“Yup,” Tamburro said. “Just saw Anna at the hospital. Heading to the parking lot now.”
The woman shook her head again.
“Damn. Hold on again, Rich. I’ve got a problem with my cards. Must have maxed out when we bought all the stuff.”
McCauley got Katrina’s attention. “Can you talk to Rich? I’ve gotta deal with the account.”
“Sure,” she said.
McCauley handed over the phone.
“Hi, Rich. It’s Katrina. What’s up?”
McCauley apologized. Once again, the Hertz representative said, “No worries.” But she wasn’t the one who needed to come up with a solution.
“I think your system doesn’t like my cards,” he said fumbling through his wallet. His Bank of America and Chase debit cards and a Citibank credit card were all declined. He retrieved an American Express Jet Blue card. “Let’s try this one.”
“Okay,” she pleasantly offered.
She swiped the credit card once. Then again. “Dr. McCauley, do you have any another means of paying? This card was also declined.”
McCauley, completely frustrated, looked for Katrina. She was still on the call, obviously engrossed in the conversation.
McCauley addressed the Hertz sales woman again. “I…I…” he stammered as he fumbled through his wallet. “One more left.” It was an American Express departmental credit card, his emergency backup. “Okay,” he sheepishly offered, “this better work.”
The woman swiped the card. This clearly wasn’t her first time through such difficulties. Her training taught her to keep the customer calm.
That wasn’t necessary. “The charge went through, Dr. McCauley. Everything’s good.” She returned the card with the receipt for $794.00 which included the $500 deductible for the damage.
After the paperwork was printed and signed she directed him to the airport shuttle kiosk. “The bus stops at all the terminals. Out the sliding doors and at the curb. I hope you’ll have a good day.”
McCauley looked over to Alpert who was still on the phone and pacing.
“I think I’m about to find out.”
Alpert pressed end and handed the phone back to McCauley.
“More,” she said.
“More what?”
“More problems?”
“Same here,” he added. “You first.”
“Outside. Your hundred-foot rule.”
They pulled their rolling suitcases, walked past the shuttle bus stop into the parking area, and settled on a bench out of earshot of other customers.
“Rich found texts on Anna’s phone while she was sleeping. They were to an international number. He’s forwarding them.”
“And?”
“You were right. She was leaking information.”
“To whom?”
“No name, but multiple texts,” Katrina continued.
“Go on.”
“The cave, the tunnel, the drawings and whatever else she learned from Rich and Leslie, too, even after she fell.”
“Christ!” McCauley exclaimed.
“She described it as something inexplicable. Something technical.”
“When?”
Alpert knew the next revelation wasn’t going to go down easily. “Here’s the worst of it. Before she went to the hospital and after.”
McCauley ran his hand through his hair.
“It gets worse,” she continued.
“How?”
“A text from the other day said we were heading to see Greene in Bakersfield.”
Anna Chohany sent another text. Like the others, it wasn’t answered. She had a phone number to call in case there was something absolutely urgent. She’d been told to use it only once. After that it would be disconnected. This was the time to try.
Anna caught the attention of a nurse and asked her to close her door. Once alone, she dialed.
On the fourth ring a man with a deep, monotone, but friendly voice answered.
“Yes, Anna.”
Chohany was surprised that she was addressed so personally and informally.
“I sent a text a few minutes ago.”
“I have it. Is there something else we need to know?”
The we threw her. She never really thought about a we or much about the research organization that had contacted her right after she was accepted for the summer dig. There was competitive money in the field — from museums, universities and even pharmaceuticals. Based on the little she gathered and the $12,500 she’d been given, she figured no harm, no foul. It would have been, had it not been for her accident.
“I…I don’t know.”
“Anna, what is it you want to tell me? It’s all right.”
Chohany was a back channel, one of many that covered explorations around the globe. She’d be surprised to find out how extensive a network there was and how long it had been around. Most of the time it led to nothing. But not here. Not now. Anna Chohany’s reporting had put into motion the kind of concern that Martin Gruber and his predecessors had operated on for centuries and Colin Kavanaugh seized on now.
The voice on the phone sounded reassuring, so she told him what Rich Tamburro had done.
Forty-three
Two men spoke cryptically on the sat phone. One was in London walking through Kensington Park, the other in a vacant hangar at the abandoned Glasgow AFB, seventeen miles north of the town of Glasgow in eastern Montana.
The facility, activated in 1957, had been home to the 467th Fighter Group and a base for Air Defense Command interceptors. In 1960, at the height of the Cold War, operations were transferred to the Strategic Air Command which tasked B-52C and B-52D bombers.
The wing was inactivated in February, 1963 and the airport was shut down in 1968 for five years.
In 1973, Glasgow was rehabilitated, intended as an Army Safeguard Anti-Ballistic Missile depot. But, the construction was never completed. The base closed again in 1976.
Today it offered the perfect place for work to go unobserved.
“Run through the schedule,” the man in London instructed. They’d never met the caller, but they recognized the voice and the clipped delivery. So would Colin Kavanaugh from his conversations on the park bench.
“The talent is in place. We’re on time. Thirty-six hours away from curtain.”
“Are we feeling any pressure from the stars?”
“None. We aim to please. The backers will enjoy a successful opening night.”
Nothing else would be gained through a longer conversation. It was said without saying it. The mission, strike target, payload and deployment were all moving forward as planned. He’d report the basics to Kavanaugh when they next met.
“It can’t be connected,” Katrina declared.
“Can and is. The bombing, the chase and now they shut down my bank accounts. Ten to one, yours are also frozen,” he explained.
“Who?”
“Whoever they are, they’re very powerful. If these people have access to my credit cards and have Chohany on their payroll, I can’t imagine what they’re capable of.”
“They’ll kill us.”
“No they won’t,” McCauley said, simply because it was the thing to say.
“Jesus, McCauley. What the hell am I even doing here? I was supposed to be sunning myself in Belize or at the least evaluating some wild ass dinosaur doc who had no real discoveries to his credit. Now—” she stopped, realizing what she’d said. “I’m sorry Quinn. I didn’t mean that.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not. And honestly, it was total bullshit. I’m just scared.”