The Black Silent

CHAPTER 37

"I found another file that's not even protected," Sam said. "It's in a CAD program and it's huge. There's a floor plan, and there's a photo."

He showed Haley and Sarah.

"I know that place," Sarah said, sitting up in bed. "We went on picnics. Waldron Island is across the way." She pointed.

"Yes, it is," Haley said. "I wonder if that's the place?"

"Deer Harbor Road, near Turtle Mountain-Orcas Nob. No Trespassing signs."

Sam and Haley listened carefully as Sarah explained how to get there.

"You know things that don't seem significant," Sam said to Sarah. "That's often the way we find something that nobody wants found."

Haley jumped off the bed. "I need to check on the Harlasens."

"The men took me, but they didn't hurt them," Sarah said, finally wearing out. She looked groggy.

"When you were there, they didn't hurt them," Sam said.

"We need to make sure they're safe now before we run over to Orcas. I'll take the ship's tender," Sam said. "It's fast and will get me close in a hurry."

"On the water you'll be a sitting duck. Not to mention, you're crippled when you get ashore," Haley said. "It's getting worse. I can see it. You won't be able to run, so you'll fight. Outnumbered. Don't go by yourself."

Sam's cell rang, but the signal was bad and the caller disappeared. The phone recorded the number. Using the yacht's satellite phone, he called back.

"This is Eugene."

Harlasen, Sam mouthed to Sarah and Haley.

"Where you at?" Sam asked.

"Out in the forest, up on a hill. I didn't want you to come looking."

"You got away?"

"Yep, and we'll be a little trigger-happy here, I'm afraid. We've got guns. In this forest at night, I think we can take them down."

"I'm sorry about all this, Eugene. Stay put and good luck. Do you know where we get a boat to head to Orcas? I'd like something really fast and a little bigger than a Zodiac tender."

"Neighbor over there on Aleck Bay has a big Boston Whaler anchored out," Harlasen said. "He's really a hobbyist and not a fisherman, but he has some crab pots and runs a couple long lines. Sometimes when he's away, I check them. He's normally got a key under the driver's seat, right-hand side. It's on a ledge and hard to get to. Sometimes I have to put another key in the crack to get it out. If you wreck it, we'll have to replace it."

"Understand." Sam wished him well again, hung up, and called Ernie, who would be craving his sleep by this time. Ernie answered on the first ring; Sam began by explaining what had happened in the meantime. He emphasized the torture: more civil-rights violations for Ernie to pursue.

"My boss wants me to call the Washington State attorney general first thing this morning. He probably won't be home. I don't know what to tell you."

"We have got to get some independent law enforcement in here," Sam began. "You would be good."

"With no official jurisdiction and against orders?"

"Uh-huh. This is so egregious, somebody is bound to do something. You might as well be here, Ernie, and get the glory. We are talking big things, Ernie, very big."

"Like what?" asked Ernie.

"Like terrorists blowing up the ocean."

"Are you out of your mind? It sounds hokey."

"Maybe."

Sam proceeded to give Ernie a breakdown of all Ben's discoveries, with an emphasis on the methane angle.

There was a very long pause.

Sam could imagine Ernie with his chin in his hand, squeezing it so tight his knuckles were turning white.

"This is serious."

"This involves the most important secrets to overcoming aging. And it's not just the future we're concerned about. We have people killing for Ben Anderson's knowledge,"

Sam said.

"All right. Hell. I'll probably get fired. Actually, I'm already in San Francisco. It automatically rings through to my cell. I hope my career survives this. Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, is that where I go?"

"Come there and I'll call you on the cell and tell you where we are. But if something goes wrong, we're going to Orcas Island, around Lime Kiln Road, or the Sawmill Road.

Somewhere in there is an unmarked road. It has a couple branches. Follow the biggest No Trespassing signs."

"What I don't do for you." Ernie sighed. "Out of my jurisdiction, out of my mind-I tell you."

"Well, there is one more thing."

"Of course. There always is."

Sam knew he wouldn't like the next part.

"I'm on the Internet with a laptop through a satellite uplink. I need Grogg, wherever he is, to remote control Big Brain and then use Big Brain to remote control this PC and download the contents of this PC and break into some files."

"Are you kidding me? They'll have my ass."

