Measure of Darkness (20 page)

T
he first battle report comes in from a Kmart in Seabrook, New Hampshire. Jack has detoured off the highway ten miles south of Pease Tradeport because Milton Bean needs a change of clothing and insists that only Kmart will do.

“He's obviously suffering from post-traumatic stress,” Jack says, keeping it breezy on the unsecured cell phone connection. “The poor guy got fired, I guess he can't handle it.”

“Fired?”

“Yeah, from his job,” Jack says.

“What?”

“Don't be stupid, Alice. The job, okay?”

He hangs up.

Weird. Jack has never called me stupid, and would not do so simply because I asked a question. So it has to be code for something. Milton got fired? Not by us, surely. Therefore by Gatling Security Group? The time is all wrong, though. It's midafternoon and if GSG had refused him entry we'd have heard the bad news well before noon.

I locate boss lady on the ground floor of the resi
dence, in the Zen sand garden. As always the place is cool and peaceful, exuding something of the fifteenth century, from which it dates. The natural lighting is indirect and soothing. Naomi is seated on a stone bench in the lotus position, palms open, eyes closed. The very thought makes my hips hurt, but she claims to find it relaxing. Opens her mind, allows that amazing brain to make random connections that have so often proved useful in our investigations.

Much as I hate to disturb her when she's doing the Zen thing, or wrecking watercolors in the studio—which appears to be another, very different form of brain exercise—this is in my judgment a call she needs to know about. As it happens, she agrees, unfolding herself from the lotus without complaint and walking me out of the garden as I recount, pretty much word for word, the strange message from Jack Delancey.

“Jack at Kmart?” she says. “How odd. In a pinch he might deign to shop at Macy's. But never Kmart. Something went wrong, obviously.”

“What do we do about it? Jack turned his phone off, it goes directly to voice mail.”

We've reached the command center. Naomi goes to her desk, takes a seat and leans back in her ergonomic chair. “We wait,” she says. “Pardon me, but I want to finish my train of thought.”

She closes her eyes and begins to breathe deeply and slowly.

I've been dismissed, obviously. Not being a Zen master, or any sort of genius, I'm left with nothing to do but pace and fret, worrying about our boys and what might have befallen them, out there in the big bad world.

An hour later they come in through the garage, both of them as giddy as children. Jack in filthy, torn clothing,
his face scratched, and Milton wearing new duds from Kmart.

“We had to run through the woods,” Jack tells us unnecessarily. “We ran through the brambles where a rabbit couldn't go.”

“Ran through the bushes,” Milton insists, piping up. “That's where a rabbit couldn't go. Not the brambles and not the briars. Bushes.”

“We're arguing about a song,” Jack explains, clapping Milton on the back. “Johnny Horton, ‘The Battle of New Orleans.' We ran so fast the hounds couldn't catch us.”

“‘Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico,'” Milton sings.

“Down the highway to Seabrook is more like it. That's where I made damn sure they didn't have a tail on us.”

“I need to use the bathroom,” Milton says, quite suddenly in a sober voice. “Can I use the bathroom?”

“Of course. Down the hall, second door on the right.”

Jack waits until Milton has left the room. The smile drops from his face. “We're bonding,” he explains. “Milton was being tortured, I rescued him, we escaped through the woods. I've been cheering him up. Letting him know it's okay to pee your pants when you're being threatened with brain death. He was really embarrassed, which is silly, don't you think?”

“Very silly,” says Naomi. “Jack, listen to me carefully. Go to your room, shower and change and then report to the library for debriefing.”

At first the suggestion startles or rankles, but then he seems to settle back into the more familiar, coplike Jack. “Okay. Sure. Makes sense.”

He trudges away, suddenly exhausted.

“Adrenaline and shock,” Naomi offers by way of explanation. “They've been through something awful.”

“Jack did mention torture.”

“He did, didn't he? Mrs. Beasley? A pitcher of iced tea, if you please. And sugar cookies. They'll need energy.”

