The CIA head chimed in, “So it was on the black market, and Maguambi orchestrated break-ins in America and France to steal and dust off a Disney plan to make animatronic whales for an attraction in their theme parks.”
“But the corporation abandoned the development and production due to ecological concerns.” Bill chimed in.
The CIA director continued, “Maguambi built it instead and used it for pirate attacks.”
“Including the one on the Vera Cruz which our operative was on, sir,” Bill said.
The president looked out the window. “So if you find the person or group that stole the initial batch of this super-fluid, they are the ones who are planning to attack CERN?”
“That is the working theory, Mr. President.” Bill said.
“Ron, you think Bill’s op will succeed?” The president asked the secretary of the navy.
“My head of warfare tactics worked with Bill on it and he’s the best, so I approved it.”
“Good hunting, Bill. When are you heading back over?”
“I’m wheels up in two hours, sir.”
∞§∞
The USS Cayuga, a fleet support vessel that was generally in the rear and well away from any action, was emanating the broadband wavelengths. The sonar man, who also served as radar and satellite communications tech on the small ship was surprised at the return suddenly coming from a spot in the ocean two hundred eighty miles due east of his location. Then it was gone. He placed his hand on the new signal generator that had been installed in his radio shack three days earlier. He switched off the auto-sweep and manually swept the dial that changed the frequency the machine put out. Slowly, he raised and lowered the setting until he got another return. He made note of the setting: one hundred eighty-six megahertz. He then radioed the USS Saipan, the Quint control ship for the sector of the ocean they were patrolling.
∞§∞
SEAL Jump Two was the closest team at ten nautical miles from the spot. The huge twin turbo-shaft engines of the Sea Stallion CH-53D started gulping air as it top ended at 170 knots or 196 miles an hour vectoring to the coordinates they received from the Combat Information Center on the Saipan.
∞§∞
They spotted the whale in the water at two hundred fifty feet altitude. The whale machine was making headway at eight knots. This was a challenge for the frogmen, because they’d have to keep up with the thing as they tried to capture it. They decided to dead drop onto the body, which was luckily just under the surface.
The Stallion hovered to match the speed of the machine at six feet over the waves, its prop wash surely being noticed by anyone inside operating the machine, unless it was a remote-controlled weapon. Operator Number One flattened out to jump and land across the top of the machine, but the whale jerked right and he wound up off the side. Number Two waited as the pilot adjusted his position, then jumped in. He landed on the back of the machine as Number One swam to keep up and Number Three waited on the copter’s skid for the disabling of the machine before he jumped.
On the back of the whale, Number Two jammed the needles into the rubber-like skin and pressed the trigger. The entire whale bloated and became rigid, like steel. He felt a tingle, even through his wet suit. The forward propulsion was halted, and it became a rock solid mass due to the high voltage being applied to the fluid, which caused it to solidify and expand, like Bill’s electric ice.
It was now Three’s turn; he grabbed the winch hook outside the cabin door. The crewman released the cable and he, the cable and the hook dropped into the ocean. Number One was swimming up to the tail and Number Three handed off the cable to him. He submerged and came up on the other side of the whale, then passed the hook back to Three, who locked it around the cable, creating a slip-noose of sorts. He gave the thumbs up, the crewman operated the winch, and the tail of the stiff machine rose.
The whale was estimated to weigh two tons. The Stallion was good for a four-ton payload, but not the winch. So as not to stress the line, they lifted it only a few feet up and then throttled forward at five knots as the Saipan closed in on their location at thirty knots. SEAL Jump One pulled up, recovered the three SEALs in the water, and accompanied the other chopper on its slow drag of the machine across the wave tops.
Then, as if in blasphemy to the gods of Duracell, operator Number One asked, “How long will the knitting needles stay charged?”
Suddenly, the Sea Stallion bucked. The whale’s tail started flapping, making huge tugs, straining the winch and with it, the whole copter. It was all the pilot could do to counteract the jolts. He knew he couldn’t keep it up much longer. “Cut the line!” he yelled back at his crewman.
The petty officer was about to release the winch when Operator Four interceded. He jumped out of the cabin door and shimmied down the cable as it was whipping from the bucking whale. It was an incredible feat of strength and guts. He slipped the last five feet but had the presence of mind and the dexterity to pull out his knitting needles as he fell and landed jamming them into the tail. Once again the whale stiffened and the bucking stopped. He righted himself and was straddling the tail as the chopper resumed dragging the machine once more. The three SEALs on the other chopper started hooting and hollering and snapped a few shots as Number Four looked like a triumphant broncobuster at a rodeo.
∞§∞
Back on the Saipan, the second chopper landed first and the SEALs watched as Number Four, who rode the thing all the way in, unhooked the slackened cable and attached the harness of the heavy supply crane that swung out off the side of the amphibious assault ship. As the whale machine was being lifted on to the deck, Number Four joined the team and asked the crane op to stop the machine as it hung directly over the deck. They ran beside it with one final mission goal to achieve, as a deckhand handed them a hastily made sign…
∞§∞
At 3:10 p.m. Paris time, Bill’s secured smart phone chimed as a terse text message appeared from SUBCOMPAC. It simply read, “Quint got his fish.”
