The Bubble Gum Thief (5 page)

Another twenty minutes passed without the Professor’s arrival. Dagny wondered if he was just a mythical figure, like a unicorn or Sasquatch. After all, McDougal’s life did seem to be the stuff of legend. In the late fifties, he disrupted a socialist-terrorist network based in New England, preventing an attack on the New York subway system. A few years later, he stopped a group of pro-Castro dissidents from setting off explosives in a handful of Miami hotels. And then in the late sixties, he infiltrated the Weathermen and helped sabotage a number of planned attacks, including the bombing of a noncommissioned officers’ dance at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. McDougal had fought domestic terrorism long before most people were even aware that it existed.

For all his heroics, McDougal had a reputation as a malcontent. When he learned that COINTELPRO—the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program in the sixties—had been gathering evidence against the Weathermen through illegal searches, he refused to work the case. He was rewarded for this principled stand with a stint in the Iowa field office, where he headed the investigation of an interstate cattle-thieving operation. Two years later, the cattle thieves were locked away, and McDougal began to work his way back into the Bureau’s good graces. He helped local police catch a serial killer in Des Moines, and then did the same in St. Louis, Detroit, and Indianapolis.

These successes won McDougal an invitation to work at the newly created Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico. At the BSU, he lectured new Academy recruits and his didactic and Socratic style earned him the nickname “the Professor.” Despite its derisive origins, McDougal actually liked the nickname and encouraged its use. And since he had no clear title at the Bureau, it was easy for most to simply refer to him as the Professor.

At first, McDougal’s work in the BSU was widely appreciated, but as he grew older and crankier, his act started to wear thin. In the early nineties, he started writing predictive and prescriptive articles criticizing Bureau operations and forecasting an onslaught of new domestic terrorism. For a while, they appeared in the FBI’s monthly
Law Enforcement Bulletin
, but when McDougal’s alarmist tone escalated, publication was refused.

Undaunted, McDougal self-published, faxing
Professor McDougal’s Journal
to field offices around the country. Younger agents referred to them as “Letters from Grandpa Simpson.” But after the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the attack on the USS
Cole
, these dispatches seemed more prophetic than crackpot.

Members of Congress quoted from McDougal’s missives when questioning Bureau leaders, which only earned McDougal additional enmity within the FBI. He was stripped of his lectures, moved to an isolated office, and given nothing to do.

Things changed when the new president was elected.

The president’s father had served as a senator in the 1960s. Some claimed that McDougal had tackled an assassin just as he was raising his gun to shoot the senator. Others said that McDougal dove through the air and intercepted the bullet with his body. Still others insisted that there had never been any gun at all, and that McDougal had discovered that the senator’s cook had been poisoning his boss’s food. Regardless, the election of
the president seemed to change the Professor’s fate, because he was subsequently allowed to create his own domestic terrorism course. Bureau leaders were not happy about this, hence the shabby classroom digs.

The years of undeserved indignities were said to have weighed heavily upon McDougal, and the man unfairly maligned as a crackpot had supposedly become one. That’s why few had signed up for the class, and why Brent’s presence was such a surprise.

Given the Professor’s heroic reputation, Dagny had expected him to be big and strong, but it was a short, slight man who finally limped through the door, looking more like an old mad scientist than some kind of James Bond. His small, round head started with a shiny bald spot and ended in a pointy grey beard. Round wire-rimmed glasses sat on his sharp nose. He wore a tweed jacket with patches on the arms, and his frail body shook with a frenetic energy, though he actually moved very slowly. A cane would have helped; Dagny figured he was too proud to use one. She guessed he was in his midseventies, though he could have been as old as eighty, or even ninety. It was hard to tell for sure; he just looked old.

Despite the Professor’s appearance, his voice was vibrant and strong.

“Welcome to what I am sure has been described to you as the end to your career in the Bureau.” He spoke in a quick, agitated manner. “I am an old coot, a has-been, a crackpot, a lunatic, a madman, right? You’ve heard all of these things, I assume. There are rumors and stories about me. I won’t discuss any of them. That’s not why we are here. Suffice it to say, you can look around this room and draw your own conclusions about my stature within the Bureau.

“Some of you—all of you, I hope—are wondering what this program is supposed to be. Six weeks of what, exactly? We already
have counterterrorism training, so what is this, besides a vanity project?” He paused a beat and then continued. “I’ll tell you what it is: it’s another view.

“After September eleventh, the Bureau put four thousand agents on the case. That’s what you do with a big case, right? You throw people at it? I’m skeptical. I believe that a handful of people can do a better job than a thousand. We spend too much time looking for information and not enough time analyzing it. We are handicapped by our size. We have too many layers. We are—pay attention to me!” The Professor threw a book at the woman sleeping next to Dagny. It missed, but still woke her. She looked like she was about to cry. The Professor was unmoved. “There may come a time when you are working a case, and you will have to make decisions, and those decisions will have import. If you make the wrong decision, people could die. Perhaps many. Perhaps thousands or even millions. I may or may not be able to tell you something that helps you make the right decision. But God help you if I do and you can’t remember it when it matters. This class is important!”

The Professor limped around to the front of the desk and leaned against it. He scanned the room, taking inventory of his disciples. Dagny pegged his look for extreme disappointment.

“Agent Gray?” he called out.

Dagny was startled. “Yes.”

“How is practicing law different than practicing law enforcement?”

“In law you can always ask for a continuance.”

“Precisely. Now suppose that you know a terrorist is making bombs in Austin, Texas. Where do you suspect he is getting his materials?”

“From a college laboratory.”

“Which one?” he asked, with eyes still fixed on her.

“The University of Texas.”

