They have me in isolation, she realized with a start.
For a moment she was afraid that she was not in Canada. However, there was a light on inside her mobile cubicle revealing no inside door handles but also showing the oxygen supply system. She couldn’t read the red warnings, but there were two sets of them, one under the other, with a maple leaf atop each.
It was Canada, all right.
The ambulance—or prison van?—stopped and backed up now. Someone fumbled with the doors, and they opened to reveal a strange plastic tunnel of some kind.
“Please get up if you can and walk through the tube,” a crisp, official voice said. “If you can not walk, say so, and we will arrange to move you.”
“I can walk,” she said, and got up unsteadily, staggering a bit. Suddenly she wondered if she really could.
The plastic tunnel went about ten meters, and felt sticky to her bare feet. She entered a doorway then, and recognized a standard-looking hospital corridor.
“Proceed to the chair facing the window to your left,” the PA voice said, and she saw what it meant and went there.
It was a comfortable chair that felt very, very good. There was a microphone in front of it, and, she saw double glass in front. On the other side sat an official-looking gray-haired man in a black suit and striped tie. He, too, was equipped with a micro-phone.
“I am Inspector Charles Douglas of the RCMP,” he told her. “You understand that you are being isolated because we have no idea what you might or might not be bringing us, and medical tests will have to be made to clear you.”
She nodded.
“I want you to tell your story into the microphone,” he instructed. “Spare nothing. Take as long as you want, but hold nothing back. It is being recorded.”
She nodded again. “I have been un’er drugs for a long time,” she told him. “Bad ones. They have hurt me, done some brain dam’ge, don’ know how bad or if it’ll wear off in time.”
The inspector nodded. “You aren’t the first one we’ve encountered,” he told her. “Just go ahead, relax, take all the time you need to collect yourself.” She did. It was tough going, telling the story in halting phrases and malformed words. She spared nothing, though. Not who she was, what she was doing, about being spirited away, about waking up and its problems escaping, even the rape.
Douglas sounded sympathetic but noncommittal. When she finished he just puffed on a pipe for a few minutes, thinking about it. Then he said, “There is a shower just down the hall, a closet with some hospital clothes, and a bed. I suggest you go make use of them and get some sleep while this information goes to Ottawa. If you’re hungry, we can send in some food.”
“I’m starved,” she told him, “but I’m more tired than an’thing.” She got up and he did the same. She looked at him seriously through the glass. “Thank you,” she said.
He didn’t reply.
She was out of the painful clothing, in seconds and showered thoroughly, particularly flushing the memories of the trucker out as much as possible.
Another hospital gown, but white this time and much better made, and a typical hospital bed which she sank into gratefully. She remembered little else.
While she slept, the recording and Douglas’s report went to Ottawa by RCMP wire. Officials there studied it, considered it, discussed it. Hospital technicians in isolation garb took fingerprints from her sleeping form, and these, too, were transmitted and matched up.
Finally, decisions were made. They called the National Disease Control Center for verification of the existence of a Sandra O’Connell, and notified the FBI through priority channels to get confirmation of her photo and prints.
The FBI check flagged the computer monitors in the Special Section, Jake Edelman’s branch. Bob Hartman was called, checked out the print information, determined that, indeed, it was Dr. Sandra O’Connell they had in Ontario, and called Jake.
Edelman was excited. It was the first real break in the domestic side of the case. “Hell, if we can get her back she can tell us a lot about where she’s been!” he said hopefully. “We can trace the sons of bitches back to here!”
The Buffalo office was called on the special line, reaching a particular agent at home. She was told to go to Diefenbaker Hospital and see Dr. O’Connell, and if possible to take her out of there and get a plane direct to Washington. One was being readied to pick them up by another friendly commander at an airbase in Vermont. RCMP’s Special Branch, which was very much in league with Edelman on this, agreed.
The Buffalo agent, a young woman named Mason, cleared the border checks with special IDs and permissions and was met by the RCMP on the other side. They sped to the hospital, about eight kilometers distant, making it in record time.
When they walked into the special isolation section, they were met by a very confused Inspector Douglas.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded.
“This is Mason, FBI,” the RCMP cop told him. “She’s got the proper papers to pick up a Dr. Sandra O’Connell.”
Douglas looked stricken. “But that’s impossible! She was picked up ten, fifteen minutes ago!” he said.
Agent Mason was upset. “Who picked her up? On whose authority?”
“An inspector from the FBI,” Douglas said. “Absolutely faultless credentials, with the proper Canadian releases as well. An Inspector Braden, I think his name was. Yes, Inspector John Braden.”
NINETEEN
They knocked the team out being moving them from Camp Liberty, of course. Although a few of the top people obviously knew its location, none of the teams going into action could be trusted with the information. If even one were caught by the authorities, it would be impossible to conceal any information from them.
Most of the team chose to make the run individually, but Sam and Suzy wanted to go together. Their old relationship had deepened in the weeks at the camp, and with the possibility of death ahead, they were both unwilling to separate until they had to.
They awoke on the deck of a tramp steamer of Liberian registry somewhere in the North Atlantic. The crew appeared to be mostly Chinese and only a couple of the merchant officers spoke good English, one mate with a pronounced British accent. He was in charge of their drop.
“We’ll be in position to drop you sometime tonight,” he told them. He walked over to a chest in their cabin and opened it. “Here, try these on,” he told them, handing out some clothing.
They were military uniforms, obviously tailored for each of them. Since they were supposed to be part of the Air Force personnel team at the alternate Pentagon, they made Suzy a master sergeant and Sam a tech sergeant. “Enlisted personnel are never scrutinized as closely as officers,” the mate explained. “But don’t forget to salute.”
They wouldn’t. Knowing they were to be in the Air Force, they had memorized an awful lot of material they would be expected to know.
Next came the identification cards and orders. They were supposedly Security Police, formerly with the 1334th SP Squadron at Shaw AFB near Charleston, South Carolina. Their orders, papers, IDs and the like were perfect. Being SPs, they would be expected to demonstrate a lot of technical knowledge, and, as military cops, they would carry a lot of weight, particularly as regulars in a military occupation force composed primarily of reservists, guardsmen, and draftees.
They had suitcases with other uniforms and some civilian clothes and toiletries as well. Sam was particularly impressed by the used look of them, even to a worn bar of soap and a partially coiled tube of toothpaste.
A little before 2:00 A.M. they, their equipment, and the mate were lowered into a large rubber raft with two enigmatic Chinese seamen doing the paddling. About an hour later, they were met by an elderly-looking crab boat and transferred aboard.