Wednesday's Child (13 page)

“In your time stream,” I said.  “In mine it happened on Thursday, at a pier on Staten Island, and I was there.  Three of my friends were killed by it.”

He looked hard at me and then at Ilene.

“Believe him, Jerry, it’s real.  I’ve been living with it since Wednesday morning.”

I think it was the earnest look on Ilene’s face that tipped the balance for him from half empty to half full.  He was still skeptical, but he was fully engaged with us.  Ilene and I explained it all, leaving out anything specific about the Agency, isotopes, or terrorists.  I even described my trampoline analogy of space-time.

“What do you need from me?” he asked.

“We’d like you to be an honest broker for us, an objective ear, someone who’s not afraid to butt in when necessary.  Beyond that I’m hoping you can be there to support Ilene.  You can make a real difference for her on days like Wednesday, helping her keep her bearings.  This is very confusing for both of us, but especially for her.  I have a degree of control, but she never knows what to expect.”

“I can try.  What else?”

“I’m not sure about the rest. We need to find ways to communicate with each other, especially dealing with realities and memories that sometimes contradict each other.  I don’t mean communication skills.  There are all sorts of practical issues, like having another set of eyes and ears keeping track of what happens and comparing notes.”

20.

A common interrogation technique is preventing prisoners from getting adequate sleep on the theory, I suppose, that a sleepy terrorist is a sloppy terrorist.  When William called late Saturday afternoon, he sounded as though someone forgot to tell him the technique wasn’t for use on interrogators.

“Those two guys you ferreted out spilled their guts, not that there was much in them.  I don’t know where your hunches come from, but you were right on every count.  Turns out that four canisters went overboard after
Al Khalifa
dropped anchor, to be picked up by a submersible homing in on sonar beacons.  We think it happened shortly after Sam inspected the ship.”

That rang a bell.  Other than those owned by NOAA, the Navy, or the Coast Guard, submersibles weren’t a plentiful commodity.  One of the Navy’s knee-jerk reactions to the attack on the
USS Cole
had been to entertain proposals on the use of submersibles, actually unarmed miniature submarines packed with electronic equipment, for port defense and security.  A lot of the development work had been done at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, commonly referred to as APL, which had a long history of working with the Navy on submarine warfare.  A former colleague of mine had managed the project.

I had years of intelligence work to thank for the associations that fell into place.  This was the third time I’d come across a mention of submersibles in the last few months, something to which I might have attached no significance, but for the pathways in my brain carved by countless tedious hours spent sorting data, looking for obscure patterns and connections where most people saw only unrelated snippets of information. 

There’d been an article in the
Sunday Times Magazine
describing simulations conducted by researchers from Rutgers and Princeton on the potential use of high tech submersibles as an effective line of defense of the ports of New York and Philadelphia.  Such were the times we lived in that the article probably never would have surfaced if the Administration hadn’t been on the defensive over not fulfilling its brag to permanently shut down Al Qaeda.

More recently, my firm had floated a memo on foreign marketing opportunities for minisubs based on leaks from the State Department that the Government was on the verge of allowing them to be leased to allies in the war against terror.  What particularly caught my eye at the time was that the list of potential customers included Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen.

William saw where I was headed immediately and said he’d get back to me.

***

Monday was a busy day in the office.  I’d been gone a few days, and things had piled up.  I needed to talk to Jim.  William was going to be taking more of my time, and Jim had to know I wouldn’t be there much.

Whatever the Agency had told him years ago must have made a big impression, because he didn’t let me finish. He assured me that he knew what was most important, and not to worry about it; he’d fill in for me himself. We spent the morning going over my projects until Gayle came hobbling by for our lunch date.  Anticipating a difficult and delicate interaction, I’d asked Ilene how she thought I should handle it. 

“She probably needs someone to vent to more than anything,” Ilene had advised.  “She has no one to talk to about it, so listen and keep your mouth shut as much as possible.”  I knew Ilene was right.  Getting involved in someone else’s marriage was almost always a bad idea.

