Code White Part 10

Harry leaned toward Ali again, so far forward that his forearm rested on his knee. "At this moment," he said, "this medical center is on high alert. There has been a very serious bomb threat. Explosive material has been recovered, which has been traced to known a.s.sociates of your brother. The evidence is compelling."

"What evidence?"

"Let me show you." Harry leaned toward the desk and picked up two sheets of paper from it, crossing his gaze with Lee as he did so to preempt any objection. "These are printouts of two messages we have received from the bomber," he said, handing the pages to Ali.

Ali read, and as she did so, her free hand rose involuntarily to cover her mouth. Until this moment, she had never thought of the bomb threat as something real. At Fletcher Memorial, drills and emergency codes were daily events, and staff rarely allowed them to disrupt clinical routine. But now, as she held these pages in her fingers, it was as though she were touching the bomb itself. A glimpse of its destructive power flashed through her mind. She saw the great steel-and-gla.s.s towers of the hospital reduced to ruins, stained with the blood of the dead and dying. She heard the cry of the innocent-a whirlwind rising up from a pyre of flames and smoke. She saw Jamie Winslow lying twisted in the rubble, his beautiful platinum hair charred black as soot.

As if they were hot coals, she flung the pages back at Harry. "A Muslim did not write this," she said abruptly.

"Why do you say that?"

"Written as it is, it is blasphemy. A Muslim would not praise both G.o.d and the Prophet in the same breath. Only G.o.d is worthy of praise. The correct formula would be 'Praise be to G.o.d, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, and may the peace and blessings of G.o.d be upon His Prophet.' Then you have the use of the word 'martyr.' A martyr is one who has died for the faith. No Muslim would refer to living persons as martyrs. This message is clearly a fraud, written by someone who is not and never has been a Muslim, and who wishes to deceive you as to his true ident.i.ty and motives."

Lee tapped his lips pensively, with his fingertips pressed together. "I have considered that."

Ali glared at him. No you haven't, you smug little know-it-all. You don't understand our culture at all. But her answer was directed not to Lee, but to Harry. "If such a thing as the Al-Quds Martyrs' Brigade exists, it did not issue this message."

Harry gave her a searching look. "I don't know whether you're right or not. But what is certain is that your brother is a person of material interest in this case. If he's not involved, then I would be happy to see him clear himself. For all I know, he may have an ironclad alibi. But we do need to locate him and talk to him. This is a matter of great urgency. The lives of scores or even hundreds of people in this hospital may be at stake."

Ali still didn't know what to make of Harry. He had dragged her before this tribunal and had lied to her to get her here. And yet he didn't seem to be like Lee and the others. He spoke to her directly, knowingly. He seemed to care about the lives of the people who were threatened by this hideous bomb. And he treated her as though he knew that she cared about them, too.

"I don't know where he is," she said, regretfully, not defiantly as before. "I told you, I haven't had contact with him for several years."

"Can you think of anyone who might know?"

"No."

"Is there anything else that you might be able to tell us? Anything that might shed some light on the situation?"

"No."

Harry leaned forward even further and took her hand. It was the first time he had touched her, and it made her bristle. Yet at the same time, she felt a blush come over her. She was in desperate need of a lifeline, and his strong but gently pliant hand seemed charged with a self-possession that she lacked. "Look at me," he said. "I want you to understand that I am not political, either. I don't know the Brotherhood from the Ku Klux Klan. The one and only thing I care about is this medical center. The hospital-that's my Jamie Winslow. And I will do whatever I have to do to keep it out of harm."

"If I could help you, I would. But I don't know anything."

"May I give you my honest opinion?"

She nodded warily. "Please do."

"I think that you do know something. I saw it in your eyes when you read those papers. Something-I don't know how to describe it ... a look of recognition, perhaps. Maybe even fear. I'm pretty good at reading people, and I'd be willing to bet my life on it. You know something. Maybe something you really do want to tell us, but don't know how."

Ali jerked her hand away from his. What is this? Another trap? "Are you going to arrest me?"

"That's not my call. But whenever you do want to talk about it, I'm ready to listen."

