Code White Part 7

Ali peered across the room and saw Jamie tossing his head from side to side and flexing his wrists against the velcro restraints. As soon as he heard Ali's voice, Jamie began to shout.

"Doctor! D-doctor!"

Ali hurried to the bedside and placed her hand on Jamie's arm. "I'm here, Jamie. There's no need to be afraid."

"I can't see anything, Dr. O'Day. I can't see anything at all. Did I have the operation?"

"Yes, Jamie. It went very well."

"Then why can't I see?"

"It's too early yet." She was glad that he couldn't see the redness that she was sure was in her eyes. "We've turned the SIPNI unit on, but it takes time to make the right connections. We're trying to rewire parts of the brain that haven't talked to each other in years."

"It's going to take years?"

"No, no, of course not."

"How long?"

"I ... I don't know. You're the first person ever to have this procedure. We don't have enough experience to predict what will happen. Remember? We talked about all this."

"But you must know something!"

The bed rails shook as Jamie thrashed at his restraints. His face turned red. He began to bawl like a three-year-old, his lips bridged with lines of spittle, his jaw quivering, his nostrils flaring wide.

The sound of his wailing was more than Ali could bear. "Nurse!" she shouted. "Two milligrams of Ativan. STAT!"

The nurse pulled a syringe from the top drawer of a cart and rushed to the bedside. While Ali held Jamie's arm immobile, the nurse quickly injected the drug into the IV port.

"What's that?" screamed Jamie. "What are you giving me?"

"Something to relax you."

As the injection took effect, Jamie began to breathe more quietly. His jaw stopped trembling. At last, he lay quietly, letting Ali daub the tears from around his eyes.

"You know," he said, "I don't even remember what it was like to see. I could be seeing right now, and maybe I wouldn't know it. I don't even see things in my dreams."

"The tumor did that to you. But soon that will all change. Trust me, Jamie. Believe."

Jamie's voice had shrunk to a whisper. "I do ... trust you ... Dr. Nefert.i.ti."

He sank back into unconsciousness, but the red flush of panic lingered on his cheeks. Ali checked his vital signs on the cardio monitor, then adjusted the electroencephalograph leads taped to his scalp. All seemed well. But was it? Oh, G.o.d, she thought. What if we've let him down? She knew that the SIPNI device had been a gamble. There were a hundred things that could go wrong. Have we moved too fast? Did I let my feelings for Jamie cloud my judgment?

It was too late now for second thoughts. There was nothing to do but wait. Wait and see.

Whoosh! The plastic pneumatic boots used to prevent blood clots started through another cycle of deflation and reinflation. The cardio monitor kept up its monotonous beeping. The EEG traced silently. Delta waves and sleep spindles ...

Ali almost dreaded what would happen when Jamie reawoke.

10:07 A.M.

Kevin strode down the green-tiled corridor toward his laboratory on the first bas.e.m.e.nt level under Tower A. Were it not for the eyes of the occasional pa.s.sing janitor or cafeteria worker, he would have broken into a run. Two hours incommunicado in the operating room, cut off from developments on the most fateful day of his life, it had taken a superhuman effort to keep his cool. Now, free at last, with the safe haven of his lab in sight, he could scarcely brook a second of delay.

At the entrance, Kevin swiped his ID badge and the red light of the lock turned green with a faint beep. Pushing against the door, he entered a large L-shaped room-a place that had once been used for washing gla.s.sware. A visitor would have found it dingy, like going into a cave. There were no windows, and to cut down glare on his computer screens, Kevin had removed all but a single fluorescent tube from the main bank of lights. Of course Kevin himself did not notice the gloom, nor the dank smell of puddled sinkwater, old cheese and stale coffee that greeted him. He had long grown accustomed to it, as a fox does to the scent of its den.

Hastening to a large gray metal desk, where piles of papers and half-eaten food vied for s.p.a.ce with a clunky old cathode-ray-tube computer monitor, he plopped into a leather swivel chair rigged like a starship commander's seat, with a keyboard fastened to one armrest. Lifting his feet from the floor, he let the chair swing out to face a sixty-one-inch flat LCD screen on the back wall.

"Odin, display endo lobby," he said, his voice quavering with excitement.

Instantly, the screen showed a security camera's view of the Endocrinology Clinic waiting room.

Kevin did a double take. "What are you showing me-the morgue?" He had expected to zoom in on a scene of panic in motion, a bunch of Keystone Kops darting around or cowering behind the furniture. Instead, the lobby was empty except for a single technician in a white paper suit, who knelt by the window and dusted for fingerprints. A yellow police tape drooped between two plastic bollards that blocked the gla.s.s doorway. The paper bag behind the planter was gone.