"Don't go through channels; just call Grogg. It'll be on us."

"I'll tell Grogg what you need," Ernie said. "And let's be clear: I am not authorizing it."

"Perfect; that will insure Grogg's full commitment to the job," Sam joked. Another pause followed; then Sam explained how to get to the files and Ernie took notes.

Sam set up the computer online through the ship's satellite network so that it would be ready for a Grogg job.

From the resort on Lopez, Khan launched Sheriff's Boats 1 and 2 with sixteen of the hired men and made for Orcas. Others took vehicles on the morning interisland ferry.

Frick sent Khan ahead without him, wanting to stay at a command center until somebody found something.

Orcas already had four deputies and five patrol cars. The sergeant remained drugged in a basement. They would keep the real deputies on the roads and checking leads. They'd use the special deputies for assaults on suspicious properties.

The cold air chilled Frick's skin as he stood on the back deck of the resort, sipping coffee, anxious for the caffeine to take hold. On the eastern horizon the black night sky was giving way to morning and he could see the first signs of light off in the west.

His radio crackled. Delia had McStott for him.

Frick tried not to sigh audibly.

"What is it?"

"I still don't know what Anderson's been making here in the lab, but I'm beginning to think I know what he's using it on."

"Yeah?"

"People." McStott let that sink in.

Big surprise. Frick almost laughed. "Is that so?"

McStott missed the sarcasm. "I think so. I mean, I'm pretty sure."

"If it turns out it's true and this stuff works, you'll be a rich man, McStott. If not, you may be a dead one."

Frick let McStott think on that. Once an egghead, always an egghead. McStott still didn't understand that he was dead meat either way.

The motors made an even slick hum as the boat rode over the flat obsidian smooth sea.

The Boston Whaler was like a thoroughbred whose owner had fitted it to a plow.

Mechanically, it was excellent transportation, traveling comfortably along at twenty-five knots at a little over half-throttle.

They pulled into Brown Island at Friday Harbor before daylight. There were some people that lived there year-round-the Milfords-but they were traveling in Europe.

The dock was old but serviceable. They had dressed Sarah's neck wounds and various other abrasions left courtesy of Rafe Black. Her muscles were giving her trouble left over from Frick's tight bindings, but she was tough.

They went to the back door of the Milford place, a lovely well-maintained cottage, and Sarah found the key in its place.

"Are you sure you're okay by yourself?" Haley asked.

"I'm sure," Sarah said. With big hugs they parted.

"God, I hope she's safe," Haley said as they climbed back in the Boston Whaler.

Without more words they shoved off and headed for Orcas.

They were in a hurry but had almost been killed enough times for one night so that they kept the boat at a reasonable speed. It was twilight Monday morning and using the spotlight was perhaps a little risky from the detection standpoint. They snapped it on occasionally through the tide rips, where wood collected. By the time they were well into Upright Channel, it was approaching sunrise and they could see well enough without the artificial light. As the gray morning painted the sky, they increased the speed to forty knots.

On the gunnels and the floorboards the evening dew vibrated in a soft glistening and that, together with the spray, made it a very wet place outside the fiberglass and canvas enclosure. For the Pacific Northwest's fall and winter, the boat had a hard fiberglass top.

Inside, a vigorous diesel heater blew hot air, a hypothermic's dream.

Sam could not remember when he had been so tired. As he sat in the captain's chair and sagged, Haley watched him. In three or four more hours it would be about twenty-four hours since the nightmare had begun.

"Sleep," she said, and put her hand on his arm and took the wheel.

"Why don't you sleep," he said. "I've got to end this thing before I sleep."

"Me too," she said. "Me too."

They skimmed along in silence, dislodging the occasional seabird, a gull, a marbled murrelet, and a spoonbill duck. The usual tangles of kelp, driftwood, and sea grasses floated along, like small islands, sometimes a resting place for the sandpipers. They were going too fast to see the jellyfish, but the jumping bait fish were visible as a wrinkling on the surface and occasional miniature splashes. Sam spied plumes of white mist from a pod of orcas, followed by their black humps and large dorsals as they traveled San Juan Channel, past Shaw.

Sam glanced at Haley as she smoothed her hair back the way women tend to do when they know that a certain man is watching. He could not help enjoying the look of her and the angles of her face, and the look of the eyes that even now did not completely hide some mirth and tender guile.

