To Hunt a Sub Page 26

  “I’d kill you, Wyn, but I need Sean. And Salah. Tell me where they are, you live.”

  Rowe twisted Fairgrove around and wrenched until the damaged joint popped back in place. “Here’s another reason to help.” He pulled out the information James faxed him that morning. “You didn’t write your research papers and I can prove it.”

  Fairgrove squirmed, eyes darting from Rowe to Kali’s door and back.

  “This report goes public if I don’t hear from you tonight.” He shoved Fairgrove. “Take Friend and go.”

  As Fairgrove and the dazed bodyguard stumbled down the hall, Rowe smiled. Al-Zahrawi would see the beaten but living men and think Rowe weak. In war, deception was an honorable weapon.

  Rowe turned to Kali, expecting disgust, even hatred for the Zeke Rowe he’d let out of the cage. He usually hid this warrior for fear of losing her, but today, the stakes were too high. Instead of revulsion, her eyes sparked with excitement. When had she changed? Was it when Joe Boyd told her about the gash on Sean’s face or when she found Sean’s desperate message in the rank outhouse? Rowe was happy for her new-found strength, but sorrowful for her lost innocence.

  “Otto can find Sean.”

  He did a double-take. “What do you mean?”

  “There are discrete differences in the human phenotype—height, weight, shape. They’re tricky because unlike a… a submarine… they change when we move, carry items, or change clothes. Sean with a backpack is still Sean, but the algorithm can’t find him.

  “But I use that to find similar individuals and then narrow the search to Upper State New York—where we think Sean is--filtering hits from live feeds for Sean’s picture. I bet the kidnappers send a live video stream to Al-Zahrawi wherever he is.”

  To Rowe, it sounded as good as any other idea. Find Sean, stop Al-Zahrawi. That made Rowe’s most important job right now to guard Kali against Friend or Wyn’s return while she worked her magic, so he settled into Cat’s chair and took a nap.

  Kali jerked upright, eyes wide. She checked the clock. Forty-five minutes lost. What had awakened her? She looked around the room. Zeke was motionless, head back, eyes closed. Her comm window to Eitan showed him tapping away, intent eyes reading, face benign.

  Nothing unusual, so why was she awake?

  The silence—that was it. Otto was quiet. He’d found something.

  “Eitan!” The round boyish face turned to her. “Otto found a webcam in Finland with a profile that matches Sean. How can he be in Finland?”

  Her fingers flew, oblivious to Eitan’s answer. Otto was whizzing. A solid wall of letters and numbers and symbols dumped endlessly down the screen. Kali grunted, swore, scowled, but her gaze never moved from the display. The phone rang and she let it go to voice mail. Rowe said something, but she had no idea what.

  Finally, she sat back and chewed a cuticle, eyes like lasers, face tense. Rowe rolled his chair over as a grainy picture formed, like a TV with bad reception. Minutes passed as it cleared until it became an image of Sean huddled in a corner as Fairgrove yelled at someone off-screen.

  Chapter 58

  “He’s alive…”

  Kali clawed at her bandages, glued to her son. Though tattered and filthy, he wore a striped t-shirt and beige chinos she purchased for his summer program. They’d fought that day because Sean wanted her to use the money for something important. His arms were bound in front and his head drooped. Stringy hair hung into his eyes, interleaved with some sort of plant waste. His legs bent gracelessly beneath him, but the sight of his muddy socks inside battered Nikes brought tears to her eyes.

  “Where is he?”

  Kali cried soundlessly, the hopelessness overwhelming her. “I don’t know,” she croaked.

  “He didn’t finish his dinner.” Zeke referred to a burger abandoned to Sean’s side.

  “He doesn’t like fast food.” Kali hugged herself and rocked, eyes on the video stream. “His fingers—he’s playing a bassline against his chest. He says it calms him.”

  Such a normal Sean action, one he did every day without a second thought, strumming the notes of a piece he was preparing, a virtual practice away from his bass.

  “His surroundings have clues to where he is.”