It turned out Ilene’s advice was harder to follow than I’d anticipated.  Things had changed over the weekend.  I’d expected to find myself consoling someone on the verge of ending her marriage, helping maintain her equilibrium and judgment, but Gayle surprised me.

“I feel a little foolish after saying those things to you on Friday.  I guess this,” she pointed at her plaster-enclosed ankle, “had me off my game.” 

Heeding Ilene’s advice, I put what I hoped was a supportive expression on my face and nodded.

“Rod’s not quite the brute I made him out to be,” she continued.  “Yesterday, the kids were out playing and I was sitting in my office feeling sorry for myself, still a bit out of breath from negotiating that narrow staircase, when I sensed him standing in the doorway looking at me.  When I looked up he averted his eyes.  Then he came in and pulled a chair over to sit beside me.  He took my hands and told me he knew he’d been behaving badly, that he wished he could take it all back.  He was sorry he’d made things so difficult for me.”

She had tears in her eyes as she spoke, and I realized how desperately she’d wanted that from him.  I can’t say I was entirely convinced by Rod’s
mea culpa
, because I’d heard less intense versions of this before, but again, thanks to Ilene, I just smiled and told Gayle how happy I was for her.  Rod had even apologized for not being able to share the other parts of his life with her, saying he wished he could, because the past weeks had been hellish. 

“That’s exactly what you said on the phone, Friday.”  I’d noticed that, too.

“I didn’t have to say anything,” she told me.  “It was like he was reading my mind.  He said he was going to make more of an effort to stay in touch with me when he was on the road from now on, that he was attending a conference in Washington this week.”  The State Department was updating its policy directives and advice for Americans doing business in the Middle East and southwestern Asia, and he had several days of briefings and meetings to attend. 

“He hasn’t been that open about his work in longer than I can remember.  We wound up having a pleasant day.  We took the kids to Six Flags, and he seemed to revel in pushing me around in a wheelchair, which embarrassed the hell out of me.  And remember when I was complaining about how harsh he sounds when he curses in Turkish and Armenian?  He even made me remember how charming I used to think his accent was when I married him.”

I hardly knew what to make of it all, but it was obvious that she didn’t need my help.  Was she fooling herself?  I didn’t know, but it would have been a mistake to probe.

***

William called on Tuesday morning.

“It seems that the submersibles research project you read about involved more than the university teams.  APL set it up as a commercial venture pending government approval and scheduled demos for potential clients when their minisub wasn’t being used by the researchers.”

“Was there any security?”

“Every requestor had to submit a proposal explaining how they intended to use the submersible.  APL was supposed to thoroughly vet every request, and the sub could only be piloted by one of their people during the demos.”

“Did the Government approve the list?”

“In theory, but you know how that goes, sometimes.”

I did.  Scientists liked to pretend science was above politics.  They could be especially careless and impatient with government regulations when they were dealing with colleagues. 

“Maybe you should pay your friend at APL a visit,” he said.  “Let him know we’re not out to make trouble for him, but we need to see his list.  Use your judgment and tell him what you need to to get him to cooperate.  You can threaten him with an investigation if you have to.”

The notion of threatening John Barksdale seemed ludicrous to me.  For one thing, he probably wouldn’t have been the least bit intimidated, and for another, I was sure it wouldn’t be necessary.  I called him as soon as I was off the phone with William.  John sounded genuinely happy to hear from me.

“How long has it been, Dylan?  I heard you were making a pile of money in international business these days.  Why didn’t I think of that?”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, John.  Besides, what you heard has a few inaccuracies in it.  The piles of money aren’t that big, and that’s not all I do.”

“Sounds mysterious.  You whetting my appetite?”

“Not on an open phone line.”  He chuckled at that.  Back when we worked together there was still a lot of cold war black humor about spies and conspiracies.  “I was thinking about coming down to see you.”

“That’d be great.  When?”

“As soon as possible.  How about Thursday morning?”  The timing created a dilemma for me.  As soon as possible meant tomorrow, but my tomorrow wasn’t the same as his.

“How early can you get here?”

