Wednesday's Child (5 page)

9.

Ilene wasn’t home when I got there.  She hadn’t called, either. 

Most days, I would have been glad she was enjoying herself.  She’d worked hard to get where she was.  Like me, she’d majored in science in college, but decided that spending her life in a laboratory wasn’t for her.  She’d taken the long route through graduate school while Gregg and Marc were growing up.  With both of them finally away at college, she dived into her dissertation in pharmacology.  Now she was a highly-paid hired gun, much in demand by law firms and drug companies.

She spent her days earning big fees for attorneys with huge egos, working and traveling with powerful men used to getting what they wanted.  At first, I’d worried that one of the things they wanted might be Ilene, but she always came home happy to see me, and that was all I needed to know.

Then why was I pouring myself a drink, wondering how many were being poured for her at Monahan’s, and by whom?  Why pick now to feel anxious and jealous?  Because Gayle had shown me how easily and unexpectedly people can slip?

Feeling the alcohol-generated warmth flow toward my stomach, I suddenly had an urgent need for Ilene’s support and approval. I felt contrite over letting my fear that she’d laugh at me or think I was losing my mind stop me from sharing the last three days with her, though I’d nearly poured my heart out to Gayle. 

On the rare occasions when I drank, I always stopped at one, but that evening I carried a second greyhound into our family room and sat quietly in the slowly darkening space.  I must have dozed. When the phone rang, the now-empty glass was in my lap, calmly resting in a cold pool of melting ice.

“Shit!”  I lunged for the phone, scattering ice chips across the coffee table.  “Hello?”  I sounded awful, even to me.

“Dylan, you’re home!  Would you come get me, please?”

I was so disoriented, it took me a second to realize it was a slightly slurred version of Ilene I was hearing.  “Sure.  You still at Monahan’s?”

“Yeah, I drank too much to drive home, and there are two or three guys awfully eager to share a cab with me.  Please rescue me.”

I was elated, my mood swing confirming how shaky I was.  But damn, I’d had most of two drinks, too.  What time was it? 
10:45
!  My head ached, but I hadn’t drunk any alcohol in three hours.

“Okay, Hon, be there in fifteen minutes.”

I saw her waiting between the double doors, talking to a guy in a suit as I pulled into a parking space and headed for the entrance.  Were they arguing?  Ilene looked so happy to see me, my heart leaped.

She turned her back on the suit, draped herself over my arm and kissed me.  “Thanks, Dylan.  Let’s go home.”

She clung to me as we walked to the car.  I looked closely at her for the first time as she was getting in.  Her makeup was a mess, either from perspiration or tears.  “What was that about?” I asked when I’d started the engine.

“Everyone was into letting off a little steam.  I drank with them and danced a little.  The guys I work with were fine – they know the boundaries.”  She really looked miserable.  “But there were other people there, and a couple just wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer.”

“That’s not so surprising.  If I were in a bar and saw you partying and letting your hair down, I’d make a run at you myself.”  That must have been the right answer, because she grinned and laid her head on my shoulder.

As we approached our driveway, she sat up.  Safe in our garage with the engine off, she pulled a sad face for me.  “I’m sorry I abandoned you.  I really meant to get home earlier.  I knew something was bothering you, but I went off celebrating.” 

Tears welled in her eyes. I took her face in my hands and kissed her.  “You’re here now.  If you can stay awake, I have a story to tell you.”

A shower and a cup of strong coffee later, Ilene got into bed and propped some pillows behind her.  I told it all to her.  Except for reminding me at each relevant juncture how incredibly stupid it was to use every excuse to avoid seeing a doctor, she listened quietly. Emotions washed over her face like cloud shadows on a windy day, finally settling on concerned incredulity. 

“You actually believe all this really happened exactly as you described it?  You’re convinced it’s not some kind of delusion or hallucination?”

“As much as I can be when all I have to go on is my own perceptions.”

“At least you’re aware they could be wrong.  That’s healthy.”  She sounded so clinical.  I felt her concern; there was no mocking now.  “You feel good physically?  No headaches or dizziness?”

I shook my head.  “I’m fine.  I wish I could make you believe me.”

“I do, but believing you and agreeing with you aren’t the same thing.”

“So you think there’s something wrong with me.”

“I didn’t say that.  But I know too much about brain chemistry and psychotic dysfunction to ignore the possibility because you say you feel fine. Let me do some digging on the Internet and call some people I know.”

