Orchid Beach (30 page)
The man didn’t even look up, just waved.
She repeated the process up and down the hallways. The offices were all identical—a steel desk, a filing cabinet, a chair, a wastebasket and a shredder. Each had a phone on the desk; some had copying machines. There was nothing on the walls of any of the offices, no pictures, no diplomas, no calendars, nothing. She went back to the utility closet and Carla showed her to an outside door with large plastic garbage cans outside. They dumped the trash bags, then each got a vacuum cleaner, and they vacuumed the offices and the hallway.
“Now, upstairs,” Carla said. She led the way up the staircase through a door and into a large room that appeared to cover the whole of the second floor, with a row of offices along one side.
Rita’s mouth fell open, and she closed it quickly, heading for the nearest wastebasket. The room was full of desks, each with a computer terminal. At the rear, reaching across the width of the room, was a row of large computers. She reflected that the computer room at the Miami field office of the FBI was a third the size of this. As she emptied each wastebasket she glanced at the computer screen on the desk. There was no time to read anything, but she saw, on various screens, spreadsheets, documents being written, columns of figures, and, on one desk, a full-color Mercator projection map of the world with red dots placed on at least two dozen spots around the globe. What appeared to be satellites were superimposed on the map. She noted the absence on every screen of anything resembling a market tape running. No commodities were being traded here.
Rita and Carla took out the trash bags, then returned with the vacuum cleaners. As Rita pushed hers around the floor, she began looking at the men at the desks. Each of them wore a telephone headset and a pistol in a holster. When they had finished vacuuming, Carla gave her a dust cloth, and they went from desk to desk, office to office, wiping down every surface. Each room was nearly identical to the ones downstairs—same furniture, same lack of anything personal on the desks or the walls. The windows were no more than six inches wide and tinted green. Carla estimated that the glass in each was at least two inches thick.
As they left the second floor, Rita noticed a bulletin board with work schedules posted on it, but she could get only the briefest of glances at it.
They returned to the ground floor. Rita turned a corner and came up against a steel door. Next to it was a keypad and a glass surface with the outline of a hand drawn on it. A sign on the door read,
ACCESS TO THE LOWER LEVELS IS BY AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. ARMED RESPONSE
.
Rita and Carla were picked up on time and taken to the country club, where they cleaned the men’s locker room, but Rita saw nothing out of the ordinary there, except for four or five men carrying weapons. They had their lunch outside, and Rita gently pumped Carla for information about what she had seen while cleaning there. At three o’clock, the bus returned the workers to the parking lot, searching each of them as they got off.
Rita drove away in her terrible old car, checking her mirrors and driving an erratic pattern to be sure she wasn’t followed. Finally she allowed herself a deep breath and a smile. She had gotten away with it.
H
olly sat at Jackson’s dining table and listened to Rita’s report. Ham had joined the group, and was intent on what she had to say. Harry Crisp was thrilled at his agent’s prompt success, and kept saying how lucky she had been.
“Doesn’t sound like luck to me, Harry,” Holly said.
“Thank you, Holly,” Rita said, smiling at her.
“I don’t mean to belittle what you’ve done, Rita,” Harry said. “But I do think you were awfully lucky to get into the com center your first day out.”
“Harry,” Holly said, “Rita manipulated her way into that building—there wasn’t a lot of luck involved. Can’t you give the woman credit?”
“I’ll do better than that,” Harry said. “Rita, I’m giving you a pay grade promotion, just as soon as we get back to the office.”
“Thank you, Harry,” Rita said sweetly.
“We interrupted you; go on.”
“The upstairs looked like the back room of a big bank, or a brokerage house. Everybody had a computer terminal and a phone headset, and they were all talking at once, like at a stockbroker’s. There was almost no paper upstairs. Everything is done on the computers, I guess, and they’ve got major capacity, more than we’ve got in Miami. These guys work like machines, and they only work six hours a day.”
“How do you know that?” Harry asked.
“I saw the work schedule on a bulletin board. There are shifts from six
A.M.
to noon, noon to six, and six to midnight. That’s all I had time to see.”
