Mortal Fear

“This is Harper Cole. I need to talk to Dr. Lenz.”

“You shouldn’t have called here.”

“I need to make sure he knows something important.”

“He knows. Harper, this is Margie Ressler.”

“Margie.” The decoy. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes, but we can’t tie up this line right now.”

“I’ve got to tell Lenz about something.”

“About the errors?”

“You know about that?”

“Everything’s under control. Really. Take it easy.”

Relief washes over me. “Okay. I just wanted to make sure you guys weren’t going to be surprised.”

“We’re the FBI, Harper. We’re not going to be surprised.” Her voice goes quiet. “You’d better keep your eyes open, though. Did you or Miles Turner send e-mail to Mr. Baxter warning him to check tissue donor networks?”

“Margie-” I stop, unwilling to implicate myself on a phone that might be tapped.

As if reading my mind, she says, “All I’m going to tell you is that the shit hit the fan after they started checking. You’d better watch your butt.”

“Thanks. And you’d better take your own advice.”

“He won’t come tonight. Not if the record’s any indication.”

Suddenly I hear a babble of male voices.

“Sir!” Margie answers like a boot camp recruit.

The phone goes dead in my hand.

“Well?” asks Miles, back on the bed now.

“They know.”

He gives me his dour I-told-you-so look.

“She also said they got your note about transplant networks.”

Now he’s paying attention.

“She said the shit hit the fan when they started checking.”

Miles ponders this for a few seconds. “Then Drewe must be right. There must be another missing woman.”

“Jesus. What are we going to do?”

He takes a deep breath, looks at the floor for a few seconds, then says, “I’m going to code until seven, which is when TBS is showing I Walk the Line, with Gregory Peck and Tuesday Weld.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I love Tuesday Weld. Did you see Who’ll Stop the Rain? From Robert Stone’s book? Even Nolte was great in that.”

“Miles-”

“Tuesday Weld should have played Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, not Audrey Hepburn. Even Capote said that. Of course, he said a young Tuesday Weld. With her we wouldn’t have gotten that bullshit Hollywood ending. Holly would have-”

“Miles!”

He looks up irritably. “What?”

“Don’t you care what happens at the safe house?”

“Of course. But it’s not in my power to affect the outcome.”

“Isn’t there some way to at least monitor the action? Hack into a Bureau computer or something?”

“Harper, a stakeout is just some guys on the radio. They’re probably not even talking a whole lot.”

“So?”

“There’s no computer angle to it. Baxter will want to be there for the collar, so he’s probably at the safe house already, or else on his way. Nothing will have to be relayed to him, ergo we can’t intercept anything digital.”

“What about radio, then?”

Miles laughs. “We can’t monitor police radio from a thousand miles away.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s analog, man. Radio waves that die after a few miles.”

Smugness is one of my pet peeves. At times like this I want to smack Miles on the side of the head. And somewhere between staring at his arrogant expression and clenching my right fist, a solution arcs through my brain like a Roman candle. As Miles stares, I sit down at my Gateway 2000 and switch on my modem.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Logging onto CompuServe.”

“Why?”

“To eavesdrop on the stakeout.”

“How?”

I click the mouse rapidly. “By talking somebody local into doing it for us.”

“Who’s going to do that?”

“Ever hear of ham radio?”

It takes less than five seconds for Miles to see where I’m going. “But ham radio is a totally different frequency spectrum than law enforcement stuff,” he says.

I don’t even respond. I know he’s kicking himself for not thinking of this first.

“Ham operators hang out on CompuServe?” he asks, getting up and looking over my shoulder.

“Either here or AOL. One of my neighbors is a ham nut. He’s mentioned a forum before, and I think it’s on CompuServe. I’m doing a Find for the word ‘radio.’ ”

Suddenly a neat column of words appears on my screen:

Broadcast Professionals

CB Handle

CE Audio Forum

HamNet Forum

IQuest($)

National Public Radio

“Ha! You see that?”

“HamNet,” Miles says. “That’s it?”

“Let’s see.”

Seconds later we’re staring at the multicolored logo of a computer forum dedicated exclusively to the arcane joys of ham radio. I click the mouse, and topic headings like “Amateur Satellites,” “Swap Shop,” “Utility DX’ing,” and “Hardware/Homebrew” appear.

“Miles, I guarantee you some of these guys are into a lot more than ham radio. That Tom Swift crap with cigar boxes full of vacuum tubes is history. These guys are high tech now.”

“A couple of old hackers at MIT were into ham,” he says, and I sense how badly he wants to move me out of the chair and take over this job.

“The only question,” I muse, “is will somebody with the right equipment be close enough to McLean, Virginia, to do it?”

“Definitely,” Miles says excitedly. “McLean’s the D.C. metro area, not far from Langley. Bound to be somebody there. I’ll bet some of these guys have wet dreams about intercepting CIA and FBI communications.”

“I don’t know,” I say, reading the screen more closely. “Look at some of these topics. “FCC Compliance” and “Proper Certification.” Maybe they’re not into that kind of stuff.”

“Why don’t you let me talk to them?” Miles suggests, standing so close that I feel uncomfortable.

“It’s all yours,” I tell him, rising from the chair.

He sits and immediately begins composing a forum message. “We just have to approach it right. I’m not a federal fugitive, I’m… a reporter. For the Times Picayune. So are you.” He pauses,