Disclaimer: see chapter 1
A/N: Longer chapter, longer wait… sorry about that. I will keep trying to adhere to my weekly schedule, but it's getting increasingly difficult.
By the way, reviews are greatly appreciated :)


53. Breaking the Silence

"Hey Don!" Megan answered the phone, surprise evident in her voice. "Have you been able to talk to Charlie already?"

"Yeah." And I should have given him more time, he silently added.

"That's great! So what did he say?"

"There are two further men besides Rosenthal, one something Patter and one Mike something."

Megan noted the names, at the same time wondering what had happened in that short time to make Don's sound so withdrawn. So sad.

"Was he able to describe them?"

Don answered affirmatively, giving his colleague Charlie's description almost word-by-word.

"Good, we should be able to get somewhere with that. Anything else?"

Don paused. "Not much," he said eventually. "But he did say something about their plans. Apparently they're planning terror attacks in Saudi Arabia."

Now, it was Megan's turn to pause. "He thinks they're terrorists?" To give her credit, the dominant emotion in her voice was confusion rather than doubt. "What exactly did he say?"

"Well, he didn't say much, he still can't talk properly, but he was pretty clear on that point. I think we should make some inquiries in that direction, anyway, it's about time we learn something about their goals. Maybe Charlie can give us some more answers at a later point, but I… It seemed like he needed a break."

Megan nodded. Now she had some idea on what had apparently upset Don so much. "Alright, I'm going to tell the others. Might be valuable information for David and Colby, they're still interrogating them, and the more information they have, the easier it'll be for them to make Wellman believe that his accomplices are cooperating with us."

"Yeah, sounds good," Don said, but it seemed to Megan as though he hadn't really been listening. "Keep me posted, okay? I gotta go now, I'll talk to you later."

For simplicity's sake, Megan said her goodbyes as well and ended the call without asking him how she was supposed to keep him posted while he was in the hospital with his cell phone turned of.

She sighed. The more time passed, the more clues she found that despite how controlled and strong Don was acting, he wasn't behaving like her friend and boss, the Don she knew.

3-1-4-1-5-9-2-6-5-3-5-8-9-7-9-3-2-3-8-4-6

"Couldn't catch a break?" Colby asked when Blake's team entered their small headquarters the next morning with slightly chastened features, and he couldn't help but smile a little. Sure, he was quite aware that they were working together and not against each other. There weren't any animosities between the two teams either, but he just couldn't stand people making offending remarks about things they didn't understand, in this case about their helpful mathematical hands. He completely missed the irony given by the fact that he himself hadn't been believing in the higher powers of math for too long either.

"I wouldn't say that," Blake said and he sounded a little offish. "We got a name. Cedric Patter. He's a member of Rosenthal's current unit, just like Johnson and Taccone are. But about everything else, the CIA stonewalled. They aren't ready to admit that some of their people got a skeleton in their closet, they just keep talking about the secrecy of their projects and that with secret projects like these, some things might be entirely different from what they seem – you know their gibberish. They cooperated and gave us Patter's name when they realized that they may avoid a scandal once we know where to look for the real culprits, but they still say that their people haven't done anything wrong and not even the committing magistrate's verdict to keep them detained could change their minds."

Nobody made a comment to that, but still it was clear that they were all thinking more or less the same: it was not surprising that the CIA would stay loyal to their agents – as long as they didn't know themselves what was going on there. On the other hand, if they knew that their agents were shady, it was more than a little unlikely that they would blab about that to the FBI and far more likely that they would try and deal with the matter internally by launching their own investigation. In any case, they would try – and probably succeed – in pretending that the organization itself was full of integrity, that even if some of their agents had committed crimes, it had nothing to do with the CIA. The worst part was that since Wellman was with the FBI, they couldn't very well point their finger at them.

"You got a picture of Patter?" a calm voice floated over to the group, taking its origin in the darkest corner of the room. Don.

