Face of the Earth

by Doug Raber

  “Mission? Who’s sounding like a spy now?” With some difficulty, she managed a smile. “But you’re right. We’re one step closer to being able to make our case to Jennings.”

  As they waited for the bowls of Vietnamese noodle soup, Jake asked, “Does Charles know how tight our deadline is for getting an answer?”

  “Absolutely. The note I gave him said we had to have it by 8:00 this evening. I used the word ‘critical.’ Is it really possible for him to do the analysis that quickly? When I was in grad school, people used to take weeks to do a gene sequence.”

  “Things are a lot faster now. He’ll understand about the kinds of markers we’re after, and he’ll focus on that kind of information. And don’t forget, a lot of this is being done using mass spectrometry these days, rather than the old digestions followed by gel electrophoresis. So if you put that together with the GeneChip technology, a whole lot of data can be obtained in just a few minutes. Did you tell him how he should get us the information once he has it?”

  “I gave him an address for a Gmail account that my dad set up to communicate with me when this all started. The only time it’s been used was when my dad sent me a message, and I accessed it from the public library in Romney. So I think we can be pretty confident that it’s still secure. And it only has to stay secure long enough for us to get the results from Charles.”

  “That would be fine, except we don’t have a computer. And we sure as hell can’t go to your apartment to retrieve a message.”

  “Of course we have a computer. I have a laptop I got from the Post just before I went to Atlanta.”

  “I know. That’s exactly my point. Think about it, Sarah. They were waiting for you at the airport. They know who you are. If you use the laptop from the Post, they could probably trace it just like the cell phone. So we really don’t have a computer.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. But we do have money. Both cash and the prepaid credit card.”

  Sarah took out her notebook. “We need to make a list, Jake. Item number one is a new laptop. It has to be ready to go, with software and wireless Internet. We have to go shopping.”

  “Who do you think they were? The people who tried to stop you at the airport? They can’t be regular police. If our names had been on an alert list, Jennings would have known about it.”

  “Who else could it be? Shit, that’s a dumb question. They’ve got to be military, the Defense Department. And it would explain why Jennings was in the dark.”

  “It also gives the reason, Sarah. The military in Farmington wanted to keep the smallpox secret. They’re building a case against Iran, and they want to keep a lid on everything until they do. They’ve tried to cover up any data that could contradict them. Right now they’re trying to put a lid on us, to squash us with it.”

  “They started checking up on me right after I called your office last week. I didn’t get your voicemail. A woman answered instead.”

  “I’ve never had a receptionist, and before I left the office, I switched my phone so it would roll over directly to voicemail.”

  “Somebody wanted to monitor your incoming phone calls. That makes it seem like CDC was cooperating with the cover-up right from the start.”

  “It sounds that way. But it doesn’t sound like the people I know. They really screwed us over, and what happened has to be illegal.”

  “Where did it start, Jake? This Colonel Bradshaw you talked about?”

  “No, it had to have come from much higher up. Somebody in Washington. Do you remember those stories when the Quentin Walker, the Secretary of Defense, went through his Senate confirmation hearings? He’d been a congressman for a long time, and some of the senators were concerned that he always supported military requests, no matter what. What if people in the Defense Department were behind this? It could be the same ones who were so convinced that Iran was behind the Shiite insurgents during the Iraq war. The Secretary of Defense might be supporting them. And he has his own intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA. That would explain everything.”

  “It would say why they’ve been following me, but not how.”

  “Start with the phones. Couldn’t they have traced your call to my office back to your cell phone?”

  “I didn’t use my cell phone. In fact, I didn’t even use my office phone. I called from one of the conference rooms, so there was no direct link to me.”

  “But it still would have been a link to the Post, wouldn’t it?”

  “I guess so. The guy who Sue Parkinson thought was from the FBI came looking for me two days later. And there was the call to Charles! If they were checking phone numbers, that was probably it. The first time I called him, it was from my apartment, and I called his home number. The second time, I called his office at Emory, and I remember using the phone at my desk at the Post.”

  “There’s the link. They probably don’t have your actual conversations, but I’ll bet they have the phone records. Remember all that crap back in 2004, when the White House Counsel tried to get the Attorney General to approve warrantless wiretaps* when he was sick in the hospital?”

  “Only vaguely. But I think you’re right about the phone records. When I called Charles again, he basically hung up on me. Then he called me later at home, but he didn’t use his own phone. He used your line at the condo. He figured nobody would be watching that, since you were out of town.”

  “But it would have been in the records, wouldn’t it?”

  “Sure, but when I met him in Atlanta, I was careful to stay out of sight. We already were worried that someone might be watching the condo. My guess is that whoever these people are, they didn’t know about my relationship with you, at least not then. They probably were just freaked out that a reporter was nosing around.

  “Wouldn’t they have known about your trip to Atlanta?”

  “I don’t think so. I was on an official reporting trip to Tallahassee, and I just stopped off for a few hours in Atlanta. There shouldn’t be any record that I ever left the airport before flying on to Tallahassee. And another thing, Jake. I also sent you an e-mail last week when I couldn’t reach you by phone. It was short. It just asked, ‘where are you?’ But I didn’t get an answer.”

