Face of the Earth

by Doug Raber

  “Okay,” Sarah said. “Do you think you could get us to the Grant County Airport?”

  “I could. Not sure you’d want to do it, though. It would be expensive.”

  “Raymond told us to trust you. We’ll pay what you say is a fair price. We don’t have any choice.”

  Alvin turned to another page in his loose-leaf binder and pored over a table of data, writing down several numbers with his pencil. He had the curious habit of licking the end of his pencil, just like a character in an old movie. Then he furrowed his brow and began his explanation. “It’s about sixteen hundred miles. Normally, I’d charge between two-fifty and three dollars per mile. This one is more difficult, since I have to come back by myself. And also, we’d need to make stops.”

  “Stops?” asked Sarah.

  “We’re not flying an airliner here. My plane is a Cessna 172, a Skyhawk. It’s one of the best aircraft out there, and mine is only 30 years old.” Seeing the sudden look of concern on the faces of his visitors, he went on, “It’s in good shape. Best aircraft ever made. More 172s were made than any other plane in history. So it’s safe. And it’s reliable. It’ll go above 13,000 feet. That’s enough to clear all the mountains.”

  “How far can it go without stopping?”

  “It can cruise at about 140 miles an hour, depending on our tailwinds flying east. That’s 12 hours of flying time for the trip. Even if I could stay awake that long, it only carries enough fuel to go about 700 miles per leg. Maybe a little less with the extra weight. Can’t do it without two stops. One stop is too risky.”

  He paused and tapped his pencil on the desk. “Like I said, this is an expensive trip. Call it five thousand, and we’re all set.”

  “That would be fine, Mr. Keeswood.” She hesitated. “Would it be all right if we paid you in cash? This isn’t a good time for us to leave a paper trail.”

  A pause. “Cash would be fine. What do I call you? I’m Alvin, not mister.”

  This time it was Sarah who nodded. “Sarah.” She tilted her head to the right. “And Jake.”

  “All right, Sarah and Jake. If people are looking for you, we should get out of here. They’ve cleared the runway, so we can leave this afternoon. You stay here while I get the plane ready. You have any gear?”

  “It’s outside. Raymond let us use his pickup. He said we should leave it with you.”

  “Show me what you need to take on the plane. I’ll put Raymond’s truck someplace safe. Coffee’s fresh. Cups are over on the table.”

  * * *

  Day 31: Phone Home

  As soon as Alvin had left, Jake turned to Sarah. “I need to call in the information on the antiques dealer. You started to say something before about a cell phone.”

  Sarah reached into her small backpack that she’d been carrying with her, “Try this. I bought it with a fake name, so there’s no way anyone will trace it to us. You’re going to call the guy you work with in Atlanta?”

  “Yeah, Frank Wirth. I don’t know who else I can turn to right now.” Jake removed a business card from his wallet. “At least I have his cell number.”

  He keyed in the number and held the phone to his ear. “Frank? I’m glad I got through to you. This is Jake Overman. Can you talk for a minute? It’s important.”

  “Christ, Jake, where the hell are you? People around here are going nuts. They’re saying that you’re ill. That you’ve gone off the deep end. Your boss is furious that you’ve stopped providing updates. Just your message yesterday that the training exercise was going fine.”

  “Frank, it’s not a training exercise. It’s smallpox. There’s been an honest-to-God outbreak of smallpox in New Mexico.”

  “That’s what they’ve been saying, Jake. About you, I mean. That you’ve lost it. You were supposed to use the smallpox protocol to test our medical and emergency response. But Jake, it’s just chickenpox.”

  “Something strange is happening, Frank. I don’t know why, but it is. The military has taken over in Farmington. The area has been completely sealed for a week now. No communications except through the military. I was sending e-mail messages to Margaret Andrews every day with all the details, but I haven’t received a response.”

  “That’s not what Margaret told me. Jake, I repeat, she said that she hasn’t heard from you.”