Colby looked over to him, not quite knowing what to think about his behavior. He'd been acting strange the entire morning, he'd been very taciturn and kind of sinister. When he'd arrived at the cabin, he'd told them in brief words about the progress Charlie had made in the meanwhile, but had soon asked about the progress his team had made with the new information Charlie's statement had provided them with the evening before. Colby – and he suspected that David and Megan felt no different – had had a hard time to dispel his doubts when he'd heard about that terrorism theory, but they'd all been willing to give Charlie the benefit of the doubt and give it a try – which had proven to be a good decision. Right before Blake's team had arrived, he, David and Megan had been reporting to Don about Wellman's reaction to Charlie's information in the interrogation when the other team's entrance had interrupted the briefing. Colby had continued watching Don though and thus hadn't missed the fact that Don had hardly said a word and that he was keeping his distance, too. In any case, Colby could have sworn that it wasn't a coincidence that his boss was sitting in the only spot of the room where he could not only observe everything, but where, more importantly, nobody could decipher the expression on his face.

Blake pulled the picture of Patter's ID card from his pocket, and as far as Colby was concerned, the description that Charlie had given Don seemed quite accurate.

"You want to show that to your brother?" Blake asked. "How is he, by the way?"

"Better," Don said, deliberately looking at the picture and not at Blake, thus keeping the other team's leader from delving further into the topic. "I guess we can safely say that this is the same person Charlie was talking about," he said, still earnest. "He described him to me yesterday."

"Anything else he could tell you?" Karen Teeger chimed in.

"Not much. He was held in some kind of dugout, apparently the group's hiding-place, or one of their hiding-places. He also mentioned a certain Mike. He seems to be the youngest of the group, mid-twenties, small and slight, dark-haired. Apparently he's their guy for hacking into foreign systems. So we got six people so far that we know of, and I don't think there were more people in the dugout or Charlie would have noticed. Still, we don't know how vast their network on the outside is."

"So a dugout indeed," Blake repeated. They'd suspected that for quite some time since it seemed to be a rational solution when hiding in a national park.

Don nodded. "Apparently Wellman, Taccone and Johnson had gone off to buy provisions after they somehow heard that we were looking for them and decided to leave their hiding-place, when Charlie managed to get out."

"So they were planning to leave the dugout to find a safer hiding-place somewhere else?"

"That's what it looks like," Don said. "The bad news is that we still don't know where that dugout is. Charlie's not sure whether he can lead us there. Since he was on the run, I don't think he paid much attention to the direction he chose. On the other hand, you never know with him."

"What about their plans?" Juliet Disher asked the question of questions. "Couldn't your brother tell you anything about that?"

Don hesitated. Again, Colby thought. According to Megan, even yesterday, when he had given her the short report, he had seemed anything but sure what to think about this point.

"If I understood him correctly," Don started, "Charlie thinks they were planning terrorist attacks in Saudi-Arabia."

Blake's team was silent for some seconds.

"He thinks they're terrorists?" Blake finally asked, the skepticism evident in his voice.

Again, there was a small hesitation before Don answered, "That's what it looks like. We still don't know their motives though, nor their exact plans. Not yet."

Blake frowned. "You mean you think your brother knows more than he told you? Or are you actually still trying to make our suspects talk?"

"Why shouldn't we?" Colby chose this moment to join the conversation. He had to admit that he was enjoying this. "For one, Wellman already confessed."

Blake shook his head with disbelief. "He did not."

Colby suppressed a smile and started his report. "With a mathematical tool Professor Fleinhardt explained to us," Colby slowly savored the words, "we could make it clear to Wellman that his accomplices have more to lose than him, and with the information Charlie gave us, we could make him believe that they were already cooperating with us. So Wellman decided to cooperate before it was too late for him to cut a deal and told us everything he knew." That was the moment when his grin vanished. "Still couldn't tell us though where we could find the other three guys."

When a couple of moments later, Blake had found his voice again, he asked with a slightly mocking overtone, "So did Wellman also confess to being a terrorist?"

"He did," David said, picking up at the point where they'd been forced to stop their report to Don earlier. Since his boss was still sitting in his corner, he couldn't be sure, but the slight movement of the head he could see seemed to bespeak surprise, so apparently Don hadn't really believed that part about Charlie's statement either. Still, it was far easier to assess Blake's reaction, whose jaw had dropped a little at the words.

"It took us some time, but after a couple of hours of interrogation, he was ready to talk, and it was just then that we got the information from Charlie, which gave him the rest. We told him outright that we knew that they were a terrorist organization, and he admitted that he'd been helping the CIA agents to commit terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, even though the CIA's order had been to fight terrorism in this area."

