Текст книги "26 - Storm Cycle "

Автор книги: Iris Johansen

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FOUR

BUSH INTERCONTINENTAL AIRPORT

HOUSTON, TEXAS

"Slow down, Rachel. You'll make it."

Simon practically ran to keep up with Rachel's long, determined strides. He moved her garment bag from one shoulder to the other as they rounded a corner in the airport's main concourse.

Rachel shook her head. "You know how horrific the security lines can be here. My plane could be halfway to Cairo by the time I get past the metal detector."

"You're exaggerating."

"Only a little." She checked her phone. "Norton has already e-mailed me a preliminary dossier on this John Tavak guy. He must be on an NSA watch list."

"Either that, or they have dossiers on everybody. My money is on option number two." Simon stared at her for a moment. "Is this really a good idea? Just forty-eight hours ago you took a bullet. Now you're flying across the world to confront some hacker."

"Don't try to talk me out of it. He's not just 'some hacker.' "

"You don't know who he is."

"I know that few people in the world could have pulled off what he did. You know more about Jonesy than almost anyone on the planet. Could you have tapped in from the outside?"

"Look, I have questions for this guy, too. And obviously so does Norton. But we both know it's more than that for you. He's stolen from you, and now he's trying to use you."

"Don't you think I know that?"

"Then let Norton handle him. There's no reason why you have to go."

"I need to talk to Tavak. If there's even a possibility he was telling the truth in his message to me, I would—"

"I know. I know. I just don't want you to get hurt."

She made a face. "Funny thing to say to a woman after she's just been picked off by a high-powered rifle."

"You know what I mean."

"I do know, Simon. And I appreciate it. But I have to do this, and I need you to finish plugging the data leaks in our system and find any backdoors Tavak set up. I promised to bring Norton back up to a hundred percent immediately."

"How are you going to pull that off?"

"Beats me. But I have a long plane ride to think about it."

"What can I do to help?"

"I don't trust the info Norton is feeding me about John Tavak. I want you to tap into the CIA and Interpol and see what you can find out."

"That's not going to be easy. It would take an Einstein to get past the firewalls they've put up against security breaches." He added slyly, "Who do you think I am? John Tavak?"

"I hope not. I don't need another Tavak to deal with. Just do your best."

"And my best will be superb," Simon said. "Anything else?"

"I still haven't heard from Dr. Carson at Allie's foundation about his opinion on the information regarding the cell regeneration that Tavak sent me. I told him to contact you while I was in flight."

He shook his head. "And you're going without even knowing if that cure has even the slightest possibility of being legitimate?"

"I'm not going to have regrets about not moving fast enough. There's no time." Not for Tavak. Not for Allie. "One last favor. Allie. Watch over her. Try to keep her from worrying about me."

"Did you tell her you were leaving?"

She shook her head. "I'll call her from Cairo. I thought maybe you could—"

"Coward."

"Yes." Her pace quickened. "What could I say? Raise her hopes about a cure when Tavak may be playing me for a sucker? Tell her I'm going to throw in with a criminal on the faint chance that he can help her?"

"No, she'd feel guilty as hell." He paused. "Because we both know you're doing something crazy."

"Crazy or not, I'm doing it." She stopped and turned to face him. She had to steady her voice. "Allie's showing signs of fading. I won't let her go. I don't care if it's a wild-goose chase. There's nothing I won't do to keep her alive."

"Rachel."

"And don't look at me like that. I don't want pity. I want help. Give it to me, Simon."

"You've got it." He cleared his throat. "I'll take care of her as much as she'll let me. But in that gentle way, she's as tough as you. I don't know which one I'd dread most being up against."

"Me," Rachel said. "E-mail me anything you can find out about Tavak." She took her garment bag from him, turned away, and headed for the security gates. "Or I'll call you from Cairo."

ARDMORE UNIVERSITY

11:20 A.M.

The news was blaring on the radio when Detective Finley drove onto the campus.

Dammit, the local media was playing the event like any other campus shooting, the work of a random psychopath. Hundreds of parents had converged on the campus to take their children home, and although the school was still open, classes were running at only a 70 percent attendance level.

Finley didn't think there was anything random about the shooting. There had been only one shot. One target. When the shooter thought he'd put Kirby down, he'd gotten the hell away without anyone seeing him.

Definitely not your typical blow-the-hell-out-of-everybody-and-everything-and-finish-with-the-gun-in-your-mouth campus attack. When had schools replaced postal-sorting facilities as the rampaging psychopath's venue of choice?

