Gideon's Corpse

“So what you just told me is false. There is a way those emails could have been planted. You could have done it.” In asking this question, Fordyce shifted his entire tone of voice, pitching it low and accusatory, emphasizing the word you in an openly disbelieving manner.

The air froze. But Novak didn’t blink. After a moment, he said, “Yes, I could have planted them. But I didn’t. Why would I?”

“I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind.” Again Fordyce employed his most skeptical tone of voice. “You just admitted you told a falsehood to me and all the other investigators.” He glanced at his notebook. “You said, and I quote: ‘There’s no way, none, that those emails could have been planted.’ That’s false.”

Novak kept a steady eye on him. “Look, I misspoke. I wasn’t considering myself in that statement because I know I didn’t do it. Don’t try to entrap me here.”

“Could anyone else in your department have planted those emails?”

Another hesitation. “The three other security officers in my department might have been able to do it, but it would have taken two of them in cooperation, since they don’t have the highest level of clearance.”

“And are there others above you who could have done it?”

“There are those who have the authorization, but they would have had to go through me. At least, I think they would have. There are levels of security even I don’t know about. The higher-ups might have installed a back door. I really don’t know.”

Fordyce felt a little frustrated. So far, Novak hadn’t actually said anything incriminating, hadn’t shown any cracks. His misstatement wasn’t out of the ordinary—he had seen far worse from innocent people under questioning.

But the house, the cars, the rugs…

“May I ask you, Agent Fordyce, what makes you think those emails were planted?”

Fordyce decided to tip his hand a little. He fixed him with a glaring eye. “You know Dr. Crew. Would you call him stupid?”

“No.”

“Would you call leaving incriminating emails on your work account a smart thing to do? Without even erasing them?”

A silence. Then Novak cleared his throat. “But he did erase them.”

This brought Fordyce up a bit short. “Yet you recovered them. How?”

“Through one of our many backup systems.”

“Can anything really be erased from one of your computers?”

“No.”

“Does everyone know that?”

Another hesitation. “I believe most do.”

“So we’re back to my original question. Was Dr. Gideon Crew a stupid man?”

Now he saw Novak’s facade just begin to crack. He had finally succeeded in raising the man’s ire. “Look, I find the entire thrust of your questioning to be offensive, all these questions about my personal finances, these insinuations about planted emails, this late-night surprise visit. I want to help the investigation, but I will not sit here and be victimized.”

Fordyce, with his long experience in questioning suspects, knew when he had reached the probable end of what had been a very useful interview. No point in provoking Novak further. He slapped his notebook shut and rose, turning back on his warm, chummy voice.

“Fortunately, I’m done. Thank you kindly for your time. It was all routine, no need to be concerned.”

“I am concerned,” said Novak. “I don’t think it’s right, and I’m going to file a complaint.”

“Naturally, you’re welcome to do so.”

As he retreated to his car, he hoped to hell Novak wouldn’t complain about him, or would at least wait a few days. A complaint would be most inconvenient. Because he was now halfway convinced that Novak was dirty in some way. That didn’t exonerate Crew, of course, and Novak hardly looked like a terrorist.

But still… Was it possible Gideon had been framed?

53

Gideon had pulled the Jeep off the dirt road ten miles from the Paiute Creek Ranch. He had to calm himself down, organize his thoughts. He felt awful about what he’d just done to Willis. He had terrified the man, brutalized him, humiliated him. The man was far from being the nicest person in the world, but no innocent person deserved that kind of treatment. And he was clearly innocent. Could someone else at the cult be behind it? Impossible, not without Willis knowing.

Gideon had made a hideous mistake.

On top of that, it was one o’clock in the morning, the day before N-Day. One day. And he had no more idea who was behind the plot than when he arrived in Santa Fe, eight days ago…

He grasped the wheel, realizing that he was hyperventilating worse than ever. He had to get a grip on himself, clear his head, and think this through.

He turned off the engine, threw the door open, and stumbled out of the vehicle. The night was cool, a slow sigh of air moving through the branches of the pines, the stars twinkling above. He steadied himself, tried to regulate his breathing, and started walking.

The Paiute Creek Ranch had nothing to do with the terrorist plot. That much was clear. So he was back to Joseph Carini and the Al-Dahab Mosque. They had of course been the obvious perpetrators all along, and now it was confirmed. He had been too clever by far. The obvious answer, the simplest answer, was almost always the true answer. It was one of the fundamental principles of scientific inquiry—and criminal investigations.

But was it so obvious? Why would the Muslims frame him as a fellow Muslim, when such a move would only increase suspicion, focus more attention on them? After all, the investigation had already come down on them like a ton of bricks. There were hundreds of investigators crawling all around the mosque, going through their most private documents, questioning their members, digging out all their secrets. He and Fordyce had been two investigators out of hundreds. They hadn’t learned anything of value, anything out of the ordinary, at least that he could see. And yet, whoever had attempted to frame him had taken huge risks, breaking into a highly classified computer system. It was someone who believed he had learned something so incriminating, so dangerous, that extraordinary measures had to be taken—

Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. Frame him. There was something he had been overlooking, blindingly obvious only now, after it had occurred to him. These actions were being taken against him, and him alone. After all, they hadn’t framed Fordyce, too. In fact, Fordyce was hot on his ass.

After the plane wreck, after learning about the sabotage, Gideon had always assumed whoever was doing this was trying to kill them both, to stop their line of inquiry. But the fact was, they were only trying to stop him.

What had he done—what had he investigated, who had he talked to—on his own, without Fordyce?

As quickly as he had posed the question, the answer came.

He stared up at the dark sky, at the hard uncompromising points of starlight. Could it be possible? It seemed so incredibly improbable. But he’d proved it wasn’t Willis, and he felt certain it wasn’t the Muslims. As he turned around and began heading back to the Jeep, he couldn’t help but remember the oft-repeated Sherlock Holmes dictum: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

54

Sitting in his cubicle in the 12th Street Command Center, Dart slowly replaced the telephone in its cradle. He