In the end he couldn't stand the waiting. Frick was coming in from West Sound, having decided to take Sheriff's Boat 3, when Rolf finally got more specific in his clues. He relayed them to Khan and expected at any moment to hear Khan call in from a big, lodgelike place out in the forest on a bluff overlooking the water. Just as he was growing impatient, the call came through.

"It's right on President Channel."

Frick listened as Khan described what he and his men had found. "It's high up on the rocks. I'm down the road here, where the reception's better."

"What did you see?"

"The place looks like it was occupied very recently. We found a pipe burning in an ashtray. Hot coffee in a big multi-gallon dispenser. Suitcases in the rooms, shaving gear and toiletries out. It looks like they all just ran out of the house, but where-I don't know. They don't seem to be hiding in the bushes."

"Tell your guys to tear the place apart," Frick said.

"Give me credit," Khan replied. "I already did. They'll call me the minute they find something. Just so you know, the sign outside is for an Astrology Research Center. A local told us that several different astrology groups come here regularly. In theory, we could be breaking in on a bunch of zodiac buffs."

"Suddenly disappearing astrology buffs. That sound likely to you?"

"I hear you."

"Look, Khan, we're way too far gone to worry about who gets hurt. Keep all your men inside, unless they find something to chase outside. First sign of anything, call me and I'm there."

If anything went wrong, he didn't want to be there. The feebies had been asking a lot of questions of dispatch; it was hard enough just dodging them.

"You said we would leave by seven-thirty; that was half an hour ago," Rachael told the people around the table.

Lew put his hand on hers, obviously trying to calm her and keep her cooperating with the authorities. It was very Republican of him; she would have to explain the virtues of rebellion as the Founding Fathers understood it.

"We are going to leave in just a few minutes," good old Melrose said for the benefit of the FBI and Homeland Security people around the table.

"First we want your personal assessment of Ben Anderson," the Special Agent in Charge, a woman who had told Rachael to call her Gayle, asked Rachael. "Is he honorable? Does he have a plan? Is he stable?"

The dozen-plus other people listened with very serious faces. Gayle Killingsworth was the Special Agent in Charge of the downtown Seattle field office. Apparently she was married to a federal judge, if the banter at the coffee urn was to be believed. It disgusted Rachael that on this morning there was a coffee urn and that there was banter. People could be dying.

"I've answered all of these questions" was Rachael's response.

"But we keep learning things every time you explain," Gayle said with a Good Morning America smile.

"I have been at parties and social gatherings with Ben Anderson probably more than twenty times. I have dined with him more than a dozen times…," she started again.

After five more minutes of how she knew what she knew, and questions about Haley and her near lifelong relationship with Haley-and her utter conviction that Haley had stolen nothing, Rachael slammed her hand on the table without warning.

Lew winced; she regretted his discomfort. Dating him after this was going to be difficult.

"I cannot sit here and answer the same questions while the lives of my friends are at stake," she said.

Gayle leaned forward and brushed back her short, well-coiffed hair.

"As we speak, we have agents moving into the area. We are on the phones. We have not located Garth Frick or the men you describe. It will do us no good to start flying around the San Juans."

"Actually, it might. I know the islands. Your people know nothing." Rachael's voice was intense, and Lew winced again. "Now let's get off our butts and talk while we travel."

Gayle sat back. "Get me Agent Willinsky."

A young male agent nodded and dialed a phone.

"How are we doing?" she asked when the phone was handed to her. "I don't understand why it isn't a simple matter of asking the dispatcher." There was another pause. "If the dispatcher refers us to Frick and says they're moving about, I want to talk with Officer Frick then. I want to know where they are so that we can render assistance." Another long pause. "Insist that you speak with him. Do you understand?" She hung up, disgusted, but tried to show a more hopeful demeanor. "I've changed my mind. We go now. I don't like what I'm hearing. At Port Angeles we can use a coast guard helicopter.

From the reports Lopez is the latest hot spot. We'll go there. It's civil rights and potential terrorist activity." She trained her eyes on Rachael. "Satisfied?"

"Thank you so much," Rachael said, Lew's hand death-gripped in her own.

At last they were leaving; now maybe they could do some good.