Cries of the Lost (36 page)

Best,

Joselito

Bingo. I selected that address and hit the “From” button. A long list popped up.

Joselito:

Feelings are mutual. I regret that reassignment more than anything I’ve ever done. I hoped I would never see you again, so I wouldn’t have to relive the regret. But there you were, standing in that room with all those security wonks and I melted. Damn you beautiful hombre.

Eloise

This went on for more than a year, with exchanges like this typical:

Eloise:

Thank you for last night. It’s even better than before.

Joselito

Joselito:

Likewise. Come to DC.

Eloise

The correspondence took the expected path—more and more ardor ineffectively disguised by fumbling euphemism. Joselito was more circumspect, but his co-conspirator was too addled by passion to contain herself. I felt all the more the voyeur, but I’d stopped feeling bad about that. I just stayed in the moment. A moment that lasted another two hours, during which Natsumi brought in breakfast and a big vat of coffee.

Then the chain took an interesting turn:

Joselito:

Very cool case out of the Caymans. I can tell you all about it tomorrow when we’re doing you-know-what. It’s very exciting. I love exciting you.

Eloise

Eloise:

Don’t forget what I told you. I know about these people. You know what I do. We find that money, we can be together.

Joselito

I felt my face heat up. I must have also been making noises, because Natsumi stuck her head in.

“You’re making noises,” she said.

“That’s what a cyber-hound sounds like when he’s after a rabbit.”

“Nut case.”

Joselito:

Let’s talk about this on the phone. I’ll call your cell.

Eloise

The emails stopped after that for about a month, then another came through:

Eloise:

You do your part, I’ll do mine. Pick out a house. Anywhere in the world.

Joselito

P.S.—No more emails. Close your account and get a tech to wipe clean your hard drive.

I went to the FBI website and started poking around. The executive directors of each division were listed, along with a description of their backgrounds and types of past service. No Eloise. I used the search box, but nothing came up there. Then I realized I was on the wrong site, and pulled up a satellite site dedicated to the International Operations Division.

Personnel weren’t listed, but press releases were, going back a dozen years. That’s where I found Eloise.

Eloise Harmon named Special Agent for
Liaison with International Division

Director Robert S. Mueller III has named Eloise Harmon Special Agent for Liaison Affairs with the International Operations Division, reporting to the Assistant Director of that division, Steven Holt. After six years as Legal Attaché assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, Spain, Ms. Harmon brings back to Washington considerable firsthand knowledge of the challenges and opportunities of the international environment.

“I’m keen on putting to use my experience in Spain in the service of our Legal Attachés across the world. Each faces unique challenges, but all share the need for solid support here in DC, as well as smooth and productive relationships with other international law enforcement agencies.”

The release went on to describe her education and steady rise through the ranks of the FBI, most of which took place outside the country—in Spain, but also Latin America.

The last paragraph noted she was born in Chile to an American engineer named Lyle Harmon and a Chilean national, Isabella Morales.

That was it. For the first time in weeks, I felt the surge of adrenaline that came with clarity, with the first intimations of a solution to the problem I faced. I didn’t exactly know why, but I knew my own mind, damaged though it was.

“All you bastards who want to kill us,” I said out loud. “I’m coming after you.”

Natsumi stuck her head in the room again. “What did you just say?”

C
HAPTER
22

I
’ve discovered what’s at the center of everything we’ve been going through since we landed on Grand Cayman,” I said to Natsumi, as we lay fully clothed on the bed staring up at the ceiling, a habit I’d transferred to her. “The driving force behind everyone’s behavior, behind every action we’ve observed.”

“And that is?”

“Us.”

“Oh.”

We lay quietly for a while, Natsumi respectfully waiting for me to continue my story.

“As a researcher,” I said, “I’m trained to stay removed from my subject—aloof, unbiased, entirely objective. People like me are ill-prepared to consider our own influence on the study’s results. Even though Werner Heisenberg, the physicist, taught us long ago that the observer will always have an effect on the observed. We haven’t just affected the experiment, we are the experiment.”

“We decided on our own to go to Grand Cayman,” said Natsumi.

“We did. Does a lab rat know the scientist has placed a tasty pellet at the end of the maze? Does a fruit fly question the ready availability of another sexy fruit fly in a lab container? The lure was set, they knew we’d bite.”

“I had a bad feeling about that bank,” said Natsumi.

“You were right.”

“So what’s it all about?”

“The money. I took a little over ten million dollars out of that account. Even by today’s greedy standards, that’s real money. They didn’t know what was in the safe-deposit box, but they assumed it was worth a lot, and so just waited for the lab rat who emptied the liquid accounts to show up sniffing for more. And show up he did.”

“What’s he going to do now?”

“Tear down the lab.”

F
INDING
E
LOISE
Harmon’s home address wasn’t easy, but not as hard as it should have been. She was, after all, one of the top people in a division of the FBI critical to national security.

She was also on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. And an active supporter of her alma mater’s recruitment committee, and a frequent user of her local library, and the editor of her swim club’s seasonal newsletter. This exposed, a home address will always squirt out, you can’t stop it.

I wrote her a note and sent it by FedEx to her house.

