Mortal Fear m-1

by Greg Iles

  On the night before my father and I were to leave, I spoke out at the dinner table. In my best attempt at his dialect, I humbly asked the Thug for his daughter’s hand in marriage. He opened his stinking mouth and belly-laughed in my face. I was humiliated, blinded by rage and embarrassment. But of course Richard knew exactly what to do. With a bemused smile he removed a leather case from his robe, laid a thousand British pounds on the table, and told the fat man he wanted the girl for me. The Thug snapped up the money and agreed without demur. At first I did not understand. I thought some exorbitant fee for sex had been arranged. But just as I was about to make a fool of myself, the situation became clear. My father had bought the girl outright. Not for the night, but for life.

  ERIN› You mean like a _slave_?

  MAXWELL› Exactly. The Thug had sold his daughter for two thousand dollars. I had no idea how she would react to this arrangement, but when we departed the next morning, she fell in behind us with a cotton bag hanging from her hand.

  A fortnight later, waiting in the Delhi airport for the first leg of our flight home, my father collapsed. At fifty-five he had already outlived most hemophiliacs of his generation, and the strain of the journey had finally caused a terminal bleeding incident. I married the Thuggee’s daughter to gain her U.S. citizenship. At the ceremony I told an Indian magistrate that her name was Kali, and no one objected. Kali I have called her to this day. We watched over Richard as he died, then spread his ashes over the Ganges and took the next plane out of the country.

  This is my early life, Erin. The seed of my becoming. My strengths I have passed over in silence. Kali remains with me still, as my concubine. Understanding that I could never bear children by her, she allowed me to sterilize her. In this pure form she has purged the lust from my body, watched over me, held my subconscious at bay while assisting in my life’s work.

  How do you judge me, Erin?

  A dozen loose ends from Miles’s recitation of the EROS murder scenes begin clicking into place: the Indian hair; the possibly female bite mark; the postmortem rapes, brutal fallout from Brahma’s dead mother fixation; even Mrs. Lenz’s death, which must have been carried out by Kali while Brahma led the FBI around McLean with his cellular phone.

  MAXWELL› Are you there, Erin?

  ERIN› You lied to me, Max.

  MAXWELL› How did I lie?

  ERIN› You told me you’d never been married. But you married Kali. You’re still married to her.

  MAXWELL› Only as a convenience! To gain her entrance into the U.S.

  ERIN› It’s obviously more than that.

  MAXWELL› It was the only thing I could do under the circumstances. Just as you did when you married!

  ERIN› I know. Just don’t lie anymore, okay?

  In the silence that follows, I realize that I have put myself into a position where action is a necessity but options are few. No matter what my gut says, I have no guarantee that the tale of Richard and Kali and the rest is anything but the delusion of a madman. Brahma seems to be wrapped around “Erin’s” finger, but what is the value of that? He’s already proved that he can evade telephone traces. How can I use our strange relationship to stop him? Try the Lenz gambit? Set up a meeting and inform the FBI so that Hostage Rescue can try to ambush him? It sounds workable, until I factor the debacles in Dallas and McLean into the equation.

  Like it or not, I have only one trump card to play, and it was dealt by Miles Turner.

  The Trojan Horse.

  The 3.5-inch disk that contains it lies just to the right of my keyboard. Inside that black plastic, painstakingly woven into a graphic file that can be decompressed into the stunning photograph of Erin holding the chalice, are a few lines of code that Miles designed to stop Brahma as surely as a stake through the heart. I don’t know exactly how they can do that, but I don’t have to know. In matters digital I trust Miles absolutely.

  The risk of sending Brahma that photo of Erin-though theoretically almost nil-inflates a large and corrosive bubble beneath my diaphragm. But my choices are few. And the stakes have been life and death for a long time now.

  ERIN› Are you there, Max? Jesus, I didn’t realize the time. This is my husband’s afternoon off. He could get home any minute. I had a gift for you, something I thought you’d like. But I guess it will have to wait.

  MAXWELL› What is this gift you speak of?

