Mortal Fear

Suddenly the speakers fall silent. Miles checks his screen. “Brahma just logged off.”

“Shit. You think he found out they were trying to trace him?”

“Maybe. He’s got guts, this guy. I wonder if he might actually try to hit her the first night.”

“That’s the feeling I have, Miles. Don’t ask me why. Like something’s wrong. Really wrong.”

“Like what? What could be wrong?”

“I think Brahma’s about to make a fool out of everybody. He’s been three steps ahead of us all the way. Why should he act like an idiot now? Why walk into a trap?”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know, damn it!”

Miles looks thoughtful. “Okay, say you’re right. How could he make a fool out of everybody?”

“I don’t know.” My mind is fuzzy with anxiety and fatigue. “By doing the unexpected?”

“And what’s that?”

“Maybe he knows ‘Lilith’ is a trap, but he’s figured a way to kill the decoy anyway. You know, the girl I told you about. Margie Ressler.”

“Harper, right this second a dozen SWAT guys are perched in trees and on rooftops around that safe house. They can shoot the balls off a hamster at five hundred yards, and the range is probably less than forty. If Brahma shows up there, he’s dog meat.”

“But Brahma doesn’t think like other people. Remember Dallas? He won’t walk up with a target painted on his shirt. They won’t even see him. Or if they do, they’ll think they know who he is. One of them maybe. He’ll do his thing and split before they even know what hit them.”

Miles bites his lower lip. “Shit,” he says finally.

“Miles?”

“What?”

“What if Brahma’s not even going there? What if he’s after someone else?”

“Like who?”

“ ‘Eleanor Rigby.’ ”

“That’s nuts. She lives in California. We know Brahma’s in D.C. or Virginia.”

“No, we don’t. We know somebody’s in D.C. or Virginia, logging on as ‘Maxwell.’ Remember the team-offender theory? If there’s really a group behind this, Brahma himself could be anywhere. He could be in California right now. He could be here, man.”

Miles shakes his head. “Calm down. He has no idea this place exists. And why in God’s name would he pick ‘Eleanor Rigby’ out of thousands?”

“Not thousands. Six hundred. She’s a blind-draft account, remember?”

“The odds are still ridiculous. Give me one shred of logic.”

“‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,’ remember? A Beatles song. And she’s ‘Eleanor Rigby.’ There’s death in that song too. Wouldn’t he gravitate to that?”

Miles purses his lips in concentration. “Maybe.”

“Is there some central data bank where all EROS conversations are stored? An archive or something? I know you told the FBI there wasn’t, but-”

“There’s a sixty-day record. Every word is automatically filed to disk for sixty days. Then it’s erased. We do it for legal protection, in case of things like crimes against children ricocheting back on us. One of my techs handles it.”

“I want you to check it. Right now.”

“Why?”

“To find out whether Brahma has talked to ‘Eleanor’ recently.”

“But-”

“If you don’t, I’m going to call Eleanor myself. And that’s the first step to the whole story coming out.”

He clicks angrily at his mouse, then types a brief e-mail message and transmits it to New York. “I told them it was urgent, but it might take a while.”

“Thank you.”

We sit in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. I watch the screen of the Gateway, but Sid Moroney sends nothing through.

“Here we go,” Miles says. “ ‘Eleanor Rigby’ spoke to ‘Maxwell’ in a private room three days ago. The conversation lasted eight minutes. You want me to get the text from them?”

My heart is in my throat as I pick up the phone.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Miles asks.

“Warning Eleanor.”

“Let’s at least look at the file first!”

“Forget it.”

Eleanor’s line is busy. I set down the phone, an image of a lonely young woman in a wheelchair burning behind my closed eyes.

“Busy,” I say quietly.

“Thank God. That would have started a network-wide panic.”

I slap the desk with my right hand. “Like I give a shit, okay? We’re talking about life and death here! I don’t care if the whole goddamn company implodes. Everybody will just have to go back to using magazines to jack off.”

Miles looks at me like a scientist observing some rare protozoan, then blinks and goes back to his screen. When I turn back to mine, I find a message from Sid Moroney awaiting my attention.

Just picked up a secondary frequency in the area. Could be another stakeout, DEA or local cops, but I don’t think so. It’s scrambled. I also heard a couple of references to “Gamma Team” on the primary frequency. No Gamma before that. What are all these guys waiting for? Could it be a dangerous fugitive or something like that?

Without consulting Miles, I type a quick confirmation that the subject of this stakeout could be very dangerous. By the time Miles asks what I typed, I’ve sent the message; by the time I finish explaining the situation, I’ve received a reply from Moroney.

My guess is that the scrambled freq is being used by a sniper team. That’s Gamma Team. A regular stakeout doesn’t mean much to eavesdroppers in this city, but people talking about lines of fire, rules of engagement, and stuff like that would have a TV truck over here like lightning. That’s why it’s scrambled. I’m working on unscrambling it, but the odds are one in a million. This is heavy stuff, guys. Thanks for the invite.

My pulse has settled into a rhythm far above its normal rate. “You were right, Miles! They’ve got sharpshooters up there.”

“Can Moroney hear what they’re saying?”

“No. It’s scrambled.”

He shakes his head, obviously disgusted. “That’s about what I’d expect from the FBI.”

“What do you mean?”

“Using encrypted radio traffic around the safe house is stupid. You think Brahma won’t have scanning equipment? Scrambled chatter is like a neon sign screaming ‘COPS.’ ”

“What choice do they have?”

“Radio silence. Or they could use fake radio chatter, like they’ve got a drug bust set up near there.”

“Should we try to warn them?”

“Way too late.”

We stare at each other in silence. Then a familiar male voice floats out of the speakers, and the printer behind Miles begins humming.

“Brahma’s back,” he says, turning. “Same room.”

By the time Brahma finishes his first sentence, Miles and I have frozen like ice sculptures.

MAXWELL› Greetings, Dr. Lenz. I’d actually planned a more dramatic revelation than this, but now it seems juvenile. After Dallas, I warned your agency not to interfere with my work. Yet you persisted. By putting