  “I never got that message.”

  “Then that’s one more piece of evidence that someone was monitoring your e-mail.”

  “Sounds like it. Okay, let’s go on the premise that they didn’t want you to learn anything about what was happening in Farmington. Were there any other phone calls?”

  “I don’t think so. I talked to my dad, but I didn’t mention anything about the outbreak. And before I came out here, I just sent my boss an e-mail saying that I was going biking for a few days. So there was no reason for anyone to suspect that I went to Farmington.”

  “What about your cell phones? You called your boss from Cortez before we left.”

  “Yeah, but that was with one of the phones in the fake name of Sarah Wallingford. How would they be able to make any connection to me?”

  “It’s the same phone I used to call Frank Wirth at CDC. Suppose they just started looking for coincidences? They could’ve been using a computer to do that.”

  “Shit. You’re right. If that’s the case, then they may have been trying to trace Sarah Wallingford. Even if they don’t know it’s me, that name now has links to the Post, to CDC, and to Cortez. Damn it! If they ever find Alvin Keeswood, he won’t be able to keep our trip to West Virginia a secret.”

  “We have to assume that they’ll find out about that, Sarah. If they start tracing stuff, they can show your photograph to the person who sold you the phones and to the airline clerks. They probably have surveillance videotapes from the airports.”

  “Then we can be pretty sure they’ll discover that Sarah Wallingford and Sarah Lockford are the same person. They’re both me. They’ve probably figured it out already.”

  “That’s right. It means we need to operate on the basis that these guys know we�
�re together and that we came back here from Farmington. It means they know that we can blow the lid off what they’re trying to cover up. We need to be careful, Sarah. This is really dangerous.”

  “No shit. I’ll bet it was my cell phone that let them track us after we left Jennings.”

  “The main thing is that you got away.”

  “Wait a minute … the photograph! I sent it to Jennings and to my boss using that cell phone.”

  “You said you deleted it.”

  “No, that’s not the point, Jake. They probably have our location when I made the calls, and they certainly know who I called. They probably know we’ve talked to Jennings.”

  “But they can’t be sure that Jennings actually met with us.”

  “Maybe not, but you can bet your ass that these guys will be watching for us when we go back to see Jennings tonight. We can’t use the truck.”

  “There’s another way, Sarah. His back yard is right on the edge of Little Falls Park, and there’s a bike path. We could go that way, and somebody watching the street would never know we were there. The bike trails go all the way to downtown Washington. All we need to do is ride across one of the bridges from Virginia.”

  “Okay, that’s item two for our list. You need a bike. And shoes, too. You’ll want something better than those hiking boots.”

  “This is really nuts, Sarah. The whole damn world is ready to come apart, and you’re making a shopping list. If it weren’t so serious, this would be pretty funny.”

  “Just trying to make sure we don’t forget anything. Don’t give me shit about it.”

  “Okay, sorry. At least you have enough cash. It might not be a good idea to use that credit card anymore. They may figure out that you used it to buy a ticket at the airport.”

  “Well, at least if they discover that, they’ll start looking for me in Cincinnati.” She paused and shook her head. “That’s just bullshit, isn’t it? They’re not going to be that stupid.”

  “Probably not. Look, we haven’t talked about it, but the biggest risk is that they may take it to the next level. They could name us as terrorists, just like they did with Jack Redhouse. They could have every law enforcement agency in the country looking for us.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s get going. We have to become completely invisible. After we get the things on your list, we have to ditch the truck and stay out of sight. And we have to hope that they don’t get to Jennings before we can give him our evidence.”

  * * *

  Day 33: Presentation

  The first stop for Sarah and Jake was a Best Buy. A sales clerk, just a kid, tried to help them by recommending models that could run all the latest high-end video games, but Sarah stopped him.

  “Hey, you may not believe it, but I’m not gonna play games with this. I’ll be using the word processor and the Web browser, but that’s about it. All I really need is a netbook with the software loaded and ready to go.”

  They spent a few more minutes haggling over which model would be best and convincing the kid that they really didn’t need a printer to go with it. Jake looked around at accessories, and he added two USB flash-memory drives to their order. Sarah completed the paperwork, using a name and address that she made up randomly, and she paid with cash. The cash brought a look of surprise, but it didn’t seem to pose any problem.

  “Okay, I just verified that it’s in stock. We should be able to have it ready for you to pick up by about four this afternoon.”

  Sarah responded in a carefully measured tone, “You didn’t understand before. I explained that we needed something that was ready to go. We’ve got a big project we’re working on, and we need to finish it this afternoon. Not tomorrow, not tonight. This afternoon.”

  “Geez, I’m sorry. But I don’t know if I can speed it up too much. It’s 1:30 now, and my boss always says that we should give the tech guys at least three hours to get something ready for a customer. The guy working there is a buddy, so maybe I could get him to cut that down to two hours. He’ll need at least that much time to charge up the battery for the first time.”

  “You still don’t understand. I need to get working on my project now, not later.”

  Sarah decided to improvise. “My desktop machine died this morning, and I was lucky enough that I backed up almost all of my work onto a flash drive before that happened. But I’m running out of time, and I’m going to get fired if I don’t finish this. So I need your help.”