  ERIN› A photograph of myself. For you. I told you I’d been looking for someone here. And I wanted to be ready if I found him. And you seem to think I have. What I told you is true. The truly transcendent aspect of my existence is my beauty. I know that. A famous writer once asked me a question he said I wouldn’t accept at face value, but one that was born from honest curiosity. The question was, What does it feel like to inhabit such a beautiful body? And the thing I tried to make him understand is that I don’t _inhabit_ my body. I AM my body. And I want to give that as a gift to you. As a beginning. I may not be as fair-skinned as your mother, but I know I’m fairer than your Indian girl. _Much_ fairer. Maybe I’m too vain, but right now it seems the only thing I can give you to match what you’ve given me.

  MAXWELL› How can you give this photograph to me?

  ERIN› I have it on a disk. In a special kind of file. A JPEG file.

  MAXWELL› You know how to encode and transmit a JPEG file?

  ERIN› I do now. A friend showed me how. She scanned my photo with a hand scanner. The quality of the image isn’t that great, but the photo itself I like. If you want to see it, we’ve got to do it right now, though, or else wait until at least tomorrow.

  MAXWELL› I wish very much to see it. Let me give you my e-mail address.

  ERIN› Can’t I just send it to Maxwell?

  MAXWELL› No. Send it to Q69@nowhere.hel.fi-do you have that?

  ERIN› I’m printing my screen. Where’s that? It’s not an EROS address.

  MAXWELL› It’s in Finland. I’ll get it, though.

  ERIN› Well if you don’t, assume that my husband got home. Don’t try to contact me. No e-mail or anything. I’ll try again the next chance I get.

  MAXWELL› Perhaps tonight?

  ERIN› I doubt it. What you told me is a lot to absorb. You must know that.

  MAXWELL› I have faith in you.

  ERIN› Remember one thing, Max. I’m worthy of my Dark Prince. After you’ve seen my photograph, you’ll know that. The next question is, are you worthy of me?

  MAXWELL› You still have no idea whom you are talking to. You’re like the desert traveler who stooped to touch a glimmer of gold in the sand. When he tried to pick it up, he found it would not move. Only when tons of earth-moving equipment had been hauled in did he realize that he had touched the finger of an enormous golden Buddha buried in the sand. That is what you have done today. You have touched the tip of my finger.

  ERIN› Good-bye, Max. Sweet dreams.

  Shaking with fatigue and excitement, I log out of the chat room and slide Miles’s Trojan Horse disk into the floppy drive. The instructions he left me are simple. First I open the EROS UUEncoder program and convert the.jpg file into a.uue file, which comes out to twenty-one pages of indecipherable text. Then I watch the file-status indicator changing slowly as the.uue file is transmitted to Finland as e-mail: 18 %… 39 %… 58 %… 79 %… 98 %… then:

  MESSAGE SENT

  UPLOAD ADDITIONAL FILES?

  Y? N?

  I press N and stare at the glowing monitor until the bust of Nefertiti swirls into sight. My hands are still shaking. Standing slowly, I look into the tray of the LaserJet III. A neat stack of paper chronicles every unbelievable word Brahma spoke during the past hour. But does it matter? Very soon he will download Miles’s Trojan Horse. As images from his twisted tale tumble through my brain, a voice speaks from a still place inside me. It is Arthur Lenz’s voice, echoing the French phrase he uttered prematurely at the safe house in Virginia: commencement de la fin.

  The beginning of the end.

  Maybe no
w the words are true.

  CHAPTER 34

  I am highlighting passages from the Brahma printouts when the high-pitched ring that announces a satellite video linkup with EROS headquarters in New York chimes through the office. On the screen of the EROS computer, Nefertiti’s head evaporates, and the face of Jan Krislov materializes in its place. A small window opens near Jan’s left ear, giving a running status report of the video link.

  “Hello, Harper,” Jan says in her cool voice. Her moving lips have the jerky quality of low-speed digital video, but the audio is clear. I pull on the headset mike.

  “Hello, Jan.”