Son of a bitch, it worked, was Bill’s immediate thought.
XXVII. THROW IN THE TOWEL
Brooke spent the day in the field chasing down a lead in Canton Two on a man who had been taken into custody there. A business card on his person indicated he had recently been in touch with someone called the Architect. After three hours of tedious translations, it turned out his contact had been with the architect of an automobile dealership. A total dead end.
At around seven, Joey called it a day and Brooke left for the club. She had decided the night before to snoop around the nightspot. It was early and the crowd was mostly business people grabbing a drink after work. She walked around a little, then left and went to the hotel down the block where the murder had taken place. It was a fleabag hotel, and while she was standing there a few hookers walked their clientele into the lobby and up the stairs. She had to give the Swiss credit: these girls were less sleazy looking than the New York whores she’d seen as she left her office on the West Side late at night. These working girls had meat on their bones and were not as diseased looking. She went in and asked the sleepy deskman if he spoke English.
“Yes. Very much so,” he said.
“Is room 212 empty?”
The desk clerk immediately perked up. “Why are you interested in this particular room, may I inquire?”
“I work with FedPol and I want to see the size and layout of the room.” She flashed her new FBI ID.
“Wow. American FBI. I like very much J. Edgar. And Leonardo DiCaprio.”
“That’s great. Can I see the room now?”
He led her upstairs past many moans, groans and squeaks muffled through the doors of the various rooms. When they reached 212, the clerk opened the lock and added, “The police have told us not to rent the room until they tell us to do so.”
Brooke noticed the room was still a crime scene. Chalk, tape and numbered cards populated the area around the massive bloodstain just beyond the front door. She bent down and exami
ned the bloodstain closely, concluding the amount and pattern was consistent with a severed carotid artery of a large man. She walked over to the couch and noted there was some slight blood splatter. She went into the bathroom. The towels were unused, the maid’s fold was still the finishing touch on the new toilet paper roll, the soap was unopened, and none of the liquid amenities were touched. Most johns would wash after a tryst with a hooker. She looked one more time and noticed that, although the bath towels were folded and neat, there seemed to be one missing. She walked out and looked around again. She walked to the window and raised the shade but it snapped up all the way and spun on its roller. Outside the window was a fire escape ladder. A spot of blood was on the sill. Since the bed was made, she reasoned that Abrim didn’t die after having sex. Therefore, the argument must have happened before, in the negotiation phase. Brooke left the room, shutting the door.
Back at the club she approached the bar. There was a bartender in a Bruce Springsteen shirt, so she figured she could ask in English, “Is the boss in?”
“Are you meaning this boss? Or my boss?”
“Yours.”
“Over there by the DJ,” the bartender said.
Brooke approached the DJ booth and saw a man in a leather jacket who was barking orders at the DJ. “Excuse me! Do you speak English?”
“A little; how may I satisfy you?”
“Yes, you do only speak a little. I want to see your security tapes from the night of the Saudi murder three weeks ago.”
Then a voice came from behind her, “He doesn’t have them, we do.”
Brooke turned saying, “Who are…” but stopped when she saw Lustig. “Captain, I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Yet I fully expected to find you. Let’s get out of here.”
Back at FedPol H.Q., Captain Lustig had a technician cue up the surveillance tape from the club. The tech looked at the index sheet wrapped around the tape case and fast-forwarded to 11:23 p.m. on the time-code window, then hit play.
Lustig narrated the scene, “The first we see of Abrim is here, when he approaches the woman on the dance floor. It is obvious he is inviting her over to where he is sitting and from the look of it, she declines his invitation.” He put his hand on the machine operator’s shoulder and instructed, “Now go to the next time.”
The tech checked the next time noted on the sheet and shuttled in fast speed to that number.
“Here it’s a little hard to see because they are at a table in the upper part of the screen, but he comes to her while she is alone at the table and again she turns him down. Then we never see him again.”
The tech stops the tape. It freezes on the woman at the table. Brooke walks over to the screen. “What about her; you think this is the hooker?”
“Can’t say for sure. No one knows her; she is not a regular working girl. We think maybe she was the girlfriend of the geeky guy she was dancing with. They may be nothing more than tourists. Maybe when Abrim struck out with her, it was only then that he sought the company of a woman of the evening.”
“Maybe. Could you play the tape from here?”
“Abrim is gone. There’s nothing more,” Lustig said, his voice showing a tint of futility.
“Indulge me.” Brooke watched as the woman sat until the geeky guy returned with two drinks. A few seconds later she reached down into his lap and the geek reacted. Then they left.
“Let me see the dancing again.”
