To Hunt a Sub Page 6

  “We’re combing through everywhere and everyone with access to a sub’s network. Problem is, that could be cables, satellite communications, repair facilities, or thousands of contractors. No one’s ever considered Vaseline-type goo dangerous.”

  “But locations are tightly guarded and highly encrypted?”

  James flared. “So is everything about a sub, and still…”

  An idea bounced up, unbidden, as so often happened for Rowe. “Maybe that’s why the student-looking man was at the presentation. Now he knows Stockbury’s work is more sophisticated than his.”

  Rowe paused, thinking through how to use this. “What if we made it easy for him to steal her research, but she defanged it, added a backdoor, and a tracker.”

  James answered slowly, “Yeah. That could work.”

  “Will she do it?”

  James grunted. “I get the feeling if we don’t involve her, she’ll do it on her own.”

  “She’ll be putting herself in danger. Get one of your—”

  “You know I don’t have anyone who could fit in that academic environ,” James interrupted, and then said nothing more.

  Rowe’s mind went back to the submariners, most of them just kids, signed on to the Silent Service because they loved their country. Desperate, freezing, down to their last O2 candle, probably thought they were doomed until that cruiser found them.

  “I have a few days.” He’d already forwarded his personal tools—a spade used on every dig he ever worked, the four-inch hand trowel from a mentor, and an old set of dental picks donated by an Uncle when he upgraded his office—to Israel and arranged for the expedition vehicles, tents, and provisions, which included a generous supply of chips, Twinkies, trail mix and the other snack foods grads loved. He was as ready as he could be.

  “What about Delamagente?” Rowe asked.

  “What about her?”

  “Her Otto is smart, like Tony Stark’s house robot in Ironman—JARVIS. Otto can connect the dots, extrapolate from data, and track anything. She made a persuasive argument at DARPA about its importance to submarine security.”

  Rowe admired Delamagente’s tenacity. Even when her experiment collapsed, she didn’t give up.

  James harrumphed. “Keep an eye on her, too.”

  “OK. Shouldn’t be difficult. They share an office. Maybe I talk her into coming to Israel with me and you cover Stockbury while I’m gone.”

  “This trip of yours can’t be cancelled?”

  Rowe ignored his question. “Dig around in the background of a Wynton Fairgrove, too. He was one of the judges.”

  James grunted. “Dr. Fairgrove has a worldwide reputation. Why judge a grad student competition?”

  Rowe would like that answer, too. “Probably looking for a new idea to steal.”

  “What’s that mean?” And then, “You know him?”

  “Like a rat knows a snake. The last time I ran into him was when his wife died under suspicious circumstances.”

  Carston Devore, dressed in what he considered non-descript but professional—blue button-down shirt, black trousers, and loafers—took a seat in the middle of the audience. Devore would have ignored the caller, but when ‘Delamagente’ was plugged into the Times database, it came up with an unsolved Los Angeles murder. Devore emailed his LAPD contact who said a note found on the victim mentioned nuclear submarines, but that wasn’t released to the press. Did Devore have information? The journalist promised to get back to him.

  Devore listened to two presentations, one by a six-foot blonde who sneered at the judges and another by a nervous raven-haired woman who turned out to be Delamagente. She couldn’t even get her equipment to work. As he waited, a gruff young man tapped Devore’s shoulder and motioned he should follow him. Something in Devore’s hindbrain whispered a warning, but he ignored it. As usual. Reporters would miss a lot of good stories if they worried about safety.

  Once outside, he asked, “Are you the one who contacted me?”

  Without turning, the man said, “Come.”

  Devore didn’t hesitate. This story was Pulitzer material. He called to his cameraman, Nelson, and they climbed into the soiled back seat of a gray Volvo. Thirty minutes later, they stopped in front of an abandoned warehouse in a neighborhood Devore only read about in the obituaries. The driver jumped out and disappeared through an opening in the concrete tilt-up building. Devore did a quick once-over and then turned to Nelson, the man who had been part of every big story Devore had ever written. They’d been in much worse places, but for some reason, this time, Nelson looked green.

  “Garbage is an improvement over the stench of the driver’s body odor, right?” He slapped his colleague on the back. “Get ready to be famous, friend.”

