“What?”
“It’s this great Albanian goat cheese, unpasteurized and zero fat. Zer-o.” Lorna voices appreciation of the Albanian nation’s cheese-mongers and agrees to the date, although she wishes Betsy would not suggest surgical modifications quite so often. It reminds her of Rat Howie, and also of her late mother, whose body was whittled down to a nubbin by surgery of the noncosmetic variety during her last year of life. Surgerynot, is Lorna’s prayer, or would be, did she ever actually pray. Slow Lorna must keep on climbing the endless staircase (such a symbol of her life so far!) when Betsy completes her allotted generation of ergs.
After this climb, Lorna hits a few other machines, somewhat less vigorously than her trainer would like, and then waves to Betsy and motions upward. Betsy waves back and shows five fingers, meaning she will be along in a notional five. The dressing room is deserted, Lorna happily observes. Moving like a thief cleaning out a bank vault, Lorna strips, grabs a towel, and heads for a shower stall. With a towel wrapped almost around her, for she is too generously built for the stingy gym towels, she weighs herself, although she knows she is not supposed to do this every day, and is pleased to find that she has dropped a full pound since the previous visit, or perhaps a little more, as the towel must weigh half a pound at least. As she steps past the shower curtain, however, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and sees not a figure that would have made Auguste Renoir fall to his arthritic knees in worship, but galaxies of hopeless lard. She does not cry in the shower, although she has before this, any number of times. She dresses, and she and Betsy go to eat. The Albanian goat cheese tastes like library paste and chalk, but Lorna is a good soldier and snaps up far more of it than Betsy does, without complaint. Zero fat.
Toward the end of the day, Paz got a buzz from Major Oliphant’s secretary, requiring him to report forthwith, which he did, garnering several speculative looks from other detectives as he passed. The major was behind his desk, in shirtsleeves, drinking from his FBI mug and eating what looked to Paz like a churro. Oliphant offered coffee, which Paz accepted and got it in a cup marked with a Treasury seal and the legend THIRD ANNUAL COMPUTER FRAUD CONFERENCE, DENVER.
Oliphant gestured with the pastry and said, “You got me hooked on these things, Paz. These’re not anywhere near as good as yours, though.”
“They have to be fresh, sir. Thirty minutes out of the fat and you might as well use them to pack bearings.”
“We could set up a fryer outside my office.”
“Good plan, sir. I could be the departmentalchurronista.”
“You’d like that, would you?”
“I’m always ready for a new challenge, Major.”
Oliphant chuckled, a dark organic sound. “Well, I called you in about an old challenge. The Trianon affair. Christ, it sounds like one of those things you learned in grade school, that caused the First World War, but I can never remember the victim’s name.”
“Jabir Akran al-Muwalid.”
“Right. I got an interesting call from Washington today, a buddy of mine who shall remain nameless, passed on a heads-up about our case. Your partner talked to a guy named Floyd Mitchell recently? About David Packer?”
“Yeah, but he didn’t get much out of him. Mr. Mitchell is tight with information.”
“That may be because Mr. Mitchell doesn’t exist, and that fact stays in this room. Mitchell is a cutout. Every major intelligence operation has one. A local PD calls asking for information on some name, like your guy did, and the girl brings it up on the machine, and a bell goes off and she goes ‘Hold for Mr. Mitchell,’ or Blake, or Fox, and the call shunts to the duty officer on the case and he spreads snow on the inquirer, and they hope he goes back to sleep.”
“And are we going back to sleep?” asked Paz.
“Maybe we should. My guy there tells me this is high level. That call rang a lot of bells. Your Mr. Packer is one well-connected fellow.”
Oliphant tossed his bad churro into his waste can, followed by the bag and waxed paper, nice swished shots, and then took a drink from his FBI mug. “National security is a funny business. I never had much to do with it in the Bureau, never much wanted to. Nowadays, of course, everyone running around with their head cut off, I guess every swinging dick is involved in it somehow.”
There was a pause. Oliphant seemed to be making his mind up about how much to tell Paz about whatever this was about. Paz said helpfully, “What was it you did for the Bureau, sir, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“Oh, the usual. Bank robberies, kidnaps, fugitives. Bread and butter stuff. Taught at Quantico for a couple of years. I enjoyed that. Then I got interested in computer stuff and I headed up a special task force on kiddie porn. We busted a couple of major traffickers, which gave me a lot of satisfaction. Then I was deputy SAIC in New York, where I met the chief, and here I am. Things have changed, obviously, last couple of years, since the events in New York. And we, I mean the Bureau, is ill-suited to carry out the national security mission. In fact, the last time we tried it we made fools of ourselves, spying on movie stars while the fucking Russians were taking everything that wasn’t nailed down. The reason is that we’re trained to make cases, to collect evidence for criminal prosecutions. That’s where the gold has always been, how you get promoted. Now you say you want us to stop things from happening, a whole different kind of op. Well, how the fuck do you do that?”
Paz had no idea. After a moment he asked, “So Packer was involved with the victim, and you learned he was a national security menace?”
“Huh? Oh, no, that’s not the point. My friend wanted me to know that the people who put him on the watch list were kind of a peculiar outfit. You haven’t come across any references to anything called the Strategic Resources Protection Unit? The acronym is pronounced ‘serpu.’ “
“No. What is it?”
“Well, strategic resources need protection is the idea. Chemical plants, pipelines, power grids. Transshipment terminals, especially petroleum terminals. If someone had something like six bombs in the right places?the Gulf, Saudi, Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, and so on?they could cut sixty percent of our petroleum deliveries off for months. It’s a fairly vulnerable business, or so I’ve been told. Anyway, this SRPU has that job, both here in the States and overseas.”
“That makes sense, then. The vic was in the oil business.”
“Really?”
Paz related what they had learned from Michael Zubrom, including the odd business of the missing cell phone.
Oliphant said, “Okay, so this Zubrom suggested that the victim had secret knowledge of an oil find and… what? He was using diverted oil to raise money so he could develop it? That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know a hell of a lot about it, but I always thought oil fields were developed by oil companies, and they spent in the multiple millions to do it. So a couple of hundred K is not going to make a dent in that. Besides if the Sudanese government knew about a big find, they’d be negotiating openly. I mean oil isn’t like some kind of hidden treasure, with a map,X marks the spot, you go down there with a truck one night and you’re set for life.”
“Oh, you’re baffled too?” said Paz. “Good. I thought I was losing it. Plus, this new thing. The victim is on a watch list of an outfit that’s supposed to protect let’s say oil fields, refineries, from terrorists. Was he a terrorist? It doesn’t look like it, unless that was what the oil sale was for, money to set up a terror network.”
“It’s something to think about. Did we find any money?”
“Not that kind of money. I got Morales checking wire transfers out of that Jersey bank Zubrom sent his payment to, but I don’t have any high hopes. Those guys are pretty tight with their information, and they’re not going to be impressed by a cop from Miami.”
“No, they’re not that impressed by the FBI either. I hate that you didn’t find a cell phone.”
“Yeah, me too. Among other things, it casts doubt on Dideroff’s guilt, or at least suggests that she didn’t act alone.”
“Did she act at all?” Oliphant’s tone had been speculative, collegial; with this last he was a boss again and staring directly at Paz.
He shrugged and answered, “Sir, you know what we know, except I arrested her and I saw something there. She could have killed him. For a couple of seconds she had that killer look. Whether she did or not…” Another shrug. “She’s not what you would call a regular person.”