I head upstairs and prepare to receive the conquering heroes.

Sugar cookies. The obvious remedy for shock and torture, why didn't I think of that?

 

Milton settles gingerly into a Windsor-style chair in the library, wincing. I pop up, offer the man a cushion, which he accepts gratefully.

“I'll be fine,” he assures us. “Just bruising, nothing broken.”

“You were kicked?” Naomi asks.

“Not directly. It was more like—”

“Let him tell it from the beginning,” Jack suggests.

“Absolutely,” Naomi says. “Take your time, Mr. Bean.”

Milton's eyes are so deep, they appear to have been pushed back into his head by heavy thumbs, but according to his account it's exhaustion that has so altered his appearance, not physical torture. He tells us he was summoned from his workstation to an office where company owner Taylor Gatling briefly questioned him. And then a black hood was whipped over his head and he was lifted into the air and carried from the building.

“I presume down a back stairway. I'm quite sure I wasn't taken out through the main door.”

“Hooding the face is psychological torture 101,” Naomi says. “Accomplishes two things: makes the suspect disoriented and instills fear.”

“It worked beautifully,” Milton says. “I was scared to death.”

“What was the nature of the interrogation?” Naomi says. “What kind of questions did they ask?”

“At first, when Mr. Gatling was present, they wanted to know if I was working for the Department of Defense or for the IRS. If you're a Pentagon contractor, the contract often stipulates that the DOD can run a spot audit at any time, without giving notice.”

“Hmm,” says Naomi. “I find the fear of an IRS audit more telling. They must have something to hide.”

“You mean besides torturing accountants or kid finders?” I say.

“Yes, besides that,” Naomi says, not flinching. “Something financial.”

“They knew I had entered under false pretenses. I could have been arrested and prosecuted,” Milton says. “They went another route, one that could put them in legal jeopardy.”

“Will you be suing?” Naomi says. “Reporting this to the authorities and pushing for an arrest? Unlawful detention comes to mind, for starters. You certainly have cause.”

“Do I have to make up my mind on that right away?” Milton asks. “I'd rather wait until we've got Joey safe and sound.”

Naomi nods agreeably, and it's obvious that's the direction she'd prefer to go. “Just so you know the option remains open. Difficult as it might be to sustain in court, without corroboration.”

“I don't know about that,” Jack snaps. “I'm the star witness. I saw three men carry a struggling, hooded figure out the back door of GSG world headquarters and hustle him into a nearby shed. I don't care if Milton was trespassing, technically, or even if he was, technically,
committing a felony by misrepresenting himself, that doesn't excuse an unlawful detention.”

“We don't know that the detention was unlawful, under the Patriot Act,” Naomi reminds him. “For all we know it might have been authorized by the Pentagon. But let's put that argument aside for now. I'm more interested in exactly what form the questions took, once they had Mr. Bean in the shed.” She looks around, puzzled. “Where's Dane? She should be here.”

“At the hospital,” I tell her. “Shane is having a lucid period and nobody knows how long it will last, so she decided he was top priority.”

Naomi nods quickly. “Quite right. Mr. Bean? Back to the shed. If you will excuse the turn of phrase.”

“They put me on a low stool and kept kicking it out from under me. That's how I got bruised. Doesn't sound so awful, me telling about it. More like a prank than torture. I guess you had to be there.”

“Who ran the interrogation? Was it Taylor Gatling himself?”

Milton shakes his head. “In his words he ‘turned me over to the professionals.' I assume he left the building. He wasn't there when the cavalry arrived, was he, Jack?”

“No, he was not.”

Milton describes, in a fairly dispassionate tone considering what he's been through, being questioned by interrogators who remained behind a very bright light. Having satisfied themselves that he wasn't working for either the DOD or the IRS, they soon established that he worked for Naomi Nantz.