  She reached for her wallet. “I’ll tell you what. Here’s $100. You can keep it for yourself or share it with your friend. It doesn’t matter to me. All you need to do is find a battery that’s already charged, and give the owner of that battery a brand new one. Whoever it is won’t mind. Then you can put the charged-up battery into my computer, hand me my computer, and everybody will be happy. Especially you and me.”

  The clerk’s puzzled look changed to a frown and then to a smile. “Yeah, I guess I could do that. I’ll have to split it with Jerry, but 50 bucks apiece is a pretty good deal. Hold on a minute, and I’ll be right back.”

  Sarah gave Jake a look that made it clear he shouldn’t say what he was thinking, and they just stood at the counter silently for several minutes watching the exchange between the sales clerk and his friend Jerry. Then the clerk gave them a cautious thumbs-up signal and turned to help his friend unpack a box. In less than five minutes he returned to the sales counter with the laptop.

  “You should be good to go. I’ve got the word processor up and running and I used my password to verify that the Internet browser works on our house Wi-Fi system. You’ll have to connect to another Wi-Fi network, but it means that you’ve got everything you asked for. And Jerry said this battery should last for at least two hours before you need to recharge it. You can see the icon down here that says it’s at 98 percent now.”

  Sarah and Jake let the clerk put everything into a shopping bag, and they walked out of the store. “I guess we made his day, Sarah. Even if he thinks we’re a couple of loonies.”

  At the far end of the strip mall, they pulled behind a dumpster, where Sarah tossed all the boxes and packaging.

  She put the laptop and charging unit into her small backpack, which now contained only the items they expected to need for the rest of the day. Everything else was in the large backpack stashed with Jake’s bag behind the driver’s seat of the truck. “Let’s head in the other direction, Jake. We have to get you a bike.”

  The young woman who helped them only asked for 15 minutes to get the bike ready. Jake found a pair of shoes in the right size, and Sarah had another suggestion. “We also need helmets, two of them. I lost mine at the airport. And it’ll be dark soon. Let’s get some sort of lights.”

  Sarah used the prepaid credit card in order to conserve their cash. They had talked more about it, deciding that even if someone could identify the purchase, it wasn’t like a computer that could be tracked electronically. She turned and whispered to Jake, “Do you think they might start watching the bike paths?”

  By the time they had paid for everything, the sales clerk was waiting by the door with the bicycle. “I hope you enjoy it. It’s a perfect day for a ride before winter hits. You’ve still got a couple of hours of daylight, and you made a good choice with those bike lights. The LED bulbs are great.”

  Jake put the new bike next to Sarah’s in the bed of the pickup. “Our shopping’s done. What now?”

  “Starbucks. They’re all over the place. We can get coffee and something to eat. And they have free Wi-Fi. We can keep the computer plugged in, so the battery will have a full charge.”

  “Let’s wait to check e-mail. I don’t like the idea of staying in one place for too long. Definitely not after we’ve logged on to a server that might give us away.”

  “You’re right, Jake, that wouldn’t be a good idea. I’ll work offline and write a draft of a story. Whatever happens tonight, it’s all going to come to a head by tomorrow, and I want to be prepared.
/>   “What about checking e-mail?”

  “Let’s wait until just before we head out to meet Jennings, We can drive around and piggyback onto a wireless network that isn’t password protected. I’ll also send my draft to Sue Parkinson. That way the Post will be ready to move when the time comes, and the paper will have the story even if something happens to us. It’s kind of insurance.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Sarah.”

  “I have to, Jake. We have to acknowledge that one or both …”

  “Not now! Just write the damn story.”

  They found a Starbucks near Seven Corners, about five miles from D.C. They hoped it was outside the area where people would be looking for them. Sarah began typing on the laptop, and Jake bought pastries and coffee.

  Jake read a copy of the New York Times, while he drank his coffee and listened to Sarah tapping away on her keyboard. After a while, he got them refills. By the time those were finished, he was getting impatient. “It’s 4:30, Sarah.”

  “Okay, I’m almost done. Give me another five minutes.”

  By 4:45 Jake was driving slowly through a residential neighborhood, while Sarah searched for available Wi-Fi connectivity. “Hold it, Jake. I think this is a live one.” As Jake pulled over to the curb, Sarah connected to a wireless network called “BillyBoy.” Whoever Billy was, Sarah thought that he shouldn’t mind helping his country, even though he’d never know what he’d done. First she checked her Gmail account, but there was nothing yet from Charles. It was still too early.

  “Is it safe to check my regular e-mail accounts?”

  “It should be. Even if they find a way to trace us, we’ll be long gone before they could link us to Billy and send anyone out here.”

  Sarah checked the other e-mail accounts, but there was nothing. She handed the laptop to Jake, who did a quick check of his e-mail accounts. “No messages. I was kind of hoping that I might find an update from Frank Wirth on the woman from Maryland, but I guess that was a little optimistic. Even if they’re not monitoring my account, he’d probably be reluctant to put anything onto an unsecured e-mail server. Okay, what next?”