“I wondered where my parade was. Merry Christmas, by the way.”
“And a big ho-ho-ho to you, Vin. So, back in OSI's clutches now.”
“This week. Did you get the MPEG I sent you?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“You done anything about it?”
“You want to get some air?” he asked. “I can also brief you on the case you're gonna be working.”
“Okay, but give me ten,” I replied. “I'd better clock in with my new boss first.”
From the commanding officer, Brigadier General James Wynngate, who was drowning in mucus from a bad head cold, I received a lecture about the new OSI. After sneezing what appeared to be around a cup and a half of concentrated rhinovirus over my service record spread out in front of him, the general eventually got around to telling me that Arlen would brief me on the case I'd been assigned to.
And so, another twenty minutes later, I was back where I started. It had begun sleeting outside so Arlen and I detoured around the corridors of the HQ block and arrived at the cafeteria. It was much smaller than the Pentagon's and nowhere near as crowded. Arlen led the way to a table in a corner.
“You want coffee?” he asked.
“That depends. Is it any better than the mystery fluid they serve at the Pentagon?”
“No.”
“Then I'll just watch you have one,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” he replied. “Can you fire this up while I go get it?”
He pulled a laptop out of the briefcase tucked under an arm and set it on the table before making his way to the counter. He returned with a Styrofoam cup containing what looked like muddy rainwater just in time to have his thumbprint scanned by the computer's inbuilt security program.
“So what are we doing?” I inquired.
“This case we're getting you to work, the investigating special agent came down with acute appendicitis and was hospitalized. With the stuff going on on the West Coast, we had no one available to take the guy's place, so I put in a special request for you.”
“Really. You did that?” I asked. “Had me pulled off the Tanaka case?”
“Whoa, buddy! I just put in a request. I didn't think it'd be acted on.”
I wouldn't have believed so either, unless it fitted in with someone else's plans. “And here I was, wondering whether there might have been darker forces at work. Why me? I'm sure I'm not the only special agent on this planet, although it is true that I'd have to be one of the best.”
“If not the best,” said Arlen.
“Well, you know, modesty forbids …”
“Since when?” he asked.
I cracked a smile, the first in a while.
“Vin, you've been moaning for months what a drag it is at the DoD filling in forms.”
“Correction,” I said. “Correcting forms other people had incorrectly filled in.”
“Whatever. I just thought I could do you a favor, you know? And I also had a case but no one to work it, so there was that, too.”
I could have been angry. I didn't like being manipulated, even if the intentions were honorable, but the reality was that the Tanaka/Boyle case was out of my hands anyway, removed by powers far above Arlen's head.
“So where do you want to start?” he asked.
“With the MPEG I sent you.”
FIFTEEN
Arlen ran through it a couple of times. “So what do you think's going on here?” he asked as the air-con in the security footage shut down.
“Beats me. I thought it might have been a power failure.”
“Yeah, I ran down that angle too. There were no cuts and no blackouts reported in the Palo Alto area on the day in question. And, also, a company like this would have its own generators, wouldn't it?”
“You'd think,” I said.
“I haven't had much time to do anything too interesting with the clip, given everyone has an Orange up their butt,” he said, referring to the fact that the Homeland Security Advisory level had been raised to High, orange, lower only than Severe, which was red. “And I'm not so sure you want this thing passed around, right?”
I nodded. “Right.” No one specifically asked me not to make copies. Chip Schaeffer said he hoped I hadn't made copies, not whether I had. After six months in the DoD, I was a master of fine print.
“But I have had time to sort out the back end, as you requested.”
Arlen replayed the disk. We watched Boyle baking his cake, the computers shutting down, followed by the desk lights and the aircon. The picture went black and then came back to life in the elevator. Arlen stopped the show. “I've had this last scene separated into individual frames, and the last dozen or so computer-enhanced.” He ran the frames one at a time. I studied the way the passengers' bodies jerked in the elevator, indicating that it had come to an abrupt stop. The lights flickered and the water-cooler guy became agitated, pounding the doors. The woman stood rooted to the spot for quite a few frames before suddenly turning toward the camera. Now, because of the computer-enhancement work, I could make out who it was.
“You know this woman?” Arlen asked.
“Yeah.”
“Who is she?”
“The CEO of Moreton Genetics — Dr. Freddie Spears.”
“You want to clue me in here?” asked Arlen.
“Are you sure you want to know?”
Arlen examined my face. “Probably best I don't, right?”
“Probably,” I said. “But thanks for helping out.”
Arlen sipped his coffee. I knew him well enough to know that he wanted to ask me a question, and I could guess what it was. “I'm not going to pursue this,” I told him. “I'm off the case.”
“Yeah, right,” he said.
“Really. I'm done.”
“So you're not at all interested in knowing what this footage is all about?”
“OK, I would like to know that.”
“So you're not done with it?”
“I can't help my curiosity, but I'm off it now, out of the loop. I'm not going to get any more clues coming my way. A Tommy Hilfiger model freelancing for the CIA is handling it from here on.”
Arlen frowned. “Who?”
“Never mind — not important. So what's the new case about?”
Arlen looked at me dubiously. He knew me too well. He gave up trying to extract any further assurances and said, “Another accident.” He used his fingers to indicate I could put quote marks around the word accident. “The coroner down there is not convinced.”
“Down where?”
“How do you feel about Florida?”
“Can I take a train?”
I went back to my apartment to pack the essentials, such as my one and only Hawaiian shirt. I knew the victim, the one the coroner wasn't convinced about. (He was convinced the victim was dead, just not how he came to be that way.) We'd served together in Afghanistan when I was in the CCTs — the Air Force's elite combat controllers squadron. His name was Ruben Wright, or Wrong Way or Dubya-Dubya, as we called him, and he was a master sergeant, which, being pretty high in the echelons of the noncom positions, meant the guy knew what he was doing.
Last I heard, Wrong Way had been offered an officer's commission to keep him interested in hanging around. I also heard he'd declined, because the only thing that interested him was combat, and officers, he figured, didn't like to get their hands dirty.
Wrong Way, despite his nickname, never did anything wrong. He was the perfect combat airman — committed, brave, sometimes foolhardy, but with nerves of steel and a resolve that was unshakable. After serving with him, I was real pleased he was on my team and not the enemy's. In hand-to-hand combat, I'd once seen him break a man in two over his knee like he was making a length of wood more manageable for the campfire. The enemy deserved it, though — the guy had made the mistake of firing a pistol at Wrong Way, not that that was the problem. The issue, as far as I could tell, was not that the bullet had dragged through the muscle in Wright's thigh, missing his testicles by less than an inch, but that basically the raghead had failed to kill him. “Well, he ain't never gonna make that mistake again, is he?” I remembered him saying as he staunched the blood flow with a compression bandage.