30
Khasha was worried. More than worried, actually. Turbee had vanished. Yes, Dan had fired him, but no one had actually accepted the fact that Turbee was, in fact, finished at TTIC. Dan had not appointed Turbee to his position. A Senate subcommittee had. Turbee’s brilliance had been demonstrated repeatedly. He just needed a good crew around him to tell him what to look for. The success of Madrid had demonstrated that. Even the pointlessness of establishing a connection to the Janjawiid, in the search for the missing Semtex, had demonstrated his usefulness and skill. Khasha was inclined to believe Turbee when he offered the opinion that the stolen Semtex was on the Haramosh Star. When he nailed something, he did so with devastating accuracy. Maybe the SEAL teams had missed it. After all, even a small freighter had a few nooks and crannies. Whoever these drug runners were, they had already been devilishly clever in smuggling drugs. Why would that have changed?
Khasha had seen the expression on Turbee’s face as he slunk out the door of the TTIC control room. It was a look of shock and utter despair. About an hour after he left, she had started thinking about the many prescription drugs she knew he was taking. What if he forgot to take them? Would he slide into a subterranean world of schizophrenic despair? What if he tried to kill himself? What would her reaction have been if an error on her part, perceived or real, had caused a Presidency to come unglued?
She’d already avoided work for three full days, sickened at the manner in which Dan had treated Turbee. Instead of going to work, she’d dropped by the offices of the Urdu dictionary group at the NSA and commiserated with them. She realized that she was probably breaching all manner of security protocols but didn’t particularly care. She’d taken one sick day, then another, then another, barely bothering to call in. Three days after the firing affair she’d finally dropped by the TTIC control room. She had been shocked at how muted it was. At least half the workstations were idle. Rahlson had told Dan to go fuck himself and hadn’t been seen since. Rhodes had done much the same, and was rumored to have gone directly to friends in high places to file an official report. Most of the rest of the absentees were engaged elsewhere. Many of them, like George, were not wanting for jobs or money. Dan was on the Hill, subpoenaed by a multitude of committees, who were investigating the Haramosh Star affair. No one had seen or heard from Turbee.
When the weekend came along, Khasha had extended a three-day leave to five, spending a portion of it with an old university friend in Philadelphia, letting the pain of the Haramosh Star situation dissipate with dry red wine and pasta. Now, as she boarded the early Monday morning Amtrak Acela Express to head back to the capital, her anxiety increased. What would the day bring? Would she too be out of a job? Would TTIC still be there? Would Dan? And, most importantly, what had become of Turbee?
It was this train of thought that eventually led to her self-appointed mission of finding the wunderkind. First she checked in at TTIC and stayed for an hour or so. Turbee was still missing, and no one knew where he was. She had traveled to Turbee’s address, talked her way into his very generic apartment building, and threaded her way past some garbage cans to a basement suite. Typical, she thought. Lights bothered Turbee almost as much as loud or abrupt noises. A cellar dweller. The building was typical — part stone, part wood, old and mostly run down. She knocked on the door of Suite 3, but there was no answer. A second knock, and still no answer. She turned the handle and found the apartment unlocked. She opened the door a crack.
“Hamilton?” she asked. “Hamilton Turbee? Are you here?”
There was no response. She opened the door wider and stepped inside. She repeated herself, a little more loudly, “Turbee, are you in here?”
She was met with dead silence. Something was very wrong. Six days since Dan had fired Turbee. Turbee wasn’t at TTIC. Khasha knew his fear of social situations, and knew he wouldn’t be in any place he didn’t know or feel comfortable. But he wasn’t in his apartment, and it had been left unlocked. Turbee was a high-strung, antisocial creature at the best of times, and now he had been brutally humiliated in front of his coworkers. He was personally taking responsibility for a growing scandal that reached all the way up to the President’s office. Even a reasonable, solidly anchored individual would be in danger of losing his moorings in that kind of situation. Turbee had never been reasonable or even a little bit anchored — he was always riding the edge of disaster. God only knew where he was now.
Khasha raced through each room in the tiny basement suite, stumbling over the archipelago of computers, routers, servers, and screens that littered every available surface. She called out his name repeatedly and, when he didn’t appear, began knocking on the doors of the neighboring units, asking if they’d seen him. They all responded the same way… that they knew who he was, but never talked to him, and hadn’t seen him in days. She wondered what their reaction would be if they knew that he basically owned the largest computer the government had, that he had solved the Madrid bombings within hours of being given the assignment, and that he was the unfortunate soul now being blamed for the latest international American misadventure.
She tried the university mathematics department where he had worked just prior to joining TTIC. Turbee? No. They hadn’t seen him for months. She was given an old address and some old phone numbers but had no luck there either. In desperation, she telephoned Turbee’s father’s law firm, and asked to speak to Mr. James Turbee, but was told that he was en route back from the firm’s Hong Kong office at the moment.
She felt the panic rising in her stomach and swallowed heavily — her mouth had become as dry as sand. That bastard Dan Alexander, out of jealousy or simple derision at someone who thought differently than he, had publicly destroyed this gentle soul. Damn him. Damn the President, for that matter, for not having done his homework; damn the SEALs for screwing up a search, damn the damn drug runners who had started this whole thing, damn them all. Turbee was out there somewhere, probably off his meds, and probably in a suicidal frame of mind. The look in his eyes when he’d left TTIC the previous week had reminded her of the gaze of a wounded puppy. What had happened since then?
She got into her car and began plotting a course in an ever-widening circle around Turbee’s apartment. She stopped at the nearest 7/11 and asked at the counter.
“What’s his name? Hamilton? Hamilton Turbee? Thin white kid, mid-20s? Don’t have a clue. Never heard of him. Seen him? Nope. Sounds like a crystal meth addict to me. They’re all over the place,” the man behind the counter answered.
She telephoned the office twice, getting through each time to Johnson, who had for some reason stayed on in Dan’s absence.
“No, he’s not here, Khash,” he had said quietly. “After all, why would he be? Dan fired him. I wouldn’t come back after a scene like that either.”
“Who are his friends? Who are his relatives, Johnson?” she asked. “Everyone has those. Even Turbee. We must have a file on him or something, with next of kin, people to contact…”
“Don’t think so, Khash. He was too odd to have friends. I think his father is some high-rolling lawyer from around here, but I would need to check the file.”
“Will you please check for anything else, Johnson? I’ve already talked to his dad’s office, but see if there’s someone else I could call. He could be hurt. He’s probably in trouble. I’m worried sick about him.”