To Hunt a Sub Page 12

  The FBI’s best guess was the virus would go live at a predetermined time. It was James’ job to stop it before that happened. If he didn’t, America’s submarine defense would be at the mercy of whatever ocean terrain they were traversing when the virus shut it down.

  So far they had reached none of the deployed boats.

  Chapter 24

  Thursday

  The muggy heat woke Kali early. She shushed Sandy out of Annie’s room, filled his bowl with a half-can of Pedigree, and flipped the fan on to cool the apartment. He devoured breakfast, one eye on Annie’s door as though worried the new human would eat his food. Kali patted his downy head, changed into shorts and a t-shirt, and went for a run. The sweat rolling from her pores and the burn in her legs felt good. The steady pounding of her feet relaxed her.

  As she ran, Kali evaluated the changes to her life. She had never lived with a stranger. She went from parents to grandparents to Sean. She had never lived with a woman her age. Should they eat together? How did they share costs? Would Annie expect an apartment key? Should she worry about waking Annie in the morning or keeping her up at night?

  Truth, Kali considered no one a friend except Cat, and Cat was so unlike any human on the planet, Kali didn’t think she counted. She heard stories about talking through emotional problems with women who wore concerned frowns, but what did that mean? Should she bare her soul or encourage Annie to? And if so, when? Would she seem cold if she didn’t or crazy if she did?

  The more Kali worried, the faster she ran until she was sprinting. She decided to skip the rest of her jog, go to work before Annie woke up, and let the questions bubble around in her subconscious for a day.

  When she got home, Annie was gone, which immediately dropped Kali’s anxiety. She showered, dressed in comfortable lemon yellow crop pants, layered pastel tank tops, and woven sandals, and plopped onto a hardback chair in a splotch of sunlight by her kitchenette. During summer, this was the best place in the apartment. She tucked her feet underneath her bottom and started her second cup of coffee.

  If Annie likes coffee, I’ll have to make a bigger pot.

  Sandy trotted in through the dog door and collapsed at her chair for a postprandial nap.

  “Oh hell, Sandy, I’ll be myself. If I blow it, so what? She leaves in a few weeks anyway.”

  She put her cup in the sink, brushed her teeth, gathered her purse and briefcase, then set everything down and returned to the kitchen, washed the mug, dried it, and placed it in the cupboard. That’s when she saw a note from Annie suggesting dinner. Kali planned to meet with Eitan late in the day so suggested 7 pm and headed to Columbia, feeling unusually upbeat.

  Something about Annie made everything seem like an adventure.

  As she walked, she mulled over Mr. Keregosian’s motives. She wasn’t so naïve to think his assistance was free. The fact Zeke with his Navy Intel background was worried, worried her. How much more concerned would he be if he knew she liked Mr. Keregosian’s friendly notes, that often they talked about topics close to her heart like the evolution of culture, the roots of religion, and traits they wanted in friends—and Mr. Keregosian had as much difficulty talking to people as she did. What would Zeke think of Mr. Keregosian’s six-year-old nephew who was the center of his world, that Al Qaeda terrorists killed his wife, or that he almost didn’t contact her worrying she’d mistrust his intentions. She imagined he was her age with bright optimistic eyes and a quick intelligence, with a love of dogs to match her own. She hoped they never met because she didn’t want to find out she was wrong.

  And what about Wyn? Cat called the Tea long and boring—‘like Wyn’. It cooled her interest and she told Kali to ‘go for it’ Kali resolved to accept Wyn’s next invite, should there be one.

  Her head was spinning. No wonder she avoided interpersonal relationships.

  Chapter 25

  Fairgrove called Delamagente’s office at least ten times with no answer and finally decided to drop in unannounced. Becoming part of her research required he be seen spending time with her. He stopped first at the men’s room to check his carefully-selected outfit—an expensive short sleeved silk shirt with Balenciaga linen slacks and Berluti tasseled loafers without socks. His hair was perfect, bangs at the rakish angle he’d been told projected a lighthearted approach to the world. Overall, he reeked of success and achievement.