“I’ll take the train down to BWI tomorrow night.  Just tell me when.”

We agreed on 9:00, and he said there’d be a visitor badge waiting for me.  Of course, I wouldn’t be taking the train on Wednesday night at all.  I’d make a hotel reservation for two nights and head south that evening.  I’d go to sleep in the hotel on Tuesday night, and unless the Übermensch had another surprise in store for me, I’d wake up, still in Maryland, on Thursday morning.  It only took a few seconds to work that out.  I was starting to get the hang of this. 

It didn’t seem fair that I had to pay for two nights to spend one. Maybe I could make up for it by making a decent stock buy this week.

21.

APL was located in the suburbs halfway between Baltimore and Washington, an area of beautiful countryside rapidly filling with upscale housing developments and chic new Town Centers.  Quite lovely except for the oppressively muggy summer heat.  John had suggested that I stay a few miles north in Columbia, a planned community of 100,000 people built around a big shopping mall.  My first thought was, “Ugh!” but it had a decent hotel built on an artificial lake only a ten-minute drive from his office.

Instead of the kind of surprise I’d had in mind, the Übermensch settled for a rather unfunny practical joke.  The hotel incorrectly entered my reservation as a one-night stay, and on Wednesday they rented my apparently unused room to an attractive forty-ish business woman.  That night, she engaged her security lock and climbed into the very same luxuriant king-sized bed that I had the night before, nude and alone.  She awakened Thursday morning to find me sleeping next to her. 

I’m sure she suffered a moment of confusion.  Had she had one too many martinis the night before and spent the night doing things she now didn’t remember? She must have quickly decided that a fifty-ish hairy-chested man whose only visible adornment was a wedding band on his left hand wasn’t her type.  She began hurling curses at me, and foregoing modesty, she lunged for the dresser, grabbed her purse, and pulled out a vial of pepper spray.  Time froze just long enough for me to realize that negotiation wasn’t an option. 

I lay defenseless under the sheets, confronted by a very angry naked woman intent on dispensing caustic chemicals into my eyes and breathing passages.  The situation couldn’t have been helped by my inability to keep my eyes from bugging out at the sight of her, nor would her discovery that I wasn’t wearing any more than she was.  Still, what choice did I have?  I leapt from the bed in a cold sweat, showing her my back and reaching for the robe I’d left on a bedside chair that was no longer there. What now, I thought, desperately, as I turned back to face her, only to find myself alone in the room.

I sat up in bed, suddenly awake, laughing at myself.  Perhaps I’d judged too harshly.  From any point of view but my own, the dream would have been an excellent prank, even for an omnipotent entity.  If nothing else, it was an object lesson in how quickly my circumstances could turn messy if I wasn’t constantly vigilant.

***

The digital clock on the night table told me that it was 6:39 a.m. on Thursday, July 31.  I was where I needed to be, when I expected to be there, glad not to need the TV blaring at me to verify that.  Calm once again, I took a leisurely shower and shave, and headed downstairs for a relaxing breakfast by the lake shore.  There was no morning
Times
, but
The Washington Post
filled in admirably. 

My morning took a turn for the worse when I saw the headline on the lead article.  “Two Men Found Shot in Laurel Motel – Terrorist Connection Feared.” 

Laurel was a bustling little suburban city twelve miles to the southeast, populated by government and military workers, young singles and families, and a wide range of working class people of diverse races and nationalities.  It first came to national prominence when Alabama governor George Wallace was shot there while campaigning for the 1972 presidential nomination.  After that, aside from its race track, no one who didn’t live there paid Laurel much attention until it was revealed that one of the nine-eleven hijack teams had lived there in preparation for the attack on the Pentagon.

At the time, the media had trumpeted Laurel’s proximity to NSA headquarters, virtually ignoring the fact that it was equally close to BWI airport, the Goddard Space Flight Center, the principal rail lines serving the eastern half of the country, all of Washington, and literally hundreds of government contractors doing highly sensitive work, among which was APL.  If I were a terrorist looking for a place to live where I could blend in, I’d pick Laurel.