Ali stared at him, trying to divine his intentions. Yes, there was something familiar about the e-mails-if only she could put her finger on what it was! It was like hearing a s.n.a.t.c.h of music and not being able to name the composer, although she had heard the piece a hundred times before. Harry had picked up on her suspicions, but how? Had she done something to betray herself? What else was he seeing this very moment? She was afraid to say anything, even to attempt a denial. Whatever she did or said would only make things worse. Of course, keeping silent looked bad, too. But silence was all she was capable of. Silence, and a vacuous stare.

It was Lee who broke the impa.s.se by clapping his hands together. "Enough of this," he said with an exasperated sigh. "Dr. O'Day, do you wish to modify anything you have said to us?"

"No."

He waved toward the door. "In that case, you're free to go."

Hesitantly, as if suspecting a trick, Ali stood up. She glanced at Lee for a moment, then at Harry. There was expectation in his eyes, but he made no move to get up or to speak. Still feeling the heat of scrutiny, and not wanting to appear overly eager, Ali ceremoniously adjusted her white coat and proceeded toward the door. But then, reaching for the handle, she paused and looked at the fingers of her extended hand. They were trembling, ever so finely-something rare for her, who prided herself on her surgeon's steadiness. She was certain that no one else could see it. And yet, a disturbing intimation came to her. She shot a glance at Harry. Was it my hand that gave me away? He touched me; could he feel this tremor?

Their eyes barely grazed before Ali turned away. Yes, he knows. He knows even more than he will say. She felt a rush of anger. This prizefighter with the sage's eyes had forced his way into her innermost thoughts, and she had not even offered a token resistance. It infuriated her how naturally it all had come about, how while she had struggled through the interrogation he had sat watching her with perfect calmness, as though he could have stepped in at any time and made an instant connection if he wanted to, and how when he wanted to, at last, he scarcely made any effort to do it. He simply took hold of her with that burly, tan hand of his, and the connection was made. She hated men like that, men of sheer physical power. Men who acted like they could command a woman. And this man, Harry, was the worst of the type. He was the worst because of those eyes of his-eyes that persuaded you that somehow, deep inside, he might really care.

So abruptly did she flee his lingering stare, that the door whooshed behind her as she pulled it shut.

As soon as the door latch had clicked, Avery whistled. "That's one cold-blooded tootsie you've got there."

Lee rested his chin on his hands. "Remarkable, yes," he said. "Except for a couple of moments, her voice and facial expressions were perfectly controlled. Even when she did show some emotion, she never gave anything away. Very disciplined."

Avery clapped his hands on the desktop and slouched back into his chair. "We should have taken her downtown. The prospect of a night behind steel bars might've gotten her singing."

"I doubt that," said Lee. "She's a gutsy one."

Harry couldn't believe what he was hearing. These guys had botched it. They had taken a very remarkable, cla.s.sy woman who had no reason to stonewall them and then they had poked her and prodded her and shredded her self-respect until she had no choice but to act like a cornered animal. There was no need to abuse her like that. Five minutes of intelligent conversation would have told them everything they wanted to know. But instead they had made her hostile. Good luck getting anything out of her in the future.

If Harry had had his way, he would have ordered all these bunglers out of his office and taken over the investigation himself. It was his medical center and his people who were at stake. Avery was a ham-fisted bully, and Lee was even worse. Lee liked to sit there like Yoda and pretend he could get into people's heads and lay traps for them and little by little turn up the heat until he could force them to reveal the truth. Even when s.h.i.t like that worked, it was the long way around. Harry didn't crack that Colombian ring by giving anyone the third degree. He got a lot further just by sitting down with the right person over beer and nachos.

"I don't see her like you guys do at all," said Harry. "Actually, I thought she looked pretty scared."

"Scared?" asked Lee. "Scared of what?"

Harry resisted giving him the obvious answer, in four-letter words. "You came on a little hard."

"You did say you thought she was holding something back, didn't you, Mr. Lewton?"

"Well, the e-mails ... Something cracked her cool, yes."