  After a minute in her doorway with an alluring grin arranged on his face, he gave up and coughed to get her attention. He couldn’t even get a lunch invite out before she was claiming too much work, but then surprised him by asking to bounce a few ideas off him. He cordially agreed and she started in with a discussion on ancient DNA.

  It took five minutes to exhaust the fluff that always got him through these conversations, but Delamagente seemed to be just warming up. He pleaded a parched throat and suggested they get a drink. She led the way to the Engineering Terrace vending machines where they drank coffee sitting in plastic chairs. The cheap brew made him gag, but he covered it with a sneeze.

  He needed to move this on. “Our research is similar, my dear. My 3D geometric morphometrics would render your geography faster with more accuracy, don’t you think?”

  Fairgrove considered his timing perfect—a progressive growth of fellowship resulting in her request they collaborate on her project. Except, she lapsed into silence, eyes focused on some middle distance. He reached for her fingers. Surely his touch would draw the words from her mouth. She shook her head.

  “I tried geometric morphometrics. They made no difference, Wyn.” Fairgrove bit back his annoyance. He hated that moniker, but would train her another day.

  “Is it a speed problem? My IBM laptop is quite speedy. I use it to manage all my research.”

  Delamagente’s jaw clenched, but she offered an agreeable nod as she stood. “There are few people who understand what I’m doing. How can I thank you?”

  Fairgrove jumped at the opportunity. “Join me for lunch. You can tell me what dreams shape your life.”

  She stuttered, checked her phone, then no surprise to him, agreed. In thirty minutes, they stood in the foyer of a restaurant Delamagente said she had always wanted to go to. The staff greeted Fairgrove by name and guided him to a patio table he called ‘my spot’.

  She smoothed her hair and hugged her body as the waiter approached.

  “Many Columbia professors find this café relaxing.” He included just enough condescension to make his point. “You will soon be part of that elite group.”

  She peered out the window at the people rushing by, phones to their ears, chattering while their eyes saw nothing, arms filled with books. “It gives me perspective, Wyn.”

  That thought had never crossed his mind. He came here to impress vulnerable young females with the extravagant cost, but Fairgrove knitted his brows.

  “Living life for others is perspective enough.”

  Living life for others is perspective enough. How perfect. He paused so she could marvel at his modern epigram. Just as the silence became uncomfortable, she started.

  “When I visited Lucy the other day, she stood on the lip of the Great Rift. A nearby volcano was erupting, spewing columns of fire into the air. Fiery rivers roared down its flanks as though a dam burst. She couldn’t have been more than a mile away yet she showed no fear.”

  Fairgrove didn’t understand how this mattered, but he pasted an engrossed expression across his face.

  “In the next scene, she and a wolf hunted an Oryx, trailing it up scree slopes and across gullies until the Oryx reached her herd. At that point, Lucy gave up the chase, but the wolf continued.”

  Fairgrove had been people watching, but when Delamagente’s voice dropped to an awe-filled whisper and her eyes found his, he pretended to search for their waiter.

  “Water, please!” He motioned toward their glasses

  “This is a critical distinction in their decision process, Wyn. Lucy gathered information to make a go-no go on hunting. The wolf did it
to inform a hard-wired conclusion he’s already reached—to hunt. She used free choice and the wolf instinct. The wolf’s tenacious way may work, but ours works better or Canis would top the food chain.”

  The waiter dropped off ice water and Wyn took a sip while struggling to convey enthusiasm, but she must have read confusion.

  “That’s my goal,” she reminded him. “To understand.”

  Now he remembered. He asked about her goals.

  She paused, as though listening to herself. “Boy do I sound like a bore.”

  “To me, you are fascinating.” Women wanted to be taken seriously. “By the way, I’m told your security system is excellent. Can you explain it to me? I need one now that I’m part of the Columbia family.” He patted her hand. “I’m also curious how Otto works outside of Columbia’s network.”

