Code White

by Scott Britz-Cunningham

  Kevin’s eyebrows shot up. “What? I didn’t authorize that.”

  “ACCORDING TO THE PROTOCOL FOR PROJECT VESUVIUS, THE FOLLOW-UP E-MAIL WAS TO BE RELEASED UPON ARRIVAL OF FBI AGENTS ON THE SCENE. THAT CONDITION WAS FULFILLED AT 8:22 A.M. THIS MORNING.”

  “The FBI here already? That’s way ahead of schedule.”

  “YES. ACCOMMODATIONS HAD TO BE MADE.”

  “The hell you say! Not without a thorough review of the situation.”

  “I PERFORMED THE REVIEW MYSELF. IN DOING SO, I WAS ABLE TO ADVANCE THE PROJECT BY MORE THAN ONE HOUR AND TWENTY MINUTES. THIS SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASES THE PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS.”

  “No! No! No! That gives ’em an extra hour and half to get the money up. I told you the plan, Odin—glue ’em to the clock. Squeeze ’em. Squeeze every minute. Watch the desperation running in little beads down their necks. That’s what gives us our margin of safety.”

  “THERE IS NO NEED FOR CONCERN. I ALSO ADVANCED THE TIME FOR TRANSMISSION OF THE RANSOM FROM 1:00 P.M. TO NOON.”

  “You did? Did you not see any fucking need to consult with me?”

  “IT WAS NOT SAFE TO DO SO.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s not safe—screwing around with plans that we worked out with a great deal of care.”

  “YOU YOURSELF HAVE REPEATEDLY INDICATED THE IMPORTANCE OF AN EARLY EGRESS FROM THE HOSPITAL PRECINCTS. PHASE 3 WILL REQUIRE A MASSIVE PARALLEL CRYPTANALYTIC OPERATION OF UNCERTAIN DURATION. PREMATURE TERMINATION WOULD RESULT IN A SIGNIFICANT LOSS OF REVENUE. DID YOU DESIRE THAT OUTCOME?”

  “Don’t be an ass.”

  “THEN I HAVE DONE WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE DONE.”

  “Have you?” Kevin kicked his swivel chair back and forth. “Okay, maybe. But Jesus, Odin, you’re giving me chest pains over this. We’re not running a simulation here. If this ship hits the rocks, I’ll spend the rest of my real-world fucking life in jail.”

  Suddenly Kevin heard the shattering of glass, coming from the far “L” of the lab. His gaze shot, not toward the “L”, but toward a six-foot-tall wire cage on the floor to his left, between his desk and the dark monolith of Odin’s mainframe. Even in the dim light, he could see that the door of the cage was ajar by about six inches.

  “Oh, hell! Loki’s out.”

  “HE EMERGED FROM CONFINEMENT AT 9:28 A.M. HE HAS STOLEN TWO PEARS FROM THE REFRIGERATOR, OVERTURNED ONE WASTEBASKET, AND DRUNK WATER FROM THE LEAKING FAUCET INSTEAD OF FROM HIS BOTTLE. HE IS NOW CLIMBING ON THE SHELVES AT THE REAR OF—”

  “I know where he is, Odin. I can hear him. He’s picked the damned lock again.”

  Kevin got up and went to the “L.” When he switched on the back row of lights, he froze. Loki, a foot-and-a-half-long macaque monkey, wearing a diaper that gave him the look of a yogi in a loincloth, squatted on the high shelf, eight feet up, holding a human skull in his tiny, twitching hands. At the sight of Kevin, he screeched and chittered, jerking his hairless pink face from side to side. The skull looked like a basketball destined for a jump shot.

  “Loki! Loki! Good monkey!” Kevin made a soft trilling sound to calm him, and for a moment Loki grew still. Kevin inched forward, stealthily raising his hands. “Good boy! Good Loki!”

  This was no ordinary skull. To Kevin, who collected human and animal calvaria the way some people collect fine art, this was a Ming vase among skulls. It bore a half-inch drillhole in each temple and a black-inked inscription beside the foramen magnum:

  S. Traversi, Patuxent River, MDd. 2/21/1955.

  Operated: C. W. Watts, Geo. Wash. Hosp. 10/9/1938.

  Here were the earthly remains of a woman who had had a prefrontal lobotomy for schizophrenia, performed by one of the American pioneers of the procedure. For two months’ salary, Kevin had bought the skull from the estate of a neurologist on the East Coast. And it was now about to do service as a simian basketball.