“Were there any women in evidence?”
“Just Carla and me. Everybody else was a guy.”
“What else did you see?”
“When we came downstairs I came to the end of a hallway and found a big steel door with a security keypad and a palm-print analyzer and a sign saying they’d shoot any unauthorized entrant.”
“That squares with what the construction guy had to say about the basement he built,” Harry said.
“The place is like a fortress,” Rita said. “Thick walls, armored glass in small windows, air conditioners on the roof, not out back, where they might be accessible to tampering. Did I mention that all the computer operators were armed?”
“Weird,” Holly said. “Armed computer operators.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Harry said, “unless they’re trained to make some sort of last stand.”
“Like Waco?” Holly asked.
“Don’t say that word,” Harry said with a shudder. “I was there.”
Holly shook her head. “You can’t
pay
people to do a Waco, they’ve got to be motivated by some cause.”
“Maybe,” Rita said, “they’re trained to hold the building until everything in it can be destroyed.”
“Now, that makes sense,” Harry said. “The only other building you were inside was the country club?”
“Yes, but only the men’s locker room,” Rita said.
“Anything unusual there?”
“It was a locker room, Harry. There were a lot of dirty towels. I found out about the other buildings from Carla, though. She’s worked there for three years, and she’s cleaned every building on the place at one time or another.”
“And what did she have to say?”
“All the other buildings are normal, except the com center and the security office. They’ve apparently got a real arsenal at the security office, too—lots of weapons. Oh, and all the houses have big walk-in safes, concealed, usually in a library. At least, it sounds like all of them—Carla has seen three.”
“Did you get any chance to see what we think might be gun emplacements?”
Rita shook her head. “I only saw what I could see from the bus, which was houses, the country club, and the village shops.”
“All right,” Harry said, “what have we got here in the nature of a crime?”
“We’ve got the tampering with state criminal records and probably perjury on seventy-one license applications,” Holly said.
“That’s state stuff. What have we got that could justify my going into that place with a SWAT team?”
Everybody thought for a minute.
“What about communications?” Holly asked.
“What do you mean, communications?”
“There must be licenses required for some of that stuff they’ve got out there.”
“Good point,” Harry said. “Bill, you check with the Federal Communications Commission and see if there’s anything we can hang a criminal charge on.”
“Right,” Bill replied.
“What else? Anybody?”
Ham spoke up. “If they’ve got anything in the way of heavy weapons in those camouflaged spots, wouldn’t that be a federal crime?”
“Yes, it would, if it’s heavy enough,” Harry said.
Holly spoke up. “Harry, I think these people are too slick to overtly violate some federal statute. What they’re doing is covert, and unless the NSA can do some code breaking, the only way you’re going to find out what they’re doing is to go in there. So, what I think you should be looking for is not grounds for a SWAT bust, but probable cause for a federal search warrant.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” Harry said, “and I haven’t heard anything from the NSA today.”
Bill spoke up. “I’ve got something I’d like you to hear from the bug in Barney Noble’s car,” he said. “There was a lot of ordinary chitchat that is of no interest, but then this happened.” He set a tape machine on the table and turned it on. There was the sound of the car running, then slowing, then the squeak of brakes and the sound of a car door opening and closing. “Rear door,” Bill said. “Somebody got into the backseat, and you can barely hear him talk.”
“What’s happening?” Barney Noble’s voice said.
There was a mumbled reply.
“She doing anything unusual?”
“Nah,” the voice said. “Routine stuff.”
There was the sound of paper crackling, and Noble spoke again. “Here’s this week’s money. Call me if anything comes up.”
“Okay,” the voice said, then the rear door opened and closed again.
“He must be talking about you, Holly,” Harry said. “It’s got to be one of your people. Did you recognize the voice?”
“No. Play it again, Bill.”
Holly listened carefully to the tape. “Hurd? You recognize anybody?”
Wallace shook his head. “It’s too faint. It could be anybody. Is there any way to enhance it, Bill?”
“Yeah, but I’ll have to send it to Miami,” Bill replied.
“Do that,” Harry said. “And next time, bug the backseat, too.”