“If you repeat all this, they’ll think I’m nuts.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be circumspect.  I’ll be researching symptoms to look for to rule out serious disorders.”

I didn’t have a problem admitting I needed help, but acknowledging that I couldn’t handle this on my own meant giving up the illusion that as long as I was the only one who knew, I retained some control over these events.  I must have looked as crestfallen as I felt. 

“I know this is hard for you, Dylan, but ask yourself which outcome is more frightening.  Would you rather live in a reality in which you never knew what day you were awakening to?”

“Jesus, Ilene, I’m already there.  You have no idea how terrifying and confusing the last few days have been.  The implications are so enormous, my grasp of what’s happening changes constantly.  Take Thursday.  I lived it two days ago, and I’ve identified a dozen ways in which your Thursday was different from mine. I have contradictory sets of memories, each of them valid from different points of view. And I don’t even know if I’m the cause of the changes.”

“What?  You mean if something really bad happened yesterday, like a tsunami that wasn’t there on your Thursday, you’d blame yourself?”

“Of course not.”  This wasn’t going well, but I couldn’t explain what I didn’t understand myself.  I paused to gather my thoughts.  “That’s not what I meant.  Look, we’re all conditioned to relate to our experiences linearly, in the order in which they occur, right?”

She thought about that.  “Okay.”

“That’s why I was relieved that Wilson had Wednesday’s version of the proposal. It felt right to me.”

“I see that, but doesn’t it bother you that the one you remember writing on your Thursday morning doesn’t seem to exist any more?”

“It doesn’t just bother me, it drives me crazy. The guys I studied physics with at Columbia would say I entered an alternate universe when I lived Wednesday out of order and the Thursday proposal still exists in the other one.”

“Alternate universe?  Implying there’s another you and another me in the one you left?”  She rolled her eyes.

“I feel the same way, but I’m living with two sets of memories for both Wednesday and Thursday.  I spent today trying to determine how your Thursday, which, contrary to my linear conditioning I have to view as the real one, differs from mine.”  She was fully engaged, so I went on.  “I scoured the news media and learned what I could from the things I heard around the office.  I spent the whole day worrying that I’d slip up because of not knowing something that happened on the Thursday I wasn’t there.

“The worst part is knowing what I could have done better if my head had been clearer.  The only proof I have that all this happened is the CyTech chart I printed.  Next time…”

“What do you mean next time?  You think this is going to happen again?”

“I’m sure of it.  Next time, I’ll document everything that happens on both the day I jump to and the day I skip, cable news web pages and emails. I’ll keep a diary of every significant interaction, especially conversations with you and other people that matter to me. All I need is some high-capacity flash drives.” 

Ilene looked stricken, and I realized she’d stopped listening.  “You okay?”

“I hadn’t considered that there’d be a next time till you said it.  No wonder you’re rattled.”  She yawned and fell back against her pillows.  “I can’t do this anymore tonight.  Come here and hold me and let’s try to get some sleep.”

The good news was that the next morning we both thought it was Saturday.  Ilene was in front of her computer by seven o’clock.  I brewed some coffee and tried to read the
Times
, but I was too distracted to concentrate.  I had to meet William at noon. 

I poured coffee for Ilene and set the cup down beside her.  “Find anything interesting?”

She sat back and sipped.  “Mmmm, good.  Thanks.  I confirmed what I thought originally.  Now I’m checking to make sure I hadn’t missed anything important.  I think I’ll call Jerry Schliemann, later.” 

Jerry was a neuropsychiatrist who’d been one of Ilene’s thesis advisors.  She’d consulted with him several times since then and recommended him to her clients when they needed an expert witness on psychotropic drugs.

“You okay with me calling him?  He’s a doctor.  Anything I tell him is completely confidential.”

“Even when you’re not the patient?  Maybe I should talk to him myself.”

“I wasn’t going to push you on that, but if you’re agreeable, I think you should.  He won’t discuss your case, even with me, unless you want him to.”

I felt like a huge burden had been lifted from me.  “If you’re willing to be part of this with me, I want you there.  There’s nothing I’d tell Jerry that I wouldn’t want you to hear.”

She got up and hugged me, her relief as tangible as mine.  “We’ll solve this together.”

Much as I’d have liked to stay with her that way, I couldn’t.  “There’s something else.  William Franklin called, Thursday.  He wants me to meet him at noon.”

Ilene paled.  “Franklin?  Ohmygod.  It’s been so long, I’d hoped we were done with all that.”  Then there was apprehension in her eyes, a fierce expression on her face.  I knew where her mind was going.  “God, Dylan, do you think…”

“I don’t know.  Anything’s possible.”