"Seems like they should have read the job description more carefully," Ian said dryly.

"Wellman's got another view on things," David said. "He claims that this way of fighting terrorism is much more efficient than any other method tested so far. He said that only with that accumulation of attacks within a relatively short time, our government has sufficient cause to invade Saudi Arabia and bring democracy and peace to their country, thus eradicating terrorism instead of merely putting on band-aids."

Don's frown could be heard in his voice. "Does he really believe that?"

David shrugged. "I don't know. But that's what he says. And knowing that they committed terrorist attacks is what matters to us, we can leave the why to the court case."

"And anyway, it's always about money in the end, isn't it?" Blake inserted. "Those pseudo terrorists don't care a damn about democracy and peace, they just want to get rich." That earned him some frowns, so he was forced to go on. "What? I mean, isn't it obvious? Saudi Arabia is what, the third largest provider of oil? I guess that once they manage to get a pro-American government instituted in that country, some members of our high society might start re-counting their millions. Maybe it was even a group of investors who gave our pseudo terrorists the assignment to make sure that there'd be a change of government in Saudi Arabia. I guess our kind can't imagine the kind of money and power that's at stake with affairs like these."

"There might be something to this," Ian admitted.

"Yeah, it makes sense," Colby thought aloud. "I mean, you create a threat, you neutralize it and the government you helped is indebted to you."

"Whether they asked for your help or not," Ian muttered.

"But maybe it wasn't the money they were after," Juliet Disher mused, "but power. I mean power that isn't bought by money."

"Meaning?" Karen Teeger asked her.

"Senators, for example, right?" Colby answered for her and Disher nodded. "Once the terrorist attacks increase in number and can be stopped by our troops, those in favor of pro-active methods will save their positions for the next term, to say the least."

"Isn't that a little far-fetched?" Megan asked, a frown on her face.

Colby gave her a shrug. "I guess there's a lot of things people craving power might do. There might also be other interest groups that gain from those attacks that we haven't been considering so far."

"Because it's not our job," Don's terse voice ended the discussion. "Our job is to find the remaining members of their group. What else did Wellman have to say? Did he admit to the abduction?"

David snorted. "He couldn't really deny it given all the information we had."

"Hang on," Megan said, holding up her hand. "I still think we have to think about their motives at least a little, for I don't know about you, but I still can't understand why they became terrorists in the first place, which is something that we should know in order to predict their further actions. I mean, they were completely ordinary agents –"

This time, it was Colby's turn to snort. "Maybe a little less law-abiding than your ordinary agent."

Megan wasn't deterred. "In any case they should have realized that sooner or later, their whole scheme would be discovered. Even if the public hadn't known, their agencies would have, I mean, that's what reports are for. I just don't understand why they would take such a risk! Now they lost their job and their reputation and face charges for terrorism. I just can't get my head around the fact that they didn't see what they were getting themselves into."

Her words made them all fall silent. She had a point there. On the other hand… Wasn't she being a little too idealistic? Would there really be the outcry she was expecting if those pseudo terrorists had been successful, if their method had worked and if they had built the foundation for inserting a pro-American government in Saudi Arabia? Especially if the details didn't get out to the public, wouldn't the people who did know about it, the people with the power to decide how to advance in this case, decide, just like Wellman had done, that the sacrifices made had been worth the higher cause?

"I'm not so sure about that," he finally stated his doubts. "There are always people who manage to twist everything in a way until it serves their purposes, and I think that among the people who know about what was going on over there, there are a lot of the-end-justifies-the-means-kind of guys."

The group fell silent again, once again thinking that there was some truth about those words. It was finally Disher who broke it. "There's one thing I still don't understand: what did they need Professor Eppes for?"

David was the one who could answer that question, for in that particular point, Wellman had been quite cooperative. "They needed him to do the analysis for which targets were appropriate for terror attacks to occur. As far as we know, that's what he did, even though unknowingly. Wellman confessed that last fall, they tricked Charlie by telling him that his task was to calculate the locations most liable to attacks in order to prevent them from happening. Apparently Charlie found out about their real goals and chose to stop working for them, but that was the point when Wellman became a little less precise, we'll have to ask him about that more precisely sometime later."

