6 - The Eye of the Virgin: Ike Schwartz Mystery 6 (16 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

Ike replaced the receiver and drummed his fingers on his desk. That cagey old coot. Now, if he could con Charlie into telling him what was on the microchip…No, wait, international intrigue and snooping was no longer Ike’s bailiwick. He didn’t need to know. He didn’t want to know. His job was to collar a couple of killers and arrest them. That’s it, period. If the State Department made him cut them loose later, well, that would be too bad, but he wasn’t going to push this. That’s it. That’s final. No more spooking.

He had one more piece to his puzzle, though. The Israelis were in this somehow. Now, if Sam could figure a way to read the replacement chip before he put it on the newly minted icon, then maybe he’d have an answer or two. What the content didn’t reveal might tell him what was on the original. Surely they would not put gibberish on the new one. The people who were after the chip would know immediately that they’d been duped and order up another. No, what had been placed on it would be similar to the Agency’s database’s backdoor, full of official sounding disinformation, but enough like what had been there originally to convince them they had the real thing. He’d call Sam.

He became aware of Essie standing in the door.

“Did you get all that, Essie?”

Essie squinted at the note book she held in her lap. “I wrote down what you all said, but it don’t sound like much to me.”

“Good. I didn’t want it to, if you must know. Leave the notes on my desk.”

“You had me sort of mixed up, there, Ike. You said I should go even though Darcie wasn’t here to relieve me and then you’re wig-wagging for me to stay and take notes. So, what’s up with you and this Shmoo-ell Gold guy?”

“He’s an old acquaintance from the bad old days. Among other roles he played in the past, he spent some time in the SHAMAK, that’s the Israeli Security Service—spooks to you. I wanted to ask him a question.”

“But you didn’t. Ask him a question, I mean.”

“No, that’s the interesting part. He answered a question I never asked, you see?”

“Sorry, too deep for me. Here’s Darcie. I’m off.”

Darcie Billingsley dropped her purse on the floor next to the Dispatcher’s desk and traded places with Essie, who waved and left.

“Evening, Ike,” Darcie said. She swiveled her chair around and began to contact each of the deputies on duty. They needed to know the second shift in the office was in place.

“There’s a note here for you,” she said. “Essie must have forgotten to tell you.”

“What’s it say?”

“Amos took down a license number of a car that had been parked near the Dakis stakeout. He said the car followed Mr. Dakis when he left to come here.”

“Check out the registration with the motor vehicle people and then call Harvey at the Dogwood Motel and see if it’s the same one that was there last Friday.”

“Will do. Where you going to be this evening?”

“I’m going to get something to eat and then see if I can convince Sam to put in some overtime.”

***

In return for the comp time she needed for a long weekend in Washington, Sam agreed to meet Ike early the next morning and try to unscramble the microchip when it finally arrived. She didn’t ask why Ike wanted to see the contents of the chip, contents he had to know would be adulterated at best. But she also knew that Ike worked in ways that frequently defied logic. At least until he solved the problem. Then they seemed supremely logical. She realized that Ike wasn’t wired like ordinary people. He would have been a great hacker if he’d taken the trouble to learn computers. But he remained determinedly ignorant of the field. Not a Luddite exactly, but certainly not an enthusiast, either.

“When I looked at it, it reminded me of one of the micro-SD card inserts.” She said and settled into her desk chair, a modern bit of ergonomic bent teak and leather that Ike could never believe was comfortable. Ike’s ensuing silence meant he needed an explanation. “The memory cards for cameras and other electronic devices have been miniaturized so that they are very small but the card slots remain relatively large. The micro-SD slips into a carrier the size and shape of the older, conventional card and then it acts like a regular memory card. The advantage of the new system is you can put the same micro-memory device into a variety of carriers. Swap them in and out, you could say. One of them would be as small as that chip your friend Charlie picked off the icon. I can’t be sure if it was one or not. I didn’t recognize it, but the technology is changing so fast it might have been.”

“All I need to know, Sam, is whether you can read it before we stick it on the substitute icon.”

“I can, if the contacts line up with one of the receiver sleeves. I won’t know until I see it up close.”

“Could you modify either the sleeve thing or the chip to work?”

Ah ha
, she thought,
not wired like ordinary people.
“Possibly, yes. It will depend on how much time I have and…like that.”

