Replaceable: An Alan Lamb Thriller

by Bouchard, J. W.

  “Don’t waste your time, Lucy. There’s nothing there to find.”

  “There has to be. He’s the one that started this thing. He’s been leaving us clues. Leaving us in the dark now would be…cheating.”

  “He’s the bad guy. He doesn’t have to play fair.”

  But so far he has, Alan thought. At least to some extent. He’s never left us completely in the dark. There’s always been one more clue. He’s always left us one more breadcrumb to follow. Why change the rules now?

  “You said yourself that he enjoys playing the game,” Lucy said. “He’s always been ahead of us. I don’t think he’d stoop to cheating. Not in a game he created.”

  Lucy read the words typed on the paper out loud. Twice.

  “You did not know where to look, and so you missed all that was important. He’s basically telling us that the answer is there, we just aren’t looking in the right place. We just aren’t seeing it.” The printout of A Case of Identity was still on her desk, resting under the note from Morrie Arti. “Oh my God! It’s been here the whole time and I didn’t even notice!”

  “What?”

  “Morrie Arti.”

  “Huh?”

  “His name. Morrie Arti. Don’t you see, it makes perfect sense!”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Morrie Arti. That’s why he left us the Sherlock Holmes story. I can’t believe I was so stupid. Don’t you get it? In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Moriarty was Sherlock Holmes’s archenemy. His nemesis. Moriarty was the greatest criminal mastermind to have ever lived.”

  Alan wasn’t a fan of Sherlock Holmes. Had never read the stories, except maybe in high school, when his English teacher had made the entire class read The Hound of the Baskervilles. Alan had seen the movies though, the recent one and its sequel starring Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law as his faithful sidekick, Dr. Watson. He remembered Moriarty from the movies. Now that Lucy had pointed it out, Alan couldn’t believe that he had missed the correlation, either.

  “You’re right,” Alan said.

  He read the note over again.

  Where’s the clue? We made the leap – or Lucy did at least –but that still doesn’t tell us anything.

  “We missed something,” Lucy said. “That’s what he’s telling us. It has to be the name.”

  “We know what the name stands for now, but I don’t see how that’s a clue. And why the misspelling? Why didn’t he spell it the way it is in the stories?”

  “Because the name is the clue. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He basically spelled it all out for us. We didn’t know where to look, so we missed the important thing, and then he put the name. Morrie. Arti. I think he spelled it differently for a reason. Maybe it’s an anagram. Look.”

  Lucy grabbed a pen from a dozen that were crowded together in a wire-mesh cup perched on her desk. She wrote all the letters down, leaving an ample amount of space between each of them.

  M O R R I E A R T I.

  “Now we just scramble them around and see if we can spell something else,” Lucy said.

  They both stared at the letters.

  Alan tried different letter combinations in his mind, trying to spell out different words.

  R I T E

  I M R O A R

  I M R A T

  “I’m rat?”

  “This is harder than it looks.”

  “Tame…”

  “More…”

  “…meat…”

  “…Oreo…”

  “…tire…”

  “…more…”

  “Rome. R-O-M-E. That spells Rome.”

  “It’s a place,” Alan said. “That’s something.”

  “That leaves the letters R-I-A-R-T-I.”

  “…tar…”

  “A-I-R.”

  “Air.”

  “Rome and air. But that leaves R-T-I, and that doesn’t mean anything.”

  Alan scrutinized the remaining three letters.

  Rome Air, he thought.

  R-T-I.

  I-R-T.

  “That’s it!”

  “What?”

  “I.R.T. International Rome Travel. Rome Air. Rome Airways. That’s an airline company.”

  “You think?”

  Alan nodded.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Lucy said.

  “You probably wouldn’t have a reason to. They only fly out of New York. New York to Rome.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “I thought about going there once.”

  “Do you think that’s it?”

  “It has to be. A clue isn’t any good if it’s too hard to figure out.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I’m going to talk to Gant. You get on the horn to JFK.”

  “What do I say?”

  “Tell them someone is planning to blow up one of their planes.”