  Her voice shook but held as she input a command string to compare details of Sean’s prison against online photo databases, Instagram, Facebook postings, anything Otto could access in the public domain. She started with the window frame, flooring, wall coverings, and other interior minutiae, and then hunted for housing developments of similar age, construction and layout. Next, she tried to match the exterior slice she could see through the narrow, grimy window with web-based shots. Every few seconds, she reviewed Otto’s findings and narrowed his field by eliminating the impossible.

  But there were too many possibilities. She selected the vegetation in his hair and the mud on his socks and shoes, identified their habitats, and sent Otto on a hunt. When she compared this new data set against previous results, the pool of options shrank, but not enough.

  The time required for Wyn to leave her lab and arrive at Sean’s location extended the search area rather than narrowed it. Focusing on Pottersville, Kali launched web crawlers to find every camera tied to an internet or intranet. There were few; Pottersville was too rural. What about the house itself? Tax rolls might include a name she recognized so she searched the county assessor’s files for small houses, townhouses, and condos which Otto would then analyze. If the kidnappers rented it recently, it might show up on the MLS, so she hunted through those databases. She ended up with such a massive list she had to write a script to auto-search the files.

  Wyn yelled at someone Kali couldn’t see. “I’m in charge. You do as I say!” The response was garbled, but the tone bored. Wyn pulled back, eyes slits. “I didn’t approve a change of plan.”

  The same voice, but closer: “This was always the plan.” Wyn moved out of the camera’s range and then, there were only whispers.

  Sean remained in the viewfinder, fingering his bassline on his chest, eyes down, face quiet.

  Kali squirmed. “The food…” She hacked McDonalds, but the order was too common. In desperation, she accessed police blotters for service calls, hoping someone had seen a suspicious boy who matched Sean and called it in. Nothing.

  Finally, she leaned back, tears glistening in her eyes. “I can’t find him.”

  “Fairgrove will tell us.” Rowe made a call and left.

  Kali sat with Sean as he finger brushed his hair and tried to spit shine the dirt from his face. In between, his fingers played a silent song over and over, in a loop, a tiny smile dancing on his lips. She fell asleep with him and had her best night’s rest in days.

  Rowe talked Sun into a field trip to Fairgrove’s palatial townhome. They sat quietly in the dark car, slumped down in their seats, until Rowe verified no one was home. Defeating the lock took Rowe half a minute. Once inside, Sun attacked the digital devices while Rowe searched the structure—back of drawers, under throw rugs, behind wall-hangings, down drains, in the freezer.

  “Listen to this ‘to do’ list, Zeke—Get visiting professor status revoked’.”

  “I knew he was behind it.”

  “This spreadsheet’s interesting. Fairgrove paid Al-Zahrawi after his—Fairgrove’s—wife’s death, his girlfriend’s disappearance, and the publication of every one of his major articles.”

  Before Rowe had time to process that, an alarm sounded. “That’s my phone. I friended Fairgrove on Bump. It alerts me when he’s close.”

  “Bump?”

  “It’s a dating app Fairgrove belongs to. It lets him find other members nearby. He can chat with them or meet up.” Sun stabbed a few buttons. “He thinks I’m a voluptuous vacuous blonde a block away interested in hooking up for the evening.”

  A phone beeped just outside the door and then footsteps hurried away.

  “We better go. It won’t take long for him to figure out he’s been stood up.”

 
; As they snuck out, Rowe found an album by the front door with photos of a Columbia grad student he recognized.

  Chapter 59

  Friday

  “Excuse me, Professor Delamagente?”

  A student assistant stood in the doorway holding a bulky manila envelope. Rowe had just arrived after spending the night watching Sun analyze Wyn’s computer—mostly worthless—and drinking coffee with James as they compared notes on what they knew and didn’t know.

  “Hold on, Kali.” He pulled out his sat phone and activated an app that scanned for anything unusual. “OK, you can open it.”

  Kali pulled the zipper and removed a pliable bundle wrapped in brown waxed paper. A few snips exposed the contents—and she screamed.

  Two ears, one human and the other the soft floppy size of a Labrador. As Kali wheezed, Rowe chased down the student who knew only that the guard asked him to deliver it. When confronted, the retired NYPD officer said it was waiting when he arrived. One call confirmed the courier had no record of the delivery.

