A Girl Named Digit (6 page)

Steven Bonning was sitting behind his desk, banging furiously on his computer keyboard. His desk was covered with precariously stacked paper, coffee cups, and a half-eaten hot dog. He looked about fifty and in need of a comb. “What is it, John?” The fact that a teenage girl was also standing there did not seem to register.

“Steven, this is Farrah Higgins. She seems to have discovered a terror cell working in L.A. that may have been responsible for the events at JFK this week. They appear to be connected to Jonas Furnis.”

I straightened a little, waiting for the confetti to start falling from the ceiling. “Well, it was nothing. I mean, I was glad I could . . .”

John jumped in and recounted in his robot’s voice the events of the past few days, starting with the code on my TV and ending with the Creepy match. John and his boss looked at each other meaningfully and did not say a word.

Steven stayed seated behind his desk; in fact, he hadn’t really moved since John started talking. He looked very calm except for a single bead of sweat that dripped down the left side of his face.

Silence is so awkward, isn’t it? I jumped in. “So you guys have his picture and his name, you even know where he works, so I guess you should go arrest him, then? This Jonas guy, I mean.”

Steven smiled a little sadly at my naiveté. “It doesn’t really work like that. He would be aware of being identified. He is gone by now; family moved away by the morning; TV operation wiped clean of anything incriminating.” He spoke slowly and punctuated each sentence with the strangest tic: after each phrase he shook his shoulders twice in a way that seemed almost involuntary and then punched his left fist into his right. Shudder, shudder, punch. I’m no expert, but it seemed like this guy could benefit from some hypno-relaxation techniques.

John added, “And this guy isn’t Jonas Furnis himself. He’s a known terror operative working within the Jonas Furnis organization.”

“What’s Jonas Furnis?” I asked, though I had a feeling I really didn’t want to know.

John answered. “Jonas Furnis himself has not been spotted in over seven years and is presumed to be dead. He’s the son of groundbreaking environmentalists who did a lot of work in the mountains of Colorado in the early eighties. They both died of cancer in their fifties, leaving Jonas Furnis alone and committed to waging war against the environmental toxins that he believed were responsible for their deaths. He was in and out of jail for arson at several small manufacturing plants that didn’t meet EPA standards during the mid-nineties. Those arrests won him a huge following, which has grown and evolved into a major eco-terror organization. Over the past ten years, they have moved into torturing and murdering individuals who they felt were ‘enemies of the natural world.’”

“Then why attack an airport?”

“I don’t know. Maybe as a protest over how much oil we use?”

Steven was shaking his head, eyes closed. “No, the event at JFK was targeted. They hit a new jumbo jet flying out of that terminal. It was a full-size private jet that accommodated only five passengers in extreme luxury.” Shudder, shudder, punch.

“The least green way you could possibly travel.” I’m not shy about stating the obvious.

John sat down in the chair opposite Steven’s desk and motioned me to the one next to it, stony-faced again. Whatever this Jonas Furnis thing was really brought out the darkness in him. Was this the same guy who was busting on my secret codes twenty minutes ago? “Farrah, these guys have a huge, nearly untraceable network. Until now their terror attacks have been on a smaller scale, just a few individuals. But if they were responsible for Wednesday’s attack, then they are getting bolder and more organized, and they are more dangerous than ever.”

Why did I feel like he was making this my problem? “But can’t you just track down that one guy who was after me and at least end my connection to this whole thing?”

John shook his head. “Jonas Furnis’s operatives are everywhere. They operate all over the world and represent forty-three nationalities that we know of. The only thing they have in common is that they are willing to kill or die to protect the environment. And this guy—we know his name, but he’s vanished by now. The problem is that you have not. They know you can identify him. They know what kind of car you drive, they have your license plate number, and they likely have your address. You are not safe. At all.”