  Chapter 20

  Gant hadn’t been thrilled with the idea of disrupting the operations of the sixth busiest airport in the United States, but he had made the call based on Alan’s insistence that there was a credible threat.

  “I hope this doesn’t turn out to be like the post office fiasco,” Gant had said.

  “I actually hope it does,” Alan said. “In fact, I hope I’m completely wrong about this. But I don’t think I am.”

  Alan didn’t bother arguing that the post office in San Francisco hadn’t been a complete waste of time. Confiscating the contents of Graham McKay’s P.O. Box was what had led them to the letter addressed to Alan, which in turn had led them to the clue regarding Rome Airways.

  “Promise me one thing. If this turns out to be another bust, you’ll drop it after this? I know you’re operating under the hunch that this guy is going to keep going, but we can only chase so many dead ends. You at least have to entertain the idea that it’s over.”

  “If this doesn’t amount to anything, I’ll leave it alone. I’ll start catching cases again.”

  Gant had nodded and made the telephone call to Homeland Security, which became the first step in creating a large spectacle that would either save lives or leave a lot of government officials scrambling to save face. Either way, there were going to be a lot of disgruntled airline passengers.

  That had been an hour ago.

  Alan was getting ready to leave the office on a flight out of Eppley to LaGuardia. Rome Airways provided a single daily flight from New York’s JFK to Fiumicino-Leonardo da Vinci International Airport. It departed at 10:00 A.M. seven days a week. It was now 1:00 P.M. Central time, making it 2:00 P.M. in New York, which meant today’s flight had already departed and was probably flying somewhere over the Atlantic by now. So far, no problems had been reported, leading Alan to believe that Morrie Arti had been courteous enough to leave them time to discover the clue he had left as well as the necessary time to solve it.

  “What if it’s a trap?” Lucy asked as Alan was gathering his things and getting ready to head out.

  “A trap for who?”

  “You. He’s singling you out. What if he’s trying to trick you.”

  “That hasn’t been his M.O. so far.”

  “It hasn’t been his M.O. to give us clues ahead of time, either,” Lucy said. Why is he doing it this time.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe this is his endgame. Maybe we’re wrong. There’s no use in speculating.”

  Alan was being disingenuous and he knew it. He had done plenty of speculating of his own, and was fully aware that he didn’t know what he would be walking into. He had never been an overt risk taker, had never been a gambler, and he was prone to exercising due caution, but he had to admit to feeling a little anxious. Something about this was different. He hadn’t been lying to Lucy when he told her this could be the endgame. Because that was exactly what it felt like: that Morrie Arti’s game was approaching its conclusion. He was winding things down and orchestrating the fall of Graham McKay had only been a small part of that. He didn’t think their man would
scurry off into the night. No. He would want to go out on a high note. Every high stakes game had to have a grand finale.

  And Alan wanted to be around when that happened. He wanted this man for a number of reasons, simple curiosity among them. He wanted to know who he had been dealing with. It wasn’t every day that he was confronted with an enemy that was as clever as Morrie Arti had turned out to be.

  “Call me when you get to the hotel, would you?” Lucy asked. “Just so I know you made it there.”

  “You got it, Mom.”

  Lucy looked troubled. She didn’t say another word as she watched him walk through the bullpen and into the elevator.

  Alan spent a good deal of the flight to New York trying to imagine what the man’s face would look like. It was wishful thinking. He didn’t really believe that Morrie Arti would be waiting for him, but it was something to hold onto. It was Lucy’s assumption that Morri Arti had singled Alan out, that in a game that they had believed to consist of many players, all it really came down to was two men: Alan and his nemesis. Deep down, Alan thought the man might be as curious about Alan as Alan was about him.

  Regardless of how hard he tried, Alan wasn’t able to put a face to the man with the fake name. The best his mind could do was to offer up an image of someone wearing a mask. A white mask with a huge fake smile plastered across the bottom of it. It reminded him of the Comedy/Tragedy masks often used to represent the theater. The big fake smile somehow implied that Morrie Arti was smarter than them; that he would always remain one step ahead of the stooges that chased him. And he knew it.