  Wyn confused Kali. On one hand, they had much in common. When was the last time she talked with someone who read all three volumes in Baroque Cycle? They shared an interest in paleoanthropology and children, and he gave off all the signals of wanting to settle down. On the other hand, he didn’t ask where she’d like to go for lunch and they ended up in a stuffy and pretentious restaurant—one where he obviously spent a lot of time. When she sarcastically said she always wanted to eat there, he believed her. She found herself jealous of the flood of happy, industrious people who hurried by, outside the window.

  In the end, he simply made it easy for her to make the right decision. This year belonged to Sean. The right person would wait.

  When they got back to her office, he made himself comfortable on the edge of her desk, a possessive hand on her shoulder, and watched her email populate.

  “Another love letter from Porter?”

  “Yes. He wants politically-correct research. An oxymoron.”

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart. He’ll fall in line now we’re working together.”

  Kali’s glare was lost on him, distracted by his own reflection in the monitor. First the Dean, and now Wyn. Where did this come from?

  “Which brings up a subject we must chat about.” He smoothed his brow while staring into the distance. Kali felt her face pinch, always a precursor to a migraine. She struggled to relax.

  “I promised Porter I’d discuss Rowe with you.” His tone was weary, but cheerful. “His efforts at Max Planck were spotty at best. Old complaints are resurfacing and I believe your work will suffer from his involvement.”

  A headache now throbbed behind her eyes. Her doctor said she didn’t handle stress well. She placed her hands in her lap and forced her fingers open.

  “Why did the school offer him the professorship?”

  “They should have asked me first. I could have suggested alternate academes with much more impressive backgrounds.”

  He knocked on her desk as though that ended the conversation, patted Kali, and left.

  On cue, Rowe limped in. He wore a white t-shirt over casual jeans with a Pendleton over it. The rolled up sleeves revealed massive forearms accustomed to physical labor, with a partially-obscured tattoo on the right bicep.

  Her jaw unclenched and she swallowed two aspirin.

  “You missed Wyn. He complained about you.”

  He winced as he eased onto Cat’s desk. “Someday, I’ll tell you the true story of Dr. Wynton Fairgrove.” His eyes took on the color of burnt charcoal. There he went again, with his split personality. How did she figure out which was real? If she was going to fall for Zeke, she needed to know what made him tick. “Have you read Atlas Shrugged?”

  Rowe picked a pencil up and twirled it through his fingers.

  “Isn’t that a subversive book?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Ayn Rand said, ‘Man comes to earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon.’ In The Fountainhead. I read it five times.” Somehow he got two pencils going, flipping and spinning through the air. “One of my favorite books is The Poet and the Murderer, about the notorious forger—”

  “—Mark Hofmann.” Kali’s third-favorite book. “How about the Aubrey–Maturin novels?”

  “I started the series while house-bound after knee surgery. I finished eighteen of them before going back to work.”

  “No one reads eighteen books in what? A month?”

  “A week.”

  Kali giggled. There was a lot more to Zeke Rowe. She took his arm. “You were interested in a security program for your computer? Time to meet Dr. Eitan Sun.”

  Chapter 26

  “Welcome to Eitan’s geekosphere.” Cluttered didn’t begin to describe this room. Trash buried every surface including empty peanut butter jars, soda cans, take-out menus, a tattered burrito, and something green in a pizza box.

  “Eitan, Dr. Rowe.”

  A disembodied voice said, “Yes.”

  The sole personal touch was a photo of a smiling woman in a floral turban, proudly displayed to the right of Sun’s computer.

  Rowe asked, “Is this your wife, Dr. Sun?”

  There was a muffled gasp from Kali as a round oversized face peeked around the wall of double-stacked thirty-inch monitors. Huge watery eyes peered through tortoise-shell glasses. His complexion was as fair and unlined as a pre-pubescent boy with no hint of beard or mustache. A Giants ball cap covered a thin ragged fringe of hair falling to his shoulders and he wore a stained t-shirt identifying him as Homo nocturnes.

  Rowe felt at home, warmed by the scruffy disdain for appearance shared by most SEALs.