  “Something is really wrong, Frank. There’s something you have to do, and it doesn’t matter if you think I’m crazy. Take down this name … call it an anonymous report if you have to. Okay … ready? Danielle Brandis. She’s an antiques dealer from Catonsville, Maryland. It’s just a few miles from Baltimore. She was exposed to Variola major about 10 days ago.”

  For a few seconds, Jake held the phone away from his ear, unwilling to listen to what Frank was saying. “It doesn’t matter whether I’m wacko, Frank. You have to follow up on this and follow up right away. An outbreak in a city like Baltimore with an international airport could cost a million lives before it’s over. Even if you think I’m lying, you have to do this. Even if it kills our friendship forever. Do it Frank. I’m begging you.”

  “I’ll have to see, Jake. This is really outside of channels.”

  Jake used every ounce of his energy to keep from screaming at his colleague. Very softly, he said, “Frank, are you willing to risk people dying—people like your wife and children—because you think I might be wrong? I’ll be in touch.”

  Jake had begun to put down the phone, but he stopped. “Oh, and one last thing, Frank. If you can find this Danielle Brandis, and you realize that I’m right? Get somebody in my lab to do a complete gene sequence. Don’t fuck around with it. Just get it done as fast as it can possibly be done.” And with that, Jake broke the connection.

  Shaking, Jake handed the phone back to Sarah, but she declined. “No, you keep that one. I’ve got more. Right now, I think I need to do the same thing you just did and call my editor. I’m missing in action, too.”

  Sarah took out the other two cell phones that were in the name of Sarah Wallingford. In response to Jake’s astonished look, she said, “That’s all of them—except for the one that’s in my real name, and I can’t use that unless we want them to find us before we get back to Washington. Oh, yeah—and there’s also another one in a different fake name that I used to call my dad. It wouldn’t be good to use that one either.” After some thought, she changed her mind and put both phones back into her pack.

  “Maybe it would be a good idea to save this other one, Jake. It’s never been used. You keep it, and I’ll call my boss with the same phone you just used.”

  The phone rang twice at the other end before Sue Parkinson answered. “Sue, it’s Sarah.”

  “It’s about time you called. We were beginning to get worried about you. I hope you’ve enjoyed your biking, but there’s work to be done here. Newspapers don’t run by themselves.”

  “Sue, just let me talk for a bit. This will be hard for you to believe, but what I’m going to tell you is the absolute truth. I haven’t been biking. I’ve been working on a story—a big one. There’s been an outbreak of smallpox in Farmington, New Mexico. The entire thing has been covered up, and all communications in and out of the area are blocked. It’s being treated as a terrorist attack, but I have evidence that it isn’t. I need to get you that evidence, but I can’t do it yet.”

  “Sarah, have you been drinking? Where are you?”

  “This is real, Sue. It isn’t a joke, and I haven’t lost my mind. I’m going to need your help.”

  “Sarah, we can’t do something like this over the phone. Just come into the office, and we’ll sit down and discuss everything. If you really have the makings of a story, we’ll go from there.”

  “This is the real deal, and I will tell you everything. But I can’t come in now, not yet. I know it sounds paranoid, but there are people trying to stop me. I’m scared. And I’m running. But it’s too important to let it go. Give me another day. Maybe two. If I’m right, this will do for us what Watergate did 40 years ago. I�
��m going to need your support on this, Sue. We’ll get pressure from the government, probably from the Defense Department. Or maybe one of the security agencies. And we’ll probably need legal help. But I’m right on this. I’ve got to go. I’ll be in touch.”

  Without waiting for a response, Sarah ended the call and turned off the phone. Even though the wood stove had kept the temperature inside Alvin’s office comfortably warm, she shuddered when she realized just how much she and Jake were out in the cold.

  * * *

  Chapter 27

  Intelligence

  Offensive CI operations … are clandestine CI activities run in support of DOD military national security objectives and programs against individuals known or suspected to be foreign intelligence officers with connections to foreign intelligence or international terrorist activities.

  —response to a question at a DIA press conference about counterintelligence activities‡

  Day 31: Tightening the Net

  “Grab a chair, Parsons. I’d like an update on anything you’ve learned on the domestic front. Have there been any more attempts to breach security at CDC?”