  “Someone wants to speak with you,” she says. “Just a moment.” She looks away from the camera. “All right, go.”

  Jan’s face remains on my screen, but after a harsh click, a static-ridden voice says, “Harper?”

  “I’m here, Miles.”

  “Did you find the Trojan Horse?”

  “I found it.”

  “Did those goddamn deputies confiscate your computers?”

  “No.”

  “Thank God. Or Daniel Baxter, rather. The locals knew he’d been using EROS to try to trap Brahma, and they didn’t want to risk crashing the system by screwing with your end of it.”

  “What the hell were you doing using a real picture of Erin to mask your Trojan Horse?”

  “It was the right thing, Harper. You know it. She’s not in any danger. Absolutely nothing we’ve done leads to the real Erin. She’s not even on the map.” He pauses. “You used it, didn’t you?”

  I say nothing.

  “Did the cops find the dummy disk I left in the coat?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughs sharply through the static. “Come on. You got him to download Erin’s photo, didn’t you?”

  “Like I had a fucking choice?”

  “Yes!”he exults. “I knew you could do it. What happened?”

  “Brahma told me his whole life story going back three generations. It was like he’d been holding it in forever. And it’s some kind of story.”

  “Well?”

  “He’s a doctor, just like Drewe guessed. Third generation, actually. There’s way too much to tell, Miles.”

  “Give me a summary.”

  Looking down at my highlighted pages, I quickly sketch Brahma’s journey from incestuous birth to his marriage to Kali. I quote some of his more chilling passages, but Miles absorbs them all in silence. The only thing that elicits a shocked comment is Brahma’s hemophilia.

  “Harper, you realize that most hemophiliacs born before 1985 got AIDS from tainted blood transfusions?”

  “Brahma’s a doctor. Maybe he suspected early that there was a problem with the blood supply and acted preventively. Don’t ask me how. I think the disease had a lot to do with shaping his character, though. Hey, what’s Cellini’s Perseus? A painting?”

  “A sculpture. The Renaissance version of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Mikhail Baryshnikov with better muscles. He’s holding a sword and the severed head of Medusa.”

  “Severed head… wow. Lenz will flip over this guy. Miles, I know there’s enough here for Baxter’s people to figure out who Brahma is. After I black out some of the stuff I had to say to get him to talk, I’m going to fax copies to Quantico.”

  “They may not need it.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “I think they may have figured out who Brahma is.”

  “ What? How?”

  “Maybe the organ donor registries. As soon as the FBI started checking donor networks, they turned up two kidnappings, both from the same registry. It’s called DonorNet. One was a long-standing missing persons case that had basically been written off. The victim disappeared about eight months ago in Florida. It was a man.”

  “A man?”

  “Yep. A guy named Peter Levy. The other happened the night after Rosalind May was kidnapped. Virginia Beach, Virginia. Jenny something or other. Drewe hit it right on the head.”

  “And you think this somehow led Baxter to Brahma?”

  “I don’t know. I do know that an hour ago Baxter asked Jan to temporarily shut down EROS.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He said it was because the media has picked up on what we’ve been doing, because of Mrs. Lenz’s death. He told Jan that staying on-line any longer would be counterproductive, even to catch Brahma. The perception of risk to our clients would be too great.”

  “The perception of risk?”

  “Baxter’s words, not mine.”

  “But with EROS down… and with potential hostages, they’ll need my information more than ever.”

  “Maybe. But I think Baxter told us to shut down because he knows who Brahma is, and he’s trying to cover up the Lenz fuckup as thoroughly as he can, however late it might be. He threatened us with an injunction if we didn’t go off-line.”

  “And?”

  “Jan decided to comply. The risk of client lawsuits is pretty high at this point. When the FBI wanted us on-line, we could pass the buck to them. Now that shield is gone.”

  “Miles, I’ve got to pass this stuff along. How many hemophiliac doctors can there be?”

  “I don’t know. Go ahead and pass it on. But even if Baxter has a name on Brahma, catching him could be a whole different thing. Why don’t you fax me the printouts of your conversation? Fax them to Jan at EROS. She’ll get them to me.”

