the rest and he’d set those aside, intending to review them while the clerks fetched new records.
At the end of two hours Alex had only managed to get through half of the records, and of those, only five had been set aside for review.
“How will you determine which file is Leavitt’s?” Sorsha asked, as the clerks brought another stack of folders for Alex to review.
“I assumed it would be obvious,” Alex said, picking up the first folder on the new stack. It was dirty and covered with prints, but he’d learned not to judge a file by its cover. Apparently the Navy reused the folders, and so he opened the file and began flipping pages. He stopped when he found one with a coffee stain in the shape of a mug bottom. Leavitt wouldn’t have bothered to add an old stain to his file.
“I’ll have to go back to his desk and see if I can find one of his fingerprints,” Alex said, setting the first folder aside and picking up the next one. “Then I can try to match it to one of the clean files.”
Sorsha looked troubled at that.
“What?” Alex said, trying not to snap at her in his irritation.
“I was talking to Vaughn while you were working,” she said. “He told me that Leavitt would have known how to put together a fake file because he was responsible for pulling any file the Admiral might want to see. He’s probably pulled hundreds of them in the last six months alone.”
Alex groaned.
“It’s still the best chance we’ve got,” Alex said, opening the next folder. “If nothing else, we can just have the various ship captains detain all these men. Though I don’t know how we’ll be able to tell which one is Leavitt until they return to port.”
“You won’t have to,” Admiral Tennon said. He’d been sitting in the corner looking through the files Alex had set aside. When Alex turned to look at him, he held up the folder he had open on his lap. “This one is Leavitt. Seaman First Class Andrew Frakes.”
Alex took off his oculus.
“What makes you think that?” he asked, moving over to read over Tennon’s shoulder.
“Look here,” the Admiral said, pointing to the list of ships where Seaman Frakes had served. “All these ships are operating in the Pacific,” he said. “According to the file, Frakes has been in for three years. Two months ago his mother got sick, so he was granted hardship leave and sent here to care for her. Once his leave was up, he was reassigned to the Atlantic Fleet.”
“So Frakes is an outsider,” Sorsha said. “No one he’s serving with would have any reason to know him.”
“Exactly,” Tennon said. “It’s the perfect cover.”
“It could also be a coincidence,” Alex pointed out. He made it a personal maxim never to believe in coincidences, but that didn’t mean they didn’t sometimes happen.
“No,” Tennon said. “I don’t think so.” He pointed to the name of one of the ships on the list. “The Minotaur is a supply ship,” he said. “She makes the run between San Diego and Pearl. She’s also where the Admiralty dumps all their hard cases and their shirkers.”
“Why is that significant?” Sorsha asked.
Tennon turned the pages of the file. There weren’t many.
“Because,” he said. “Anyone assigned to the Minotaur would have a disciplinary file as long as your arm. Seaman Frakes here has never even been written up for smoking on guard duty.”
“Is that rare?” Alex asked.
“I have three of those in my file,” Tennon said.
“So where is Seaman Frakes right now?” Sorsha wondered.
Tennon checked the front of the file.
“According to this, he’s on the Tripoli. She’s a cargo hauler bound for Liverpool.”
“Where is the Tripoli now?” Sorsha asked.
“Looks like you were right about Leavitt leaving early, Mr. Lockerby,” the Admiral said, closing the file. “The Tripoli sailed this morning. She’s headed out across the Atlantic.”
“Can you contact the Tripoli by radio? Sorsha asked.
“Sure,” Tennon said with a nod. “Her captain and I came up together. But I doubt anyone on board will know enough about chemistry to understand Dr. Burnham’s notes.”
“They won’t have to,” she said. “If I can hear his voice, I can teleport to him. Then I’ll find Leavitt, retrieve the notebook, and take it to Dr. Burnham directly.”
Alex didn’t know sorcerers could do that. He had a sudden flash of all the times he’d provoked her over the phone. He wanted to promise himself he wouldn’t do that again, but that was a promise he knew he would break the next time he had a chance.
Captain Cross of the Tripoli was a no-nonsense old salt who disliked being summoned to the radio room, even by an admiral.
“What’s this about, Walter?” his gravelly voice came through the radio in the harbormaster’s office. “I’ve got a ship to run.”
“Stow it, Dan,” Tennon barked into the microphone. “I need to know if you have a Seaman First Class Andrew Frakes aboard.”
“Everybody on my manifest checked in,” Cross said.
“Check, damn it,” Tennon ordered.
“All right,” Cross capitulated. “Give me a minute.”
“You think he might have gotten on a different ship?” Sorsha asked.
Tennon shrugged.
“I think it’s good to make sure before you send yourself a hundred miles out to sea.”
“You there, Walter?” Cross’s voice cut through the static. “According to the list, Frakes checked in. He’s on board.”
“Good,” Tennon said. “I want you to send two of your best men to arrest him.”
Alex put up his hand and Tennon’s eyes darted to him.
“What if he fights them?” he said. “If they shoot Leavitt, we might never get the notebook.”
“Belay that, Dan,” Tennon said into the mic. “I’m here with Sorsha Kincaid.”
“Who?”
“She’s a sorceress here in New York. I want you to read your logs over the radio. She’s going to use your voice to travel to the Tripoli.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, Walter,” Cross declared. “If you want Seaman Frakes, my men can get him, easy enough.”
“Leave Frakes to the Sorceress,” Tennon said. “That’s an order, Dan. Now start reading your logs.”
“Yes, sir,” he grumbled. “Give me a minute.”
The radio lapsed into silence and Sorsha turned to Alex.
“How many finding runes do you have on you?” she asked.
Alex consulted his rune book.
“Three,” he said. “Why? You know right where Leavitt is.”
“Cargo ships have lots of places to hide,” she said. “I don’t want to waste time searching the ship when all we need is his toothbrush and you can lead me right to him.”
Alex groaned. He’d though it would be something like that. It meant he would have to teleport again.
When Alex and Sorsha arrived on the Tripoli the sky was clear and dark. When Alex finally managed to shake off the effects of the teleport, he marveled at how clear the sky looked. He hadn’t seen it in almost a week.
Sorsha had managed to locate the cargo ship after the Captain read his logs for the better part of fifteen minutes. She said it took so long because the ship was moving and bobbing on the ocean. Alex suspected the technique of finding a person by listening to his voice was somewhat imprecise and dangerous. As it was, the sorceress dropped them on the bow, well away from the bridge.
The reaction of the sailors who were on watch was priceless. Both of the big men had yelled in near panic and scrambled away from the place where Alex and Sorsha appeared. Alex chuckled as he helped Sorsha stand.
By the time they both had their sea legs under them, Captain Cross had come down from the bridge. He wasn’t at all what Alex imagined from the radio. He’d pictured a shriveled, bent old man, probably with an eye patch. Cross turned out to be a short barrel of a man with enormous, calloused hands, a weathered face, and a jaw that looked to be carved of granite.
“So what’s this fella Frakes done anyway?” he asked as he came ambling up to where Sorsha was still trying to catch her balance. She’d been wearing heels and hadn’t thought to take them off before appearing on the rolling ship.
“He’s stolen critical information from the government,” Sorsha said. It wasn’t exactly a lie and it communicated everything the short-tempered captain needed to know so Alex let it go without comment.
“He’s a spy?” Cross spat. “You should have just let me arrest him.”
“He has a notebook that we need to get back at all costs,” Sorsha said. “Where is he now?”
