Fielding was interested in a keynote address Dr. Liam Saltz just gave at Whitehall, I say, while numbers change on a digital display, while we gently sink from floor to floor in the soft glow of LEDs in my environmentally friendly hoisting machine that no one who works here appreciates in the least, from what I’ve heard. Mostly there are complaints because it is slow.
“He’s one extreme, and DARPA’s certainly the other, neither of them always right, that’s for sure.” I describe Dr. Saltz as a computer scientist, an engineer, a philosopher, a theologian, whose sport, whose art, most assuredly isn’t war. He hates wars and those who make them.
“I know all about him and his art.” Benton doesn’t say it in a positive way as we stop gently and the steel door slides open with scarcely a sound. “I certainly remember from that time at CNN when you and I got into a spat because of him.”
“I don’t remember getting into a spat.” We are back in the receiving area, where Ron is sternly alert behind his glass partition, exactly as we left him long hours ago.
In split screens of video displays I see cars parked in the lot behind the building, SUVs that aren’t covered with snow and have their headlights on. Agents or undercover police, and I remember windows glowing in MIT buildings rising above the CFC fence, I remember noticing it at the time Benton drove us here, and now I know why. The CFC has been under surveillance, and the FBI, the police, aren’t making any effort to disguise their presence now. I feel as if the CFC is on lockdown.
Ever since I walked out of Port Mortuary at Dover, I have been accompanied or locked inside a secured building, and the reason isn’t what was presented, at least not the only reason. No one was trying to get me home as quickly as possible because of a body bleeding inside the cooler. That was a priority but certainly not the only one and maybe not even the top one. Certain people used that as an excuse to escort me, certain people, such as my niece, who was armed and playing bodyguard, and I can’t believe Benton wasn’t involved in that decision, no matter what he did or didn’t know at the time.
“Maybe you remember him hitting on you,” Benton is saying as we follow the gray corridor.
“You seem to think I’m having sex with everyone.”
“Not with everyone,” he says.
I smile. I almost laugh.
“You’re feeling better,” he says, touching my arm tenderly as he walks with me.
Whatever got into me has passed, and I wish it wasn’t such a godforsaken hour of the morning. I wish someone was in the trace evidence lab so we could take a look at the plastic film I was exposed to, probably try the scanning electron microscope first, then Fourier transform infrared or whatever detectors it takes to figure out what is on Fielding’s pain-relieving patches. I’ve never taken anabolic steroids and don’t know firsthand how that would feel, but I can’t imagine it’s what I felt upstairs. Not that quickly.
Cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, LSD, whatever could get into my system instantly and transdermally, hopefully nothing like that, either, but what would I know about how that would feel? Not an opioid like fentanyl, which is the most common narcotic delivered by a patch. A strong pain reliever like fentanyl wouldn’t have caused me to react the way I did, but again, I’m not sure. I’ve never been on fentanyl. Everybody reacts differently to medications, and uncontrolled substances can be contaminated with impurities and have variable doses.
“Really. You seem like yourself.” Benton touches me again. “How are you feeling? You okay for sure?”
“Worn off, whatever it was. I wouldn’t do the case if it wasn’t, if I felt even remotely impaired,” I tell him. “I guess you’re coming to the autopsy room.” Since we’re headed there.
“A drink. Right.” He is back to Liam Saltz. “He bumps into you at CNN and asks you to have a drink with him at midnight. That’s not exactly normal.”
“I’m not sure how to take that. But I don’t feel flattered.”
“His reputation with women is on a par with certain politicians who will remain unnamed. What’s the buzzword these days? A sexual addiction.”
“Well, if you’re going to have one.”
We walk past the x-ray room, and the door is shut, the red light off because the scanner isn’t in use. The lower level is empty and silent, and I wonder where Marino is. Maybe he’s with Anne.
“He had any contact with you since then? That was what? About two years ago?” Benton asks. “Or maybe with some of your compatriots at Walter Reed or Dover?”
