The message read: Must end all contact. Operation is ready. Glad to help an old friend. Must depart for passageway that connects our worlds.
The message was dated just before the bombings began. Had Hellerman enlisted the aid of international terrorists to attack inside the United States?
She tucked her hair behind her ears and flipped through the pictures. She stopped at a picture of the wall with the calendar. She confirmed again that Tallahassee was marked and had a large question mark next to it. Her memory had been good. She next saw the pictures she had taken of the communications gear. Hellerman had a tactical satellite phone and radios with cables that ran out the back of the office. He had a satellite television installed and guessed he was using that satellite to also feed his telephone.
What did he need those communications platforms for? The long-distance equipment was state-of-the-art and would allow him to talk to anyone in the world who had a similar piece of equipment and the correct encryption technology.
The last two pictures were even stranger than the others. They were photos of a document written in Chinese and a sketch of a ship. She studied each photo, the Chinese characters unfamiliar to her.
She saw a single line of English letters which read Top Secret, Special Category on the very bottom of each page in fine print.
Flipping back to the sketch, she could see it was a cargo ship. But it had a long, narrow aisle drawn down the middle of its deck, almost like a road. Curious, she thought.
China, Iraq, Colombia? Huh, she moaned to herself. What could it mean? Why would Hellerman be at the center of this coalition? They had been seriously concentrating on the Rebuild America project. Could this be his way? Let an attack on American soil wipe out the apathy and reunite the country in popular defiance?
She lay on the bed, the men with top hats staring at her from the comforter. She was exhausted from all of the physical and mental activity of the last twenty-four hours and began to fade, her instincts trying to keep her awake. She had a firm grasp on some decisive information.
But perhaps it could wait.
It would have to.
CHAPTER 48
Vice President Hellerman struggled out of the bathroom. He had spent the last hour washing his face and cleaning the mace out of his eyes. He was slowly recovering from a drugged, drowsy feeling and could see, though his vision was a bit cloudy.
He had dressed in khakis and a sweatshirt with tennis shoes. He moved slowly but purposefully down the steps into the kitchen and through the door leading to the basement. Negotiating those steps, he was encouraged when he saw the lock on the hasp.
He pulled out his key and unlocked the door. Has she been down here? Everything appeared to be in order. He opened the file cabinet, and all of the files were where they belonged. In fact, there was nothing that seemed to be out of place.
Not a single item appeared to be amiss. Had she been telling the truth about changing in the kitchen? Perhaps he had been a bit scary the last few days, he figured. Maybe she did feel threatened by something he had done.
He looked at the televisions, the maps, the chart boards, and the computer. He leaned over and pressed the button to turn on his computer. He waited for it to boot up, which it usually did fairly quickly. He saw that the monitor screen was still blank, so he pressed the button again. Still nothing.
He lifted the laptop and immediately saw that the hard drive was missing. His heart sank. She had his hard drive. That was a big problem.
Everything he had done in the last fifteen years was recorded on that hard drive. He had scanned old notes and copied them in PDF format. Also, he had copied old floppy disks and CDs onto thumb drives and then had consolidated everything onto this one hard drive. After copying them, he had destroyed all of the notes, papers, disks, and drives. But having backup was not the issue.
He immediately grabbed his secure satellite phone and hit a memory button.
“Bandit, this is Rawlings,” he said, using his call sign that referred to the baseball maker.
“Rawlings, this is Bandit. How nice to hear from you.”
“I need you to track down Meredith Morris. You’ve got a file on her with her address, home phone, and cell phone numbers, as well as some of her closer friends. She has something of mine, a hard drive, which I need back.”
“Sounds simple enough. Do we need Miss Morris back?”
The voice was eerie and unnerving to Hellerman. He pictured the delight with which this particular individual enjoyed killing. He paused and thought of Meredith, then spoke. “No, Miss Morris’ presence is not required.”
“Fine and dandy. I’ll call you soon. I presume you need your computer up and running shortly?”
“Tonight. No later than tomorrow. Got a big project I’m working on.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, if you have to find her using CallScan, then do it. It’s that important,” Hellerman said.
“My, that is important. Will do.”
Hellerman hung up the phone. Having just ordered Meredith’s death was enough to make his weakened body tremble. He felt like he might vomit, but then regained his composure.
What is one more death in this quest for national unification? he thought. Meredith had served her purpose as both a sexual diversion and someone to keep him company as he developed his plan. He picked up his cell phone and called Alvin Jessup, who he knew was probably sitting in a car at the end of the driveway.
“Alvin, I need you to find Miss Morris. She may be in a bit of trouble, and we need to get her back here on the compound.”
“Yes, sir. She left about an hour and a half ago. We’ll find her,” Alvin said.
“Thanks, appreciate it. It’s pretty urgent,” Hellerman said.
“Yes, sir. I’ll let you know when we’ve got her.”
Hellerman shut his phone and then double-checked to make sure that the hard drive really was missing. This time his stomach couldn’t hold back as he ran into the basement bathroom and unleashed the poison in his stomach into the toilet. He wiped his mouth, brushed his teeth, walked back into the command cell and opened the file-cabinet drawer.
Even though he believed that he honestly had nothing to hide, he pulled the files out and began running them through his crosscut shredder one at a time.
Next he called Zeke Jeremiah, the tall Naval Academy graduate, over to his residence.
Jeremiah stood before him in a blue suit, white cotton shirt, and light blue tie, all hanging loosely off his lanky frame.
“Zeke, I need to let you in on something,” Hellerman said. It had taken him only a few minutes to clean up the living room prior to Jeremiah’s arrival. He motioned Zeke onto the facing davenport.
“I’m listening, sir,” Zeke said, pulling out a small green notebook.
Hellerman coughed, leaned forward, and said, “I’ve intercepted the enemy’s plan. I have evidence of a conspiracy involving former CIA director Frank Lantini to aid terrorists in attacking the United States.”
Jeremiah put his pen in the crease of his notebook and looked at the vice president.
“You don’t want me writing any of this down, do you, sir?”
“That’s right. I’ve been holding onto this information until I was certain what it meant. After the Rolling Stones incident last year, I don’t trust too many of our agencies these days. Being a former intelligence officer, well, I’ve been doing the analysis down in my basement.”
Jeremiah nodded.
“You do look a bit… overtaxed, sir.”