  They’d just entered when a searing pain exploded in the middle of Devore’s back. As he collapsed, someone thunked to the ground behind him. Powerful hands hauled Devore to a wall and propped him up next to Nelson. Out of the corner of his eye, Devore saw blood pouring down the younger man’s face. Nelson made no move to staunch it.

  It didn’t take long for Devore to figure out he too was paralyzed. He tried to ask what his host wanted, but nothing came out. All he could do was soundlessly scream as a nail was pounded through his breastbone. When the stranger repeated the procedure on Nelson, the cameraman gasped, sucked in the stream of blood rolling down his lips, and then his chest stopped moving.

  The man who had promised Devore the scoop of his life slit the journalist’s wrists and left.

  Chapter 11

  Monday

  Wynton Fairgrove walked with what he hoped was the relaxed gait of a man with no worries. That was a lie. Kalian Delamagente and her truth-seeking robot had shaken him. If she knew the unconventional steps he’d taken to advance his career, she could cause him difficulties.

  Well, technically, everything illegal had been committed by Salah Al-Zahrawi. Fairgrove rolled this around in his brain, thinking how to spin it, and then shook his head. Al-Zahrawi could smell disloyalty. They’d been dining one evening at the Russian Tea Room in New York when a man rushed up, sweating and nervous. He left his daughter’s birthday party to warn his boss of a mole in the organization. Al-Zahrawi thanked him and asked one of his bodyguards to walk the man back to his car. I set the trap and this man fell for it like a skydiver without a parachute. Never give a liar a second chance.

  Fairgrove eased into an empty meeting room and punched in Al-Zahrawi’s number. “I didn’t expect to see you at the presentation.”

  Silence greeted him and the judge flushed. “Of course, you have wide-ranging interests—”

  Al-Zahrawi interrupted. “I have another job for you.”

  Fairgrove bit his tongue. He was tiring of Salah’s demands. He had to buy his way onto the DARPA panel and then Al-Zahrawi had been there anyway. What would the next chore cost?

  “What Catherine Stockbury calls NEV provides unexpected opportunities.”

  “Yes, of course. I too was fascinated.” In fact, when Stockbury explained how simple NEV was to create, he turned her off. He never wanted ‘simple’ and ‘Fairgrove’ in the same sentence.

  “In two weeks, you will receive an invitation to join the Columbia faculty as a visiting professor. Once there, you must keep tabs on Catherine Stockbury for me. You will start by creating a distraction that offers me access to her lab.”

  Fairgrove preened. Teaching at a reputable university was an honor he hadn’t enjoyed in a long time.

  Before Fairgrove could respond, Al-Zahrawi asked, “What did you think of Kalian Delamagente?”

  Fairgrove choked back his surprise. “She has potential. I believe with my influence and assistance, she can become an adequate researcher.”

  “Her invention—Otto. Will it work, Dr. Fairgrove?”

  Here was his opening. He must sound objective, but collegial. “I’ll make sure it does.”

  Apparently, he sounded frightened because Al-Zahrawi said, “If this is difficult, I have other ways
to persuade her. She has a son, true?”

  “Leave him out of this!” Fairgrove hissed.

  “Never tell me how I must act.” If Al-Zahrawi’s voice had been a cornered rat, it would have bit Fairgrove.

  The scientist wiped his brow. “You misunderstand me, my friend. I’ve worked with many young researchers. I know how to get what we need.”

  “I will give you everything you require. Find out if her Otto will work. If the boy is important to you, do it quickly.”

  Fairgrove hung up to the sound of a dial tone. Despite Al-Zahrawi’s derogatory attitude, Fairgrove was energized. It had been far too long since last his name lit up the scientific leaderboards. Former colleagues who gossiped he’d become irrelevant would soon eat their words. The glamorous and connected Dr. Wynton Fairgrove would befriend grad student Kalian Delamagente, study her notes and whatever Al-Zahrawi could collect, come up with dazzling insights to gain her trust, and then create a problem only he could solve. He would become her white knight.