  I hesitate. “I will if you’ll answer one question. The one you’ve been avoiding from the beginning.”

  “What?”

  “How did Brahma get into the system? How did he get the master client list?”

  A flicker of interest on Jan Krislov’s inscrutable face.

  “I don’t know,” Miles says simply. “I may never know. But every account Brahma hijacked is over a year old. He could have done everything he’s done so far by breaking into the system a single time over a year ago and downloading the list. And there’s just no way to check that now.”

  “How good was your security a year ago?”

  “As good as anybody’s.”

  “Like what? A firewall?”

  “Give me a break. That’s corporate pacifier stuff. I use traps, filters, alarms, other things.”

  “Logs?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know what I’m thinking?”

  “Yes.” Miles’s voice is strangely flat. “Brahma got physical access to a company computer, either in the office or in one of our homes, and printed out the list.”

  “Right. Any break-ins at the office?”

  “No.”

  “Your house? Jan’s? The techs’?”

  Krislov shakes her head. Miles says, “One of my techs had a burglary seven months ago, but that’s too recent.”

  I’m mulling this over when he adds, “There is one other possibility.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a little uncomfortable to talk about.”

  “People are dying, Miles. Spit it out.”

  “Can you hear me, Jan?”

  Krislov’s lips move jerkily, but I hear nothing.

  “Okay,” Miles says. “You’re a widow. You date men of the age we’re considering as suspects. It’s possible that Brahma could have begun a relationship with you just to get access to your house. Your computer.”

  Even before he stops speaking, I know he’s found the truth. His words seem to hit Krislov with physical force.

  “That’s got to be it!” I tell him.

  “Except,” he says quickly, “Jan doesn’t exactly date guys off the street. She dates corporate people, architects-”

  “Doctors?” I cut in.

  The static closes around me like a malevolent embrace. Jan’s lips are moving again, her eyes wide in anger or fear as she talks to Miles. It’s over a minute before he speaks again.

  “You going to fax that stuff through, Harper?”

  “One more question. How is your Trojan Horse supposed to work? Can it really nail Brahma by itself?” />
  “If he uses the EROS UUEncoder-Decoder software, there’s no doubt about it.”

  “So how does it work?”

  “Just be patient, okay? I don’t want to jinx it.”

  “Shit. Then when is it going to happen?”

  “I can’t predict that exactly. But it will.”

  “Damn it, Miles!” I want to push harder, but I know it’s useless. “All right. Just keep your head down.”

  “Harper, wait. Did Brahma’s messages show any typos during the time you talked to him?”

  “I didn’t notice any.”

  “Not during the entire exchange?”

  “No, but I’ll check again. You think he’s on the move?”

  “I just want to be careful.”

  “He can’t trace anything to my house, right?”

  “No way. I’m just being paranoid. Even if Baxter hasn’t identified Brahma, the Trojan Horse will have sealed his fate by dawn tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow! Miles-”

  “Tell Drewe thanks for letting me stay there,” he says, his voice full of hacker’s glee. “And fax your stuff to Jan. Ciao.”

  The static ends.

  I can tell from Krislov’s face that she wants to speak to me, but I am not interested. Our professional relationship will very soon be over. I terminate the video link, walk over to my desk, and get the number of Investigative Support at Quantico. My name gets me quickly past the operator, but instead of the person I asked for, I get voice mail.

  “Dr. Lenz is on compassionate leave at this time,” says a sterile female voice. “His calls are being handled by Dr. Weaver of the Behavioral Sciences Instruction Unit. If you need further assistance, please remain on the line.”

  When the operator comes back, I tell her I want Daniel Baxter. She says he’s unavailable. Two minutes after I tell her it’s life-or-death and the EROS case, Baxter comes on the line.

  “Cole?”he shouts, like a man in the pit of a mine. “Talk fast, I’m in a hurry.”

  “I heard you’re shutting down EROS. Is that right?”

  “Yes. Speak up!”