Ms. Harmon:

Interesting reading:
[email protected]

David Reinhart

I had a few more notes to send. The first to Joselito.

Sr. Gorrotxategi:

I want to meet with Domingo Angel here in America. I have information he will consider extremely valuable. I have things to ask in return, but will only deal face-to-face.

El Timador, the guy who hacked your computer (I know about Eloise)

Rodrigo:

I just saved your life once again, while you continue wanting to take mine. If you harm me you will never see a dime of that money. What is the sense of that?

El Timador

Evelyn:

How are things? Are you happy to be back in Connecticut? How’re the Bosniaks? It’s likely your phone and online activity are being monitored. Even the disposable is insecure. The return address on this FedEx is fake. I will try to drop you messages, but for the time being, I don’t know how you can safely return the favor. But I’ll figure it out.

BTW, burn this note and the envelope and sprinkle the ashes in the backyard.

Shelly:

As far as I know, we weren’t followed home. But I have to stay off electronic communications. I know the name of that little underground mammal, and it’s a juicier bugger than I thought. I need an introduction to Steven Holt, the Assistant Director of the International Operations Division. Nobody below him can be trusted.

“How can he make an introduction if he can’t talk to you or send email?” asked Natsumi, looking over my shoulder.

“Working on that.”

I was also working on another venue change. We’d clearly overstayed our welcome in New York City.

After pondering the options, I said to Natsumi, “I’m homesick for Connecticut.”

“Stamford?” she asked.

“Litchfield County. As far from other houses as possible.”

“Should I start the search?”

“While I pack.”

F
OR
THE
second time in recent days, Natsumi and I were traveling up the West Side Highway on the way out of the city and up to Connecticut. We’d cleared out of the hotel and traded our rental car for a Dodge SUV into which we piled all our gear, including some new stuff sourced in New York City, the world’s greatest source of all manner of stuff.

Natsumi had come up with a rental in the Connecticut town of Canaan, a low-density farming and vacation community in the far northwest corner of the state, not to be confused with the gold-plated New York City suburb of New Canaan down on the coast.

The property included more than two hundred acres of mixed forest and open uncultivated fields, several outbuildings and a farmhouse built in the mid-nineteenth century in the Empire style, which meant it was big and weird-looking, with a mansard roof and clock tower shooting two extra stories above the three-story building.

“I couldn’t find anything more remote,” said Natsumi. “In addition to the farm’s own acreage, state parks and watershed abut all four sides. The closest neighbor is two miles away, and he’s sort of a hermit living inside huge piles of newspapers and secondhand clothing. The agent thought he might be dead in there, in which case the next living person is a breeder of beagles a few miles further out. If you know beagles, you know why.”

“My parents loved dogs, but thought it was unfair to keep them in apartments. So I satisfied my dog needs playing with the Pomeranian living happily in the apartment next door.”

“My Japanese mother used to say, ‘Cats, dogs, what’s next, water buffalo?’ ”

“It’s a slippery slope.”

The traffic and capacity of the roadways diminished over the next two hours until we were riding over a road that conformed to every rise and fall, twist and turn of the topography.

Our SUV handled the increasing challenges with barely a wobble or sway.

We cracked our windows to let in cool, fresh air slightly tinged with the smell of manure.

Guided by my smartphone’s GPS, we eventually came to the head of the narrow, unpaved driveway that ran through stands of mature hardwoods and fluffy hemlocks, then open grassland spotted with conical red cedars, and finally up to the imposing farmhouse facade.

Though a modestly ornamented version of the Empire form, the house still looked like it had broken away from a pre-industrial, upper-class Parisian enclave and wandered off into the wilderness.

“If they’d exiled Napoleon in Litchfield County instead of Saint Helena,” said Natsumi.

“Lots of room to spread out.”

When Natsumi had rented the place online, she’d clicked on the “Will take as is, just leave the key under the mat,” and that’s where it was. The front foyer was impressively cavernous, even for a big house. A central staircase swooped up to a second-story balcony. The mahogany railing, stained the color of dark chocolate, was missing approximately every fifth spindle. The walls were painted a deep blue and the plaster ceiling had been haphazardly patched more than once, though nothing was currently falling.

The walls in the living room were covered with an expensive-looking woven material in a color Natsumi called pinky-beige. It was furnished in musty over-built and overstuffed Victoriana and eclectic salvage. The kitchen was clean and well equipped, all but one wall freshly sheet-rocked, though hooks and shelves screwed into the bare studs were well deployed as open storage.

The rest of the house followed suit, successfully avoiding the confines of a unifying decorative motif. We picked the bedroom with the best bed for sleeping and the biggest one for electronics. The other five were held in reserve.

While Natsumi went out for provisions, I set up the gear, opened a fresh IP relationship and dove out into the web.

One of my graduate professors would describe research as a methodical progression, searching for hidden pathways that would allow you to move along from phase to phase. I hated that idea. To me, there was nothing linear about it. Where he saw chain links, I saw a wild, gnarly bush. There was no gleaming, singular truth at the end of the journey. Only a jumble of approximate facts and assumptions, leading to a set of probabilities.