THIRTEEN
I had to watch it several times but even then I didn't understand it — not the bigger picture, anyway. The starring role was played by Sean Boyle before his conversion to carbon. I'd recognize that haircut in my sleep. The cinematographer was a security camera — actually several of them. A display indicated the time and date: nine-thirty p.m. on the second of August — nearly five months ago. I guessed that the location was most likely Moreton Genetics. I played with the sound, but there wasn't any.
In that sketchy way security cameras operate, I saw a white room full of electronic apparatus I didn't recognize, plus a few scrolling computer screens. Boyle was leaning over something. He walked to a different bench to check on something else, then headed to yet another white box closer to the camera that featured a bunch of dials as well as a little screen. He could have been baking a cake for all I knew. Then one of the computer screens went blank, followed by two more. A desk light went out, and I noticed the streamers on the air-conditioning duct beside the camera grow less excited and then hang limp.
Boyle stood up straight. He was smiling a private, self-satisfied smile. Then a line went through the screen, freezing the picture for an instant, before the screen went blank. Nothing happened for a few moments and I was wondering whether the show had finished, and then the picture returned. I was looking down on two people standing in a stainless-steel box. I assumed the location was an elevator. The time-and-date display had returned. One of the people, a male Caucasian in a uniform with a hand truck carrying bottles for the water cooler, was in a panic and pounding the doors, while a woman, also Caucasian, just stood there like a store dummy. I couldn't see her face — her head was tilted down away from the camera until the very last split second. Was she calm, or frozen in panic like the guy in there with her? It was impossible to tell. And then she turned and, as she did so, the picture again went blank — no signal again. I fast-forwarded but there was nothing else on the disk.
The time display told me only a couple of seconds had passed from the footage of Boyle fiddling with equipment to the pair in the lift. The familiar double-helix logo in the elevator confirmed I was seeing something that had happened at Moreton Genetics, some kind of power surge or power failure. But wouldn't a high-tech place like that, with all its delicate and important ongoing research, have some kind of emergency backup power source — generators — that would kick in? I was intrigued by what was on the disk because someone thought it important enough to slip under my door and because whoever did so wanted their identity kept secret.
I went to my laptop and called up the home page for the San Francisco Chronicle. I became a member and surfed around the site's archive, but I couldn't find any reference to power failures in any part of San Francisco in or around last August. If the power was cut, wouldn't everything at MG go out at the same time, rather than in a staggered fashion? I set up the news service to forward any articles containing the keywords “Moreton Genetics” to my Hotmail address.
I took the disk from the player and put it into my laptop's CD drive. I made an MPEG copy and e-mailed it on to Arlen at OSI with a note explaining what I wanted him to do about it. Then I called Moreton Genetics and received a recorded message letting me know that MG would be closed until the fourth of January. Ten days. I turned to the online phone directories next. If I could get hold of Freddie Spears, perhaps she'd be able to tell me what I was seeing on the disk. But there was no Dr. Freddie Spears listed, nor was there any Frederique Spears in the data base, although there were twenty-three “F. Spears” in the San Francisco area. For a moment, I thought about cold-calling complete strangers on Christmas Day. I decided against it.
I carefully removed the disk from the slot in the laptop and returned it to its envelope. Then I placed the envelope in the laundry bag and put it with the rest of my stuff. What to do next? A rumble in my stomach told me it was getting impatient for those low-fat yuletide bacon-and-pancake stacks. Problem solved.
FOURTEEN
Cooper! So you made it back in one piece,” Schaeffer said, looking up and then leaning back in his chair.
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“Take a seat.” The fish tank's air filter thrummed away in the background. “How was it out there?”
“They seem to be getting on top of things, sir,” I said. Schaeffer made a “humph” sound and raised a skeptical eyebrow at me. “You're best out of it, son.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, not believing him but not having much choice anyway.
“You'll make available all materials on the Tanaka case.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Would you know whether the CIA intends to share any forensics with us from the Four Winds site?”
Schaeffer ignored my question. “Anything turned up on the Tanaka thing I don't know about?”
As much as I didn't like being excluded from the loop, there wasn't a lot I could do about it. I gave up what I didn't tell him when I called in from San Francisco. “Sir, I have a statement from a witness claiming he saw Boyle on deck moments after Tanaka was thrown overboard.”
“Then why didn't this witness do something to help the guy in the drink?” he asked.
“I don't know, sir, but it's a good question.” A couple of better ones would be to ask whether Boyle pushed Tanaka overboard and why. And whether the Transamerica bombing was somehow linked to Boyle and therefore related to Tanaka's death.
“Some people …” he said, shaking his head.
“I strongly recommend that this witness be interviewed by the SAC,” I said. I strongly recommended it because the Marianas was a long way to go for nothing, the witness, as far as witnesses went, being a waste of time.
“I'll be sure and pass that on to CIA,” said Chip.
“I also received this.” I set the envelope containing the disk, still wrapped in the laundry bag, on his desk.
“What is it?”
“Possible evidence, sir.” I told him about the disk, gave a précis of what was on it, and explained how it came into my possession.
“I trust you haven't made copies.”
My fingers were crossed where he couldn't see them. “Can you tell me why the CIA has taken over the case, sir?”
“No, I can't,” he said, cracking his knuckles one by one. “Look, you've done a good job on this, Cooper. You've performed some fine work here and I've enjoyed having you on my team. That's going on your Officer Performance Report, by the way.”
“Yes sir,” I said, but I was thinking, what fine work, exactly? Sure, I could buy tropical fish with the best of them. I already knew the Tanaka case was no longer mine, so I was a little surprised. Was Chip attempting to soften me up for something, even if it was just for me to move on quietly? Or was he feeling bad that a difficult case I was making headway on had been handed to a jerk like Bradley Chalmers? I wasn't going to get any answers to these questions, so I let them slide.
Twenty minutes later, I was at OSI HQ, Andrews AFB. An agent I'd never met was sitting in the office that had my name on the door, so I walked down the hall to Arlen's. He was on the phone. He gave me a nod and shifted in his seat, half turning his back to me. He cut the call short and said, “Vin! Here already? That was quick. We haven't really had time to prepare for your triumphant return.”