Finley parked in front of the large white trailer that served as the Ardmore University campus police headquarters. He hopped up the three short steps and opened the door into a sterile reception area. Before he could speak to the receptionist, Gonzalez appeared in a doorway.

"I just came from the hospital," Finley said. "Rachel Kirby checked herself out."

"What?"

"Against doctor's orders. No one seems to know where she is."

Gonzalez sighed. "Great. I'm not doing any better. Come back and take a look."

Finley followed him down a narrow hallway to a dim A/V center, where two security officers watched a bank of a dozen monitors. Every few moments, each monitor changed to a different view of the campus.

Gonzalez motioned to one of the officers, a petite young woman with round wire-rimmed spectacles. "This is Tricia Denton. She was here when Rachel Kirby was shot. And, no, she's not a witness."

Finley shook her hand. "You didn't see anything?"

"Not until Dr. Kirby fell." Tricia gestured to her control panel. "I was able to pan and zoom every camera in the area, but I couldn't find the shooter."

"He probably blended in with the students coming and going. We'll need to comb through each one of your feeds. You do record them, don't you?"

"Each video-camera feed goes to an array of hard drives. It's automatically kept for forty-eight hours, but within that time we can preserve any recordings indefinitely."

"Tell me you did that."

"Of course. The minute we realized what had happened, we locked all the recordings down." The woman and Detective Gonzalez shared a quick look.

Trouble. "So what's the problem?"

Gonzalez grimaced. "The recordings are gone."

"What?"

"They're gone. Wiped clean."

Finley turned back to Tricia. "How?"

"I don't know. We lost six camera feeds from three different hard drives. Only in the area where your shooter was."

"The recorders were sabotaged?"

Tricia bit her lip. "If they were, someone sure knew how to cover their tracks. The machines are in a locked closet at the end of the hall. The closet door and the recorders don't appear to have been tampered with. And the recorders work fine—it's just that we're missing everything from a few hours before and after the shooting. Whoever did it had to know just what machines to target."

Finley cursed under his breath. "Who has access to that closet?"

Gonzalez answered. "Only the head of campus security. I've already talked to one of our tech guys, and he's clueless as the rest of us. He's familiar with this system, and he says no one could have done this without some high-level know-how. He says that even the company that designed it might have a problem pulling this off."

Finley pulled out his phone. "Okay. Then let's have somebody take a closer look at those machines. If it really takes high-level know-how, there can't be that many people capable of it. Let's figure out who could have done it and where they could have learned."

"Gotcha."

"And let's look at the camera feeds that were knocked out. If nothing else, it tells us where the shooter didn't want us to see. We'll focus our canvass on those areas and see if anybody saw something."

"Anything else?"

"Not unless we can locate Rachel Kirby," Finley said grimly. "I have an idea that she's in more trouble than she realizes."

CAIRO, EGYPT

"I'm not saying anything more, Polk," Tavak said. "I've told you I didn't breach any U.S. security. That wasn't my agenda. I'm no terrorist." He looked the CIA agent directly in the eye. "And you know it. This interrogation has been bullshit." He glanced at Nuri sitting on a chair across from him. "If you'd really believed I was a threat, you wouldn't be letting these mercenaries hold me. My ass would be on the way to Langley."

"You're in no position to refuse anything," James Polk said sourly. "You're in deep trouble. Blowing up a tomb, destroying precious artifacts."

"My, my. And yet all you can ask about is my hacking expertise. I find that interesting." He shook his head. "But not interesting enough to make me answer any more questions. Go back to whoever sent you and tell them to do whatever they want. I never give something for nothing, particularly information." He turned his back on the agent. "Nuri, will you show this gentleman out?"

Nuri chuckled. "It's only one room. I think he can find his way."

Tavak heard a muttered curse from Polk, then the slam of the door.

"You made him angry," Nuri said. "Better you than me. The CIA makes me nervous. I like everything straight and clear. I never know what the CIA's going to do."

"Neither do I. Then I take it that you're not working for the CIA?"

"I work for Nizam. That way, he's the one who has to worry."

"Sounds like a good arrangement." Tavak restlessly paced the length of the windowless ten-foot-by-twelve-foot room. He had been blindfolded before they even left the tomb site and taken to what appeared to be a single-family home. As in much of Cairo, there were sounds of heavy traffic outside. He smelled strong citrus and cabbage odors wafting from the other side of the room's only door.

He turned to Nuri, who was leaning back in a small chair. "How much longer do I have to stay here?"

Nuri took a bite from a large, juicy date. "Difficult to say. We have our instructions."

"Instructions from whom?"

"I assumed you would know, Mr. Tavak. Do you have so many friends who would go to such trouble for you? Would you like some dates? They're quite tasty."

