Instead, he called a woman he’d dated for a few weeks who was also in the security field. They’d remained friends and colleagues for years since then, even though the spark hadn’t quite been there. Samantha was very good at what she did; she worked for one of the large PI and corporate security firms as a research specialist, but he figured she’d moonlight for him and could be depended upon to keep things confidential.
Michael called her using the IP phone and gave her his short list of terms, dates and institutions to investigate. They agreed she would report back to him as soon as she had something, one way or another.
There wasn’t a lot more he could do until he knew what he was dealing with, so he unwrapped an energy bar he found in a drawer, yanked a bottle of water out of the fridge and returned his attention to reading the manuscript.
He weighed the remaining pages in his hand. Probably about two thirds left to go. Michael silently prayed that whoever had contrived the documents was given to long-winded descriptions, or went off on lengthy tangents, and that the rest of the book was fluff or obvious malarkey and didn’t contain any more realistic-sounding explosive claims. He didn’t see how it could get much more pejorative than the first third.
Unfortunately, the author wasn’t big on creative writing.
It got worse.
Far worse.
Chapter 6
If there was a professional team working Abe’s office, Michael figured they’d go in after all the businesses had closed for the day and the employees had gone home for the evening. That would create an opportunity for Michael to stake out the building for signs of obvious activity — but he immediately dismissed it as unnecessarily risky and unlikely to prove or disprove anything. Sure, if they were amateurish, perhaps a cleaning crew would appear late at night, or some other sort of maintenance or emergency repair personnel would enter, and then the lights in Abe’s seventh floor office would go on. However, if they were seasoned professionals it was doubtful he’d see anything at all — and the absence of activity wouldn’t necessarily mean that nobody had breached the office — rather, it would reinforce that they were not a low-end team, which Michael was already pretty certain about, given the hardware Jim had found secreted.
His natural desire to be pro-active, to gain an advantage over the hypothesized hunters of the document, lost out to his better judgment and discipline. Harsh experience had taught him that security threats were often akin to fishing — both required patience, skill, tuned senses, observation and instinct. Impatience and succumbing to a desire to act were weaknesses he couldn’t indulge.
Michael gave up trying to finish reading the document that evening; he was in informational overload mode, and he realized he wasn’t registering the facts any more. A glance at the remaining pile of unread papers confirmed there was maybe ten percent left, at most, which he could hit in the morning. He decided to stay in the apartment rather than go out for dinner and spent his time going over his notes of the manuscript’s highlights so far.
Studying the list of underlined terms and operation names and organizations, he resolved to attempt to parallel Samantha’s efforts and do some online research. Two hours of surfing and searching for data yielded nothing, other than an appreciation for the number of kooky conspiracy theories that were now accessible with a few mouse clicks. There was a scenario for every prejudice, every level of nuttiness, from the erudite and esoteric to the banal. From flat-earth adherents to those convinced that the devil was everywhere, from modern-day Knights of the Templar scheming for Armageddon to the Tri-lateral Commission fostering a shadowy new world order, there was an ass for every seat, as they said in the car business.
The U.S. government was especially popular amongst the tin foil hat crowd as uber-villain, and one would have to believe it was astoundingly competent to pull off everything from staging lunar landings to assassinating its leaders to hiding the bodies of extraterrestrials to scheming to create a new currency in order to somehow take over Canada and Mexico.
Exhausted and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, Michael eventually stumbled over to the couch to rest his eyes. He was out cold within two minutes of lying down.
An explosive crashing jolted him awake, followed by screaming.
Michael cautiously approached the window and peeked out; it was morning — a woman in a Honda SUV had rear-ended a plumbing van on the street below. Both drivers were standing beside their vehicles yelling at the top of their lungs, berating each other for their lousy driving skills. The woman was East Indian, with a pronounced accent and a vocal range that likely had the neighborhood dogs running for cover. The male sounded Polish or Russian.
Good morning — I heart Brooklyn.
He stumbled into the shower, prioritizing his activities for the day as he stood under the tepid stream of water. Having skipped dinner, he was starving, so first order of business was to get some calories on-loaded. Then he’d move to making calls and following up on his prior day’s contacts. And of course, finish reading the manuscript. Michael figured that today was going to define whether his network was in crisis, or if this was merely a false alarm.
His Blackberry was blinking. Shit — he hadn’t even heard it ring. Koshi had called him the previous night. He punched the speed dial number and listened to it ring.
“You alive?” Koshi asked by way of greeting.
“Yup. I just crashed hard and missed your call,” Michael explained. “Sorry.”
“Write this down,” Koshi responded, and gave him an e-mail address, login and password. “Use it to communicate until the fire drill’s over.”
“Got it. Anything going on over there?” Michael asked.
“No black helicopters, if that’s what you mean,” Koshi deadpanned.
“Good to hear,” Michael reflected before going on to explain about his pulling in some favors to check on Abe’s death.
“Keep me in the loop when you hear something,” Koshi reminded him.
Michael promised to let him know as soon as he talked to Ken, and they agreed to stay in contact via e-mail at least twice that day — once at three o’clock, and once more at the end of the evening.
There were two coffee shops on the block, indistinguishable from each other, so he chose the nearest one and slid into a vacant red vinyl-clad booth. He ordered, then called Ken, who promised he’d have more information later in the day — they were still waiting for feedback from the lab. He assured Michael he’d call as soon as he knew anything.
Samantha wasn’t in yet, so he left a voice mail and the voice-over-IP phone number.
Michael slouched restlessly, fidgeting with his cell, unable to sit still. He’d only been awake an hour, and nervous energy already had him bouncing off the walls.
The waitress delivered his food; the coronary special — three eggs, pancakes, sausage, hash browns. Michael resolved to cut himself off after two cups of coffee. The last thing he needed was to add caffeine jitters to his growing impatience. He plowed through the meal like he’d just been released from prison and broke his commitment to stop the coffee. They were small cups, he reasoned, so three were only about the same as one and a half of his usual.
Back in the apartment, he reviewed the prior evening’s notes and then picked up the remainder of the manuscript, determined to finish it. As he made it to the last few pages, he registered an e-mail address inserted seemingly by mistake in one of the endnotes. That had to be deliberate. Maybe the author had put a contact point in that would only be noticed if Abe really read the entire thing and digested every word.