Steven got up and started pacing the length of his desk. “You’re sure it’s them? I agree it can’t be a fluke, I mean, if he followed her and is a known operative for Jonas Furnis. And the Fibonacci thing. God, they love their Fibonacci. They call it the code born of nature—you know, the pineapple, the pinecone, flower petals, or whatever.” He ran his right hand through his silver hair repeatedly, adding the finger comb to the beginning of a series of shudder, shudder, punches. “They are going to come after her. They know . . . I can’t keep them from kidnapping . . .”

Wait. What? “Kidnapping?!” I wanted to shake him.

John became strangely calm in the face of his boss’s flipping out. There was no levity left to him, no smile, half or otherwise. “Kidnapping is their specialty. Kidnapping and torture, really.” He turned away from Steven, now collapsed in his desk chair with his head in his hands.

I noticed for the first time that the fist he’d been making with his left hand was not a fist at all. It was just a fingerless palm, perfectly square. I tried not to stare, but sometimes staring has a mind of its own.

John lowered his voice as if he didn’t want to upset Steven further with the details. “Jonas Furnis is well known for their kidnapping tactics. If they want someone, they will find them and take them, no matter how they are protected. Sometimes the kidnappings are ideologically motivated, but sometimes they’re more strategic to protect the organization from exposure. Like in your case.”

Uh, freaking out here. “What do they do with you once they have you?”

“They torture you and brainwash you. Or they kill you. No one, well almost no one”—he turned away from Steven even farther—“comes back as they were.”

“I really don’t want to know. But, Farrah, how old are you?” Steven asked.

“Seventeen. Eighteen in June.” There I go again.

“Oh Jesus.” Shudder, shudder, punch.

By dinnertime—and, yes, I was starving—my parents arrived and were fully debriefed. Dad was somber and seriously concerned for my safety, but there was a flicker behind his eye that told me that he was delighted. Over the past few years, it had been painful for him to watch me hide out. As much as he wanted me to have a fun and normal life, I wondered if he felt the strain of the charade as much as I had. My gift is much like his and has always been a serious source of bonding between us. I always suspected that he felt like he’d lost me during those years that I pretended it didn’t exist. At this moment I could tell he was proud that I had been right, and he was proud that I was being taken seriously by the freakin’ FBI. Mom, not so much.

“So, you’re telling me there’s an organization of terrorists out there who now wants to off my daughter for having added up some numbers on the television?” She was incredulous.

“She broke their code, yes. But they could easily make up another one. And they can find another way of disseminating their messages. It’s more that Farrah can positively identify this guy. He must be higher up in the organization than we believe if he wasn’t told to just slam his car into hers, killing them both. They must need him for something . . .” John clued in to the fact that he was freaking my parents out. “We may never know what. But we are prepared to protect Farrah at all costs.” Nice save.

“You are going to rip Farrah out of school at the end of her senior year so that she can live holed up in some FBI hideout . . . My God! It’s only two weeks till the prom!”

John jumped in. “The agent assigned to the case will have the support of the entire Terrorist Task Force to keep Farrah safe, but they will be more or less camping out until this is over. We are convinced that your daughter is in extreme danger and that she needs to be hidden until this terror ring is disbanded and, well, we think her gifts would be of great use to us in making that happen.”

Shoulders back. I’m da man. Dad caught my eye and winked at me.

“Can’t you at least put her up in a hotel while she’s hiding? The Peninsula has a great reputation for service, and the spa is . . .”

John cut her off and managed to stay completely professional. “The terror cell in question has very little regard for the safety of innocent bystanders. Putting a target in a hotel would be endangering everyone in the vicinity. We must keep her in a remote, secure, and substantially less luxurious location.”

Steven jumped in with, “And we are going to have to do more than hide her. If Farrah vanishes, they will know that we have her and they will come after you for leverage.”

Mom had had enough. “So, how do you suggest we hide her and protect ourselves at the same time? Do we all go into hiding? This is ridiculous.”

“No, Mrs. Higgins, we have to fake a kidnapping. They’ll think one of their own people took her. It might buy us enough time to find them.”