According to the
Post
article, two men of Middle Eastern descent, with Arab names on their driver’s licenses, were found dead in a motel room along US Route 1, Laurel’s main business arterial.  Both were armed with silencer-equipped handguns, and bullet holes in the walls and furniture indicated that at least three shots had been fired in addition to the ones that killed the two men.  The bodies had been discovered after an anonymous caller phoned 911.

Fingerprints not matching those of the deceased were found in the room, and there were also traces of blood that didn’t match either of the victims’.

I headed for the hotel lobby, where several people were watching CNN and FOX News.  The only new facts I gleaned were that the names of the two victims were both on the FBI’s terrorist watch list, and the unidentified fingerprints had been matched to a motel housekeeper’s.  For once, I almost sympathized with the talking heads spewing theories on what might have happened.  Was this a falling out among thieves?  Perhaps an undercover operation gone bad?  And what about the timing?  Could the killings be related to the isotopes we’d been hunting for?

I hurried back to my room, relieved to not find the naked woman in my dream taking a shower, and called William.  He seemed confused when he heard my voice, but recovered quickly.

“Isn’t your meeting at APL this morning?”

“At nine, but I need to talk to you before I leave.  I just saw the motel shooting story on the news.  It happened a few miles from here.”

“I know.  I’m glad you called in.”  Again, he seemed momentarily confused.  “I should have called you last night when the story broke.  I can’t believe something like that slipped my mind.”  Normally, I couldn’t have either, but yesterday had been Wednesday.  “The cops found the bodies around noon.  The locals down there stay in close touch with the FBI when something involving Arabs occurs, but it took a while for the feds to react.  I’m sure they’d have tried to keep it quiet, but by then the local media had picked up the story as a double murder.”

“Are there any leads on who killed them and fired the other shots?”

“FBI’s handling the forensics.  They’ll put off telling the press what they know as long as possible, but we should know what they find later today or tomorrow.  They might have preliminary findings on the gun the shooter was carrying by then, too.”

“Are you thinking this could be related to what we’re working on?”

“We’re assuming it is until we find out otherwise.  Look, Dylan, I know crime scene investigation isn’t your thing, but you’re there.  Manzone’s arranging for an agent from the Baltimore field office to meet you at that motel later today.  Look around and ask questions.  I want to know everything the FBI knows about the case.  When’ll you be back?”

I told him I’d be on a 7:30 train that arrived in Newark after 10:00 that evening.  He said he’d meet me at the station, and he’d call me later to let me know when to meet the FBI agent.

I had a few minutes to call Ilene before it was time to leave to meet John.  We’d tried to figure out how we could improve our communication on my skipped days.  That proved tricky, but we agreed, before I left on Tuesday, that I’d call Thursday morning to find out if there was anything she wanted me to know. 

Our plan went like this: I’d get home tonight, and presumably, wake up next to her on Wednesday morning having already experienced Thursday.  Wednesday evening, I’d tell her about my Thursday, and we’d decide, together, if there was anything she should tell me when I called Thursday morning. 

It was a ticklish situation.  I was worried about creating a causation loop, that is, doing something on Thursday, telling Ilene what I’d done on Thursday when I saw her on Wednesday, then doing what she told me I said I’d done when I actually experienced Thursday.  That was a problem because I was now convinced that I was living Thursdays before Wednesdays for a reason.  It gave me a unique point of view, an edge I was supposed to use to accomplish some as yet unspecified objective.  But that required me to have free will to use my initiative.  I couldn’t allow my Thursdays to be pre-ordained, which was what might happen if Ilene told me everything I was going to do before I did it.

On the other hand, we agreed that there ought to be exceptions to that rule.  What if I realized, tonight, that I’d made a terrible mistake earlier in the day, or there was an action I could have taken to avoid a catastrophe if I’d known something Thursday morning that I didn’t learn until afterward?  I needed to be able to use hindsight to change my decisions, or what was the point of all this? 

Given all that, her answer when I called to ask if there was anything I should know, was anticlimactic.