Colby looked over at Don, trying to read his features. He remained silent and in the dark, so Colby could only guess what was going on in his mind. He was relatively sure that these particular facts were news to Don, that he hadn't talked to Charlie yet about his captivity last fall. He wasn't sure though whether the brothers would ever talk about that. It wasn't really a pleasant subject. At bottom, Charlie had been part of a terrorist organization, even though he hadn't known at the time that he was. Now, however, he did know, and another thing that Colby was relatively sure of was that the mathematician with his idealistic principles would have a hard time dealing with his bad conscience because of that.

"And why did Wellman go into hiding?" Teeger asked.

"He got cold feet," David replied. "When they found out that the nurse, Anna Silversteen, had been deceiving them, the group hadn't been sure how much Charlie knew and how much he would tell other people. Wellman panicked and went into hiding even before the group had figured out a plan how to proceed. And by now we also know what the plan they did make entailed, namely Charlie's abduction and the murder of Anna Silversteen."

"Who killed her? Did he tell?"

"A small-timer," Colby said. "Well, relatively small. A local henchman, a Desmond O'Reilly. Our people in Jackson are interrogating him right now."

"So he wasn't part of the group in the dugout?"

David shook his head. "No, according to Wellman, they were only six in the dugout, Rosenthal, Johnson, Taccone, Patter, Kirtland, who Charlie apparently only knows as 'Mike', and himself."

"And where is that dugout?" Blake asked. "I mean, would be quite helpful to know that, don't you think? Who knows, maybe Rosenthal's still there hiding, along with the other two."

Colby grimaced. "I doubt that. We don't really have a way to check that, though. Wellman claims he doesn't know where it is. He said he only went that way once, together with Taccone, and probably wouldn't find the way again, and it's not like we can force him. And if we took him to the area and asked him to find the way, he'd just laugh in his sleeve because that'd give him a perfect opportunity to escape from pretrial detention. We can't risk that."

"But if the dugout belongs to the CIA, it shouldn't be too hard to find, right? Its location should be documented in detail."

There was doubt plainly visible on David's face. "I don't think so. We told Wellman something of the sort, but his reaction was far from impressed. I guess this dugout is actually one that is known only to the unit that had been hiding there. I mean, we can ask the CIA if they know anything about it, but I doubt that they do."

"Do you know if they're investigating in this case as well?" Teeger asked.

Ian's reply came with characteristic sobriety. "They'd be pretty stupid if they weren't."

3-1-4-1-5-9-2-6-5-3-5-8-9-7-9-3-2-3-8-4-6

Charlie awoke at half past seven in the morning. He was alone. Finally. Of course he'd been glad to see his family again after all this time, after that awful time of loneliness and fear and despair, and it had been good not to be alone. On the other hand, he'd also longed to being alone for at least a little while, to get his head clear. Now, however, he wasn't sure whether getting a clear head was actually such a great idea.

Before the memories could get to him again, he chose a compromise and picked up the phone. It had been far too long since he'd been talking, really talking, to Amita and Larry anyway. At bottom, he hadn't done that since his phone conversations last fall, when he'd been on the job for the CIA. Accordingly, he was beyond nervous when he waited for the phone to be picked up.

"Amita Ramanujan?"

And bang. His mind was empty. Only now did he realize that he had no idea what he should say. To make matters worse, his body was betraying him just as badly as his mind. His heart was beating in his chest forcefully, making his whole upper body tremble and rendering his voice even weaker than it already was these days.

"Hey," he managed to say, feeling that the word sounded ridiculous and completely out of place. He couldn't think of a better alternative, though. "It's me."

There was a pause at the other hand, and when she came back, he noticed that her voice was even more unstable than his, every now and then broken by soft sobs. "Charlie! Are you… How are you?"

He couldn't help but smile. "Good," he said and thought that it wasn't that much of a lie. All of a sudden, he felt a whole lot better than the day before.

Still, it took him a while to convince her that he wasn't going to drop dead any instant, and it took him even longer to get the trembling out of his voice. Yet he knew that he was safe now, he knew that everything was going to be fine, that everything was okay now, so why was there still that giant lump in his throat?

