The Green Trap (29 page)

 

L
ionel Gould sat on his oversized bed, propped on a small mountain of pillows, and watched Elena Sandoval hang up the phone at his curved teak desk across the room. She was wearing a shimmering robe of green silk, a very old Gould family heirloom, very clinging.

“An excellent performance, Elena,” Gould said, smiling at her. “Excellent. He'll lead us to this Cardoza fellow now.”

Sandoval stood up. The robe slipped open.

“He doesn't know where the man is,” she said.

“Perhaps so. But you've given him the incentive to find out. Incentives are good. He'll move heaven and earth to find him now.”

Sandoval said nothing. She simply stood by the bedroom desk, naked beneath the delicate robe.

Gould patted the bedsheet beside him. “Come back to bed, Elena. The night is young.”

Stone-faced, she slipped the robe off her shoulders and let it fall to the thickly carpeted floor. Gould perspired heavily as she walked slowly toward him.

S
AN
C
LEMENTE
, CA—Jeff Greenbaum grins when he drives past gas stations. With gasoline prices reaching for the stratosphere, Greenbaum claims his car gets 250 miles to the gallon of gas.

That's because Greenbaum modified his car, making it a “plug-in” hybrid.

Greenbaum's Toyota Prius was a hybrid when he bought it, powered by a combination of a normal gasoline engine and a hydrogen-based fuel cell. But that wasn't good enough for Greenbaum, a retired hardware executive and dedicated environmentalist.

“Electricity is the cleanest form of energy we have,” Greenbaum notes. “I figured that I could use electricity to power my auto.”

So the trunk and rear sear of Greenbaum's Prius are filled with batteries that provide power to the electrical engine that is normally driven by the hydrogen fuel cell. Greenbaum plugs his battery pack into the wall socket in his garage overnight, and is ready for a day's driving in the morning.

“I just use the gasoline engine to get my buggy started,” he says. “From then on she runs on electricity.”

Greenbaum believes that if everyone converted their automobiles to his type of “plug-in” power, the nation's need for imported petroleum would be cut by more than half.

But electric utility spokesperson Glenda Swarthout commented that a swing toward “plug-in”
power for the nation's automobiles would put an enormous strain on existing electrical power plants. “You'd see brownouts and blackouts until we could build new plants to provide the needed electricity,” she pointed out

And those power plants burn fossil fuels, such as petroleum, natural gas and coal. Asked what he thought about the potential increase in pollution from an enormous increase in the number of electrical generating plants, Greenbaum replied, “I don't know. That's not my problem. Maybe they could use solar power, instead.”

When the possibility of nuclear power was suggested, Greenbaum balked. “I'm antinuke. Always have been.”

—
O
RANGE
C
OUNTY
R
EGISTER

C
ochrane's cell phone broke into
The Marriage of Figaro
the instant he seated himself in the Boeing 767. It was a full flight and he was jammed into the middle seat between an obese woman in a garish flowered blouse and a gray-bearded guy who looked like a construction worker: T-shirt sleeves cut off to reveal hard, muscular, tattooed arms. Cochrane felt almost abnormal next to them, wearing his jeans and his last clean white shirt.

They both stared at Cochrane as he struggled to pull the phone from his shirt pocket. For a moment he couldn't place the image that formed in the minuscule screen, then he recognized Grace Johanson, his department head back at the university in Tucson.

“I'm sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning, Paul,” she began, “but it's been more than three weeks now and you haven't answered any of my e-mails.”

Cochrane put the phone to his ear and kept his voice as low as he could. “I know, Grace. I've been… it just hasn't been easy for me.”

“I understand, but I can't cover for you much longer,” the department head said. “The semester's nearly over and you've got to be back for the finals, you know.”

“Grace, I don't think I'll be able to.”

A long hesitation. Then, “After four weeks' absence the dean gets involved. And the committee.”

Cochrane knew what she'd left unsaid. They'd stop his salary checks unless he either came back to work or applied for a medical leave of absence.

