Bobby Adair - Ebola K

The pointing finger skewered Salim’s guilty, apostate thoughts, bleeding out their despair. He knew he was caught, and though exposure was tantamount to death, the shame of being caught was wholly consuming. With eyes unable to look at his accuser, he shuffled through the road dust toward the porch stairs with Jalal on his heels.

Salim knew the tidy Arab boy’s yellow clad attendant had ratted him out. Nothing had been said at that moment, but at the time there was no man nearby with a gun. But now there he stood on the porch, beside that plastic-covered rooster of a strutting, barking little man.

Salim twitched his face into a tired, innocent guise and went to work on his lie— the white American kid was delirious . It was that simple.

Salim repeated the lie in his head. No! He’d start with ignorance. The incident was so insignificant that it was hardly worth remembering. Who gave a care about the dying utterances of a delirious boy? What did the boy even say? Salim hadn’t even understood him.

Oh, the power of a well-spoken lie, from a face stretched in innocence, the essence of hope.

“Dump those water buckets,” said the rooster man, who gestured with a recently acquired AK-47.

Salim looked up and responded by emptying his water into the dirt. Jalal did the same.

The man with the weapon pointed toward the edge of town. “Down there, past that white-walled building, you’ll see a rusty tank raised on a metal framework. See if it contains diesel fuel. Let me know how much is inside. Go quickly.”

Salim bit his cheek, tasting the warm salt of his own blood. Anything to hide the unexpected joy that comes from sidestepping despair. A grin would have raised a question that he wouldn’t be able to answer. He turned on eager feet and took off at his fastest run.

The nice thing about conference room D-3 was the window, which provided a view of open fields, tall loblolly pines, and sky. Because of the way the building curved back on itself—like an apostrophe with an extra leg—the mirrored glass walls of the cafeteria and another wing of the building were visible.

Rain falling from the overcast sky made Olivia Cooper think about the only thing she didn’t like about her job. The NSA’s Whitelaw building at Fort Gordon lacked windows. Or that’s to say, the windows were there, but they offered views into offices and conference rooms. From the cubes, situated mostly in the center of the building, they couldn’t be seen. Days passed—mostly in winter—when she was absorbed in a project, coming in early, having lunch at her desk, and even staying a little bit late, when she wouldn’t see the light of day. There was one stretch during the previous winter when she’d worked six consecutive days without seeing the sun. That particular week, they’d worked on Saturday as they had for many Saturdays over those months.

Olivia was excited about the challenge of the new project and the added—though unofficial—responsibility. Her thoughts drifted as the day dragged on. Long hours had a cumulatively deleterious effect on her focus. She needed to jog some long miles. She needed a few good, full nights of sleep. She needed another cup of coffee, and she needed to stop staring out the window at the clouds. Barry was talking to Christine about phone records, and the mention of the name Almasi brought Olivia’s thoughts back into the room.

Almasi. Najid Almasi.

The credit card numbers had been tied to an account linked to him. Katherine, the CIA liaison, had nearly sloughed off her mannequin façade and turned into a real, live, excited person when Kevin Sylvan announced the name across the conference room. That was the moment when Olivia’s doubts about having wasted the time of overqualified people on a data association game disappeared.

Something real was happening. Something the data would help them sniff out.

Olivia looked at her watch. Eric would be in at any moment. He had a meeting in another wing of the building that had wrapped up ten minutes prior. Before going to the meeting, he promised he’d be right back—Eric was chronically punctual. Minutes later, the conference room door swung open and Eric entered.

He glanced around the room. “Looks like everybody just opened a Christmas present. Olivia, what’d I miss?”

All eyes turned to Olivia.

She drew a quick, calming breath and said, “The accounts have all been tied to Najid Almasi.”

Eric was surprised into silence. He looked around the room at confirming nods. “All right,” he said, settling back into the seat he’d occupied on and off since the project had taken over conference room D-3. He smiled slyly.

As Olivia started to say something, she couldn’t help but notice Barry and Christine—the two who’d been talking about Almasi just a moment before—were squirming in their chairs. To Barry, Olivia said, “You guys came up with something new just before Eric got here?”

“Yes,” Barry nodded, then looked over at Christine. “It’s good, but it’ll be more significant to talk about after you cover the account information.”

Olivia motioned toward the screen, “Kevin, would you mind going over the account data for Eric?”

“Sure,” he answered, as he stood up and commandeered the cord to the projector. Looking at Eric, he expounded, “I put together a flow chart.” Adept with the projector, Kevin got it plugged in quickly, hit a few keys, and seconds later the pull-down screen glowed with a six-foot image of his computer’s LCD. “We’ll go through this from a bird’s-eye view and drill down as necessary into the details.”

Kevin stood up and walked over to the wall. It was covered in glowing boxes and triangles connected by labeled lines. He spent ten minutes going through the steps, following the money from the transaction back to an account held by Najid Almasi’s father at a Swiss brokerage—an account controlled by Najid. Kevin talked for a moment about how the data had been acquired—at least where that extra information was available—as well as how confident he was with each step in the process. His bet, he explained, was placed on the money coming from Najid Almasi.

“How confident are you?” Eric asked.

Still standing in front of the room with the contents of his computer screen glowing behind him, Eric simply said, “Ninety-eight percent.”

“That solid?” Eric was not surprised.

“Yes,” Kevin confirmed.

Eric looked around the room. No one voiced disagreement. He stopped on Olivia. “This is your baby. What do you think?”

“I agree with Kevin,” she said.

“And you’ve been over all the data in detail?” Eric asked.

“In detail. As did Barry and Christine.” Olivia tried her best to keep a clinical air about her. Outward excitement over the importance of the account data would undermine her credibility with Eric. It would make him want to look at the data himself.

Eric leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head. “Good. Very good. I think we can say for certain something is up. Katherine, please notify your boys at the CIA.”

“I have,” she answered. “Preliminarily. I’ll let them know you concur.”

“Let’s see if we can figure out what we’ve got here.” Eric looked to his right. “Barry—” He stopped and looked back at Olivia.

Olivia was surprised that he was deferring to her. He was trusting her to run the investigation. She swelled with pride as she turned to Barry. “Please tell us what you and Christine came up with.”

Barry smiled at Olivia, also deferring, which didn’t surprise her. Left to his own devices, Barry Middleton might turn into a brilliant troll living under a bridge, but with someone to lead him who appreciated his talents, Barry was a loyal team player.