  As Rowe returned, he searched the faces of the students racing to classes and cataloged their backpacks, purses, and anything else that might be out of place. Nothing. Whoever had left this was long gone.

  When he got back, Kali sat rigidly, eyes misted, face taut.

  “We don’t know they belong to Sean and Sandy, Kali.”

  He reached out, but she shook him off. “They don’t. Sean has both according to Otto’s latest images, and Sandy’s are whiter. Who pretends to hurt a boy and a dog and thinks that’ll talk me into helping?”

  “Al-Zahrawi.” Rowe punched a few icons on his tablet and brought up a picture of a VW bug wrapped around a pole. The only visible part of the driver was a severed arm lying three feet from the wreckage. “This is what’s left of Yaakov Demsky, the man Laslo Hemren replaced in Israel, on Fairgrove’s recommendation. Yaakov was the first in his family to attend grad school. Friends considered him a gentle soul with a sharp sense of humor. He planned to marry when he received his doctoral degree.”

  Another gory scene burst onto the screen. “Salah Mahmud Al-Zahrawi was paid to kill a young Muslim woman. Her husband thought she was cheating on him because she spent two evenings away from home. 235 people died when an aircraft she was flying in exploded. Her remains were strapped into Seat 10A. After her death, a lawyer told the widower his wife had arranged for his parents to visit from Pakistan, as a surprise for his birthday.”

  Kali’s shock gave way to the blank expression Rowe knew from battle-hardened soldiers. He pulled the scrapbook from his briefcase, the one he took last night from Fairgrove’s house, and paged through pictures of an infant and mother, a toddler riding a pony, and a mother and preschooler on a peddle boat ride. Grins covered their faces as they waved to the camera. “Do you know this child?”

  Whatever color remained in Kali’s face vanished as though a drain had opened. “They’re like the pictures on Wyn’s computer…”

  A kindergartner with her mom outside an elementary school, book bag in hand, a frightened but stalwart expression on her face. A seven-year-old Kali blowing out candles on a cake.

  “The collection ends at Columbia.”

  “That’s my mother. Did she give these to Wyn?”

  “Were they friends?” Rowe countered.

  Kali didn’t answer, just kept turning pages. Rowe didn’t tell her about the second album, of a striking woman with raven hair and porcelain skin with an eerie resemblance to Kali. She rested her head against a young Wynton Fairgrove who frowned into the camera. In another, the exquisite woman displayed a bulging stomach. She wore a flowered sundress and sat in a Queen Anne chair decorated with balloons. Her smile spilled warmth and friendship across everyone around her. In the next, and last, she held a baby.

  To Rowe, only one scenario fit. Fairgrove contracted with Al-Zahrawi to get rid of Kali’s birth mother when the relationship became inconvenient. For some reason, he spared the child. Kali didn’t need to hear this.

  Her jaw bunched as tears filled her eyes. Rowe gave her time. Finally her face hardened.

  “Promise me you and Sean will live.”

  Rowe took her hands. “Sean won’t die unless I do.”

  “Not good enough. No one else will die because of me. Annie, Alfred and his daughter, my m-mother. No more innocents.”

  Chapter 60

  Friday

  Last night’s wind had blown itself out leaving a postcard perfect summer morning in New York. Kali showered and stood in front of her closet. There was a good chance she wouldn’t be home for days so she wanted clothes that were comfortable, durable, and stain-resistant. She picked day-old jeans, layers of tank tops, a sweater, and the only sandals she could find.

  She stuffed a handful of Tigers Milk bars in her purse and set out for Columbia. The pool down the street from the campus opened early today because of the heatwave and children were already lined up.

  Would Sean’s life ever be normal again?

  As soon as she arrived at her lab, she called Eitan. He wore the same Hawaiian shirt as yesterday except more creases and bigger food stains. His eyes were bloodshot behind his backup frames.

  “What happened to your glasses?”

  “Glasses? I have them on.” His fingers clicked nonstop as he talked.

  “You ready?”