"Yes, I saw it, too. A tiny c.h.i.n.k in her armor," said Lee, tapping his chin with his fingertips, his hands folded like a monk in reflection. "She resisted frontal pressure very well. But when you showed her sympathy, you took her by surprise. What do you suppose was behind it?"

"I don't know. I don't think she's guilty. Do you? Seriously?"

"I wouldn't say 'guilty.' Only that she's ... interesting."

Scopes looked at Lee. "What do you want to do?"

"Well, it's clear that questioning her further won't give us anything. We'll learn a lot more just by watching her. Mr. Lewton, will we have any trouble keeping an eye on her with this high-tech system of yours-what did you call it, Cerberus?"

Harry sighed. More of the long way around. "There are virtual gateways at several key locations in the hospital. They're kind of like the drive-through E-Z pa.s.ses on the tollways. Every time you walk through one of them, your ID badge registers on the system. It'll give us a rough idea of where she is at any given moment. If you need finer detail than that, most of the corridors and public s.p.a.ces are under video monitoring. You can switch between cameras, and orient them by keyboard controls. Like so." He adjusted the controls, flipping between cameras until he caught an image of Ali, who looked like she was sleepwalking down the Pike. "There she is. See her?"

"Good. We can watch her from here. Will we know if she tries to leave the hospital?"

"Yes."

Lee turned to Avery. "Give your men orders to arrest her if she does." Then, swiveling his chair toward Scopes, he tapped his index finger against the palm of his other hand, as if counting to himself. "Call the district office. Tell them to get hold of a federal judge. We're going to need a couple of search warrants ASAP. Phone and e-mail records, premises of house and office."

"Let's not rush to judgment here," said Harry.

"Relax," said Lee haughtily. "If it were to come to that, she'd already be in shackles."

Harry was surprised to see how Avery and Scopes jumped into action when Lee gave the word. Scopes was a colleague, and Avery was the Incident Commander, the one who was supposed to be in charge. But both of them took orders from Lee like an office girl taking shorthand.

There was a knock on the door and Harry got up to answer it. Through the gla.s.s of the door he could see Tom Beazle's scraggly, freckled face. Tom was breathing hard, and was looking up, down, and in every direction like a frightened pigeon.

"What is it, Tom?" asked Harry, letting him in.

"Trouble. We got trouble. That TV crew? The ones filming that surgery? Well, they're out by the bomb squad trailer, taking pictures of some of the techs. They're onto it all by now."

Harry smiled. "It was just a matter of time. Don't worry, Tom. I'll go down and talk to 'em."

"Better hurry!"

"Okay." Harry turned to the men behind his desk. "I've got to go plug a leak. If you guys need anything in the meantime, ask for Judy in the control room."

Lee tapped his pencil on the desk. "Make sure you do plug it. If this gets on to the air prematurely, we could have a full-blown panic on our hands."

Now Lee was ordering him around, too. "Check!" said Harry, raising two fingers to his eyebrow as he sprinted out the door.

11:38 A.M.

In the alleyway between the main block of the medical center and the row of research buildings that had sprung up behind it, a thirty-foot-long white motor home was parked between a red fire truck and a row of blue-striped police cars. On any other day, the presence of the fire truck and police cars alone would have raised more than a pa.s.sing curiosity, but today the motor home, with its eye-catching inscription "Chicago Police Department Bomb Squad," commanded attention like a condor in a flock of sparrow-hawks. In particular, it had become a magnet for the film crew of America Today.

As Harry strode down the alley, he saw a huddle of people beside the motor home, some of them in police duds, some in the T-shirts and jeans that were the internationally approved uniform of cameramen and sound men and lighting technicians. There was a glow in the air, and Harry was surprised to see that powerful lights had been turned on to illuminate a scene that was already in broad daylight. As he got closer, he saw Kathleen Brown, now out of her scrubs and wearing a creme turtleneck and dark green skirtsuit, holding a microphone in the face of a slightly bewildered bomb tech.

"... and that was all the department told you?" Kathleen Brown was asking.

"Uh, yeah. Standby," said the tech.