"No, thanks. I want to see Ben Leonard."

"He's in a hospital five minutes from here. The last I heard, he was doing quite well. As soon as we have clearance, I will take you there myself."

"Clearance? Great. Dammit, you've kept me here for the last eight hours. Why? What are we waiting for?"

Nuri smiled. "I realize that you were hoping to get back to the tomb. You thought this Dawson might return, and you wanted to do painful and lethal harm to your enemy. I understand revenge. I approve of it. But you must understand that we must do what we must to make a living."

"I only understand that Dawson and his men are free and had all the time in the world to go back and examine that mural. While I'm still under lock and key."

"Very sad." Nuri patted his shoulder-holstered firearm. "And with an armed guard. Quite ironic. That's the word, isn't it? 'Ironic'?"

"That's the word, all right."

"You're lucky the CIA didn't turn over the interrogations to our local officials. They are not bound by your human-rights laws."

"The CIA always has its own agenda, and evidently having me tortured or beheaded wasn't on the current one."

Nuri beamed. "That's very good news."

"Better news if you'd let me go."

"It would be my pleasure. But unfortunately, you'll be here until at least tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"You are to have another visitor. A young woman. She's on her way from the U.S." He tilted his head. "You're smiling. Is this pleasing to you?"

"It could be. Intriguing anyway."

"I think her name is Kirby."

Tavak started to laugh.

"Is something funny?"

"No. Not at all." It was what he had expected. Through the anger and frustration he had felt at not being able to go after Dawson, there had also been the underlying impatience to confront Rachel Kirby. He realized that he had been almost disappointed that Rachel had not put in an appearance yet. Now he could feel a tingle of eagerness and exhilaration surge through him. "There's nothing funny about Rachel Kirby. The interrogation I got at the hands of that CIA agent will be child's play compared to the treatment I'll get from her."

Nuri's gaze narrowed on his face. "But you look forward to it." He smiled. "I think you're a very strange man, John Tavak."

* * *

"He won't talk," Polk said, when Norton picked up the phone. "And I'm not about to pressure him any more than I have already. Have your own agency do your dirty work. I've done a cover-up on the explosion at the tomb, and that's going to be dicey enough for us to manage. The Egyptian government isn't fond of people destroying their treasures. They need those tombs for tourist revenue."

"I didn't have anyone on-site," Norton said. "And I promise you'll get a return favor when you need it."

"You'd better. We're too busy to run around and plug your damn security leaks." Polk paused, then said maliciously, "What a pity the NSA data files are so unsecured that a hacker can breeze right in and screw you."

Norton wanted to hang up on the bastard. If there had been any other way to tap Tavak for information before Rachel Kirby got there, he would have done it in a heartbeat. And it had been for nothing. Now he owed this CIA bastard, and he would probably take it out of Norton's blood. "It wasn't our computer, and evidently Tavak is fairly remarkable."

"I don't know about that, but the son of a bitch is cold as an iceberg," Polk said. "And he told me to go back to whoever sent me and tell them he never gives something for nothing. So I'm telling you. Go after him yourself." He hung up.

Norton muttered a curse beneath his breath. Polk didn't realize how much he wanted to go after Tavak. Tavak had been able to break into that computer, and that was a prize beyond belief. If he had Tavak's information, he'd be able to control Rachel Kirby. God, he hated the idea of that bitch being able to call the shots.

But he would have to put up with it for a little longer. He could be patient. Let Rachel Kirby handle Tavak and dig the information out of him. Polk had called him an iceberg and Kirby had all the force of a Titanic waiting to happen. He'd just give them a chance to collide and destroy each other.

* * *

Rachel's phone rang as she was leaving Cairo customs.

Simon.

"What have you got for me, Simon?" she asked when she picked up.

"John Tavak, age thirty-eight, unmarried, no children. Born to an affluent upper-class family; father Randolph Tavak, stockbroker, mother Nancy Carter Tavak, socialite, jet-setter. Only child."

"And this is the son of a bitch who stole my processing cycles?"

"Almost certainly. Because it turns out Tavak is something of a phenomenon. He was a child prodigy whose IQ couldn't even be measured. He was taking classes at Harvard by the age of ten. His teachers said with proper guidance and encouragement, he could be another Einstein. His problem-solving ability was astonishing." He paused. "Infiltrating Jonesy and stealing our cycles must have been a piece of cake for him."

"It was not," Rachel said. "I don't care if he was a second Einstein, I made sure that it was almost impossible to do what he did. He would have had to work damn hard at it. And why would he want to do it anyway? If he had a background like that, why steal anything? He could make any amount of money he wanted."