  There was a formaldehyde smell and broken glass on the floor from the specimen jar that Loki had already knocked over. Loki chittered nervously as Kevin got closer. Kevin had to be careful not to smile or show his teeth or do anything that a monkey would interpret as anger. If Loki freaked out, the skull was as good as gone.

  “Good Loki! Good monkey! What a pretty, little, fragile, and insanely expensive toy you have there! Can Daddy see it?” With hands outstretched, Kevin stepped up onto a stack of books. Loki screeched, exposing his half-inch canine teeth. But then, ever so gently, he lowered the skull within reach of Kevin’s fingertips.

  Kevin snatched the skull and tucked it under his arm like a football. “Good, good boy! Come to Daddy now,” he said, extending his free hand. Loki gave out a couple of chitters, then bounded along Kevin’s arm to take up a new perch on his shoulder.

  “Guess we’ll be making monkey sausage tonight,” said Kevin, as he ceremoniously reshelved Miss Traversi’s skull between the yellowed incisors of a beaver and the pearl-white fangs of a young wolf.

  Sardonic remark notwithstanding, Loki owed his life to Kevin. Helvelius had bought him for an experiment in which his spinal cord was severed, then reconnected with a primitive version of the SIPNI device. Loki had come out of the procedure amazingly well. His nerve function was better than ever, giving him a heightened sensitivity to touch and pain, plus a humanlike manual dexterity. During his fifteen minutes of scientific fame, everyone connected with the project celebrated the little monkey’s bravery and powers of healing. But after a paper describing the breakthrough had been rushed into print, Loki himself was of no further use. The plan had been to euthanize him, to cut up his brain and spine to study the microscopic changes that took place in the nerve fibers. But, as luck would have it, the neuropathologist who was to carry out this work transferred to UCLA. Loki’s date with the dissecting room was postponed, then postponed again, and ultimately forgotten as the team’s interest moved on to dog-brain experiments. One night, a couple of months ago, Loki disappeared altogether from the Primate Center. Rumor spotted him hiding out in a cage in Kevin’s lab, or even walking on a leash with Kevin on the hospital grounds. On those rare evenings when Kevin went home instead of crashing on a cot in his lab, he would sneak Loki out the back door in a small traveling cage, and give him the run of his apartment in Wicker Park.

  “Score one for the brotherhood of apes and angels,” Kevin would say as Loki swung from the kitchen cupboards. “Zero for the brain butchers.”

  * * *

  Back on the big wall monitor, Odin was still showing video of the Endocrinology Clinic. With Loki on his shoulder, Kevin went back to his starship commander’s seat and watched. Taking a bag of peanuts out of the top drawer of his desk, he began passing them one by one to Loki. Instead of gnawing the shells as most monkeys would do, Loki would crack them in his hands before extracting the nuts with his lips and tongue. Most of the empty shells wound up on the floor or on Kevin’s lap.

  “Odin, have they started a search for the bombs yet?”

  “SIXTY-SEVEN SECURITY AND MAINTENANCE EMPLOYEES HAVE DIVIDED INTO FOURTEEN SEPARATE SEARCH TEAMS. THEY ARE ADHERING PRECISELY TO THE PROTOCOLS INSTITUTED TWO MONTHS AGO BY THE CHIEF OF SECURITY. TWENTY-EIGHT UNIFORMED POLICE OFFICERS ARE STANDING BY, BUT ARE NOT PARTICIPATING IN THE SEARCH.”

  “Are any of them getting warm?”

  “NO. IT IS UNLIKELY THAT THEY WILL DO SO. AS YOU KNOW, I DETERMINED THE SITES FOR DEPLOYMENT AFTER ANALYZING PERSONNEL MOVEMENT PATTERNS OVER A PERIOD OF THREE WEEKS. I WAS ABLE TO IDENTIFY BLIND SPOTS WITH A MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD OF BEING OVERLOOKED BY HUMAN OBSERVERS.”

  “Are the surveillance cameras at each site functioning properly?”

  “YES.”

  “Are all the bombs armed?”

  “YES.”

  “Good. Then let’s run a fail-safe check at each site. Integrity sensors, detent switches, arrest and recall circuits—the works. I want to make sure nothing goes off because of a loose wire or because some jackass sticks a screwdriver in the wrong place.”

  “I AM DOING SO NOW. IN THE MEANTIME, SUR
VEILLANCE VIDEO FROM EACH SITE IS BEING DISPLAYED ON MONITORS A1 THROUGH A6 AND B1 THROUGH B6. VIDEO OF THE SEARCH TEAMS IS ON THE REMAINING TWELVE SCREENS. THEY CAN BE IDENTIFIED BY WHITE RIBBONS AFFIXED TO THEIR SECURITY BADGES.”