  “Are you OK?” Kali asked, concern tingeing her words.

  Sun bobbed his head, more a spasm, like a coiled spring about to pop. Kali caught Rowe’s eye and shook her head. He edged forward, close enough to see Sun’s fingers flying across two keyboards while he spoke into a wireless headset. Every few seconds, his hands moved across his chest like a choreographed dance.

  Rowe turned to Kali. “What’s with the hand movements?”

  “Those are busy signals in American Sign Language. He says he’s almost done.”

  “I also communicate in Python, Hungarian, Russian, LISP, Visual Basic, SQL, assembly—MIPS and ARM, HTML, XML, and some Bash,” Sun added, looking directly at Rowe with the most unusual eyes Rowe had ever seen. They carried the wisdom of generations, the curiosity of a child, and the peace of a man comfortable in his own mind.

  “It depends upon the needs of my software friends. Chinese anyone?” Sun offered a carton. “I’m eating orange today.”

  “Eitan eats by color, which varies with his mood. No thanks,” Kali answered. Rowe declined, too, wondering if the fork was to be shared.

  Sun rolled toward Rowe. “Cat had a crush on you for a day.” His gaze inventoried Rowe’s body, not even pausing at the damaged hands as though he, like Rowe, took his handicaps philosophically—a trade-off for some past adventure.

  Rowe searched for a jaunty comeback, but came up empty. Kali rescued him.

  “Eitan is a polymath with the mental ability to absorb, retain, and reference large amounts of unrelated details.”

  “Which inevitably find context in later experiences.” Sun continued to focus on Rowe.

  “Eitan never relaxes. A true stress puppy.”

  “I don’t like others controlling solutions.”

  “What’s your new digital jewelry, Eitan?” Kali pointed to one of the numerous necklaces around Sun’s neck.

  “Observe.” He ran the object over Rowe’s head and shoulders and waved it in front of his monitor. A grainy picture appeared and sharpened to a three-dimensional representation as good as any Rowe used in SEAL Intel.

  “How’d you get the back of my head,” Zeke asked.

  “When the face is digitized, the program searches for online images that include more detail. Somewhere out there are images of the side and back of your head.”

  Kali got up. “Zeke needs help with security protocols,” and she was gone.

  Sun continued to focus on Rowe. “I trust you found the analysis of the pictures useful.”

  “You out-ana
lyzed the FBI.”

  “They operate with limits I don’t. Happy, happy.”

  “I appreciate the help.”

  “Kali’s webcam, in her house, takes a picture when motion is detected or when the light pattern from her window is disrupted. This morning, a man beamed a device through the window, probably trying to see why the bug stopped working.”

  Rowe jumped up. “Excuse me. I need to—“

  “—notify Bobby James. Done.”

  Rowe stared at Sun and sat down. Before he could form a question, Sun said, “I never did hear what happened.”

  From anyone else, that would sound odd, but not to Rowe. He wanted to answer, Life happened. He had considered life benevolent until the night it destroyed what he valued most. The SEALs saved him, until they didn’t.

  It was Iraq, early morning, just before the humidity turned clothing to damp sweaty rags. Rowe and Duck Peters examined satellite photos for clues to where Saddam Hussein kept his Weapons of Mass Destruction.

  Duck picked out a smudge. “Those trucks cross into Syria couple times a week. See how the bed sits lower to the ground on the way out? They leave full and come back empty.”

  “He’s sending WMDs out of the country. We just gotta prove that.” Rowe tore into a stack of Watch Reports, in search of the next convoy.

  Duck’s walky-talky squawked. “Hussein is at a farm ten miles south of Tikrit. I’ll get him. You find the WMDs,” and he sprinted out.

  Minutes later, Rowe found them, packed up his gear, and left.

  When Duck returned to base two days later, Rowe was missing. His last communiqué put him in sight of the convoy and then nothing. SEALs often maintained radio silence during an operation, but this felt wrong. Duck made a phone call, refilled his P226, his M16, shouldered an M60 and disappeared. When his hardware ran out, he had his hands.