“I'm trying to find out who murdered my brother,” he said in an urgent whisper.

“But can't you at least put in an appearance, Paul? Talk to the dean. He'll understand, I'm sure.”

“I'll try to e-mail him.”

“That won't be good enough. He wants you—”

“Grace, I'm on a plane and they're going to close the hatch in a few seconds. I'll have to hang up now.”

“Call me when you land,” she said, her voice hardening.

“Yeah. Right.” And he clicked the phone shut.

Cochrane sank his head back in the seat and closed his eyes as the flight attendant went through her little safety lecture and the 767 trundled away from the gate. Next stop, he thought, will be Cabo San Lucas.

Never thought I'd be going to Mexico. Good thing I kept my passport in my travel bag. Right in there with the razor and the shaving cream.

He wondered what Elena was doing. How's Gould treating her? Where's Kensington? He'd had to use his own American Express card to buy his plane ticket. Does Gould know it? he wondered. Will he send Kensington after me?

He'd sent half a dozen e-mails to Vic Cardoza after his phone conversation with Don Mattson. All day Saturday he'd alternately paced his hotel room and then sat at his laptop to tap out another urgent message to Vic. He got no “delivery failure” notices from America On Line, so he assumed that the messages got through to Vic, wherever he was.

Answer me, goddammit! he snarled silently at the laptop. Come on, Vic, I'm not going to tell your wife where you are.

He had said as much in his e-mails, and pointed out that this was a matter of life and death, maybe Vic's own life or death.

Around nine
P.M
. Saturday night his cell phone had rung. It was Vic, looking more than a little annoyed.

“What the hell's going on?” he demanded, with no preamble.

“Vic! Where are you?”

“Never mind that. What's this shit about my life being in danger?”

Cochrane spilled the whole story to him, talking so fast at one point that Cardoza had to tell him to take a breath and slow down.

“That e-mail you sent me last week? With the attachment? I never even downloaded it.”

“Good. Fine,” Cochrane said. “Now you've got to give me your computer.”

“Give you—Are you nuts?”

“I'll buy you a new one. But I need to have the one you're using now.”

“Fuck you, Paulie. I'm not giving you my notebook.”

Cochrane held on to his temper. “Vic, I sent the same material to Don and Sol. Somebody broke into their homes and stole their computers. They want yours, too.”

“That's crazy.”

“But it's true. They killed Mike, for chrissake! And at least one other guy I know of. They'll kill you if they have to.”

Cardoza's face, on Cochrane's laptop screen, went crafty. “Shit, they don't know where I am. Nobody knows. Especially Lillian.”

“They could trace this call.”

“I'm calling from an Internet cafe.”

“I need your computer, Vic. There are lives at stake. Including yours.”

“You're not bullshitting me?”

“No bullshit.”

Cardoza looked suspicious, then thoughtful.

“Vic, you know I wouldn't rat you out to your wife,” Cochrane pleaded.

“I'm in Mexico,” Cardoza said grudgingly.

“Mexico?”

“Cabo San Lucas, down at the end of the Baja.”

One good thing about Washington, D.C., Cochrane thought now as the airliner roared down the runway, is that you can get a direct flight to almost anywhere. In five hours I'll be in Cabo San Lucas. I'll get Vic's notebook computer and bring it back to Gould. Then Elena will be off the hook and this whole business will be finished.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. And saw his brother's battered face.

 

J
ason Tulius was in his office at the Calvin Research Center when the phone call from Zelinkshah Shamil came through. As soon as he saw Shamil's dark face on his wall screen, Tulius got up from his swivel chair and swiftly closed his door, then returned to his desk and pressed the “no disturbances” button on his phone console.

“You shouldn't call me here,” he said to Shamil. “I've told you that before.”

“This is an emergency.”

“What do you mean?”

“This Dr. Cochrane, the brother of your murdered employee, he's left the country.”

Startled, Tulius asked, “How do you know that?”