“We’ll make the time. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. These guys are getting desperate, I’m thinking, but they’ll wait. As long as we keep that car in front of Dakis’ house, that is.”

Sam hung up and rooted through her desk drawer for memory cards and micro tools and then spent the rest of the evening on the Internet. She needed at least one manual. When she found what she was looking for she downloaded and printed it out. She would need to take a trip to the computer store or a Radio Shack early tomorrow. The rest of her waking time she divided between reading the twenty pages of technical information and e-mailing Karl who, she knew was on assignment and out of reach. He was working to build up comp time as well. It was after midnight when he finally called and she could tell him her good news. Karl did not like the idea of her tinkering with the CIA’s microchip, but he was happy with the compensation.

“A long weekend. That’ll be great. Be careful with this thing, though. I don’t want Ike to get you thrown into federal prison for one of his brainstorms. I swear—”

“It’ll be fine, you’ll see. Ike wouldn’t do anything like that. He’d have my back. You know that.”

“Yeah, well be careful.”

Chapter Thirty-three

Ike was about to tuck into his hash browns when his cell phone chirped in his pocket.

“Where you at?” Essie sounded frantic. It had become her standard mode lately. Ike hoped maternity and a return to hormonal equilibrium would also restore her normal cheerful presence.

“Across the street enjoying my usual heart attack breakfast and listening to Flora, who has been telling me all about you. That is, all about you back when. She watched you grow up, she says.”

“Well, you can’t believe everything that old bat says. You want to know about me, you ask me personal-like.”

“Did you really pour maple syrup on your third-grade teacher’s chair?”

“Ike, I ain’t got time for this. There’s a snooty woman here who has a package for you and she won’t leave it with me. You got to sign for it or something.” Essie lowered her voice and, Ike guessed, cupped the phone. “She looks like one of them spies or something like the woman who came by here once to pick up that old telephone you had. Slick and sassy is what she is. You better get over here.”

“I’m on my way. Give her coffee and regale her with your tales of morning sickness, cravings for pickles and ice cream, and the unreasonableness of husbands considering your condition.”

“She don’t look the type to go into that with. How’d you know about Billy and me? Did he say something? I’ll kill him.”

Ike paid for his half-eaten breakfast, refused Flora Blevin’s offer to box up the remains, received a dirty look from her because of it, and left. He expected but did not hear her say something about starving children in Biafra.

Sam arrived as he did. She carried a small satchel and there was a gleam in her eye that he recognized as her geek alert. She had a challenge in front of her and she could hardly wait to tackle it. Ike hoped she would be successful, and then wondered again why he bothered with this stuff. It was none of his business, he could get both himself and Sam in trouble, and when all was said and done he’d have very little to show for his efforts. He was only after the murder of Sacci, right? But his tenure in the CIA and its aftermath had left him permanently irritated with the world of secrets and operations conducted in the dark. National Security was one thing; geopolitical manipulation was another.

After consulting several photo IDs and asking Ike to sign a receipt, Essie’s slick and sassy woman handed Ike a package and left.

“Rudest woman I ever met,” Essie complained. “Didn’t say a word except to tell me the coffee was burned. What’d she expect? It’s been in the pot since six.”

“Make us a new pot will you, Essie. Sam, have you got everything you need?”

“I don’t know, for sure, Ike. I may have to run to the mall. Let’s have a look at that thing.”

Ike slit open the tape on the package and extracted a smaller box and a slip of folded paper.

“Ha! Charlie writes us a note to wit; ‘Do not try to read the contents of this file. It’s all lies anyway.’ Then he adds this post script, ‘I mean it, Ike. The boss is watching.’”

“So what do we do?”

Ike smiled. “Charlie knows that the surest way to get me to snoop for the contents of this chip is to tell me not to. We tackle the thing. Here you go, have at it.” He handed Sam the small box and they walked into Sam’s office/communications center.

She carefully tilted the contents of the box into her hand and inspected it.

“It looks like a micro memory card like I said. Let’s see if we have a carrier.” She poked about in the envelope she’d brought and removed an SD memory card carrier and held the two up side by side.