Harry stepped through the ring of lights and reflectors. "Ms. Brown, my name is Harry Lewton," he said, commandeering the attention of everyone on the scene. "I'm the chief security officer for this medical center."

"At long last, Mr. Lewton." Kathleen Brown feigned a smile. "I've been trying to reach you by phone all morning."

"I've been busy, as you might understand. I believe that your a.s.sistant-who did the calling for you-was informed that Dr. Gosling, the president of the medical center, would be providing a full statement this morning."

"I have a copy of that statement, Mr. Lewton. It's a pathetically skimpy whitewash." She held up a sheet of paper and began to read aloud.

"'As of 7:45 this morning, the Fletcher Memorial Medical Center has been operating under a Code White, due to a bomb threat received from an as yet unidentified source. While no bomb has been found, a standard search protocol is ongoing, and the police and fire departments have been requested to a.s.sist in the investigation. Bomb threats against this medical center occur several times a year, but have never resulted in a single injury or explosion. We are, however, taking every possible action to ensure the safety of every patient, visitor, and staff member at FMMC. Their well-being is our highest priority.

'Further updates will be issued as they become available.'"

"That's as accurate as can be," said Harry.

"Did you write this statement, Mr. Lewton?"

"More or less." Harry suddenly found himself in the center of the glow of lights.

"This amount of police presence seems unusual for a routine, unsubstantiated bomb threat. I'm told that the FBI has also been called into the investigation-something not mentioned in your statement."

"Some FBI advisors are here unofficially, at the request of the Chicago Police Department."

"Is that routine?"

"As long as I'm the chief of security, yes, it's routine to use every available resource to guarantee the safety of this hospital and the people in it."

"That's a great line, Mr. Lewton, but I don't buy it."

"I'm not selling anything."

"What did you find in the second-floor Endocrinology Clinic this morning, Mr. Lewton?"

Harry suddenly felt like a lone tuna in a school of sharks. Ah, the dainty little powder-puff poodle wants to play bloodhound. He had had run-ins with reporters before, and there wasn't a single one of them who wouldn't sell his grandmother for a scoop. The memories turned his stomach, but he knew that if he wanted to keep things from getting out of control, his best leverage would lie in Kathleen Brown's ambition. "Any discussion of that will have to be off camera," he said.

"The camera is the eye of the public. Why are you afraid of the camera, Mr. Lewton?"

"Spare me your slogans. I'm offering you an exclusive, but for background only. If that doesn't suit you, Dr. Gosling will have another statement for you this afternoon."

"All right." Kathleen Brown called to Dutch, her cameraman-a body-builder type with a blond crew cut, wearing a ratty gray sweatshirt with the sleeves hacked off in the mid-deltoids. Dutch nodded silently as she spoke to him, and then turned away. In a moment, the hot, bright lights had been cut.

Harry looked around for a place to talk. "Why don't we go in here?" he said, nodding toward the motor home. Opening the door, he climbed in and sat sidewise in the driver's seat, while Kathleen Brown took up a place across the gear-shift. They were alone. In the unlit compartment behind them was a work counter, a handful of computer monitors, several bomb suits hanging from ceiling hooks, and a cache of equipment and cables. At the very end was a drop-down door and Old Yeller, the bomb squad's mascot, a three-foot-tall remote-controlled robot shaped like the Mars rover.

Harry started out matter-of-factly. "What I found was a paper bag with some components for making a bomb. Not an actual bomb."

"A fake?"

"No. More like a message."

"Sent by whom?"

"Not sure. We've received e-mails from something calling itself the Al-Quds Martyrs' Brigade-"

"Muslim terrorists?"

"I wouldn't jump to conclusions. That may just be what they want us to believe."

"What are they demanding?"

"Money, naturally. Plus the release of two terrorists in New York. Meteb and Mussolimi, or something like that. You can look them up."

"Are you complying?"

"On the money, yes. The payment is scheduled for noon, just a little while from now. The terrorists are another matter. Washington's thinking it over."

"This is really not a routine bomb threat, is it?"