With thirty agents in the field, 300 more in offices and headquarters, aerial reconnaissance, and dedicated satellite time, every move Bernard Keyes made was now a matter of national security. His place of work, home, car, garage, and even his favorite bar were now more wired than most local TV stations. Millions of dollars worth of electronic gear was sending the FBI’s central nervous system every impulse of Bernard’s life. The most productive device, however, and the one that would prove to be the best few hundred dollars invested, was the keystroke transmitter. NCIJTF technicians attached it to Keyes’ Dell computer during a surreptitious, court-ordered break-in. It transmitted every keystroke he made to a “bread truck” parked near his house. The truck was equipped with a satellite up-link patched directly into the FBI Electronics Crime Lab in Washington, D.C. There, other National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force technicians would eavesdrop on every chat room and web site Bernard visited, including the e-mails he sent out announcing an emergency meeting of the Sabot Society.
Mallory’s Chrysler Concord was parked in front of his daughter Kelly’s house. Inside, Cynthia and Kelly spoke in hushed tones in the kitchen as Kelly’s husband Jim and her father tinkered with Jim’s Jeep out in the garage.
“Does Daddy know?”
“No, I didn’t want him to worry.”
“How did you hide the dizzy spells?”
“They only happened a few times. It was the headaches that made me go to the hospital.”
With tears in her eyes, the daughter reached across the table, grabbing the hand of the mother she loved, then hated, then loved again and had now come to cherish, since she herself became a mother. “It’s so infuriating. It isn’t fair, it just isn’t fair.” Anger replaced Kelly’s tears.
“Kelly, this is God’s plan. It’s been there since before I was born and decided to act up now.”
“You know, you are going to have to tell Daddy sooner or later.”
“Tell Daddy what?” Dennis asked, as he and Jim stepped into the kitchen.
As their grandson John worked a Tonka bulldozer into a pile of dirt in the corner of the yard, Dennis and Cynthia sat on a stone bench near a sleeping rose bush.
Dennis read the letter for the third time. “I’ve paid into the health plan for thirty-five years, and they won’t cover the type of procedure you really need? I’ll go down there and raise hell.”
“Dennis, the doctors at the hospital and the administrators all tried. No health insurance will cover it, it’s too expensive. Those words in that letter, severe aortic stenosis, complicate every treatment option that we could ever afford.”
Dennis picked at one of the thorns as the gravity of Cynthia’s situation sank into his chest. He closed his eyes in one last-ditch effort to test whether or not this was just a bad dream from which he could awaken. Cynthia’s sigh brought him back to the inescapable reality of the nightmare already in progress. The sun was setting, the day’s final light illuminating Cynthia’s graying blonde hair and affording her a radiant glow. Her eyes were large and sparkling. She’s never looked more beautiful, he thought. He couldn’t let her go without a fight. He spent his whole life protecting strangers, the great unwashed, the hoity-toity, the average working stiff. If he could do that for them, it was his duty to protect his gal Cynthia. Hell, there were doctors all over the world working on this. Surely, they could help. He’d find a way to save her life.
Truck seven returned to the loading bay of Sperling High Voltage at 4:18 PM. At 7 AM the next morning, it was scheduled to be reloaded and ready to roll by eight, but instead of going to Brookhaven Labs, it would be making a delivery to Con Ed in Shirley. The dispatcher, seeing number seven back into the loading dock, glanced at the clock and decided that there was plenty of time to load up before the 5:00 PM punch-out and directed the dock men to do so. A forklift specially set up with a curved saddle and claw to hold 55-gallon drums loaded fifty of them filled with Translyte. At 4:55 PM, the load was completed, and the workers closed the truck’s rear door. The crew all punched out before 5 PM. One of the workers noticed some people still up in the office as he steered his Ford Focus toward the employee parking lot exit.
Dennis squinted as the late afternoon sun glared through the window behind Miles Taggert, silhouetting him in his own palatial offices. “Mr. Taggert, I’m here to propose a trade.”
“Go on,” Taggert prompted across a teepee of fingers, two dabbing at his chin.
“You want me to keep you alive; I want you to keep my wife alive.”
“Whoa, wait a minute. What’s the matter with Mrs. Mallory?”
“She has …” Dennis reached into his coat and retrieved the hospital letter, not wanting to get this wrong, “arterio-venous malformation in her head. Traditional surgery, the kind my Detective’s Endowment medical will cover is very risky because of …” he found the other words in the letter, “Severe aortic stenosis, they’d have to lower her body temperature during an already risky operation. She probably couldn’t survive that.”
“What can I do?”
“You travel in high circles, with people who are always running off to Liechtenstein or Sweden to try new radical therapies that aren’t available here in the United States. I’ll work for free, but you pay all the travel, medical, or whatever bills to make sure Cynthia beats this thing.”
“You’ll draw a salary and we’ll do everything we can for your wife … as long as I am alive. Deal?” Taggert extended his hand. Dennis did the same, worried that his might be shaking from nerves. He had been in tight situations before, even helped negotiate a Detective’s Endowment contract once, but this was different. He was negotiating for Cynthia’s best shot at survival. It was a pressure he had never known, even when he was undercover.
“Deal.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Gloria Santiago, Sperling’s assistant comptroller, was getting more and more frustrated. Her computer was not cooperating today. She had entered the same numbers into a spreadsheet three times already, only to have the computer lock up when she tried to print it. The only way out was powering down. To her dismay, every time she rebooted, the spreadsheet was gone. This time, at 5:30, she saved it every step of the way.
“Gloria, why are you still here?” her boss asked on his way out the door.
“Dave, this friggin’ computer is going out the goddamn window in a minute.”
“Are you not thinking pleasant thoughts? You know these things read your mind and if you don’t think pleasant thoughts they can be vindictive.”
“Dave, please, I am in no mood.”
“Sorry, what’s the problem?”
“I have been working all day on this spreadsheet for the meeting tomorrow and this piece of crap keeps losing it.”
“Did you save it?”
She turned and shot him a look that could burn out his eyeballs.
And when he tried the spreadsheet himself, he had no better luck. Finally, she resolved to do it by hand.
Dave patted her on the shoulder. “Your dedication will pay off someday, Gloria. Try not to work too late.”
She watched him leave, muttering under her breath, “Try not to drink too much.”
At 8:50, she was still standing in front of the Xerox machine, breaking company policy. One good thing about working late was there were no pansies around to object to secondhand smoke.