“I'm not without resources,” Shamil replied, his face still deadly grim.

Thinking about it for a moment, Tulius said, “So what of it?”

“He has his brother's work, does he not?”

“Perhaps.”

“Then why is he fleeing the country?”

Tulius tugged at his beard. “Perhaps to get away from Gould.”

Shamil considered that briefly. “If so, Gould will send operatives after him.”

“Probably.”

“How is your staff's work proceeding? Have you duplicated the slain man's breakthrough yet?”

“It's only been two weeks, for god's sake,” Tulius snapped. “These things take time.”

“Dr. Cochrane has the information with him.”

“Probably so.”

“So we should get to him,” Shamil said. “If he is willing to cooperate with us, fine. If not, we take the information from him. Either way, we get what we want.”

“I don't want any violence.”

Shamil smiled humorlessly. “Violence is a last resort.”

“No,” Tulius protested. “You can't go that route. This isn't Chechnya, for god's sake.”

“He'll be in Mexico, at a resort by the sea. Tourists often get robbed in such places. Even murdered.”

Tulius started to object more strenuously, but Shamil simply cut the phone link.

F
lowers everywhere. Thick blooms of color cascaded down the tiled stairway that led from the lobby down and down and down five levels to the thatch-covered bar on the beach.

A stiff breeze was gusting in off the sea, cool and moist despite the blazing sun. The surf looked rough, thundering. Cochrane smelled the tang of salt in the air mixed with the perfume of the luxuriant flowers.

“But where's my room?” he asked the lithe young bellman who was carrying his single wheeled travel bag.

“Qué?”
asked the bellman, smiling brightly.

“My room,” Cochrane repeated, louder. Then, falling back on the primitive Spanish he'd picked up in Tucson, he added,
“Mi sala.”

“Oh,
sí,”
said the bellman, his smile widening. He pointed back up the wide, winding staircase. “Up there, señor. But is not
la playa muy bonita}
Beautiful?”

Cochrane nodded. “Yes, very beautiful. But I'm tired and I'd like to get to my room.”

The bellman started up the stairs.

It didn't take long for Cochrane to unpack. He called for the housekeeper to take more than half his clothes to be laundered. Thank god for American Express, he said to himself. By the time I get home I'll owe them a year's salary.

His room was small and surprisingly dark. Its one window looked out on the staircase, shadowed by thick flowering vines. He could hear the pounding surf but couldn't see anything more than the tangled vines and the stuccoed wall on the other side of the stairs.

Tired yet keyed up, he stretched out on the bed to wait for Vic's phone call. If he calls, Cochrane thought. He might get cold feet and duck out on me. But he's got to call! He's got to! Elena's life could depend on it.

He hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep until he opened his eyes and saw that it was pitch-black in his room. Focusing on the green glowing digits of his wristwatch, he saw that it was 9:19
P.M
. local time. He remembered he'd adjusted the watch on the plane from Washington.

No call from Vic. Cochrane sat up and fumbled for the lamp on his night table. He clicked the switch once, twice—nothing. In the darkness he groped for the telephone. No dial tone. “Power outage,” he mumbled, swinging his legs off the bed and getting to his feet.

It was
dark.
Not a glimmer. Cautiously he felt his way along the wall to where he remembered the bathroom to be. And barked his shin on a wooden upright chair. Cursing, he found the bathroom door, banged his hip on the sink, and managed to find the toilet. Afterward, when he turned on the tap, barely a trickle of water gurgled out. Cochrane splashed his face, rubbed his eyes, slicked down his hair. Then he groped back across the room and reached the front door.

The broad stairway outside was lit by candles every few steps. The flickering light was almost beautiful, he thought, romantic. He heard voices and laughter from farther down the stairs, and a guitar strumming softly.

The bar on the beach was lit by dozens of candles. And packed with people. The blackout had driven everyone in the hotel to the bar, it looked to Cochrane.

If the phones aren't working, Vic can't call me, he told himself. I might as well get myself a drink and something to eat.