“Will it work?” Ike peered over Sam’s shoulder. That sort of close proximity by men made her nervous. Except Karl, of course, and there were times when she’d as soon he were in front of her, not crowding her space. She wondered some times if it was some kind of neurosis. She’d never confided it to anyone else. Maybe she should. She sat straighter, forcing Ike to retreat marginally.

“You’re in my light,” she lied and Ike stepped back. “The contact points look like they are in all the right places, but this chip is way thinner.”

“Can you make it work?”

“Oh, yeah. Remember I told you about people in the intelligence business having to have identical equipment on either end of the sending and receiving system?” Ike nodded. “So here’s an example. If they’d used a complicated chip, you know, custom-made and all that, then the person who received it would have to be in possession of the same special equipment. What they’ve done, and your pals in the Agency have reproduced, is a chip that can be read by the kind of card reader you can buy in any electronics shop, camera store, or on-line.”

“I thought you said it was too small.”

“I didn’t say too small; I said it was thinner. All I have to do, and all the recipients would have to do, is fatten it up with a layer or two of card stock. This will only take a minute.”

“So, it’s different enough to dissuade an amateur but if you know what the thing is, it’s no big deal.”

“Right.”

Sam used nail scissors to cut three small squares of card stock and carefully glued them on the chip. “We’ll have to remove the glue when we’re done here.”

“That going to be a problem?”

“No. It’s school paste. Heck, my little brother used to eat the stuff. It’s water soluble. Okay, here we go.” She slipped the chip in a carrier and that into her card reader. The file opened up in Adobe, “There you go. Piece of cake.”

“I think it would be a good idea if you didn’t look at this file, Sam.”

“Why? It’s got to be junk, like in the CIA’s accessible computer site, right? What’s the harm?”

“I’m thinking that if the Agency does send in a goon squad, you can say with a straight face, ‘No, I didn’t read it.’ Capisce?”

“I don’t capisce…well, okay. But you’ll tell me what you think it means, right?”

“Perhaps. Copy all this for me, and then, Karl awaits, so hit the road.”

***

It took Ike less than twenty minutes to read the documents. His Hebrew was nearly nonexistent. It had been a long time since his
bar mitzvah
and he’d not had much use for it since, but he got the gist. The same was true with his Arabic. You use it or you lose it. He lost it.There was an interesting bit in French that he could make out, written by a French advisor to their air force probably. It didn’t matter. Now he knew what the CIA intended to quash and what the Mossad wanted to keep out of the wrong hands—the
USS Liberty
. The damn business wouldn’t go away and in the divisive political climate that characterized the day, resurrecting it could be a bombshell, true or not.

Undoubtedly, the information on the original chip, now in the hands of Charlie and his friends and copied, analyzed and summarized by a half dozen sub-directorates, formed the thrust of their next move, whatever that might be. Bully for them. In the meantime, the originals were still out in the Near East somewhere, ready to resurface if the senders of this batch wished to try again. The Mossad and the CIA would scour the desert for them. But the critical thing at the moment was to keep a request for another chip or package of some sort from being requested. The recipients of this new version had to believe they had the authentic goods. Ike shook his head at the significance. This bit of history of military bungling could not be worth the lives of two, at least two, and who knew how many more on the other end. Madness.

Ike removed the adapter, slipped the chip from it, and peeled away the cardboard. He didn’t bother to clean off the paste. By the time he remounted the thing in its microdot look-alike, no one would notice.

Chapter Thirty-four

Ike finished reassembling the ersatz microdot, fastened it with a dab of rubber cement on the eye of the icon, his icon, spritzed it with a puff of varnish, and called for Billy.

“He’s out running some errands, Ike,” Essie said. “He’ll be back directly.”

“Errands? What kind of errands? I don’t remember asking him to run errands.”

“We needed some things down to the store and since he didn’t look too busy at his desk, and all, I sent him up to the Shop and Save to pick up a few little things for dinner.”

“Essie, I know you are in an acute state of maternity and your judgment may, therefore, be somewhat impaired, but this is a police operation and on-duty deputies do not, I repeat, do not, slip out to ‘pick up a few little things for dinner’ unless, and only when, I say so.”

Essie blushed. Her jaw dropped. In all the years she’d worked the dispatch desk Ike had never spoken to her that way.

“I’m sorry, Ike, I didn’t think…I’ll get him back.” She spun in her seat and toggled the radio key.