"Sometimes money doesn't matter. Evidently it didn't to him. According to the report, his parents treated him like some kind of prize showpiece to display to friends and business clients. He got tired of it and walked away from the good life when he was eighteen and never looked back. He disappeared from the think tank where he was the star attraction and set out to taste the world. Or maybe I should say gobble it up. In the next five years he did everything from fighting as a mercenary in Africa to smuggling artifacts out of China."

"He has a criminal record?"

"No, only under suspicion. But the report from Interpol was pretty damn conclusive."

"Is he still smuggling?"

"Not for a long time." Simon hesitated. "Considering his later activities, I'd guess he got very bored during those first years. It might have been different experiences but not much challenge. Even as a kid he needed constant stimulation and was something of an adrenaline junkie. He was a mountain climber, into powerboat racing, a pi lot. At one time he made his living repossessing airplanes."

"What?"

"He was paid to repossess fighter planes for manufacturers that didn't receive payment from the third-world countries which had purchased them. Extremely risky since he had to sneak into military bases and literally steal the planes back."

"Crazy."

"And profitable. It pays upward of a million dollars a plane. But he only does that occasionally these days. Lately he's been working at solving archaeological and technical problems. He can read hieroglyphics and several other ancient scripts and has become something of an expert on antiquities. His focus is recovering lost or stolen objects, kind of a high-tech repo man."

"Like stealing those planes?"

"Not exactly. If a company buys a defense network and refuses to pay for it, Tavak finds a way to shut it down until the money is paid. He also tracks down priceless objects that may have been pilfered from museums and private owners during time of civil unrest and steals them back. Very lucrative, very dangerous."

"My God, he really is an adrenaline junkie."

"Without a doubt. Maybe you can use that. He's going to be difficult to handle. You're going to need all the firepower you can find."

"I'll handle him. I'll stick his ass in jail if he doesn't cooperate."

"Good luck. After I hang up, I'll send you a photo of Tavak."

"I'll be seeing him in person within the hour." She paused. "Have you heard from Dr. Carson at Allie's foundation?"

"Yes, but I probably shouldn't tell you what he said about that excerpt you sent him."

She tensed. "He thought it was bullshit?"

"No, he was thrilled. Off-the-charts excited. Remember that crushed 'bone of Horus' that was listed as a primary ingredient in the cure? Turns out that's what ancient Egyptians called magnetic lodestone. Just in the past couple of years, the University of Miami has come out with some research that suggests that magnetic nanoparticles, or MNPs, can stimulate growth in damaged central nervous system axons."

Rachel almost had to remind herself to breathe. "If this pans out, Peseshet may have been almost five thousand years ahead of her time."

"Maybe. But there's a lot more to her cure that we don't have. As you know, the body sends chemical signals to inhibit growth of damaged neurons in the central nervous system. But if her cure delivers what this tablet promises, she may have discovered a way to stop those chemical signals. It could be a combination of plant extracts, sediments, or who knows what. In any case, Carson wants more."

"I don't have more."

"That's what I told him. But I knew after you got Carson's input that you wouldn't stop until you did."

"You're damn right I won't." Hope. For the first time in years, a glimmer of hope in the distance. "Tell Carson to get back to me if he thinks he's got anything. Have you been in touch with Allie?"

"Yes, she said for you to call her so that she can tear you apart." He added, "And since I did the dirty deed and broke the news, you'd better do it. Someone else besides me needs to get it in the neck."

"I'll call her. Thanks, Simon."

"Call me if you need me." He hung up.

She stood there for a moment while the news Simon had given her sank in. Hope. Carson was brilliant and not prone to jumping on the bandwagon if there wasn't some basis for doing it. There was a possibility that what she was doing here wasn't completely irrational.

He wants more.

So did Rachel, and that need was a deep and terrible hunger.

All right, then start moving. Reach out and take what Allie needed.

She pressed the button to access the photo Simon had sent her. It was a snapshot of Tavak standing beside an airplane, dressed casually, dark hair ruffled by the wind. He looked younger than thirty-eight, she thought. He was tall and deeply tanned, with sun wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. His nose was too long, his lips too full, but his blue eyes glittered with life. He was not a handsome man, but the vitality and intelligence in his expression were almost mesmerizing.

High impact, she thought.

Everything about Tavak had been high impact since that first moment she had opened that e-mail.

Ignore it. She closed her phone and headed for the exit. It didn't matter if Tavak was a power house. She had met strong men before and stood toe-to-toe with them. Tavak would be no different.