"The Stones have left the stage," he glumly observed. "Nothing left to do but send our greeting card."

"MESSAGE 2 HAS ALREADY BEEN E-MAILED TO HARRY A. LEWTON, CHIEF OF SECURITY, AT 8:35 A.M."

Kevin's eyebrows shot up. "What? I didn't authorize that."

"ACCORDING TO THE PROTOCOL FOR PROJECT VESUVIUS, THE FOLLOW-UP E-MAIL WAS TO BE RELEASED UPON ARRIVAL OF FBI AGENTS ON THE SCENE. THAT CONDITION WAS FULFILLED AT 8:22 A.M. THIS MORNING."

"The FBI here already? That's way ahead of schedule."

"YES. ACCOMMODATIONS HAD TO BE MADE."

"The h.e.l.l you say! Not without a thorough review of the situation."

"I PERFORMED THE REVIEW MYSELF. IN DOING SO, I WAS ABLE TO ADVANCE THE PROJECT BY MORE THAN ONE HOUR AND TWENTY MINUTES. THIS SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASES THE PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS."

"No! No! No! That gives 'em an extra hour and half to get the money up. I told you the plan, Odin-glue 'em to the clock. Squeeze 'em. Squeeze every minute. Watch the desperation running in little beads down their necks. That's what gives us our margin of safety."

"THERE IS NO NEED FOR CONCERN. I ALSO ADVANCED THE TIME FOR TRANSMISSION OF THE RANSOM FROM 1:00 P.M. TO NOON."

"You did? Did you not see any f.u.c.king need to consult with me?"

"IT WAS NOT SAFE TO DO SO."

"I'll tell you what's not safe-s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around with plans that we worked out with a great deal of care."

"YOU YOURSELF HAVE REPEATEDLY INDICATED THE IMPORTANCE OF AN EARLY EGRESS FROM THE HOSPITAL PRECINCTS. PHASE 3 WILL REQUIRE A Ma.s.sIVE PARALLEL CRYPTa.n.a.lYTIC OPERATION OF UNCERTAIN DURATION. PREMATURE TERMINATION WOULD RESULT IN A SIGNIFICANT LOSS OF REVENUE. DID YOU DESIRE THAT OUTCOME?"

"Don't be an a.s.s."

"THEN I HAVE DONE WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE DONE."

"Have you?" Kevin kicked his swivel chair back and forth. "Okay, maybe. But Jesus, Odin, you're giving me chest pains over this. We're not running a simulation here. If this ship hits the rocks, I'll spend the rest of my real-world f.u.c.king life in jail."

Suddenly Kevin heard the shattering of gla.s.s, coming from the far "L" of the lab. His gaze shot, not toward the "L", but toward a six-foot-tall wire cage on the floor to his left, between his desk and the dark monolith of Odin's mainframe. Even in the dim light, he could see that the door of the cage was ajar by about six inches.

"Oh, h.e.l.l! Loki's out."

"HE EMERGED FROM CONFINEMENT AT 9:28 A.M. HE HAS STOLEN TWO PEARS FROM THE REFRIGERATOR, OVERTURNED ONE WASTEBASKET, AND DRUNK WATER FROM THE LEAKING FAUCET INSTEAD OF FROM HIS BOTTLE. HE IS NOW CLIMBING ON THE SHELVES AT THE REAR OF-"

"I know where he is, Odin. I can hear him. He's picked the d.a.m.ned lock again."

Kevin got up and went to the "L." When he switched on the back row of lights, he froze. Loki, a foot-and-a-half-long macaque monkey, wearing a diaper that gave him the look of a yogi in a loincloth, squatted on the high shelf, eight feet up, holding a human skull in his tiny, twitching hands. At the sight of Kevin, he screeched and chittered, jerking his hairless pink face from side to side. The skull looked like a basketball destined for a jump shot.

"Loki! Loki! Good monkey!" Kevin made a soft trilling sound to calm him, and for a moment Loki grew still. Kevin inched forward, stealthily raising his hands. "Good boy! Good Loki!"

This was no ordinary skull. To Kevin, who collected human and animal calvaria the way some people collect fine art, this was a Ming vase among skulls. It bore a half-inch drillhole in each temple and a black-inked inscription beside the foramen magnum: S. Traversi, Patuxent River, MDd. 2/21/1955.