10.

Attempts to use dirty bombs as military weapons in the Iran-Iraq war proved impractical, but their potential use by terrorists was another matter.  Scattered around a city like New York, long-lived radioactive isotopes could cause thousands of casualties and unprecedented economic chaos.  The delivery system could be as simple as vials of powder scattered by the wind.

After the first Gulf War, when federal budget cuts greatly reduced active surveillance, people like me became sleeper agents, available in emergencies, but otherwise invisible.  Since I was already known in several foreign capitals, the Agency provided me with a career that would serve as a front and mesh with my Intelligence activities.  Thus, Dylan Brice became a mild-mannered international marketing analyst by day, and a Caped Crusader on call to defend America against nuclear terrorism whenever my secret phone rang.  Thursday was the first time it had rung in years.

I’d described William to Ilene as a Reserve Unit squad leader, only more covert.  She knew there was a lot I couldn’t tell her, and she understood that it wasn’t only the risk of going to prison for violating security.  As I’d told Gayle, she was better off not knowing.

Ilene asked me a couple of times if my work with William was risky. I told her I’d never been in danger.  I was a scientist consultant, not a field operative. 

What I didn’t say was that the Government preferred to invest its resources reacting to past threats rather than future preparedness, which meant a small, underfunded unit like ours had to be cross-trained.  We all knew how to defend ourselves, and we all carried side arms on duty.

William Franklin was the kind of patriot in the war against Islam was coincidental that the marina at the North Cove of Battery Park was only the length of a football field from the Freedom Tower, which stood where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once had. 

Any illusions I might have had of a luxury cruise up the Hudson were quashed the moment I arrived at the Cove.  William, looking every inch a barrel-chested Marine drill sergeant, was impatiently pacing the deck of what was either an NYPD Harbor Patrol boat or something cleverly disguised to look like one.  He could have been forty-five or sixty, with his steel gray buzz cut and lined, sun-worn features.

“Move it, Dylan.  The others are already here.”

The sight of William projecting his trademark stalwart confidence transported me to a place I hadn’t been in so long I’d almost forgotten the feeling, pushing the bizarre events that had begun on Wednesday to a dim recess in my mind.  The anxiety and nervousness that had been my constant companions evaporated as I was again drawn into William’s orbit.

I savored the heady feeling of being part of something special again, one of the protectors of freedom, blah, blah, blah…  It energized me the way these assignments always used to.  We were an elite unit, even me.  Not that I was a great field agent, but there were only a handful of people with my specific experience, and the work we did might save a million lives one day.

The others turned out to be only two of our group.  William used his own version of the cell network concept.  No one but the people you were teamed with on an assignment knew what you did, and even they usually didn’t know all the details.

William directed me to the small enclosed cabin.  Inside was Samir Jafour, a one-time Syrian who had years of experience on the ground infiltrating Islamic training camps, and whose command of Arabic and other Middle-eastern tongues had been invaluable after nine-eleven.  I knew and liked Samir, but the other occupant of the cabin was a stranger who introduced herself as Mary Conlon, of late, a member of the UK’s antiterrorism strike team in Belfast, until the relative calm there convinced the cash-poor Brits to cut back on personnel.

“Dylan,” she said.  “What is that, Irish?  Welsh?”

“I think my mother just liked the name,” I said, but I couldn’t help laughing.

“What’s funny?” she asked in a delightful brogue.

“Oh, you made me think about names.  I grew up in an Irish working class neighborhood and for a while I wondered if every girl in Ireland had been named Mary.”

“You were more right than you knew,” she said, laughing with me.  She took a seat across a small work table from Samir and William. I sat beside her, facing William. 

“How’d you get your hands on a New York police boat?”  His superiors could usually borrow anything they needed from local law enforcement, and I knew he liked to parade his connections in front of his command.

William preened.  “You might have noticed this isn’t an ordinary police boat.”  I hadn’t, but I might have guessed as much.  “After nine-eleven, the feds offered to outfit one with high tech surveillance gear in exchange for being able to requisition it when we needed it.  We also made it virtually impervious to eavesdropping.”  William loved that stuff.

“Those two,” he nodded toward the two uniformed men in the pilot house, “are harbor patrol.  They’re discreet, but they don’t know why we’re here and they can’t hear us.  Conlon, here, is our new communications and electronics expert, and she’s damn good at decrypting things.  Personal citation from the Prime Minister.”  Mary parodied a sitting curtsy.