  Al-Zahrawi’s spies reported that US Navy helicopters and ships were searching an area of the Atlantic half the size of Iran, most likely for the sub. Al-Zahrawi cared nothing for the outcome. His plans had changed. If the AI Otto could do as Ms. Delamagente promised in her presentation, maybe with the proper data, he could track US Trident submarines, the crown jewels of the American military defense.

  Catherine Stockbury, though, bothered Al-Zahrawi. If America realized his virus was like hers, they might come up with a way to inoculate their weapons. He called Aleksei Borodnoi. The Russian did not take the jihad seriously, but in this errand, being a true believer was less important than sex appeal.

  Alhamdulillah. Praise be to Allah for showing how to carry out his wishes and for guiding him in the path of patience.

  Chapter 12

  Monday evening

  Back home in the seclusion of her lab, Kali fiddled with her diamond studs and talked to Lucy.

  “They misunderstood you today.”

  The ancient primate’s arms pumped and legs churned, sweat pouring from her steaming body, huffing past an endless panorama of primeval grassland and scrub. The projecting brow ridge did little to cool her. The male she traveled with set a torrid pace, muscles rippling across a hirsute body, but Lucy kept up. Her smooth brown face no longer looked pained, just resigned, but to what?

  Lucy mouthed a word—‘Rah-zah’—and sniffed.

  “Raza.” Kali replicated the movement of Lucy’s lips, the slight raising of the tongue. “Now I know your name.”

  Lucy pointed to a male silhouetted against the dusky sky. His head fur billowed and shoulders arched back, legs spread. He clenched his fists so tightly, Kali could see the white of his knuckles beneath his hair-fur.

  The scene evaporated.

  The solitary male’s raw emotion haunted Kali as she gathered her materials. The tension in his muscles, the fear in his eyes, the desperation—all were so human.

  As she left, she asked the night guard about Fred’s key.

  “No one gets one without authorization.” He checked his list. “No ‘Fred Kaczynski’.”

  “Did a Professor Faith Saunders work Sunday evening in the History building?”

  He didn’t even check this time. “No one named ‘Faith Saunders’ in any position in any department. Are you sure of the name?”

  Kali smiled inwardly. Even if she wanted to forget, she couldn’t. Eidetic memories were funny like that. “I must be confused,” and left.

  The day’s ninety-degree heat had bled off to a pleasant evening cooled by slight breezes from the Hudson River. As an undergrad, she hated Columbia with the same ferocity she now loved it. It wasn’t Columbia’s fault she had to pick a school close to home, but she took it out on everyone. Over time, the school’s cerebral passions seduced her. Schermerhorn, where she devoured anthropology. The authentic bronze casting of Rodin's Le Penseur before the entrance of the Philosophy Hall. Low Plaza, built to resemble a Greek amphitheater and used as an urban beach by students. When she graduated, she would miss the ardor of the professors, the fulminations of her classmates, and the sense every student had that they could improve the world. And she would sorely miss the CAVE, the Machine Learning Lab, and all the Computer Science areas.

  She greeted several neighbors at the local family-owned grocery as she bought milk. A Persian man she didn’t recognize offered a wan smile as though his day too had been challenging. In her lobby, she collected mail and opened the door to the rhythmic slap-slap of Sandy’s tail against the narrow entry walls. She scratched his neck as he huffed an enthusiastic greeting, nose twitching at the scent bouquet clinging to her body. That done, he curled up and fell asleep. Someone once said man was a dog's conception of God, but Kali thought they had it backwards.

  As usual, nothing in the mail—a Publisher’s Clearinghouse notice, a pre-approved credit card, a demand to update Sandy’s license, and a letter with no return address. She flipped on the news and thumbed open the last.

  “Alfred Zematis’ killer is still free,” she muttered as the janitor’s homely face appeared on the TV. In her final conversation with Angel Zematis, Kali promised Otto would search for Angel’s birth mother. A week later, the girl’s father called. His daughter was missing. Otto found the girl, but too late.

  While Kali mentally replayed these events, she unfolded a linen page with an embossed heading announcing, ‘Gegham Keregosian’.

  It contained a check to Kali’s research fund for $100,000.