  “I already started. I’m reconfiguring Otto’s scripts to integrate the geologic landmarks…”

  Saturday-Tuesday

  When Rowe arrived each morning, Kali ignored him, and did Sun. Both were in a zone that had no room for flesh and blood or small talk. Didn’t matter. This was where he had to be. He sat with an iPad full of Kindle books, feet on Stockbury’s desk, lukewarm coffee at his elbow, head spinning from Kali’s and Sun’s geek-speak, hyperbole, and general mishmash of obfuscatory jargon. She hunched in her chair, trolled the room when Otto was rendering, popped Tylenol like candy and squirted Visine into her eyes. His grandma would call it sitzfleisch, the ability to do something for hours without stopping, something Rowe had never mastered except as a SEAL.

  Kali didn’t eat unless Rowe brought her something. He tried to bring the snacky foods he’d seen Sun eating—pizza, orange chicken, Cheetos, Twinkies, soda, juice, cashews, coffee, and pretty much every sort of junk food he could find. One day, Sun ignored all of that and Kali said in passing that he was eating white. Rowe went back out and loaded up on popcorn, burritos, white chocolate, milk, and cottage cheese, which Sun ate nonstop.

  No one had died since Annie, and there were no more threats. James thought Al-Zahrawi understood a live Sean kept Kali working on the one item he must have to execute his plan: Otto. Rowe agreed. Interesting Al-Zahrawi hadn’t sent the magnetic signature, hopefully because he couldn’t get it.

  Whatever the plan, it climaxed in ten days with the online auction.

  James had agents tailing Fairgrove, but he hadn’t left his house since the confrontation and the only visitors delivered food. Occasionally, James called with a clue which Rowe ran to ground. The warrant to search Hemren’s room turned up a Qur’an, a prayer rug, and letters from his sisters begging him not to forget them. Hemren told the truth about the girls.

  Borodnoi had disappeared. Matt Monroe was in custody, but refused to talk. James would hold him forty-eight hours as a person of interest in Hemren’s death, and then release him with a covert tail. He figured Matt would find Al-Zahrawi once he was out because he needed his fee.

  Ajit was tasked with finding the online auction. When James asked how it was going, Ajit responded, “Mumble, groan. Meh,” which meant he had nothing. When James reminded him of the deadline, he whistled.

  As the hours passed, Sean remained their only tangible lead to Al-Zahrawi so Rowe kept bringing food, watching Kali’s digital clock tick off the minutes, and listening to her quiet mutterings.

  Tuesday morning, the fifth day of the search, Kali sniffed her armpits, scrunched her nose, and then ignored the sour scent wafting from her bo
dy. The daily sponge bath consisting of soap squirted on a paper towel and a splash of baby powder hadn’t worked for at least a day, but Rowe wasn’t about to mention it. This was her only break that didn’t involve falling asleep at her desk. Today, breakfast included her sixth Excedrin in three hours. Not that Rowe was counting, but didn’t she worry about ulcers?

  “Any estimate when you’ll finish?”

  She turned toward him, eyes angry red orbs surrounded by dark circles. Usually, they were filled with hope. Today, all he saw was despair.

  “There isn’t enough data. We need Al-Zahrawi to move Sean somewhere with cameras. How do we make that happen?”

  Rowe left and reappeared an hour later, dragging a furious and frightened Fairgrove by the collar. Rowe threw him to the floor by Kali’s desk. “Ask the world-famous paleoanthropologist, the embarrassment to my profession.”

  Kali eyed Fairgrove with the disdain reserved for a cockroach in the kitchen cabinet. “Tell me, Wyn. I’ll do anything. Give you my research. I’ll even marry you. Would that work?” Kali’s voice was pleading and exhausted, but still she managed a kindness that might appeal to the man.

  Fairgrove’s eyes darted around the room, never settling anywhere for more than a second. “He won’t listen to me anymore. He destroyed my 850,000-year-old English lance. Do you know what it was worth?” His voice held none of its usual superior condescension. He had become the emperor decloaked, standing in front of his subjects.

  “Less than Sean and the millions of Americans Al-Zahrawi will kill if we don’t stop him,” Rowe growled and texted James about how somehow Al-Zahrawi got in to see Fairgrove.