  “No, sir. Just a few incoming phone calls to people who were sent to New Mexico. We checked them all out, and there’s nothing there. One was from an old boyfriend. When he couldn’t get through, he didn’t even ask where she was. Guess he just figured he’d look elsewhere if he wanted to get laid that night. There was also a call from another guy’s former girlfriend—actually, maybe not so much former as current. The trouble is the guy’s married. We had to follow up, and I think the wife figured out what’s going on. Apparently, she was really pissed. Poor guy’s gonna be in trouble when he gets back to Atlanta. He’ll probably wish he’d managed to catch smallpox out in Farmington. At least that would’ve bought him some sympathy.”

  “What about the girl? The reporter.” Zaborsky really wasn’t interested in the gossip.

  “Nothing at all. We haven’t seen her since Monday. The lookout we posted outside her apartment building saw someone fitting her description leave the parking garage on Sunday afternoon. But it wasn’t her car. He got the license plate, and it belongs to her next door neighbor.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Not right away. We didn’t want to spook her. When there was still no sign of her by yesterday afternoon, we paid the neighbor a visit when he got home from work. We used the same trick with our badges. He actually asked why the FBI was interested before we got to plant the suggestion.”

  “And …”

  “Well, first off, I think she must have noticed our guy. She told the neighbor she was trying to avoid an old boyfriend. Said she’d noticed him outside the apartment building and asked if she could borrow the neighbor’s car to dodge the boyfriend. Said she needed to go to Richmond for the night.”

  “She’s friends with this neighbor? But she lied to him. If she spotted your man, she knew it wasn’t an old boyfriend. She’s up to something.”

  “Maybe, but we don’t know what. She was back the next day. We saw lights in her apartment Monday night. The neighbor confirmed it. Said he ran into her in the hallway.”

  “And you haven’t seen her since? That was three days ago.”

  “No, she seems to be gone. But it fits. Early Tuesday morning, the lookout thought he saw her ride out of the garage on a bicycle. She got onto the bike path that heads toward National Airport, so he phoned his partner. The partner drove down the GW Parkway toward the airport, and he saw someone fitting the description—woman on a bike, carrying a backpack, same blue jacket. She rode right on past the airport.”

  “You didn’t try to stop her?”

  “We couldn’t get to her. The bike path is on the other side of the parkway. But our man saw her stop and talk to a guy on a bike. We thought maybe she was meeting a contact. So our man made a U-turn and talked to this other biker.”

  “And …?”

  “Nada. Guy was just a tourist out for a morning ride, and he stopped the woman to ask directions. We checked him out, and we don’t think he was bullshitting us. He never got to do any sightseeing, though. Not after all the time he spent talking with us. But he won’t complain. He thinks he was helping the FBI work a bank robbery case.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “Like I said, our man couldn’t follow her any farther. He had to focus on the guy she talked with. She was headed down toward Alexandria, and that path goes all the way to Mount Vernon.”

  “What does Mount Vernon have to do with it?”

  “Nothing direct. But the neighbor said when he saw her on Monday, she had new camping gear she just bought. He asked her, and she said she was going to go on a bike trip for a couple of days, somewhere out in the country. It fits. The weather was good, and the person riding the bike was heading out of town with a big pack. If she’d been trying to go somewhere in a hurry, she would have taken a plane. But she just cruised right on past the airport. We think she’s on a little vacation.”

  “I don’t like it, Parsons. We know she’s up to something. She’s a fucking reporter, for Christ’s sake. This is the only security breach we have, and it could be a real problem for us if she finds a way to contact this guy Overman in New Mexico.”

  “I don’t think she’ll be able to do that, sir. I followed up with Colonel Bradshaw in Farmington like you asked. He said they’ll keep tabs on Overman. If she tries to contact him, we’ll know about it. Bradshaw is monitoring the secure phone lines out there, and we’re getting all the e-mail traffic here.”

