James Huston - Fallout

Luke watched as she frowned, listening to whoever was on the other end.

“Where is he?” She listened intently. “No, don’t wait for me. I’ll never get there in time,” she said, glancing at her watch. “Pick him up now. If you think he’s willing to talk at all, call me, and I’ll be there… . No, we’ve got to keep going here. Call me as soon as you bring him in.” She signed off, closed the phone, and replaced it on her hip.

“What’s that about?” Luke asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Is it related to this?”

“The Undersecretary.”

“Where is he?” Luke asked.

She ignored him.

The FBI technician had set up shop on the dining room table. He had cases opened, special lights set up, microscopes, and a laptop computer. The tapes that he’d used to pull fingerprints off the pot were carefully placed on slides to be scanned, digitized, and visually examined. He typed on the keyboard and brought up two images: the fingerprints he’d just taken off the mask and prints from another location that were already stored digitally on his laptop. He examined the two side by side, then adjusted the size of the new print to match the other one, overlaid the new print on the stored print. The correlation was nearly perfect. He didn’t have an entire print from the Paiute pot, but the one they got was 80 percent complete. He glanced at Helen, who was watching him carefully out of the corner of her eye. He put the first slide under the bright light of the double microscope, then put the other next to it in the second slide platform. He examined them together with the double eyepieces.

Luke watched Helen watch the technician. He followed her as she walked across the room, sensing that the technician was almost finished with his analysis.

Helen stood next to him, waiting. He adjusted the focus again, looked at the computer screen, and stood up next to her. She couldn’t stand it. “What do you think?”

“Good enough for comparison.”

“And?”

He studied the two images and did an automated computer comparison to confirm what he’d already concluded. He waited for the program to complete its analysis, then looked at Helen and said ominously, “It’s him.”

“Any doubt?”

“None.”

“That son of a bitch,” Luke said, amazed. “How did he get back to Pakistan?”

Helen nodded. “That is a question we will try to find the answer to one day. However, our current job is to get him. Either to bring him back here for trial or… some other option. The other options are not in my area.”

“Well, who is in charge of the other options?” Luke asked.

“That would be the other government agency. The one that begins with a C.”

The image of Khan sitting in Pakistan, safe and sound, was too much. “We don’t have a lot of time,” Luke said.

“Everyone is aware of that.” She dialed a number on her cell phone, a digital phone with some additional buttons Luke had never seen before. While it was ringing, she punched in a series of numbers onto the backlit screen. As soon as a connection was indicated, she hit “send” again, and the numbers were transmitted digitally.

“Was that for him? Did you tell the CIA that you’ve ID’d him?” Luke demanded.

She put the phone back on the clip on her belt and looked at Luke. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“So do you.”

“It’s my job.”

“I’m making it mine. I’m not done with him.”

“You may be right.”

“It’s him!” Cindy Frohm said as she burst into Morrissey’s office. “They have absolute confirmation that the print on the fork Renee got is the same as the one that was in the house in Nevada.”

Morrissey jumped up from his desk. “Renee has outdone herself. Does she have anything else since then? She was going to keep digging.”

“She hasn’t checked in since we got the print.”

Morrissey frowned. “Have you talked to anyone at the DO?” The Directorate of Operations.

“Nothing. They’re concerned. The embassy hasn’t seen her at all.”

Morrissey stopped and stared at Cindy as he thought. “What does that mean?”

“She would disappear now and then if she was on something that required her to stay undercover. But no one knows for sure.”

“Think they might have grabbed her?”

“Pakistan claims to be uninvolved in the Khan attack. Why would they go after her?”

“Because she’s collecting intelligence on their soil. If you get found doing that, they don’t step back and wonder about the final end-of-the-day implications. They just grab you.”

“At least we know where Khan is.”

“And that he may have something in mind. Did you read what Renee said about something happening in three days?”

“That’s less than forty-eight hours from now,” she said, looking at her watch.

“Exactly. And what is he going to do?”

“Did you see that estimate from the FBI?”

“Sure.” Morrissey felt uneasy. “They think a nuclear plant strike. Based on some Russian telling them what he thinks is the target and his estimate of India’s pathetic ability to stop them. I don’t know about that.”

Frohm waited. “So what now?”

“I need to talk to my counterpart in India. Call in a few chips.”

The man who’d knocked Renee down now sat next to her in a room at a table. She was surrounded by smelly men smoking and leering at her. Renee was still wearing her nightclothes. Her shoulder was throbbing from where she’d strained against his hold, but her wits were completely intact.

He took a long drag from his cigarette, a vile, dark one that produced acrid brown smoke. “So, we have long suspected you are with the CIA.” He waited for her reaction. There wasn’t one. “Are you?”

“I am with the Department of State. You know that,” she said icily.

He smiled. “Yes. The Department of State. Of course. Some kind of—what is it?—cultural person. What is it exactly?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she replied. “You won’t believe anything I say.”

“Why do you think that?”

“You broke into my home. You knocked me down. You obviously already have opinions. I doubt I can change your mind. Why try?”

“Why try?” He laughed. He looked at the other men in the room. “Why try?” He grew suddenly serious. “Because I believe you are with the CIA! That’s why!” he screamed as he leaned toward her. “And I know that you have been spying on our Air Force base! That’s why! You disguise yourself as a Pakistani woman. Your mother was half Pakistani!” Her head jerked toward him. “Ah, you didn’t think we knew? You continue to think we are stupid.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know what you know.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“You have learned information about who attacked your country. It is my belief that you know who it is. I—we—want to know what you know.”

“Then ask my country what we know. I’m sure they’ll tell you.”

“No. Time does not lend itself to such formal requests. They do not trust us. Especially now.”

“Can you blame them?”

“Oh, yes. I can blame them. They think they know all about us, and they are mostly wrong. So tell me what you have learned about this pilot that attacked your country. This man, this pilot, has caused greater humiliation to our country than anyone in history. We are more interested in finding him than you are.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Do you deny that you were on our Air Force base near Karachi?”

“Yes. I deny it.”

He glanced over his shoulder, and a man behind him handed him a photograph. He tossed it in front of her. She continued to stare straight ahead. “Look at it.”