  Morrie Arti. Moriarty.

  Of all the agencies involved, of all the individuals working the case, the man had singled Alan out; had left a letter with his name on it.

  Why him? Alan didn’t have a clue. It meant, of course, that Good Ole Morrie was following the investigation closely. Almost too closely. Alan wasn’t surprised the man was keeping score. He had been dropping clues all along the way to keep his opponents from abandoning the chase, but that he had chosen Alan specifically…

  The game’s afoot.

  Had he personally selected Alan to play the role of Sherlock Holmes for this particular game of cat and mouse? Alan didn’t think he was too shabby of an investigator, but no one had compared him to Sherlock Holmes. Although he prided himself on being shrewd when it came to the nuances of human behavior, no one had ever accused him of being a genius when it came to deductive reasoning.

  There was the familiar jerk of the landing gear falling into place. Alan let the wheel of faces spin over in his mind. This mental slideshow began with the face of Howard Sitka and flicked through the other faces, of the victims/suspects, remembering Deputy Defries, Detective Weathers – recalling all of them. Frank Knowles, Graham McKay, and the mystery man, Darrow.

  Darrow. He had meant to follow up on the spook, but that had taken a back seat once they had focused on McKay as their prime suspect. He hadn’t heard anything from Darrow since they had spoken in the casino.

  He pulled out his wallet and dug into the card holder. He shuffled through the dozen or so business cards that had accumulated there during the course of the last week. He found Darrow’s tucked into the stack behind the card Lucy had given him for her psychic friend. Only Darrow’s wasn’t really a business card at all. Just a blank rectangle of heavy stock paper with a phone number written on it in blue ink.

  Alan pulled out his cell phone. It was still on Airplane Mode. Maybe he would give Darrow a call once he landed. He wasn’t sure what force motivated him, but the urge was a strong one. Alan put his phone away and stuck the business cards back into his wallet for safekeeping.

  He felt tired again. Despite having gotten some sleep the night before, he still felt weary with exhaustion.

  But there wasn’t time to be tired. The endgame was coming. Alan was sure of it. The mastermind of this game had made Alan a major player; had thrown down the gauntlet and challenged him to an old-fashioned game of wits.

  And Alan was determined to win.

  Chapter 21

  Alan had taken a cab to the Holiday Inn Express, thrown his suitcase on top of the bed, and then gone into the cramped hotel bathroom to splash cold water onto his face. If there had ever been a time when he felt like embracing sleep, this was it. But there was no time.

  After he had freshened up, he made the trip over to JFK and met with the task force that had been assembled after Gant had informed the head of Homeland Security of the credible threat they had received regarding a possible terrorist attack on one of the airlines.

  The task force met in a cramped conference room. It was sparsely furnished. The walls were lined with whiteboards. An analog clock hung high on the wall.

  Besides Alan, four other men occupied the room.

  Alvin Harper and Fred Hegge from the Department of Homeland Security; Marshall Evans, head supervisor for the TSA at JFK; Les Tetrault, Air Marshall; and Orin Wiens, General Manager of JFK.

  Alan could feel the gaze of the other men on him. This was his ballgame. Reluctantly, he stood up and addressed the other men in the room.

  This is exactly why I’ve never been interested in being an administrator. Public speaking has never been my strong suit.

  He began the briefing. He broke down everything they had so far, including the other three bombings, if only to convey the message that the threat was real.

  When he was finished, Orin Wiens said, “And you’re certain the Rome Airways flight is the terrorist’s primary target?”

  Alan nodded. “That’s what the evidence suggests.”

  “I’ll be on it,” Tetrault said.

  “Like hell you will,” Wiens said. “There isn’t going to be any flight. We’ll cancel it.”

  Alan said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Fred Hegge was in his late forties and completely bald. The dome of his head reflected the overhead fluorescents. When he stood up, he was taller than Alan had expected. “Because if they’re hellbent on getting a bomb on a plane,” Hegge said, “they won’t stop because you cancel one flight. They’ll just find a different plane. At least this way we know the specific plane they’re targeting.”

