first person an investigator would question. Any decent investigator would wire the guard to a lie detector. And giving a guard a wad of cash before the entry… of course the guy was going to spend it and attract attention. It was almost as if the agency didn't care if Carmellini got caught.
Two weeks. Then he would bid this silly band of paper-pushing bozos good-bye and be off to bigger and better things. If he wasn't in jail somewhere awaiting trial.
The guard was reading a newspaper when he walked in. There was a security camera behind him aimed across the desk at Carmellini, another above the arch over the elevator, and a third above the door where he had entered.
Carmellini nodded at the guard and spoke: 'Someone told me you are a fan of American baseball.'
'I like the Yankees,' the guard replied as he looked Carmellini over.
'I'm a Braves fan myself,' the American said. He noted that the monitor behind the desk was automatically cycling from one camera to another every ten seconds. No doubt there was a recorder somewhere, probably in the basement security office, capturing this gripping drama on videotape.
'The bank of elevators on the left. Ninth floor.'
'Thanks.'
'All the bigwigs are on the trading floor tonight,' the guard added, but Carmellini just waved a hand as he headed for the elevator.
No cops eyeing him from behind the potted palms, no wailing sirens. . just the cameras catching my handsome criminal mug on videotape, he thought bitterly. I'm going to spend the next ten years eating macs and cheese off a plastic tray.
He pushed the button to call the elevator and tried to look slightly bored.
The ninth floor was the upper balcony level. The eighth floor was the lower balcony. The seventh floor, just visible through the floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass that shielded the offices from the elevator waiting area, was the trading floor, the pit. Amid the computer workstations two floors below, Carmellini could see a crowd of people — at least a dozen — staring at screens, talking animatedly, sipping drinks. The people in the pit traded currencies and currency futures around the clock worldwide, according to the Langley briefer. None of the traders seemed to pay any attention to him standing here at this entrance. They were engrossed in their business.
Hot night tonight, Carmellini thought, with the mess in Washington. The dollar was probably getting hammered worldwide.
The security station that controlled the heavy glass door was on the wall at his left. Two security cameras were in the corners, one aimed at the elevator door, the other at the security station. As Carmellini approached the wall-mounted unit, he took two objects from his pocket and glanced at them. A left and a right. They looked like marbles.
The security panel had a slot about six inches across and three inches high in the face of it, about belt high. Left or right hand? Sarah was right-handed, so he put his right hand into the slot. A light illuminated inside the device. He held his hand very still as the scanner read the fingerprints chemically embedded on the flexible plastic sleeves that covered his fingers and thumb. He had sleeves on the fingers of his left hand too, just in case.
A message appeared on the liquid crystal display at eye level. 'Step closer please.'
Right eye, he thought, and used his left hand to hold up the marble labeled 'R' about four inches in front of the scanner. He held it as still as he could.
Three seconds passed, four…
'Thank you, Ms. Houston,' flashed on the LCD display, and the main door unlocked with an audible click.
Carmellini went through the doors, then checked his watch. 1:12 A.M. local time.
Her workstation was in an office halfway along the balcony on the south side of the building, about as far away from a corner office as one could get, Carmellini noted wryly. She had a lot of corporate ladder left to climb.
There was a small finger scanner beside her computer. He used his right forefinger. After a few seconds her computer screen hummed and came to life.
Now all he had to do was type in her password and get to work. Alas, no one at Langley knew her password. Neither did Tommy Carmellini.
He sat staring at the blinking computer prompt, flexing his plastic-encased fingertips, reviewing everything he knew about Sarah Houston one more time. He had been dreading this moment for days, and now it was here. He had, he thought, no more than three bites of the apple before the computer would lock him out. Then his only option would be to disassemble the main computer and steal the hard drive.
On the flight across the Atlantic he had decided on the three keywords he would try, but now, at the moment of truth in front of her computer, his confidence deserted him.
He looked around her desk, at the photo of her parents and the cup full of pencils and pens. He opened the desk drawers, glanced at the contents, stirred the nail file and photos and paper clips and candy bar wrappers around with one finger while he thought it through again. Four of the photos were of Houston and a man, sort of a smarmy guy, Carmellini thought.
He had gone through the items in her purse very carefully when she had been lying drugged in the bed of the New York apartment. What had been in there? Think!
He flexed his fingers carefully, then typed 'houston' and hit the
Enter key.
No. He was still at the password prompt.
So what could it be? This was a woman who wrote her four-digit bank PIN numbers on the envelopes that held the ATM cards. A telephone number?
He typed 'houston020474.' Her birthday.
No.
Okay, Carmellini, you clever lad. Last chance. He bit his lip. 'houston090602.' Today's date. Yes. The computer brought up the menu.
Tommy Carmellini found he had been holding his breath. He exhaled explosively.
CHAPTER NINE
'Oh, Jake, I've been so worried.' Callie hugged him fiercely when he walked through the door into the candlelit apartment. He held on and hugged her back.
Finally she led him onto the balcony. 'I made soup on the barbecue grill. Can I warm up some for you?'
'Sounds great.'
'Tell me, was it the submarine that did this?' She waved a hand at the dark city.
'Yes.'
'But I thought they didn't have nuclear weapons.'
'They didn't need them. They have ten Tomahawk cruise missiles carrying electromagnetic warheads, called Flashlights. We think two of them exploded over Washington and knocked out the power. A Tomahawk with an explosive warhead hit the White House.'
As she lit the grill, he explained how the warheads worked. 'The warhead is basically a flux generator. A coil is wrapped around a metallic tube full of explosives, and an electrical current is run through the coil, creating a magnetic field. The explosion is more of a fast burn than a one-time boom; as the explosive burns, it creates a pressure wave that flares out the tube holding it and pushes the tube into the coil, which creates a short circuit that diverts the current into the undamaged coil that remains. As the explosion progresses,
the magnetic field is violently squeezed into a smaller and smaller volume, which is the coil ahead of the explosion. This creates a huge rise in the current in the remaining coil. Just before the warhead destroys itself, the current flows into an antenna, which radiates the pulse outward. The whole process takes about a tenth of a millisecond and pumps out about a trillion watts of power from a seven-hundred-and-fifty-pound warhead.'
'A trillion watts!'
'Yep. Fries switches and blows transformers and generally obliterates computers and telephone systems.'
