Pied Piper

“Don’t remember it.”

“Black kid delivered it,” one of her assistants answered. “No signature required, except from you that is.”

“A messenger?”

“Not someone I’m familiar with,” the young man answered. “Not a regular.”

“A cold drop? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“A delivery, Lieutenant,” the young man replied. “Guy said it was urgent.”

“But what guy?” Boldt said, exasperated.

“We get a couple dozen couriers in here a day,” Lu explained to Boldt, defending her assistant and herself.

“Was it logged?” Boldt asked.

“Every arrival is logged,” the assistant confirmed, checking a computer terminal. “Arrived twenty minutes ago. We sent you an E-mail.”

“I don’t care about the E-mail! I care about how it arrived, who delivered it.” He felt a growing sense of anxiety in his chest; a part of him did not want to open it, another part could not wait. But he wanted the details straight first. The label and the lack of postage had triggered a series of internal alarms. If the envelope contained cash, and not a CD, Boldt wanted witnesses to its being opened. Intelligence officers regularly faced attempts to compromise them; the smarter people behind such attempts left all details off the delivery of the bribe, waiting to make later contact. The CD might be a ruse, the true contents a roll of a couple hundred, a couple thousand, dollars in cash. Boldt needed witnesses.

“I’m opening it here,” he announced. He marked the time aloud. This won the attention of Sue Lu, who joined him knowing he was requesting a witness. She checked her own watch and confirmed the time.

Boldt opened the padded envelope and disgorged its contents: a single gold-colored CD in a clear jeweler’s box. The words OPTICAL MEDIA were printed on the disk along with some manufacturing information. No letter or note. No explanation. Everything about this bothered him. He handed the padded envelope to Lu, who looked it over.

“Empty,” she said.

“Just the CD,” he agreed.

“It’s a CD-R,” she informed him, pointing out the initials on the disk. “It’s marked data, not music. For use with a computer CD-ROM.”

“I need a computer with a CD-ROM player?” Boldt asked her, both testing that he had it right and asking her for advice where he might find one.

“Tech Services’ media lab,” she informed him. Adding, “They have everything in there.”

Tech Services occupied two glorified basement closets that communicated by a doorway cut through a cement block wall. An array of electronic gear, predominantly audio/video and computer, occupied black rack mounts that in some instances ran floor to ceiling-linoleum to acoustic tile. Twice the rooms had experienced water damage due to errant plumbing, damaging gear and blowing circuit breakers. As a precaution against such accidents, a clear plastic canopy had been installed as a kind of shortstop. The sheets of plastic were taped together with silver duct tape, in places partially obscuring the overhead fluorescent tube. Boldt was shown to a computer terminal in the corner of the back room.

“We’re working on some audio tapes in the other room,” the technician explained, offering Boldt a set of headphones that were in bad condition. He plugged them into one of the rack-mounted devices.

“I don’t think it’s music,” Boldt said, not understanding the offer of headphones. “I’ve got a CD player in my office.”

“It’s CD-R,” the tech explained. “Recordable CD-ROM. Multimedia, probably, or why not just send a disk? These babies hold six hundred and forty megs of data, that’s why. With compression? Shit, it’s damn near bottomless.”

“What do I do?”

The man set up the disk in the machine. “Double click this baby when you’re ready,” he said, pointing to the screen. “It should do the rest.” He reminded, “Don’t forget the disk when you’re done. People are always forgetting their disks.” He tapped his earlobe.

“You go through this a lot, do you?” Boldt asked sarcastically.

“Headphones,” the man reminded.

Boldt slipped the headphones on as the tech left him. He double clicked the CD icon and sat back, watching the screen, his anxiety still with him. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble. The average snitch liked things simple: money for information. This felt more white collar, more upmarket, and that generally meant power and influence- entities that Intelligence ran up against from time to time.

The computer took a moment to access the CD-ROM. The word WAIT flashed in the message bar, as if he had a choice. The screen suddenly changed to a light gray background, and a credit card-sized box appeared in the center of the screen. Ambient room sound hissed in his ear, reminding Boldt of interrogation tapes. But there was something else in the sound: a radio or TV.

The small box in the center of the screen showed a small child-a girl-in a chair. He scrambled for his reading glasses. The girl appeared bound to the chair. Worse, she looked alarmingly like his own Sarah, although the room was unfamiliar to him: a pale yellow wall behind her, grandmother curtains on a window behind her and to her right. To the child’s left, a television set played CNN, the voices of the news anchors distant and vague.

All at once the image animated. The girl looked left in a movement all too familiar to Boldt. The reading glasses found their way to Boldt’s eyes, and he leaned in for a better look.

Not possible, a voice inside him warned. Terror stung him.

As she spoke, as he heard that voice, all doubt was removed. Sarah screamed, “Daddy!” She rocked violently, her arms taped to the chair. “Daddy!”

The video image went black, replaced by a typewritten message in the same small box. Boldt could not read it for the tears in his eyes.

He saw her all at once as a small fragile creature, cradled between his open palm and elbow, a tiny little newborn, a treasure of expressions and sounds. A promise of life; the enormous responsibility he felt to nurture and protect her.

He wiped away his tears, returned the glasses and read the message on the screen.

Sarah is safe and unharmed. She will remain so as long as the task force’s investigation wanders. Do not allow it to focus. Do not allow any suspect to be pursued. If you are clever, your daughter lives and is returned to you happy and safe. This I promise. If you speak of this to another living soul, if the investigation should net a suspect, you will never see your sweet Sarah again. Think clearly. This is a choice you must make. Make it wisely.

Boldt reread the warning, stood from the chair and then sagged back down. He closed the file and took the CD out of the machine. Think! he demanded of himself, no thoughts able to land, his balance gone, the room spinning. He drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The Pied Piper might have spies anywhere. Paranoia overtook him. Boldt stood up slowly, like an invalid testing his unsure legs. Chills rushed up and down his spine. His face burned. Someone spoke to him in the hall, and again on the elevator and in the garage-he saw their mouths move, he heard the shapes of sound, but not the words. He was someplace no one could reach him. He ran several red lights on his way to the yellow house where Sarah and Miles spent their middays with fifteen other children.

He bounded the stairs two at a time and attempted to turn the doorknob. Locked! He pounded hard-too hard, too loudly, too furiously.

If you speak of this to another living soul …

Hurried footsteps approached noisily. The fish-eye peephole momentarily darkened as someone inspected him from the other side. Hurry up! he wanted to shout, but collected himself as the door came open.

Millie Wiggins stood before him, surprised. “Mr. Boldt!”