“No,” she said, “everything was remarkably normal.  You must have gotten home from Maryland late tonight. You were here yesterday morning when I woke up.”

“I didn’t say anything about today that I should know?” 

“Nope, nothing.”  We chatted a bit more and it was time for me to leave.

Things had happened so fast, I didn’t process my conversation with William until I was in my rental car.  His attitude toward me had changed markedly.  I’d always been a valued member of the team, but no one, least of all William, had had any illusions about my value as a field operative.  Frankly, neither did I.  The others all had a finely honed hardness about them, the result of many years in the field that I didn’t possess.  Sure, I’d been through the same required self-defense and hand-to-hand combat training as the others, and I scored above average on the shooting range, but I’d never fired my weapon in anger or been in a physical struggle with my life in jeopardy. 

I was still surprised at how automatically I’d used physical coercion on Achmed.  At the time, I’d attributed it to the rage he evoked in me, convincing myself that such behavior was an aberration, but deep down, I knew I’d merely been salving my conscience.  I was no different from the others.  I’d do whatever was necessary when the time came without having to think about it.  The unspoken message in my conversation with William was that he knew that too.

***

The warm handshake with which John and I greeted each other spontaneously morphed into a heartfelt hug.  We’d always liked each other, and more importantly, we’d known we could rely on each other the way only people who’d been teamed together on critical, demanding jobs understood. 

“Damn, Dylan, it’s good to see you,” he said, his eyes smiling above his full, neatly trimmed beard.

“Likewise, John.  I checked after we spoke, by the way.  It’s been fifteen years since that bash we threw for Norm.”  The last time we’d seen each other had been at the party celebrating the retirement of our former boss at the NRC, two years after we’d both moved on.  I wondered how we’d managed to lose touch for so long. 

He took me back to his office and we spent the better part of an hour reminiscing.  Then it was time for business. 

“I know you have other things to do, John.  I’d better get to what brought me here.”

“No worries, I blew off a couple of meetings. I’m clear until 1:30.”

I looked around the room, not sure where to begin.

“What’s wrong, Dylan?”

“Honestly?  I was wondering if there’s any chance of us being overheard.  I know what kind of work goes on here.”

“You’re asking if my office is bugged?”

I shrugged.  “I guess I am.  This is delicate.”

He looked hard at my serious expression and burst out laughing.  “Jesus, Dylan, this is a research facility.  We’re scientists.  Security’s tight, but they wouldn’t dare eavesdrop.” 

They sure as hell would if they thought there was a reason to, but I didn’t press the point. 

“We could do a walking tour of the campus – they can’t bug us out by the pond.” 

“No, that’s all right.”  I knew he was teasing me, and worse, I wasn’t sure how much to tell him.  William had said to use my judgment, but…“All right, I’ll get straight to the point.  What would I have to do to get a list of the people who’ve tested one of your submersibles in the Princeton-Rutgers project?”

“The list is no problem, but I’m not authorized to release details of the proposals.  Some of them have enormous dollar potential.  A lot of noses would be out of joint if I did that.”

“I understand, John. I wouldn’t put you in that kind of position.  I don’t care about the commercial interests, that’s just my day job.”  I waited for a response, but he just watched me, waiting for me to continue.

“Look, John, I trust you, and I’m empowered to use my discretion in what I tell you.  I just want to be sure how much you really want to know.  Telling you too much isn’t necessarily in your interest.”

He thought that over for a few seconds.  “This is obviously pretty heavy stuff.  Tell me what’s going on and who sent you, and as long as it doesn’t involve committing a felony, I’ll help however I can, even if I have to bend a few rules.”

I told him about William, and that we suspected someone on his list of using one of his submersibles to help terrorists smuggle deadly isotopes into the country.  And that if this ever came back to bite him he should have his bosses call Carlton Manzone.

He gave me the contact information for everyone on the list who’d recently had use of a submersible in the New York area, and after eliminating the State of New Jersey, the City of Philadelphia, and an environmental group interested in protecting the Jersey shore from toxic wastes and oil spills, he had his secretary copy the remaining proposals for me.