“The last few years we’ve quietly stepped up our port security.  Ports have always been soft targets, and we decided to let the terrorists think they still are.  We use intelligent software to analyze emails, especially if they’re written in Arabic or they contain certain word patterns in French and English typical of people whose first language is Arabic.  We intercept cell phone calls, too, when we have an idea what to target.  Why don’t you bring Dylan up to date, Mary?”

We’d been cruising south into the harbor straight toward the Statue of Liberty. 
William
, I thought,
it’s enough with the symbolism.  We get it.
  We passed to the east of the Statue and out into the shipping lanes where several big freighters lay at anchor.

Mary described the volumes of communications their screening programs identified and the months of tedious analysis they’d done.  I hadn’t been involved with that stuff for years.  I was impressed by how far things had progressed but wondered how valuable it was…

“Until, last month, I found this.”  She handed me a printout. Excerpts from a sequence of emails, the contents of which meant nothing to me.  “Then this and this,” and she began laying sheets before me with several items circled in red.  Three times the name “Al Khalifa” was circled and my brain snapped to attention.  I’d just seen those words.  I stood and scanned the harbor through the police boat’s smoky windows.  There!  A container ship precessing about its anchor line in the outgoing tide, had “Al Khalifa” stenciled on its starboard bow.

If William called me in, he was worried about radiological contamination.  I looked at Mary’s papers, focusing on the circled items.  Most of them seemed like gibberish, lots of unrelated symbols.  They were all watching me expectantly, so I looked again, with my brain on full alert.  Shit, I must not be processing information very well.  Just minutes ago I’d passed over a line that should have triggered alarm bells: PU238-88, CS137-30, AM241-430, CO60-5.26, SR90-28.1.  It was a list of radioactive isotopes and half-lives, all byproducts of nuclear reactor fission, extremely deadly, and long-lived.

Samir noticed my reaction.  “Dylan has seen the light.”

“You think
Al Khalifa’s
carrying these?”  Port security had been a political football for decades.  There was always a lot of talk about it during election campaigns but no evidence that anything was done about it when the elections were over.

“We’re not certain.”  Samir glanced at William, who nodded at him.  “Things have changed, Dylan.  We don’t publicize it, but we’ve been doing random sweeps of freighters entering the harbor for years.  We cast a broad net on a regular basis so they’ll think we’re just fishing, but it’s also a cover for taking an apparently innocent look at targets like
Al Khalifa
when Intelligence identifies them.”

“What do you have, exactly?”

“I went on board with the Border Patrol carrying a radiation detector.  It helped to know the language.”

“You’re kidding.  You mean they actually mark containers, ‘Illegal Radioactive Contraband’ in Arabic?”

“You’d be surprised what I can learn from a shipping label.  These guys are thorough and patient, but not always terribly creative.  They tend to follow predictable patterns like always using the same front companies to cover their activities. 

“I found traces of radioactivity on a container marked ‘Medical Supplies.’ There was even a radiation hazard sticker on it.  That’s not unreasonable because some of these isotopes are used to treat cancer.  It’s also not uncommon for slight leakage to occur, not dangerous, but enough to register on a good counter.”

“What made you suspicious?”

“The container was addressed to a hospital in Riyadh.”  He unrolled a map of the Arabian peninsula and the Mediterranean.  “Why would a ship carry potentially dangerous and sensitive cargo bound from Aden to Saudi Arabia, travel up the Red Sea through the Suez Canal, to Benghazi and Marseilles, and then across the Atlantic to New York? Why would you even put it on a ship?” 

He was right; it made no sense from any point of view.  Riyadh is landlocked, two hundred miles from the nearest port in Bahrain, and if the cargo was going there and then by truck to Riyadh, the ship would have gone in the other direction.  And even that dodged the question of what the cargo was doing in Aden in the first place.

“You’re sure the container was loaded in Aden?”

“According to the manifest it was.  We have a priority request in to Homeland Security to have the Coast Guard impound the ship.  We’ll have to move quickly to get the crew off before they can react, then get in and out as fast as possible.”

Identifying the substances Samir detected would be pretty routine, the same kind of thing I’d done working for NRC.  The trick was to keep our options open.  If we found something significant, we’d confiscate most of it, but try to make it look like we didn’t know it was there.  The best scenario would be to neutralize the threat and still be able to follow the containers to their destination.

William said, “Any questions?  Okay, then, stay loose and be ready to jump when I call you.”