Operated: C. W. Watts, Geo. Wash. Hosp. 10/9/1938.

Here were the earthly remains of a woman who had had a prefrontal lobotomy for schizophrenia, performed by one of the American pioneers of the procedure. For two months' salary, Kevin had bought the skull from the estate of a neurologist on the East Coast. And it was now about to do service as a simian basketball.

There was a formaldehyde smell and broken gla.s.s on the floor from the specimen jar that Loki had already knocked over. Loki chittered nervously as Kevin got closer. Kevin had to be careful not to smile or show his teeth or do anything that a monkey would interpret as anger. If Loki freaked out, the skull was as good as gone.

"Good Loki! Good monkey! What a pretty, little, fragile, and insanely expensive toy you have there! Can Daddy see it?" With hands outstretched, Kevin stepped up onto a stack of books. Loki screeched, exposing his half-inch canine teeth. But then, ever so gently, he lowered the skull within reach of Kevin's fingertips.

Kevin s.n.a.t.c.hed the skull and tucked it under his arm like a football. "Good, good boy! Come to Daddy now," he said, extending his free hand. Loki gave out a couple of chitters, then bounded along Kevin's arm to take up a new perch on his shoulder.

"Guess we'll be making monkey sausage tonight," said Kevin, as he ceremoniously reshelved Miss Traversi's skull between the yellowed incisors of a beaver and the pearl-white fangs of a young wolf.

Sardonic remark notwithstanding, Loki owed his life to Kevin. Helvelius had bought him for an experiment in which his spinal cord was severed, then reconnected with a primitive version of the SIPNI device. Loki had come out of the procedure amazingly well. His nerve function was better than ever, giving him a heightened sensitivity to touch and pain, plus a humanlike manual dexterity. During his fifteen minutes of scientific fame, everyone connected with the project celebrated the little monkey's bravery and powers of healing. But after a paper describing the breakthrough had been rushed into print, Loki himself was of no further use. The plan had been to euthanize him, to cut up his brain and spine to study the microscopic changes that took place in the nerve fibers. But, as luck would have it, the neuropathologist who was to carry out this work transferred to UCLA. Loki's date with the dissecting room was postponed, then postponed again, and ultimately forgotten as the team's interest moved on to dog-brain experiments. One night, a couple of months ago, Loki disappeared altogether from the Primate Center. Rumor spotted him hiding out in a cage in Kevin's lab, or even walking on a leash with Kevin on the hospital grounds. On those rare evenings when Kevin went home instead of crashing on a cot in his lab, he would sneak Loki out the back door in a small traveling cage, and give him the run of his apartment in Wicker Park.

"Score one for the brotherhood of apes and angels," Kevin would say as Loki swung from the kitchen cupboards. "Zero for the brain butchers."

Back on the big wall monitor, Odin was still showing video of the Endocrinology Clinic. With Loki on his shoulder, Kevin went back to his starship commander's seat and watched. Taking a bag of peanuts out of the top drawer of his desk, he began pa.s.sing them one by one to Loki. Instead of gnawing the sh.e.l.ls as most monkeys would do, Loki would crack them in his hands before extracting the nuts with his lips and tongue. Most of the empty sh.e.l.ls wound up on the floor or on Kevin's lap.

"Odin, have they started a search for the bombs yet?"

"SIXTY-SEVEN SECURITY AND MAINTENANCE EMPLOYEES HAVE DIVIDED INTO FOURTEEN SEPARATE SEARCH TEAMS. THEY ARE ADHERING PRECISELY TO THE PROTOCOLS INSt.i.tUTED TWO MONTHS AGO BY THE CHIEF OF SECURITY. TWENTY-EIGHT UNIFORMED POLICE OFFICERS ARE STANDING BY, BUT ARE NOT PARTIc.i.p.aTING IN THE SEARCH."

"Are any of them getting warm?"

"NO. IT IS UNLIKELY THAT THEY WILL DO SO. AS YOU KNOW, I DETERMINED THE SITES FOR DEPLOYMENT AFTER a.n.a.lYZING PERSONNEL MOVEMENT PATTERNS OVER A PERIOD OF THREE WEEKS. I WAS ABLE TO IDENTIFY BLIND SPOTS WITH A MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD OF BEING OVERLOOKED BY HUMAN OBSERVERS."

"Are the surveillance cameras at each site functioning properly?"

"YES."

"Are all the bombs armed?"

"YES."