“Not with me. I wouldn’t know about others, except no one involved with the armed forces is a fan of Dr. Saltz’s. He’s not considered patriotic, which really isn’t fair if you analyze what he’s actually saying.”
“Problem is nobody seems to understand what anybody is saying anymore. People don’t listen. Saltz isn’t a communist. He’s not a terrorist. He hasn’t committed treason. He just doesn’t know how to curb his enthusiasm and muzzle his big mouth. But he’s not of interest to the government. Well, he wasn’t.”
“Suddenly, he is.” I assume that’s what Benton will tell me next. “He wasn’t at Whitehall yesterday. Wasn’t even in London.” Benton waits until now to inform me of this as we pause before the locked double steel doors of the autopsy room. “I don’t guess you found that part on the Internet when you were trying to make heads or tails of Jack’s indented writing,” Benton adds in a tone that is shaded with other meanings. A hint of hostility, not directed at me but at Fielding.
“How do you know where Liam Saltz was or wasn’t?” I ask at the same time I think about what Benton mentioned upstairs. He referred to the event at Norton’s Woods as a VIP wedding and mentioned a security presence. Undercover agents, Benton told me, although it was during an interval when I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I should have been.
“Did his keynote address by satellite on a big video screen. Well attended by the audience at Whitehall,” Benton says as if he was there. “He had a complication, a family matter, and had to leave the country.”
I think of the man beyond these closed steel doors. A man whose wristwatch when he died may have been set to UK time. A man with an old robot called MORT inside his apartment, the same robot that Liam Saltz and I testified against, persuading people in power to disallow its use.
“Is that why Jack was looking him up, looking up RUSI or whatever he was looking at early yesterday morning?” I ask as I scan open the lock to the autopsy room.
“I’m wondering how that happened, if he got a call and then looked him up or maybe knew he was in Cambridge for some reason,” Benton replies. “I’m wondering a lot of things that hopefully will get answered soon. What I do know is Dr. Saltz was here for the wedding. The daughter of his current wife, whose biological father was supposed to give her away, then got the swine flu.”
“I text-messaged you,” Anne tells me, and she’s shrouded in blue as she works on a computer that is contained in a waterproof stainless-steel enclosure, the sealed keyboard mounted at a height suitable for typing while standing. Behind her on the autopsy table of station one, which is now shiny and clean, is the man from Norton’s Woods.
“I’m sorry,” I say to her abstractedly as I think of Liam Saltz and worry what his connection might be to this dead man, beyond robots, particularly MORT. “My phone’s in my office, and I’ve not been in there,” I say to Anne, and then I ask Benton, “Does he have other children?”
“He’s at the Charles Hotel,” Benton replies. “Someone’s on the way to talk to him. But to answer your question, yes, he does. He has a number of children and stepchildren from multiple marriages.”
“I wanted to let you know I didn’t feel comfortable uploading his scans and e-mailing them,” Anne then says to me. “Don’t know what we’re dealing with and thought it was better to play it extra-safe. If you’re going to hang around, you need to cover up.” She directs this to Benton. “Got no clue what this one’s been exposed to, but he didn’t set off any alarms. At least he’s not radio active. Whatever he’s got in him isn’t, thank God.”
“I assume all was quiet at the hospital. No incidents,” Benton says to her. “I’m not staying.”
“Security escorted us in and out, and we didn’t see anyone else—no patients or staff, at any rate.”
“You found something in him?” I ask her.
“Trace amounts of metal.” Anne’s gloved hands move on the computer’s keyboard and click the mouse, both freshly overlaid with industrial silicone. Fielding’s sloppy presence is noticeably gone from the autopsy room, and I see water in the sink of station one—my station—and a big sponge, the surgical instruments bright and shiny and neatly arranged on the dissecting board. I spot a mop that wasn’t here earlier, and a whetstone on a counter- top.
“I’m amazed,” I say to her as I look around.
“Ollie,” she says, clicking the mouse. “I called him, and he drove back and spruced up the place.”