  Chapter 13

  Wednesday

  Within hours of Rowe’s acceptance, the Columbia Department of Anthropology published a press release about their coup adding the formidable Dr. Zeke Rowe as a visiting professor to their already prestigious faculty.

  Today was his first day. He might as well try the University’s coffee. He’d be drinking a lot of it. While he waited for his vending machine cup to fill, he breathed in the intoxicating aroma. Strong and slightly burnt—could be worse. As he took his first taste, Kalian Delamagente showed up. She wore a soft blue tank top that flowed from her bronze shoulders to just below her waist. It had a low neck and narrow straps that offset the healthy glow of her skin. Her off-white shorts accentuated long muscular legs. He fumbled with his hands and ended up sticking them in his pockets.

  Her cheeks flushed a beguiling pink. “You must be lost. No one down here but DARPA losers.”

  “I was looking for a good cup of coffee,” and he offered her his friendliest grin.

  “You won’t find that either.” She glanced at his badge. “You forgot to mention you taught here.”

  “I just signed on. Porter assured me you and Stockbury are indicative of Columbia’s talent.”

  Her eyes hooded and a look he couldn’t identify sped across her face. She smiled, a notch cooler than before. “Seventy-three Nobel Prize winners have come from this faculty. Someone has to be the seventy-fourth.”

  In spite of the dismissive response, Rowe sensed she wanted to trust him. He could work with that.

  “By the way, your presentation deserved more than Dr. Fairgrove’s pejorative comments. They ignored its significance in the wider framework of human development.”

  Delamagente’s head dipped as color flooded her face. “Since I no longer answer to judges, I’ve embraced my previous goal—an exploration of mankind’s roots.”

  Here was his opening. “Maybe I can help you, now that we’re colleagues. I’m leading a field investigation of the Tethys Corridor—”

  “—one of man’s possible migration routes out of Africa. You’re that Dr. Rowe.” Delamagente’s full lips parted and her intelligent eyes glittered with curiosity.

  “Would you like to join me? A student cancelled so we’re short,” which was not quite a lie. “It’s paid for, but it starts this week.” That part was true.

  Delamagente opened and closed her mouth several times, but said nothing.

  “Think of the new friends you’ll meet,
shoulder to shoulder exposing our past, removing ossified breccia from fragile artifacts, discussing fascinating topics like horizon layers, sleeping under the Israeli moon.” She looked unconvinced so he added, “I’ll share my iodine tablets.”

  She stared into the middle distance and then asked, “Your dig covers the Plio-Pleistocene?”

  Rowe nodded.

  “Otto keeps throwing me into that era. There’s a female habilene he has a crush on.”

  He touched her arm. A tingle of electricity burst into his chest and up his neck. When was the last time he felt that? She must have felt it too because she said, “When do we leave?”

  She loved the way Zeke Rowe never stuttered or stammered, always knew what he wanted to say, every movement imbued with a quiet authority. The only real problem accepting his offer was she knew so little about him. To start with, why was he at DARPA? The presentations weren’t in his field. She typed ‘Zeke Rowe’ into Google search. Sixty minutes later, she’d read enough.

  He had a BS in geology and a Masters in paleontology from a Midwestern college. He got his Ph.D. in paleoanthropology at the University of Paris and became one of the youngest professors in the school’s history. She uncovered pictures of him teaching in a high-ceiled nineteenth-century classroom, and one walking with a short comfortable-looking woman, sandy brown hair tied back into a schoolmarmish bun, huge eyes fixated on Rowe. A student, Kali guessed. Then he fell off the grid. She fiddled with her earrings and wondered if his disappearance had to do with how he lost the tips of fingers.

  Which was none of her business. Everyone had secrets. She certainly did. What she did know was he felt right. She emailed Sean at his music camp that she would be unreachable for a few weeks. Mr. Winters agreed to keep Sandy. The dog loved these sleep-overs in no small part for the food, usually steak and French fries which the ex-Marine called ‘Freedom Fries’. The old man set a place at the counter for himself and one at his feet for Sandy. Over dinner, Mr. Winters shared commentary on his favorite TV shows. Afterward, they went for a walk, Sandy to do his duty and Mr. Winters to follow the doctor’s exercise routine. At bedtime, they slept together in the old man’s double bed.