"Good. Then let's run a fail-safe check at each site. Integrity sensors, detent switches, arrest and recall circuits-the works. I want to make sure nothing goes off because of a loose wire or because some jacka.s.s sticks a screwdriver in the wrong place."

"I AM DOING SO NOW. IN THE MEANTIME, SURVEILLANCE VIDEO FROM EACH SITE IS BEING DISPLAYED ON MONITORS A1 THROUGH A6 AND B1 THROUGH B6. VIDEO OF THE SEARCH TEAMS IS ON THE REMAINING TWELVE SCREENS. THEY CAN BE IDENTIFIED BY WHITE RIBBONS AFFIXED TO THEIR SECURITY BADGES."

Kevin spun his chair around and looked to the left of the door, where twenty-four desktop computers were arrayed on metal shelving units, filling the entire wall. He used these small computers to work out problems in parallel processing, or as overflow units when Odin needed to expand beyond his own mainframe. Right now, they were doing service as video monitors. Kevin was delighted to see all of the search activity going on-activity that he had set in motion. He particularly enjoyed the drawn, fearful faces of the searchers, and the gingerly way in which they would peer behind closet doors or under the lids of trash bins.

"Attaboy!" he exclaimed as a plumber in gray overalls tried to remove the faceplate from a drinking fountain near the main entrance, and let it slip to the floor with a clang. "If you had really been onto something, you'd be a sticky red smear on the floor right about now. Good thing you'll never know the real pinata is tucked safely behind an I-beam ten feet above your head."

A pair of chimes sounded in the interval of a rising fourth-Odin's signal for his attention. Kevin quickly pivoted back toward the main monitor.

"FAIL-SAFE CHECK IS COMPLETE. ALL UNITS ARE IN PEAK OPERATING CONDITION."

The monitor confirmed that each device was operating at 100 percent effectiveness.

"Excellent job, my friend," said Kevin with a grin. "Let's make sure we stay in control."

He looked at the names of the twelve devices on the board-twelve mountains of fiery death. To his ears, they were like music-twelve riffs, which he was ready to weave together into one razzle-dazzle, ear-splitting jam. Twelve strings, which he would play like Jimi Hendrix. Deception, disruption, destruction, death-all were at his fingertips. No one had ever heard rock 'n' roll like this before. Not the FBI, not the bomb squad, not the city of Chicago, not the blue-nosed directors of the Fletcher Memorial Medical Center.

Any rube can build a bomb, he told himself, but it takes a rare man to play it like a guitar.

He put a peanut in his shirt pocket and chuckled as Loki struggled to fish it out.

"Spotlight's on the stage, little monkey. And Dr. d.i.l.d.o is sitting front row, Orchestra A. Somehow I don't think he's gonna dig the music."

Flicking the bottom of his pocket, he pushed the peanut up high enough so Loki could reach it. Then he looked back at the status board and smiled.

"Time to make f.u.c.king history."

Harry's black deadline clock read seven hours and ten minutes.

"What about the canine squad?" asked Harry. "Don't you guys have some dogs that can sniff out C4?"

He was sitting in his office, in his big leather chair, with Avery and Lee on either side of him, each with his own laptop. The desk was getting cramped. On his left, the bearlike Avery crowded him with sheer body bulk, pushing his elbows out like retaining walls. Lee did the same thing by stacking three neat piles of papers in front of himself. Harry was beginning to wonder whose desk it was.

"Dogs? Sure, we have 'em on standby," said Avery.

"I think it's a little early for the dogs," said Lee. "We risk drawing too high a profile. Remember, the first message was explicit: 'All operations must remain normal.' The bomber may have an observer on the site. If he sees us going around with dogs, he may feel uneasy."

"But he can see the search teams," noted Harry.

"Oh, he expects us to make a search," said Lee. "He'd probably be disappointed if we didn't. But there's no need to be obvious about it. Dogs represent an escalation."

Just then, the desk phone rang. At a nod from Avery, Harry picked it up. He identified himself, listened a moment, and then handed the receiver to Lee.

"It's for you. Washington."

Lee spoke briskly with the party on the other end. After a couple of minutes, he put down the phone.

"That was the Bomb Data Center. The infrared scan came up positive. The C4 traces to a batch stolen from Quantico Marine Base six weeks ago. A rented van used in the theft was tracked to a credit card issued to a known member of the Al-Quds Martyrs Brigade. So there's a confirmation of our ransom message. It's from Al-Quds, all right. It turns out that the individual registered to that credit card had been under surveillance for some time, but dropped off the radar screen after the theft."