David Baldacci - Simple Genius

“Truck, what are you talking about?” Sean asked.

“Viggie and I worked it out,” Michelle said hastily, averting her gaze from Sean’s questioning look. She plunged on. “I doubt I’ll be saving her life again, at least I hope I won’t have to. So what else do I have to do to get her to give up the rest?”

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

Sean mulled this over. “So we’re at a dead end for now, until Joan comes through, or Alicia decrypts that song.” He put the articles away in his pocket, stretched and yawned. “Well, since we’re up early we might as well go eat.”

Michelle checked her watch. “Let’s make it quick. Champ is picking me up at nine for our flight.”

“You’re still going?” Sean said harshly.

“I’m still going.”

“But he doesn’t have an alibi for the time Rivest was killed.”

“I doubt we’re going to get any good information from innocent people.

So it makes far more sense to go after the ones we think might be guilty.”

“My gut tells me to leave this guy alone.”

“Yeah,” Michelle said. “Well, my brain tells me we can’t afford to do that.”

Horatio glanced over at Sean. “Your turn unless you want to concede to the lady.”

“Shut the hell up,” Sean snapped as he climbed in the truck.

Horatio turned to Michelle. “Geez, could the guy be any more obvious?”

“More obvious?” she said, puzzled.

Horatio rolled his eyes, sighed deeply and got in the truck.

HORATIO CALLED SOUTH FREEMAN later that morning for two reasons. First, to see if the man had a list of any of the German POWs held at Camp Peary during World War II.

The man laughed out loud. “Oh, yeah, I got that right here on my desk. Pentagon wouldn’t give it to me so I strolled on over to the CIA and the spooks printed me out a nice clean copy and then asked me what other secret shit I’d like to get my hands on.”

“I’ll take that as a hell no, ” Horatio said. Then he asked Freeman whether he knew any people with newspapers in Tennessee around the area where Michelle grew up. On this query Horatio struck gold.

“Man named Toby Rucker runs a weekly in a little place an hour south of Nashville.” When he named the town, Horatio almost jumped out of his chair. It was the very place where Michelle had lived.

“What do you want to know for?” Freeman asked.

“I’ve got some questions about the disappearance of someone down there, say nearly thirty years ago.”

“Well Toby’s been there over forty years, so if it made the paper he’ll know about it.” Freeman gave Horatio the number and added, “I’ll call him right now and tell him you’ll be in contact.”

“I appreciate it, South, I really do.”

“You better. And don’t you forget our deal. Exclusive! Or I strangle you.”

“Right.” Horatio hung up, waited twenty minutes and called the number.

A man identifying himself as Toby Rucker answered on the second ring. South Freeman had just gotten off the phone with him, Rucker said. Horatio relayed his request and Rucker agreed to see what he could find out.

As Horatio clicked off his phone, there was a sound from overhead. He poked his head out the bedroom window. It was a chopper buzzing over Babbage Town. As it sped away Horatio thought about Michelle thousands of feet up in the air with a man Sean King clearly didn’t trust. So clearly in fact that he’d asked a special favor of Horatio that the man had granted.

“Come back in one piece, Michelle,” he muttered under his breath. “We still have a lot to talk about.”

The takeoff had been clean and smooth. The Cessna Grand Caravan was very roomy and luxurious, with a single aisle, seating fourteen counting pilot and co-pilot. It also had every navigation and communication bell and whistle, Champ had assured her.

“You take many people up?”

“I’m a solo kind of guy.” He hastily added, “It’s just that I like to think up here.”

She looked back at all the seats. “Seems like kind of a waste then, all this room.”

“Who knows, if things go really well, I could buy my own jet.”

“You don’t really strike me as all that materialistic.”

He shrugged. “I’m not really. I went into science because I liked figuring out things. But it gets complicated, and I’m not referring to the science.”

He fell silent.

“Come on, Champ, talk to me.”

He stared out the window of the plane. “Quantum computers have enormous potential to do good in the world and bad.”

She said, “I’m sure the guy who invented the atom bomb had the same concerns.”

Champ shuddered. “Can we please change the subject?”

“Okay, show me what this little old plane can do.”

He put the plane into a steep climb, something it handled easily. Next he guided the Cessna through controlled dives, cutting tight banks and even doing a rollover. None of it bothered Michelle; she’d ridden in just about anything with two wings in some of the roughest conditions possible.

He pointed out the window. “The infamous Camp Peary. This is about the closest we can get without being shot down.”

“Can we at least go a little lower?”

He eased them down to two thousand feet and circled back around. Michelle kept her eyes on the topography, taking in every detail she could. “So you can’t get any closer?”

“Depends on how risk-averse you are.”

“Not very. I take it you are.”

“Funny, not since I met you.”

He moved the flight wheel to the left and reduced their airspeed. The plane flew along on a straight line basically following the contours of the York River.

“This is really as close as we can get without having a missile up our butt,” he said.

Michelle could see the boat dock that Ian Whitfield had presumably used to launch his RIB. Next to that appeared to be the bunkers that Sean had shown her from the satellite map. From the air they looked like a series of concrete boxes lined up side by side. To the north of that was the inlet from the York that seemed to bisect Camp Peary. And farther north of that she saw the massive runway. Her gaze next ran across the old neighborhoods South Freeman had described, then an old brick home, and a small pond. And south of Camp Peary was the Naval Supply Center and the Weapons Station.

“The feds have this area pretty well locked up,” she said.

“Yes they do.” He banked to the right, flew east over the York, staying at two thousand feet and passed over some of the most picturesque country Michelle had ever seen.

“It is beautiful.”

“Yes, it is,” Champ said, staring at her. Then he looked abruptly away.

“Come on, Champ, it’s the girl who’s supposed to blush.”

He looked out the window. “I took Monk up once.”

“Really? Did he want to see anything in particular?”

“Not really. Although he did want to fly pretty low over the river.”

Michelle thought, So he could do a recon on Camp Peary. Just like I am .

“Um, would you like to take the controls?”

She took the wheel in front of her and eased it to the left. And then to the right. “Can we climb a bit?”

“You can go up to eight thousand. Just take it slow and easy.” She edged the nose of the plane up and leveled off at eight thousand feet.

She said, “How about a controlled dive? Like you did?”

He stared at her a bit nervously. “Oh? Sure, okay.”

She eased the wheel forward and the plane’s nose dipped. Then it dipped some more. Michelle could see the earth coming at them awfully fast. And still she kept the wheel pushed forward. Suddenly flashing through her mind were nightmares that had torn at her for nearly three decades. A child petrified, but what child? Her? Even in her mind’s eye she couldn’t be sure. And yet the terror she was feeling was very real.