burns the cases onto DVDs because we can’t store all that data indefinitely on the DVR machines.
“We also keep a registry of the discs, which is what the instructors use to look up operations they want to show their students. We catalog them not only by date and time, but also by IDC code and keywords. I checked after you called, Doctor. There is no entry anyplace for Aleem Syed Mohammad’s surgery.”
“Could somebody have taken the DVD and deleted the entry in your database as well?” Jillian asked.
“Anything is possible, I suppose. But why would somebody do that? Actually, I asked myself that very question any number of times. Tell me about this Mohammad fellow. What do you know about him?”
Nick produced the folder of articles Reggie had printed out during the evening.
“Mohammad was born and raised in Jordan,” Nick said. “He was in his late forties when he was captured in Karachi by U.S. and Pakistani Special Forces in a joint operation code-named Shining Star. There’s no telling how many deaths he was responsible for. He was a prime suspect in several major bombings, including the massacre at the United States Embassy in New Delhi.”
“What’s his affiliation?” Mollender asked. “Are we talking Al Qaeda?”
Nick shook his head.
“I haven’t had time to go through all this yet,” he said, “but I think not at first. Apparently at some point after the Iraq invasion, his organization, Islamic Jihad in Jordan, merged with the Al Qaeda terror network, making him one of the most powerful and wanted terrorists in the world.”
The Mole thought for a few beats. “Yes, I remember now. His capture was touted as a major victory in the war against terror.”
“Correct,” Nick said. “The controversy that erupted when word got out that Mohammad required surgery to remove a dangerous cardiac tumor, and that a team of doctors had been assembled for the operation, was intense.”
“I guess there were those who felt the famed Hippocratic Oath phrase ‘Do no harm’ applied to the doctors, but not to the patients,” Mollender said, chuckling at his own humor.
“There were threats made by extremist groups who wanted him saved, and others who wanted him not treated at all,” Nick added. “They promised retaliation against anyone who helped keep Mohammad alive, which they believed would have made it possible for us to torture him some more. That’s why the location where his surgery was scheduled to be performed was kept a closely guarded secret, right up until the day of the operation.”
“According to Nancy Lane at the nursing school,” Jillian said, “a lot of people felt justice had been served when Mohammad died on the operating table that day. Autopsy results indicated he suffered a massive brain aneurysm and subsequent cardiac arrest from chronic high blood pressure.”
“Tough way to go,” Mollender said.
“That’s why we need to see the tape of his operation. Maybe Belle’s death was some sort of retribution for his death, even though it’s hard to understand why they waited three years.”
“But why her?” Nick asked. “Saul, that operation is all we have at the moment. We need to know everything we can about it. I can’t believe you, of all people, don’t have a backup.”
Mollender snickered. “Hence my statement that Fred Johnson is a jackass.”
“What does he have to do with any of this?” Nick asked.
“Before Johnson took over, I would send the DVDs by mail to my friend Noreen Siliski, who runs a disaster recovery business in Sutton, Virginia. She would then copy the files to her servers and mail the DVDs back to me and, bingo, we’d have our backup. Noreen is a wonderful person. Very bright, very unique. We were once quite close. Now we’re just… good friends.”
“You don’t sound so pleased about that.”
“I’m not, really. But like you said, what can you do?”
“Sorry. Can you go on?”
“So when Fred Johnson takes over and sees this minuscule payment we’re giving Noreen each month, the guy decides to flex his muscles, make it a point to the hospital administrators that he’s looking after every nickel and dime. Meanwhile his EMR department is a million over budget. I was told to stop sending backups to Noreen.”
Jillian frowned. “I’m afraid to ask when Johnson made you stop using your friend for disaster recovery.”
“Four years ago. A year before Mohammad’s operation.”
“So that’s it, then. No video. Even if we
For the first time, Jillian noted a glint in the Mole’s eyes.
“Well, all might not be as bleak as it seems, my friend,” he said. “You see, if Mohammad’s surgery was ever recorded, then there is a copy of that video nobody knows about. That’s why I asked who would want to steal it and cover their tracks by deleting it from my database log, and the real reason why I wanted to meet here. If someone’s stolen the original DVDs, I didn’t want to meet anywhere near the place.”
“But you just told us there wasn’t any backup,” Nick said.
“I told you there wasn’t
“You mean…”
“Yup. Fred Johnson assumed, as did everybody else, that we stopped sending DVDs to Noreen. But as with most things, the pompous jackass was wrong. Buried in that massive budget of his is one tiny line item that he wouldn’t find unless he went through the whole thing ten times with a fine-tooth comb. You see, I changed the name of Noreen’s company but I never canceled her contract with us.”
“Saul, let me buy you another milk,” Jillian said.
CHAPTER 39
Better Safe Than Sorry Electronic Storage, Noreen Siliski’s data backup and recovery business, was located in an isolated three-story brick business center on the outskirts of Sutton, Virginia. It was ten in the morning when Nick pulled into the nearly deserted parking lot. Rush hour traffic away from the city had been intense, although he suspected it was not unusually so. Nick had the entire day free. Junie would be working the RV with one of his backups, a seventy-year-old retired professor of medicine from Georgetown-a brilliant, caring woman, who was beloved by the patients and utterly devoted to the evening each week she spent on the roads with Helping Hands.
The drive across the river and south was made in virtual silence. Mollender, sitting in back with his hands folded tightly in his lap, stared out the window of Nick’s 1995 Cutlass Cierra. In the front, Nick and Jillian were each engrossed in the same gnawing question: Would the recording of Aleem Syed Mohammad’s ill-fated surgery shed any light at all on the strange one-way ambulance trip of Umberto from the Singh Center to Shelby Stone, or on Belle’s subsequent murder three years later?
“Just pull in there a couple of spaces left of the Dumpster,” Mollender said, breaking the prolonged silence. “The chute is coming out of Noreen’s office on the third floor. She’s always remodeling.”
“You got it,” Nick said, easing into the spot.
Down on the seat, where the Mole could not see, Jillian squeezed Nick’s hand. Then they followed Mollender into a rather stark, tiled lobby and up two flights of stairs.
At that instant, a gunshot rang out from within Noreen’s office, then several more in rapid succession.
Nick pounded once on the door and grasped the knob. The door flew open.
The woman’s outer office, which was about the size of a two-car garage, had been stripped down to the studs. On a stepladder at the center of the room, wielding a hefty cordless nail gun, was Noreen Siliski.
“This is what one can do when there is almost no human traffic,” Noreen said, making no mention of Nick’s rather sensational entrance as she stepped down to the floor and shook hands heartily with the new arrivals. “Business was good when I petitioned the owner to add storage space. When he finally approved the changes, business was bad. But I love building things so I’m doing it anyway.”
Half the office was covered by bedsheets, sprinkled with a fine misting of sawdust. The smell of freshly cut