  Kevin spun his chair around and looked to the left of the door, where twenty-four desktop computers were arrayed on metal shelving units, filling the entire wall. He used these small computers to work out problems in parallel processing, or as overflow units when Odin needed to expand beyond his own mainframe. Right now, they were doing service as video monitors. Kevin was delighted to see all of the search activity going on—activity that he had set in motion. He particularly enjoyed the drawn, fearful faces of the searchers, and the gingerly way in which they would peer behind closet doors or under the lids of trash bins.

  “Attaboy!” he exclaimed as a plumber in gray overalls tried to remove the faceplate from a drinking fountain near the main entrance, and let it slip to the floor with a clang. “If you had really been onto something, you’d be a sticky red smear on the floor right about now. Good thing you’ll never know the real piñata is tucked safely behind an I-beam ten feet above your head.”

  A pair of chimes sounded in the interval of a rising fourth—Odin’s signal for his attention. Kevin quickly pivoted back toward the main monitor.

  “FAIL-SAFE CHECK IS COMPLETE. ALL UNITS ARE IN PEAK OPERATING CONDITION.”

  The monitor confirmed that each device was operating at 100 percent effectiveness.

  “Excellent job, my friend,” said Kevin with a grin. “Let’s make sure we stay in control.”

  He looked at the names of the twelve devices on the board—twelve mountains of fiery death. To his ears, they were like music—twelve riffs, which he was ready to weave together into one razzle-dazzle, ear-splitting jam. Twelve strings, which he would play like Jimi Hendrix. Deception, disruption, destruction, death—all were at his fingertips. No one had ever heard rock ’n’ roll like this before. Not the FBI, not the bomb squad, not the city of Chicago, not the blue-nosed directors of the Fletcher Memorial Medical Center.

  Any rube can build a bomb, he told himself, but it takes a rare man to play it like a guitar.

  He put a peanut in his shirt pocket and chuckled as Loki struggled to fish it out.

  “Spotlight’s on the stage, little monkey. And Dr. Dildo is sitting front row, Orchestra A. Somehow I don’t think he’s gonna dig the music.”

  Flicking the bottom of his pocket, he pushed the peanut up high enough so Loki could reach it. Then he looked back at the status board and smiled.

  “Time to make fucking history.”

  * * *

  Harry’s black deadline clock read seven hours and ten minutes.

  “What about the canine squad?” asked Harry. “Don’t you guys have some dogs that can sniff out C4?”

  He was sitting in his office, in his big leather chair, with Avery and Lee on either side of him, each with his own laptop. The desk was getting cramped. On his left, the bearlike Avery crowded him with sheer body bulk, pushing his elbows out like retaining walls. Lee did the same thing by stacking three neat piles of papers in front of himself. Harry was beginning to wonder whose desk it was.

  “Dogs? Sure, we have ’em on standby,” said Avery.

  “I think it’s a little early for the dogs,” said Lee. “We risk drawing too high a profile. Remember, the first message was explicit: ‘All operations must remain normal.’ The bomber may have an observer on the site. If he sees us going around with dogs, he may feel uneasy.”

  “But he can see the search teams,” noted Harry.

  “Oh, he expects us to make a search,” said Lee. “He’d probably be disappointed if we didn’t. But there’s no need to be obvious about it. Dogs represent an escalation.”

  Just then, the desk phone rang. At a nod from Avery, Harry picked it up. He identified himself, listened a moment, and then handed the receiver to Lee.

  “It’s for you. Washington.”

  Lee spoke briskly with the party on the other end. After a couple of minutes, he put down the phone.

  “That was the Bomb Data Center. The infrared scan came up positive. The C4 traces to a batch stolen from Quantico Marine Base six weeks ago. A rented van used in the theft was tracked to a credit card issued to a known member of the Al-Quds Martyrs Brigade. So there’s a confirmation of our ransom message. It’s from Al-Quds, all right. It turns out that the individual registered to that credit card had been under surveillance for some time, but dropped off the radar screen after the theft.”

  “So we have a name,” said Harry.

  “We have several.”

  “That’s good news.”

  “Not entirely. The, uh, ordnance that was stolen … Well, it was a major break-in. Over two hundred kilos of C4 are missing. Close to five hundred pounds.”