“Why not Concordia? Or Austin Community College? Wouldn’t these smaller colleges have fewer security measures in place?”

“It’s easier to blend in at a big school. At smaller schools, people in the lab know everyone who uses the lab. At UT, there are so many people that no one would think twice about seeing someone they didn’t recognize.”

“And why else?”

She felt as if she were on the rapid-fire segment of a game show. “The University of Texas is likely to have a larger variety of chemicals, and also a larger supply of each chemical, which means that you might find what you need and be able to take some without a noticeable depletion of the supply.”

“Mr. Walton?”

“Yes, sir?” Opie stammered.

“Suppose someone from Concordia University tells you that they are missing small quantities of ammonium nitrate and chlorine gas. Are you worried?”

“I’m actually”—his voice cracked—“a forensic accountant.”

“I didn’t ask what you are. I asked if you’re worried.”

“It’s not my specialty, so—”

“Are you worried?” the Professor bellowed.

“I am now,” Walton said. No one was brave enough to laugh.

“One minute with the Google you kids are always talking about will show you that you need to be worried about the creation of nitrogen trichloride, which will explode violently if heated to above sixty degrees Celsius.”

The next three hours were more of the same. The Professor grilled his captives on the explosive properties of various chemical agents, the philosophical treatises underpinning the modern ecoterrorist movement, the historical and biological differences between the tangelo and the clementine, the emergence
of three-dimensional imaging in ballistic identification, and the fundamental failings of the legal profession. Each of these digressions was punctuated with periodic outbursts of anger and occasional, but mild, cursing. The Professor threw three more books, confiscated two Game Boys, called one agent fat, and finally drove the sleepy woman to tears.

Most of the students sat in silent, abject horror. Dagny loved every moment of it.

She did not love the trek to the medical center. Since Cooper’s ultimatum, she’d eaten less, not more. Maybe it was the stress of the situation. Maybe she thought it would be better to start at a lower weight, so that it would be easier to show progress. She did not try to analyze her behavior; she knew she couldn’t justify it.

A man in a doctor’s coat met her at the top of the building’s steps. His name tag read “Malloy.” He looked her up and down, fished some keys from his pocket, and unlocked the door. “Follow me,” he said, grimly.

He led her through the waiting area, down a dark corridor, and past a series of examination rooms. With his thumb, he herded her inside the last room and flicked on the light. He opened a drawer under the examination table, withdrew a paper gown, and tossed it at her. “Change into this and then meet me in the hallway.”

“I can’t just wear my clothes?”

He smirked and shook his head before closing the door behind him. That smirk stayed with her. She’d seen enough smirking doctors to last a lifetime.

She changed as instructed and walked out into the hall. Dr. Malloy was waiting by the scale. He motioned for her to step onto it. Bathroom scales are kinder, Dagny thought. They give instant readings. Physicians’ scales require the sliding of weights and the settling of levers, and this only serves to ratchet up the suspense
and maximize the agony. Physicians’ scales were suitable for produce or livestock, not people.

Malloy fiddled with the smaller weight, sliding it back and forth until the beam finally settled. One hundred eight. It was actually better than she had expected. She had two months to gain seventeen pounds.

She changed back into her clothes, and he walked her back down the hallway to the main doors. There was no humor in his face. “You would be perfectly healthy at one forty. This one twenty-five...” He shook his head. “If it had been up to me, your target wouldn’t be one twenty-five,” he sighed. “I’ll see you next week.”

Dagny nodded and started down the steps. She felt relieved that the ordeal was over, until she realized that it had just begun.

January 17—Alexandria, Virginia

Dagny climbed out of bed and walked blindly through the darkness to the bathroom. She flicked on the light, stripped off her nightgown, and looked at herself in the mirror.

People had told her that she was beautiful, but they were wrong. Sure, there were some things she liked—her high cheekbones, for instance, or her long legs, or her small breasts; the silky-smooth dark hair that hung past her shoulders; the soft olive skin that had slipped down the gene pool from a Korean grandmother she’d never met. But when her gaze shifted from isolated parts to her body as a whole, everything fell apart. She turned away from the mirror and looked over to the bathroom scale, pondered its utility and purpose, and decided once again to leave it alone.

Back in the bedroom, Dagny dressed quickly—nylon running shorts, a sports bra, and the Harvard Law sweatshirt she wore only under the cover of darkness. She pulled on her advanced-performance, friction-free, low-cut socks and the new pair of Nikes that she’d laced the night before. Grabbing her keys, her iPod, and her gun, she raced downstairs.

At five in the morning, all of the homes in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria were dark except for hers: a small Prairie-style two-story—all horizontal lines, overhanging eaves, and intricately cut wood—set back on a heavily wooded quarter-acre lot. It was fifteen degrees outside when Dagny ran out of the house. The cold air felt like a sharp slap against her bare legs, but after a dozen strides, the sting faded.

It was quiet except for the buzz of a dying streetlight, the flicker of which glistened against dangling icicles, remnants of a freezing rain from the night before. No cars filtered through the streets. The morning papers had not yet come. These early hours belonged to Dagny alone.

After five minutes of sidewalks and streets, Dagny reached the Mount Vernon Trail, which snaked along the Potomac from George Washington’s plantation toward the District. She turned left on the trail, cranked the alt-piano rock of Ben Folds’s
Rockin’ the Suburbs
, and sprinted through dark woods and past wet swamps. She followed the trail around Reagan National Airport, under the roar of a United jet taking to the skies. A mile later, she was across Gravelly Point, a large grassy field that jutted out along the Potomac. During the summer, the field was covered in blankets and the air was full of Frisbees. Now, in the cold and dark, Dagny saw only a single homeless man, wrapped in a blanket and leaning against a tree. He followed her with his eyes.