Gail Calloway’s password hadn’t been changed, though. That’s what Amanda told me over the phone when we got back to my stilthouse.
“But there’s nothing in her letter files,” she added. “Not a word. So I guess it’s like one of those good news, bad news things.”
When I told Tomlinson, he said, “Same difference. If you’re serious about getting all the information you can about this weird love affair, you better seek help from one of your warmonger compatriots. Also, I think we better drive to Lauderdale tomorrow or Thursday. Better use me while you can, man. Musashi arrives Friday. After that, we’re aboard No Mas and out of here.”
I told him fine, then he needed to give me some privacy.
I had a couple of calls to make.
When I heard the outboard on Tomlinson’s little inflatable clatter to life, I picked up the phone and dialed a two-one-two area code, plus a number which, as fewer than a hundred Americans and well-placed Israelis knew, actually rang at a secluded, nondescript but beautifully tended farm on the border of Virginia and West Virginia.
When a woman’s voice answered, “Malabar Grain and Silo,” I spoke a four-digit identification number and was immediately transferred to a computerized security system which, I knew, was searching its own memory banks, attempting to match a graph of my recently-recorded voice with the vocal prints of men and women who had sufficient security clearance to speak with an actual human being.
I did not have to wait long. From this fastidious place, this picture-perfect farm with its forest of grain silos (and a forest of complex transglobal listening systems, passive and invasive, housed therein) came a voice on a screechy, scratchy answering machine that told me, “Sorry, neighbor, you’ve reached Malabar Grain and Silo and we’re probably uptown shopping. If you think you got the right place, leave your name and number and we’ll catch you on the comeback!”
Which meant that the computer had recognized me as a person who had once had full security clearance but who was no longer operative, was no longer considered an asset, was, most likely, a potential liability but who might, just might, have a useful tidbit of information to offer.
Without hesitating, I spoke a second four-digit identification code and then, after a series of beeps, I said, “Ford, Marion D. Secondary listing: North, Marion D. I’m calling for Bernard Objartel Yager. My telephone number is-” and I gave it.
Four beeps later, the jolly farmer’s voice told me, “Sorry, neighbor. You mustuh got the wrong number. Nobody here by that name. Have yourself a great day!”
I hung up the phone and began to futz around the lab, neatening this, straightening that. As always, I was annoyed by the high-tech game-playing and the Hollywood-style trappings that, to me, seemed an adolescent adjunct to a business I had once found as complex as it was dangerous.
Why couldn’t they have a secretary like everyone else? Someone trained to screen calls? What was so compromising about a real, live human being who could decide to accept or refuse a telephone call?
But no… they reveled in theatrics and their own little venues of power… and every year it seemed to get sillier. More tricks, more complicated electronic gags that suggested to me that the intelligence-gathering community was becoming a parody of its own excesses, and so probably was neither as powerful nor effective as it had once been.
I kept reminding myself: Ford, aren’t you glad to be out of this business?
I continued working in the lab, going over how I was going to ask Bernard Yager, a computer and electronics genius by all accounts, for his help in breaching the security of a housewife’s desktop computer. To even make such a request was embarrassing.
It was Yager who had single-handedly unscrambled the Soviet/Soviet nuclear sub code progression. It was Yager who had invaded and compromised computer communications between Managua and Havana during the Sandinista wars in Nicaragua.
His was not a name seen in the newspapers, nor would it ever be seen. Yet the man had been a legend in the business for more than a decade. By now, I suspected that his underlings looked upon him as some kind of wizened old electronics guru.
About fifteen minutes later, when my phone rang, I answered to hear, “Hey Doc, you old so-and-so! It’s Bernie!”
I began by saying, “Bernie, is it safe to talk?”
“On my line? You’re making a joke, right? Such a funny man with the jokes. The president, he should be so confident in his phone security. What? You think I’m such a nebbish that I’ve gotten old and rusty like a certain Viking-sized field hand? Why do you waste our time with such questions?”
“So I take it my side of the line is also fine.”
“Marion, Marion, you are trying an old man’s patience. Is my line okay? he asks. Is your line okay? he asks. We’re having this conversation, you hear words coming from my lips, so of course the lines are okay. What else do you need to know already? Why don’t you just come out and ask me, ‘Bernie, my old friend, have you become old and senile and stupid?’ Because that’s what your questions say to me.”
“Hey, that’s not what I’m saying, Bernie.”
“To me, that’s exactly what you’re saying. You’re saying that you no longer have confidence in my expertise. This from the man whose ass I personally saved after he’d slept with a certain president’s wife in Masagua. Name another person in the business who could have electronically lifted information from the poor husband’s office and still had the good sense to telephone you in the bedroom of His Excellency’s beautiful wife? So what did you have to spare? Five minutes? Ten minutes, tops. The man’s elite guard hunting you like dogs, but you were warned in time. All thanks to the person you keep asking these offensive questions.”
I was laughing. Everything he said was true. I said, “Well, I’ve got to risk offending you again.”
When I told him what I needed, he feigned indignation. “Any teenage hack can do what you’re asking me to do. Such a waste of time and talent!”
“It’s what I need, Bernie. I don’t think you ever met Bobby Richardson, but his wife is the lady in question.”
“I’ve heard of Commander Richardson, so I don’t need to meet him. He’s a friend of yours, so he’s a friend of mine. The man was part of the old guard. One of the rare good men. So what else do I need to know?”
“What you need to know is that Bobby and I went through some very heavy business together. You know the kind of stuff I’m talking about. I owe the man. He’s been dead a long time, but I still owe the man. His girl is in trouble and so is his daughter. I’m going to do whatever I can to help out.”
“Okay, okay, so maybe I owe you a favor or two myself. You ask, it’ll be done. What you need to do is tell the daughter to switch on her mother’s machine and modem. It’s a PC or a Mac? Of course, someone like you wouldn’t know. Doesn’t matter. I’ll have my equipment invade the poor little thing and install the software you’ll need in a program called… I think I’ll label the folder Pilar. “He had a curiously high-pitched giggle. “Will you be able to remember that? If remembering is such a problem, I’ll have everything on her screen changed to red, but the folder-the folder, I’ll make green. Or maybe interesting colors. Just so you can find it.”
“You’re a bastard, Bernie Yager.”
“A bastard I am not. And neither do I ever forget. When my poor sister, rest her soul, got herself in trouble in Boulder, you were the one, the only one, who went there and spoke with her and helped bring her home. Eve liked you, Doc, she really did. And she trusted you. You may have been the only person in her life that she truly trusted. I don’t know why she went back to the streets, but she did. God rest her soul and the souls of all who loved her. Her going back, that I will never make sense of.”