Mortal Fear. Greg Iles

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СКАЧАТЬ Lake Champion. It’s a tiny little nothing of a town.”

      I feel my heart pumping. “So? Are they going to arrest him or what?”

      “Not that easy, I’m afraid. You’re not going to believe this. Lake Champion, Wyoming, is one of the last towns in America with electro-mechanical phone switching. It’s like the Dark Ages. They actually have these complicated metal gizmos that spin around making physical connections, and there are rows and rows of them stacked on top of each other, from floor to ceiling.”

      “What does that mean as far as tracing Brahma?”

      Miles chuckles softly. “It means it takes an actual human being running up and down the aisles between those switches to trace the connections. With digital tracing, you can move through twenty states in a couple of minutes without getting permission from anybody. But to authorize an actual human being to chase down mechanical connections in one of these little towns, you have to have a court order.”

      “What?”

      Miles is laughing harder. “Here’s the brilliant part. To get that court order, you have to prove that a crime is being committed in the state where that town is. It’s one hell of a buffer system, and Brahma knows it. Rather than going higher and higher tech—which is what most hackers do and which is ultimately a no-win game—he goes to the simplest possible solution. He goes analog. It’s exactly what I’d do, man.”

      Exactly what I’d do … “So what happens now?”

      “Baxter is strong-arming a Wyoming judge as we speak, trying to get permission for a local yokel phone guy to do the trace.”

      “How long will that take?”

      “Hel-lo.” Miles sighs with almost sexual satisfaction. “Your question just became academic. The Strobekker account just went dead. Brahma’s history.” Miles’s voice rises to the exaggerated bellow of a game show announcer: “The switches in Wyoming are no longer connec-ted!”

      I picture blue-suited FBI agents in the EROS office staring at Miles with murder in their eyes. “What alias was he using?”

      “Kali this time. I haven’t seen that one before.”

      “C-A-L-I?”

      “No. K-A-L-I.”

      “Who’s Kali?”

      “The Hindu mother goddess, consort of Shiva, which is one of his other aliases. Kali’s an ugly black bitch. Wears a belt of skulls, carries a severed head and a knife, has six arms. She’s the betrayer, the terrible one of many names. Weird that he’d log on with a female alias.”

      “Severed head? Christ. Are you an expert in this Eastern stuff or what?”

      “I’ve dabbled. Read the Vedas, the Upanishads, some other things. They make a lot more sense than the chickenshit dualism of Christianity. You know, you really should—”

      “I don’t have time for it, Miles.”

      “Neither do I. Someone just told me the Wise and Wonderful Oz wants me on another line.”

      “Oz?”

      “Arthur Lenz. He’s the man behind the curtain on this thing, isn’t he?”

      “I guess. I’ve got to run, Miles. Keep me posted. But use my answering machine, not email.”

      “Don’t sweat it. Nobody reads my email if I don’t want them to. Not even God.”

      I tear off Lenz’s fax and run for the Explorer. I believe nobody reads Miles’s email if he doesn’t want them to, but what I’m thinking as I crank the engine is this:

      Maybe somebody should.

       FIFTEEN

      I am crossing the Washington Beltway in a yellow taxi driven by a black lay preacher. Lenz told me I would be met at Dulles Airport by FBI agents, but none showed, so I took the cab. The driver tries to make conversation—he still knows a lot of people from “down home,” meaning the South—but I am too absorbed in the object of my journey to keep up my end of the exchange.

      Lenz’s private office is supposed to be in McLean, Virginia. All I know is that my lay preacher is leading me deep into upscale suburbia. Old money suburbia. Colonial homes, Mercedeses, Beemers (700 series), matched Lexi, tasteful retail and office space. The driver pulls into the redbrick courtyard of a three-story building and stops. You could probably buy five acres of Delta farmland for the monthly rent on Lenz’s office.

      The first floor of the building is deserted but for ferns, its walls covered with abstract paintings that look purchased by the square yard. A bronze-lettered notice board directs me to the third floor. When the elevator door opens on three, I am facing a short corridor with a door at the end. No letters on the door.

      Beyond the door I find a small, well-appointed waiting room. There’s a lot of indirect light, but the only window faces the billing office. A dark-skinned receptionist sits behind the window. I am not looking at her. I’m looking at a pale, gangly, longhaired young man folded oddly across a wing chair and ottoman. He is snoring.

      “Miles?” I say softly.

      He does not stir. A Hewlett-Packard notebook computer and a cellular telephone lie on the floor beside him. The computer screen swirls with a psychedelic screen-saver program.

      “Miles.”

      The snoring stops. Miles Turner flips the hair out of his eyes and looks up at me without surprise. His eyes are the same distant blue they have always been.

      “Hello, snitch,” he says. “What’s in the briefcase? The names of everybody who works at EROS?”

      “Fresh underwear. What the hell are you doing here?”

      “Same as you, I guess. The mad doctor wants to pry open my skull, see what he can find. I hope he’s in the mood for drama. I certainly am.”

      “I can’t believe you agreed to come.”

      A fleeting smile touches his lips. “Didn’t have any choice, did I? I’ve got an old drug charge hanging over my head. All Lenz has to do is tell his sidekick—Baxter—to push the button, and I go to jail. Do not pass GO, et cetera.”

      “Jesus.”

      Miles leans his angular head back with a theatrical flourish and tries to catch the eye of the receptionist. I take the opportunity to study him more closely. It’s been four years since I saw him in the flesh. Miles long ago vowed never to set foot in Mississippi again. When I saw him last, in New Orleans, he had short hair and wore fairly conservative clothes. No Polo or khakis, of course, but your basic Gap in basic black. He’s wearing black again today, but his hair hangs over his shoulders, his sweater is not only torn but looks cheap, and he is dirty. I don’t smell him—yet—but he plainly hasn’t bathed for at least a couple of days.

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