  “It’s time to ramp this up another level. I want everything on this reporter tracked—cell phone, land line, e-mail—all of it. We’re talking national security and terrorism here, so get the telecom companies to do full monitoring. And not just lists of phone numbers. I want full transcripts of anything she sends or receives. If anybody gives you trouble, I’ll get you whatever signature authority you need. I’ll sign it, or I’ll go to Under Secretary Edwards or the Secretary of Defense. We’ll go right to the fucking Vice President if we need to, so make sure they know that.”

  Parsons stood up to leave.

  “One more thing, Parsons. We need to talk to this reporter. Next time you find out where she is? Don’t fuck around. Take her.”

  * * *

  Day 31: Local Service

  “What is it Parsons? I’m pretty busy right now.”

  “Sorry, Colonel, but I thought you’d want to know. We’ve got active wiretaps on both of the woman’s phones, her home phone and her cell. No traffic yet, but as soon as she uses her phone, we’ll be listening. I’ve got two people on it at all times. Since you bumped this up to an official antiterrorism action, we’ve been able to get a lot more resources on it. Nobody but me knows why, though. They all think we’re following up on some kind of Al Qaeda thing. Just like you told me.”

  “What about her office phone? Edwards signed off on all of this, but we only have seven days. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act* requires us to get concurrence by the DNI and the Attorney General after that. Edwards says we’re lucky we’ve got a whole week. Before they amended FISA in 2008, those numbnuts in Congress used to think we only needed three days before we had to follow all the legal procedures.”

  “We’ve got her office phone covered, too. Your buddy Atkinson over at the National Security Administration is handling that. NSA has computers that scan everything. So we just picked out some keywords, like her name, Farmington, smallpox. You get the idea. If they get any hits, they’ll have someone listen to the conversation. If there’s something of interest, they’ll send us a transcript.”

  “Make sure you stay in touch with Atkinson. Just you. If this operation goes south, I don’t want anybody else to know what we’ve been doing. Are all of your people okay with doing the things you’ve asked of them?”

  “Yes sir, Colonel. These guys are solid. They’re all contractors, just like me. All ex-military, so they know how to take orders without asking q
uestions. Every last one would like to crack a few heads, but they understand that they probably won’t get the chance.”

  “Okay, Parsons. I want to be notified of any developments. Anything at all.”

  Parsons left Zaborsky’s office and returned to his office by the cluster of cubicles his group occupied. Overall, he thought this was turning into a pretty good gig. Not as boring as usual. And if he caught up with this woman, it might get a whole lot more interesting. He’d seen her picture, and he thought she wasn’t too bad. Not exactly hot, but definitely fuckable. Talking to her—getting some information out of her—that could be kind of fun.

  Parsons signaled his team leaders to join him. “Give me an update. Anything on the Lockford phones?” He’d already checked his desk, and there was nothing from NSA about any calls at the Post.

  Jimmy Tarkington and Pete Harkness pulled their chairs up close to Parsons’ desk in the cramped office. After they reported that there had been no telephone activity, Parsons gave them their instructions. “Look guys, it’s Friday afternoon, and I don’t think we’re likely to hear much more today. So wait until 1800 hours, and then send your people home for the night. I want them fresh in the morning, and they should all be happy that they’ll be getting lots of overtime this weekend. Both of you need to stay on alert in case I have to call you. And make absolutely sure that you each have an unmarked car ready to go. If anything goes down, we need to move quick. Zaborsky is getting nervous.”

  In just a few minutes, all the cubicles were empty. One of them, occupied all day by the newest and lowest ranking member of the group, still had the Post-it note affixed to the bottom corner of the computer monitor.

  To: D. Parsons

  From: A. Cummings

  Re: MSA—pls call H. Atkinson about your leak

  Cummings had received his discharge papers only a few weeks before, and he was excited with this new job as a contractor for DIA. Growing up in Las Vegas, he had driven past MSA Engineering on countless occasions. They did electrical and plumbing, and the incoming message had triggered that memory. It never occurred to him that he was thinking of a business located more than a thousand miles away. In addition, he had heard the first letter incorrectly—it was NSA, not MSA.