  “And,” Alan said, “we want to catch these guys. This is our best chance to do that. It might be our only one. For once, we know where they’re going to be ahead of time.”

  “Because they told you,” Wiens said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but do the bad guys normally let you know in advance where and when they’re going to attack?”

  “Nothing’s a hundred percent certain. I’m not going to speculate as to why we’ve been given this information. For all we know, they’re overly confident in their ability to succeed in their mission. Maybe they’re throwing us a bone because they don’t think they can get caught. It doesn’t matter. We know where they’re going to be, we have to act on it. What we don’t know is who we’re looking for. Based on the details of the previous crimes that have taken place, it will likely be someone you know. Most likely an employee.”

  “Do you know how many people work here?” Wiens asked. “Even with that information, it’s still like searching for a needle in a haystack.”

  “I’ll brief my men,” Evans said. “They’ll be hyper vigilant for anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Don’t,” Alan said.

  “Don’t?”

  “That’s exactly the thing I don’t want you to do. The perpetrator could be one of your men,” Alan said. “I’m not saying it is, but it could be. It could be anyone.”

  Alan looked around at the roomful of doubtful faces.

  One of these men could be in on it, Alan thought, but didn’t say it out loud. If Morrie Arti’s motive is to instill paranoia, then it’s working.

  “So what then? We’re supposed to sit on our hands?”

  “No. We’re going to be proactive, but we’re going to do it without sounding the alarm. Rome Airways departs at te
n o’clock tomorrow morning, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I want you to do everything the way you would do it any other day. Board the passengers as usual.” Alan glanced at the Air Marshall. “Tetrault, you’ll be on board the plane. Keep your eyes open for anyone suspicious.”

  “And what if we get everyone on board and nothing’s out of the ordinary?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Alan said.

  His answer didn’t sit well with the others. He didn’t like it much himself, but he was thinking that this was the endgame. If they didn’t catch their man this time, they might not get another chance.

  “That’s wonderful,” Wiens said, slapping his hand down on the table. “You don’t want me to issue any alerts. You want me to put passengers on a flight that, according to your information, has been targeted for a terrorist attack. And then what? You want me to have it take off and risk it blowing up halfway across the Atlantic?”

  “If we have to, we’ll cancel it. But that’s the last resort. Say there’s a mechanical issue if you have to. In each of the related cases, someone that worked for the company perpetrated the crime. They were all employees, including top ranking officers. They were able to pull it off without raising suspicion because they were all above suspicion. That’s been the game so far. There’s no reason to believe it would change now.”

  “What are you thinking?” Tetrault asked. He was leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. His hair was starting to gray, but he looked formidable enough. “What’s the reasoning behind them providing you the intel?”

  “I’m not sure. My guess is that they’re getting cocky. They’ve managed to get past us so far, and they don’t think it’s possible to get caught. Pointing us in the right direction amps up the risk level. They’re trying to make a statement.”

  “Which is?” Wiens asked.

  “That they’re smarter than we are.”

  His cell phone rang around nine-thirty that evening. By that time, Alan had showered, shaved, and was sprawled out on the bed with the hotel TV playing in the background as he went over everything in his head. He couldn’t stifle the feeling that they were putting all their eggs in one basket. If they had been correct in deciphering Morrie Arti’s message, then the target was the single flight that departed JFK daily at 10:00 A.M. and landed in Rome eight hours later. Everything hinged on the assumption that they had interpreted the clue correctly. But even assuming that, the clue hadn’t provided a timeline. It could happen tomorrow or it could happen a month from now. That it hadn’t occurred on the day Alan had been given the letter meant that Morrie Arti had purposely given them enough time to decode the message. Alan kept coming back to the Sherlock Holmes story that the man had left for them on one of the confiscated computer hard drives. It had provided a clue just as he had known it would, but there hadn’t been a bomb. It was simply a clue that had led to another clue.