“Give that man a few donuts and he will do anything you say,” Alex said and then took a long drag on his cigarette.
For the first time the Lobbyist noticed a long scar along the jaw line of the man with long hair. He could only imagine how the man had earned that cut. Time to get on with the terms. “How is our work coming in the west?”
“The professor?”
“Of course.”
“We are on that like black on a hockey puck,” Alex said, mixing his metaphors.
A bit confused, the Lobbyist said, “So, he’s in your possession?”
The bald man’s eyes shifted toward Alex, who simply took another draw on his cigarette and slowly let out a couple of smoke rings. Then Alex rubbed his fingers along his jaw scar and said, “Not yet.”
The Lobbyist picked up his cane and gazed at the dragon on the end. “We might have another way to get to this man.”
Alex finished his cigarette and flicked the butt into a patch of snow alongside the path. “Okay. What will it take?”
Smiling, the Lobbyist said, “Persuasion.”
Alex nodded and said, “That’s my specialty.”
4
Professor Tramil was so far out of his element, he wasn’t sure of much of anything. Since his friend and colleague Professor Stephan Zursk had been shot and killed, and Tramil had been chased and shot in his butt, much had happened that made no sense. He had given his statement to the Corvallis police, gotten the superficial bullet graze to his right cheek patched up with dermabond and a four-inch bandage, and then gone early the next morning to his lab at Oregon State. Someone had broken in there also during the night and trashed the place, taking the computers with them. And that’s what had gotten Tramil to believe that these were not random incidents of violence. As a scientist he was used to collecting empirical data that would lead him to a conclusion of some sort. ‘Follow the data’ had been the mantra shoved down his throat since his undergrad years. It might lead to where you want it to go, or not, but it will always tell the truth. And everything that had happened to him over the last twenty-four hours, from the shooting to the trashing of his lab, led him to only one of two conclusions. Either someone wanted to stop his research, or someone wanted to steal his research. Nothing else made any sense. But who would want his work? And why? He and Stephan had only published a recent paper, along with a couple of patents, so not many people could even know about their work.
Scientists were the most paranoid of the human species. Tramil and Stephan had been no exception. None of their research had been collected or hosted on university computers, sitting there waiting for some nineteen-year-old undergrad to download or destroy after getting a less than favorable grade in inorganic chemistry. No, that wouldn’t work for a couple of paranoid professors doing cutting-edge research. They had dedicated hosting off-site on a server in Denver with more security than the Pentagon used. Since Stephan’s murder, Tramil had done one thing he wasn’t sure was smart, but he had felt the need to download his research to a 64 gig flash memory card that resided now in a hidden compartment in the heel of his right running shoe. The files still on the Denver server? Permanently deleted.
After his lab had been trashed and he reported it to the campus and Corvallis police, he had suggested to them that his life was in danger. But they didn’t seem to believe him, despite the hole in his posterior and the death of his friend. They were considering the two incidents unrelated, with Stephan’s death the result of a breaking and entering gone bad, with Tramil at the wrong place at the wrong time. Total nonsense, of course. Anyone with an IQ slightly above the average human body temperature would have linked the two events.
Since then, Tramil had done his best to stay on the move. The police were still holding his car, so he had mostly traveled around town on foot. He didn’t even go to his own house for more clothes. Instead, he had taken out a cash advance and used some of that to buy clothes and a small backpack. Then he jumped a campus shuttle bus to Portland International Airport, where he caught the MAX Light Rail to the Amtrak Train Terminal on Sixth Street in downtown Portland. Luckily, Amtrak still took cash, so he bought a one-way ticket on the Empire Builder from Portland to Chicago.
He got up now with the first call to board the train, slinging his small backpack over his shoulder. He couldn’t help looking over his shoulder and stopping abruptly to see if anyone was taking an interest in him. Tramil knew he was being paranoid, but the pain in his rear end gave him a constant reminder that he wasn’t entirely nuts.
As the crowd drifted toward the outside train platform, a man with a black watch cap and horned rimmed glasses slipped along with them, his eyes trying desperately to concentrate on a small brochure he had been given by the ticket agent which explained the route they would take on the Empire Builder, along with history of the famous route from Portland, Oregon through Spokane, across Montana, to Minneapolis/St. Paul, and finally ending in Chicago. Sometimes the train even vectored to Seattle for passengers.
When the man reached the platform outside, he let his eyes catch a glimpse of the professor as the tall, slim man carrying only a small backpack rose up the steps onto the train.
His employers were not happy with him. He was supposed to first get the research and then kill the professors. He thought he had gotten that information at the professor’s house on the rainy night, only to realize later that what he had gotten was garbage. That had led him to the university lab, where he thought he could redeem himself. No such luck. Now he’d have to play this out a little more diplomatically, which was not exactly his specialty. Oh well. Maybe a train ride would be a nice distraction.
5
Through tired eyes, Jake Adams was able to access the information Congresswoman Lori Freeman had given him. She had used a combination of new technology and old-school information exchange. In the envelope was a single piece of paper with a link to a secure server where he would find the info, the login and password things that only Jake would know, based on his high school experience in Montana. And just in case anyone could discover these items, she told him to rip up and flush the paper down the toilet once he got online.
What he found there was surprising. Lori had decided not to give him a summation of what she had discovered. She simply had a list of seemingly unredacted documents and images from various sources, including the CIA, NSA, and military intelligence. A couple of documents were NSA transcripts of conversations from foreign nationals speaking with U.S. citizens. Each document was dated with two entries, the original date discovered, and then the date each was presented to the House sub-committee on intelligence. There were a few exceptions, and those came from Air Force intelligence. These only had the original discovery date. Jake guessed these had not actually been included in the House briefings. Also, they were perhaps the most damning and illuminating. Now he knew why his old high school friend was concerned. She wasn’t getting the full story. Someone was either cooking the books or simply using selective intelligence — not totally unheard of in the intel business. Most House members had never served in the military, and had no clue that Top Secret meant to keep your damn mouth shut. The Agency had a somewhat sick propensity to divulge totally useless salacious information, very specific in nature, just to see which member of congress was leaking info. This disinformation never came at an official House briefing, but instead during social functions, where an officer would pull someone aside and tell them the info was Top Secret but off the record. Keep this close to the vest. Right.