John immediately picked up on the plan, like this was something they did all the time. “Jonas Furnis is very careful about direct communication within the organization, as they know that the FBI and every major government are tracking them. They generally operate by communicating with high-level spies that they have placed in key government jobs and then use that person as a central hub of information. Even that communication is coded to an absurd degree. Our hope is that their communications are convoluted enough that they won’t figure out that none of them has kidnapped Farrah before we can find them. We will send police and press to your house in the morning. We will send an agent to spend the night with you in case there is any activity before then. Unfortunately, there won’t be time to get Farrah a change of clothes before we go into hiding . . .”

“That won’t be a problem,” Mom said, rolling her eyes at me and my uniform.

“This shouldn’t take more than a week, during which time you two are to play the distraught parents of a kidnapped teen.”

Dad elbowed Mom. “The role of a lifetime, hon.” She ignored him.

John sat down in the chair across from Steven’s desk and folded his arms as if he were done and quite satisfied with himself. “So, I guess that’s it. As soon as we assign someone to Farrah, they’ll be off.”

Steven, quiet until now, got up and walked around his desk. “John, I think I am going to give you the job this time.”

John was really surprised. Hadn’t they ever let him out of the building? “But, sir, I’m not . . . I’m only . . .”

“You’re the perfect guy for the job. Now all of you say your goodbyes and get out of here.”

As it turns out, the Federal Building on Wilshire Boulevard is a hub for hideouts all over the West Coast. When John and I were ready to leave, we were escorted to a fourth elevator bank that took us to the twelfth floor, no stops. We were silent as we rode up with a uniformed security person who was acting like he was protecting an armored car full of cash. His eyes darted right, then left, then right again, as he scanned the moving elevator car for intruders. When the doors opened, he motioned for us to stay inside until he had visually checked the area. Having satisfied himself, he stepped aside so that we could walk out into yet another lobby.

A middle-aged woman in a navy suit stood to greet us. “I am Hannah Devine, and you must be Farrah and John.” John and I smiled and nodded and shook her hand like a couple of trained monkeys. It occurred to me just then that John knew nearly as little about what to expect as I did. He’d probably heard about where we were headed, but this was his first field assignment. “I was charged with assembling your survival kits, but frankly I’ve rarely been given so little time. I hope you find everything to your satisfaction, and if you need any—Oh, it’s time for you to leave now.” She turned to see the frame on the door behind her light up into a bright red.

The mute security guy pushed the door open and quickly pressed his thumb into the print reader on the inside wall to hold it open. He motioned for us to hurry up, so we each grabbed a small black duffle bag from Hannah’s outstretched arms and followed him. He keyed some numbers into the pad above the print reader and the door slammed shut. A few more numbers and a pair of metal elevator doors slid out of the walls and met to completely enclose us in a silver box. The security guy spoke for the first time. “You might want to hold on to something.”

I lightly grasped the handrail behind me, and John did the same. He rolled his eyes at me, the first sign of levity since we’d identified Creepy. The elevator started to descend, a little more quickly than normal. Then it started to accelerate so fast that I was sure we were no longer connected to any elevator cables at all. And how could we be falling so far? We’d only gone up to the twelfth floor.

We stopped abruptly, and I stumbled a little. John grabbed my upper arm to steady me and then immediately let go. We started moving again, this time sideways and fast, like we were on a train.

John wasn’t surprised about this at all. “We have entered the Subterranean Transport Network. We are about a half mile below-ground. This elevator car will now take us to our secure location.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“I forgot to ask.” John cleared his throat to get the attention of the security guy. “Um, sorry, I forgot to ask. Where exactly will we be hiding?”

“I have been instructed to leave you in an interior compartment of building six in sector 312.”

John shrugged and translated, “Downtown L.A., abandoned warehouse. It won’t be terribly comfortable, but they’ll never look there.”

“It’s also my responsibility to collect any traceable electronic devices at this point. FBI-issued cell phones are fine, but any others must be relinquished at this time.”