“I'm not making excuses for myself, because by then I was ready to tell them anything they wanted to know. But they already knew about my arrangement here. They
have this place under surveillance and they had an image of me entering the residence.”

“This is important,” Naomi says, pushing aside her glass of iced tea. “Exactly how was the question phrased?”

“In the form of true or false. ‘True or false, you were spying for Naomi Nantz.'”

Naomi turns to Jack. “You realize what this means? If they have us under surveillance that means they've already established our connection to Randall Shane, and undoubtedly had him under surveillance, leading, eventually, to us. That makes it approximately certain that Gatling's organization abducted Randall Shane in the first place, which is why our investigation has attracted their interest. They have confirmed our hypothesis.”

Jack says, “It was confirmed for me the moment we made the connection between Gatling and the security guards.”

“I have a slightly higher standard,” Naomi says loftily, “but as usual your investigative instincts are well focused.”

Jack rolls his eyes and leans back with his arms folded across his chest. Hair still damp from the shower, but dressed, as we've all come to expect, immaculately.

“Oh!” says Milton, raising his hand like a kid in class. “Oh! I just remembered. They know about the program, Teddy. The one you had me install.”

Teddy looks crestfallen, and then a little scared.

Naomi reacts sharply. “They knew, or you revealed?”

“No, no. They knew all about it. They accused me of installing spy software. Said I was guilty of treason and could disappear down a black hole for the rest of my life. That's when I told them about Joey. That we weren't trying to steal secrets, we only wanted to find the miss
ing child. I was eager to tell them. I told them everything I knew. Everything.”

“Milt, you didn't do anything wrong,” Jack assures him. He again reaches out to pat the smaller man on the back, which is in itself unusual, because Jack's not a back slapper, and from what I've observed, despite having mostly male friends, he goes out of his way to avoid physical contact with other men. On the other hand Milton looks way more than crestfallen and embarrassed. It's as if something essential in him has been destroyed. Now that the adrenaline has had a chance to abate, it's obvious that he's been crushed by his recent experience.

I push the plate of Mrs. Beasley's cookies closer to him, without any real hope that they will have their intended medicinal effect.

Naomi says, “Mr. Bean, I want to make one thing abundantly clear. My questions are intended to reveal what may be crucial clues as to what, exactly, has been GSG's involvement in the case of Professor Keener. In no way are you to be held responsible for anything that may have been revealed under duress. Your task, penetrating through company security, is by its very nature dangerous. You were in peril from the moment you agreed to enter QuantaGate. You knew the danger and yet you persisted, which demonstrates great courage on your part. Particularly after we all learned what had been done to Randall Shane. Clearly, these were professional interrogators using proven techniques. In my book you were a hero the minute you entered the door. Do you understand what I'm saying, Mr. Bean?”

“Sure. You're trying to make me feel better. I appreciate it.”

“I hope you come to accept that it is
we
who appreciate
you
. Now I'm afraid we have to get back to this busi
ness, however painful it may be to relive the experience, because a little boy is still out there and I'm very much afraid that our time may be slipping away. So, how exactly did they react when you mentioned Joey?”

“They were surprised.”

“Surprised?”

“Or they did a really good job of acting surprised. I remember being surprised myself, because I assumed that if they had been investigating Professor Keener they had to know about his son.”

“Think back, Mr. Bean. Was the boy's existence a surprise to them, or was it our involvement in his recovery?”

Milton puts a hand to his forehead, closes his eyes. “I don't know. That's my honest reaction. All I know is, once I mentioned Joey they stopped asking questions for a little while and conferred among themselves. Something had changed and the next question they asked was about you.”

“About me?”

“‘True or false, Naomi Nantz is acting on behalf of agents of the Chinese government.' I said ‘false,' and their reaction was to wheel out the gurney and tell me they were ‘going chemical,' because they didn't believe a thing I'd told them. That's when Jack broke me out of there. He's the real hero.”

And with that, Milton Bean nibbles at his sugar cookie, stares at the floor and begins weeping silently.