“Yeah,” Bill said.
“Rita, how thoroughly were you searched?” Harry asked.
“Thoroughly enough to get groped, but not all
that
thoroughly. I had already changed out of my clothes into a jumpsuit, and that didn’t have any pockets.”
“Did you keep the jumpsuit?”
“Yeah, they told me to.”
“Bill, take a look at the garment and see if you can hide some bugs in it for Rita to take in.”
“Okay.”
Rita shook her head. “That’s not the best way, Harry.”
“What have you got in mind?”
“Well, nobody looked up my ass with a flashlight, or up anywhere else.”
“I think I see your point,” Harry said.
“Bill,” Rita said, “do you think you can find a canister of some sort, say four inches long by an inch in diameter?”
“Probably.”
“Would that hold some bugs?”
“Four, maybe half a dozen.”
“No sharp corners, okay?”
“Sure, Rita.”
Rita looked around the table. “I’ll shoot anybody who smirks,” she said.
H
am Barker got into bed and turned on the TV, but he couldn’t concentrate on any program, and when he switched it off, he couldn’t sleep, either. He had listened to what was said at the meeting with Harry Crisp, and he was intrigued. He was also a little annoyed at how everybody seemed to be tiptoeing around the Palmetto Gardens problem, instead of
doing
something about it. “Fucking feds,” he said aloud to himself. If this had been an army problem, it would already have been solved. He lay there thinking for a few minutes, then he got out of bed, got into a bathing suit and a T-shirt, and slipped into some Top-Siders, no socks.
He walked around the cabin, picking up things, looking at them and putting them down again. Then he got a large, zippered plastic bag and started collecting what he needed. He found a waterproof flashlight and taped over most of the lens, leaving an open area about half an inch in
diameter, and added that to his bag. He dug a black nylon warmup suit out of his closet, rolled it into a small, tight wad and put it into the plastic bag, along with a pair of black sneakers. Then he went to his tackle box and lifted out the plastic tray that covered the bottom. Under that were two things that he had stolen from the army: one was his standard-issue special forces knife, which was still razor sharp; the other was a small black .22-caliber pistol with a silencer attached that had been issued to him for a mission in Vietnam by a CIA field agent. When, after the job had successfully been completed, the CIA man had asked for the weapon back, Ham had told him to go fuck himself. He had never thought that he would actually need it, but he liked it so much that he’d have been willing to fight the agent for it, which hadn’t been necessary. The man had laughed and told him to keep it. He put the knife and the pistol into the plastic bag, along with a spare clip.
Ham took the gear down to his dock and tossed it into the whaler. Then he got an electric trolling motor from the back porch, clamped it to the stern of the whaler and attached it to the boat’s battery with alligator clips. He fastened his rubber diving belt around his waist, minus the weights, got into the whaler, started the engine and headed out into the Indian River, accelerating to around fifteen knots. There was a moon, occasionally covered by clouds, but it was bright enough to light his way down the waterway.
Twenty minutes of running brought him within half a mile of the entrance to the Palmetto Gardens marina. He cut the outboard, pulled it out of the water and switched on the nearly silent trolling motor. He sat on the bottom of the boat to keep a low profile, and moving silently along at around two knots, he soon reached several acres of marsh just north
of the marina entrance. A little creek provided an opening in the marsh grass, and he turned into it, peering ahead into the darkness, heading toward the riverbank. After perhaps three minutes, the bow of the whaler touched the mud, and Ham switched off the trolling motor.
He sat silently in the bottom of the boat and listened for five minutes by his illuminated wristwatch. His eyes were well accustomed to the darkness, now, and he could see that he was perhaps thirty feet from dry ground. He kicked off his Top-Siders and stepped into the water, feeling out the soft mud with his bare feet. He pushed the whaler into the marsh grass, which was a good two feet tall, shucked off his T-shirt, got his plastic bag and waded slowly toward the land. It was another twenty feet to the brush, and he covered it quickly. He sat down on the ground, his back to the dense thicket, and listened again for another five minutes. Once, he heard a vehicle in the distance, but it was driving at a steady speed and soon passed by.