  Avery raised his hands, as though he were weighing two hundred kilos in the air. “Jesus! That much explosive could incinerate a city block.”

  “I think we have to assume that a large portion of that materiel may have been deployed in this medical center,” said Lee.

  Harry felt his stomach sink. “Then we’ve got to find a way to speed up the search.”

  “You know this hospital better than anyone, Mr. Lewton,” said Lee, a little snidely. “Did you learn anything from my course? Think like a terrorist. Your aim is to kill and destroy. Where would you want to place the bomb? Where would you have a maximum effect?”

  Harry’s thoughts raced to his mother, lying helpless on the eighteenth floor. His mouth suddenly went dry. “With that amount of explosive, you could easily bring down the Goldmann Towers. That’s the heart of the inpatient hospital. You have hundreds of patient rooms, several clinics and operating theaters, probably a thousand people concentrated together.”

  “All right. Focus the search there,” said Lee.

  “I’m on it.” Harry was already on his feet and needed no prompting from Lee. But he didn’t get far. As he opened the office door, he was pushed back by Scopes, who charged into the room, panting excitedly.

  “I found a tie-in,” Scopes announced.

  “Good doggie!” said Lee.

  Scopes, all grin, rustled a sheaf of papers as he pulled up a chair beside Lee. “I cross-checked our names against the Immigration and Naturalization records, as well as one or two other databases that shall remain nameless. Came up with a very interesting link.”

  “To what?”

  “To here. To this hospital.”

  “Lemme see.” Lee grabbed the papers and rifled through them, shuffling each page to the bottom of the stack. Then he stopped abruptly and stared fixedly at a single line.

  “I believe that this may be of interest to you, Mr. Lewton.”

  “Oh?” Harry came back from the doorway and craned his neck toward the papers. Lee made no move to share them.

  “Do you have a foreign national employed here named Aliyah Sabra Al-Sharawi?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Her.”

  “Never heard of her. We have over thirty-five hundred people working in this medical center. I’d have to check the personnel register.”

  “She’s married to an American citizen also employed here. He works in Computational Research. His name is O’Day. Kevin O’Day.”

  “Kevin O’Day? Are you serious?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Yes, I know him. Or of him.”

  “And his wife?”

  “I don’t think we’re talking about the same man. O’Day’s already married … I mean, he is married … to one of our most prominent neurosurgeons. Ali is her name. Dr. Ali O’Day.”

  “Aliyah.”

  “Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me!”

  Lee’s face was Mount Rushmore. “Do you know her whereabouts, Mr. Lewton?”

  “Yes. Yes I do,” he said, a little indignantly. “She’s been on television all morning, in fact.”

  “We need to talk to this woman. I
mmediately.”

  10:55 A.M.

  With light footsteps, Ali slipped into the family lounge on the second floor—a small room with flowered curtains, oak bookshelves, a wide plasma screen TV, and a sofa and chairs arranged to look like the living room of the average patient of the Department of Surgery. Jamie’s legal guardian, Mrs. Gore, was sitting on the sofa, next to Kathleen Brown. She wore a pink satin dress with a high waist that artfully underplayed her middle-aged plumpness. Her short bottle-blond hair suffered a little from the excessive curliness that follows a fresh perm.

  Dr. Helvelius, in his surgical scrubs and a long white coat, leaned forward from a chair and listened attentively while Mrs. Gore extolled the virtues of the Grossman School.

  “We’re on a par with the best private schools, with a complete K-12 live-in program, accommodating students from all over the Midwest, even from Canada. Two-thirds of our teaching faculty have master’s degrees. We have a fully staffed counseling division, with weekly case review conferences. We have to be ready to deal with anything, you know. Not all of our students are strong like Jamie. Many have other issues, like attention deficit disorder, cerebral palsy, developmental delay, or autism.”

  “Not surprised,” said Helvelius.

  “Do you work with adults, too?” asked Kathleen Brown.

  “Oh, yes!” said Mrs. Gore, her eyes lighting up. “Our mission goes far beyond the two hundred and forty-seven students who formally study with us. We conduct training seminars for teachers in the mainstream school system. We operate a senior learning center to help older people adjust to life with sight problems. And then, of course, there’s the Braille and audio book library…”

  The conversation broke off as Ali approached. Kathleen Brown scooted over on the sofa, opening up a place, but Ali sat down in an armchair next to Helvelius. She was annoyed to see a cameraman crouching behind a low tripod where a coffee table used to be. Alas, there was no escape from the relentless, all-prying lens.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Gore,” said Ali.