The tech rewound and ran the part of the tape where the girl and the geek were dancing. Brooke watched intently. She recognized the signs of the game; the geek was trying to impress her. She was ignoring him. To Brooke, the girl’s hair hung like a wig. She also noticed the geek’s eyes couldn’t be pried from the woman’s chest. “These two are not a couple; they aren’t on a date. This guy is strutting his stuff for her and she is ignoring him. He can’t keep his eyes off her chest. That’s not a couple who have had sex before. Plus, with the wig, I’m guessing she’s a hooker. She may not be our hooker, but she is definitely working this poor schmuck.”
“Are there any other angles? Outside the club?”
“No. This is all there is.”
“Do you have the testimony of all the witnesses?”
“Yes, transcripts.”
“May I see them?”
Lustig’s eyes got big. “All of them?”
“I have all night.”
Three hours later, Lustig yawned and came into the room where Brooke was poring over the transcripts with a Swiss policewoman, who really didn’t want to be there this late, translating.
“Read that back to me again,” Brooke said.
“About a minute later the big guy left. He went east on foot.”
“Okay and now go back up a few lines. What did the bouncer say about the couple?”
The policewoman yawned and flipped back through the sheets bound across the top. “‘Er…I had just let two guys in and then a blonde and a skinny guy walked out.’ Then the officer asks, ‘Did you see their faces?’ The doorman replies, ‘No they walked away from me.’”
Brooke slapped the table.
“What?” Lustig asked from the doorway as he was just entering the room.
“She may be our hooker. The way this reads, Abrim followed them out of the club, down the street to the hotel.”
“But the bouncer, as you called him, says he didn’t see their faces.” Lustig pointed at the transcript in the policewoman’s hand.
“Last night the doorman had a stanchion with a proof light and stamp pad to the left of the door. If he had just let someone in, he was behind that little podium and facing east with his back to the west like he was last night. So they went east as well, same direction as Abrim did a minute later, and for my money, right to the same hotel.”
“Are you saying the geek killed Abrim?”
“That skinny malink? He could never get the drop on a two-hundred-eighty-pound security guard, much less jam a broken bottle into his throat.”
“So what you are saying, Agent Burrell, is that Abrim follows them, has sex with both of them? Then doesn’t want to pay for the extras, so she calls her pimp, and he and Abrim get into a fight?”
“No that’s not it; the bed was untouched. No one had sex. It all came down before anything else happened. Did forensics match the blood on the couch and the blood on the sill?”
Lustig sighed. “Hold on; I can’t believe I am not home right now,” he muttered as he rifled through the reports looking for the blood-splatter analysis. “Here it is. The blood on the carpet and on the table legs was that of the victim. The blood on the couch was diluted with saliva and was not the victim’s, but matched the spot on the sill.”
“Okay, last question. Crime scene photos?”
Lustig pulled out the jacket on the bottom of the pile. He spread out the photos from the crime scene. Brooke scanned each one. She tapped the one where the towel was shown on the side of the couch. She then found a different angle from another photo.
“Do you have the towel in evidence?”
“Of course; and yes I have the forensics,” he said, anticipating her next request as he rifled through the paperwork and finally found the pages on the towel. “The bath towel was standard from the hotel laundry and was in the room when it was occupied. It was rolled up and did not have any blood on it, so it was deemed not to be crucial to the investigation.”
“Can we get that towel to the lab? I want a skin cell analysis.”
“First off, you are not a Swiss police officer. Second, it is eleven o’clock, and third, what is your suspicion?”
“The towel ended up behind the couch so it was protected from blood spray, but somehow it got rolled up and into the room. There was no sex, and as far as I can tell there was no use of the sink or bathroom, since it remained as housekeeping left it prior to the occupant’s entry, and the murder. So why the rolled towel?”
“What are you hoping to find from skin cells?”
�
��Tell me what you find, and I’ll tell you what I think.” With that, she got up, stretched, and headed for the door, “We’ll see tomorrow — morning, right?”
“You know, for a retired person you are very demanding.”
“You should have seen me when I was on active duty!” She smiled and left.
XXVIII. IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS
With Joey, Brooke and Parnell in Geneva and the Vatican now reluctantly on his side, Bill found no reason to stay in Paris. He was about to make the arrangements to go home when he had a better idea. “Mrs. Hiccock, do you have a free weekend?”
Janice was talking to him from the phone in their kitchen and smiled, “Well, you know I am pretty busy here with my husband away and all.”
“So then why don’t you call your mom, get her to mind Richie and jump on Air France Flight 891 to Paris leaving Dulles at 6:05 p.m. non-stop to the City of Lights. It’s all paid for, just show ’em your passport.”
“Well, I haven’t a thing to wear!”
“Don’t worry mademoiselle, that is why we have French clothes places here… in France.”
“Can’t stay on the phone much longer, ’cause I got to pack! I love you…”
“Love you too. See ya for breakfast, babe.” He hung up and smiled. He had made the right choice.
The God Particle Page 30