“You do that.”

Ike felt badly for snapping at Essie. There wasn’t a disingenuous bone in her body, but hormones or something had changed her from the smiling hard worker to a grande dame, and he needed to nip it in the bud. He’d apologize later. He retreated to his office and began wrapping the icon for transport to Dakis’ place. Billy scuttled in the front door, conferred with Essie, shot a look in Ike’s direction, and hustled into the office.

“Don’t blame Essie, Ike. I was the one who thought I could squeeze the run to the Shop and Save. You were tied up with Sam and all, so…well, I’m sorry. Won’t happen again.”

“Billy, you know I run a pretty loose ship around here. I am happy for the informality, the lack of…” Ike took in Billy’s unorthodox uniform. He’d substituted a Stetson for the standard issue campaign hat and cowboy boots for shoes. Hardly any of his deputies were ever in proper uniform, including Ike. “Convention, and I adore Essie. She has been a loyal, always cheerful, encouraging employee, and friend. It’s that lately she’s become,” Ike searched for the word he wanted, “imperious.”

“Say what?”

“She is acting like a queen bee. That has a lot to do with her pregnancy, no doubt, but there is a time and place for everything and, I hate to say it, the dispatcher does not assign duties, or dispatch you or anyone else to the store. Not in this office. At home—maybe, but not here. Send her in. I’ll apologize and we’ll have a coffee.”

“Doctor says she shouldn’t be drinking nothing with caffeine in it.”

“Is that why she substituted decaf in the urn?”

“You knew about that?”

“I used to be a spy, remember? Now, I want you to take this icon out to Dakis. Tell him to put it out where the thieves, if they come, can easily see it without having to tear his place apart, but not to make it too obvious. I wrapped it in a oversize box so that if the bad guys are watching the house, they won’t see that an icon is being delivered by the Sheriff’s Office. At least that’s the hope. Tell you what, have a civilian do it. No, send one of our volunteer auxiliary deputies. And then call and make sure Dakis understands what he’s to do.”

“Right. Got it.”

“Tell him to make a point to be away several nights in a row so that the snatch can be made and he won’t get caught in the middle. Tell him one man is already dead because of that icon. Maybe two men. Now git, and send in Essie.”

Billy hustled out the door and Essie swiveled out of her chair and heaved herself erect and walked to the office. She seemed so different now. Before Billy, before her pregnancy, she would have swooped into the office. Now she moved slowly, not a waddle exactly, not yet, but definitely not a swoop.

“Ike, I got these messages for you and I’m sorry for being pushy. I guess I been here so long I sometimes think I’m home, like, this has been my home for so long and now me and Billy…well, I’m sorry.”

“I got carried away, and I shouldn’t have barked at you. The truth is, you are the heart of this department and so, your baby will be our baby. So, forget I said anything.”

Essie brushed away a tear and dumped a stack of pink call-back slips on Ike’s desk.

“Anything important in there?”

“The usual complaining by the mayor. He’s upset you ain’t enforcing the uniform dress code like he told you to. The State Highway Patrol people want to know if we have anyone on the force that would like to transfer over. I guess they miss Frank. You think they want him back? And Ms. Harris called and said it was urgent, like, and you should call her. Oh, and thank you for the ‘heart of the department’ thing. I’ll get back to work.”

Ruth answered on the first ring.

“What are you doing answering your own phone? Where’s Agnes?”

“Busy. We have an emergency. I need your help.”

“Is it serious? I’ll be right out.”

“No, it’s not that kind of an emergency. I don’t want you to come out here. Well, not until tonight at the party, at least.”

“So what is it, then?”

“Mother.”

“Your mother is the emergency? How does that work?”

“Never mind. She showed up in the office an hour ago. Agnes is entertaining her in the cafeteria at the moment. My God, Ike, she wants to move in with me.”

“Is that bad?”

“Damn, Ike, I told you about her. She’s nipped and tucked and…you know. I hardly recognize her.”

“And you want me to do what? I could arrest her for impersonating a celebrity. She could move into the jail, but I don’t think that’s what you had in mind.”

“Don’t start with me, Schwartz. I want you to call your dad and invite him to the party tonight. Tell him he owes me for showing up at Dolly’s debut on short notice. And he should bring Dolly with him, too. I need reinforcements.”