"How's Larry?" he asked eventually when her questions had finally been answered to her satisfaction. By now, his voice had started to get raspy again.

"He's okay, I think. Anyway, he's not complaining."

Which isn't saying much, Charlie thought, but didn't interrupt her.

"I guess the worst part was the shock. And, of course, the fact that his beloved car is only a pile of junk now."

Charlie was silent. He knew how much the vintage car had meant to his friend, it had almost been an obsession. And now the car had been severely damaged and Larry seriously hurt, all because of him.

"He worshipped the car," he said quietly.

Amita had to be aware of what was going on in his head. "Charlie – in the end, it was just a car, and he knows that. Believe me, Larry was much less concerned about that than he was about you." Her voice, which had become steady during the conversation, was getting more broken again, even though she seemed to be trying to keep it together. "And he wasn't the only one."


The conversation with Amita made him feel a lot better, and her apparently too. When they, a little reluctantly, ended the call, it was eight fifteen and Charlie decided to rest for another fifteen minutes. The phone conversation with Amita, as pleasant as it had been, had taken its toll on him. Besides, he knew that Larry was usually in his office at half past seven (Pacific Standard Time) to do some last preparations for his first lecture and have some breakfast.

It was three or four minutes to half past eight when Charlie couldn't wait any longer and tried the number of Larry's office. After the conversation with Amita, he didn't feel quite as nervous anymore.

Maybe he should have.

The voice that answered the phone after the fifth ring sounded sleepy. Had he been mistaken? But he couldn't have made a mistake calculating the time zone difference, and Larry was a man of habits… "Did I wake you?"

There was silence and the other end and Charlie could practically see his friend's confused face. "Who is there?"

Charlie realized only now that his voice, especially over the phone, probably couldn't be recognized very well. He himself was getting more and more used to the raspy sound.

His nervousness was back with a vengeance. "Um – it's me. Charlie."

This time, the silence was even longer than before and Charlie's nervousness increased. Amita's response had been somewhat more eloquent when she'd realized that he'd been the caller. In the end, it was Charlie who couldn't hold back his question any longer, the question that had pushed him forward all the way through the national park, "How are you?"

There were two more seconds of silence at the other and, then his friend was back with his characteristic confusion, "Did you just ask me how I was? I mean, I could be wrong, but I think the more pressing question in this conversation would be how you are."

"I saw a picture from your accident."

"Oh," Larry just said before he got back something of his usual eloquence. "Well, in that case I think I should tell you that everything was not as bad as it looked, even though I must say that it's an experience I would rather chose to avoid in the future."

Charlie wasn't deterred. "Are you okay?"

"I am," he said, and when Charlie detected the quiet smile in his voice, he breathed a sigh of relief. "But what about you?" And just like that, the smile had become a frown.

"I'm okay," Charlie said relatively truthfully. "Still a little exhausted, but otherwise… okay." As if to mock him, the pain in his leg came back with a vengeance at that, but he decided that stretching the truth a little was still better than lamenting. Wallowing in self-pity wouldn't lessen the pain either.

Now that those two questions had been dealt with, the two friends fell silent again, none of them able to think of something similarly important to talk about.

"Do you still sleep in your office?" Charlie asked eventually, remembering that his phone call had apparently awakened his friend.

"Every now and then, yes," Larry replied. "I've found it both the most comfortable and rational solution during finals."

"It's – I'm such an idiot, I completely forgot about finals. And my dad even mentioned it. So you've probably been working for most part of the night?" Since he knew his friend, he didn't even wait for an answer, but went on, "I'm sorry, Larry, I didn't mean to make all this more stressful for you than it already is."

There was a sigh at the other end. "Charles, you may believe me when I tell you that I far more prefer talking to you to taking a nap at my desk. There's most certainly nothing stressful about that."

Charlie bit his lip. "That's not what I meant. Not really. I meant… This whole… abduction thing, you and Amita had to do a lot of work on top of all your other responsibilities."

"I hope you're not serious about that."

When Charlie remained silent, he could hear a small incredulous laugh at the other end. "Charles, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you're not making a lot of sense. Apart from your questionable comparison of doing work in order to prepare for finals and doing 'work' in order to help find you, Amita and I did what we did on our own account, it wasn't you who asked for our help."

"I did," Charlie said, very quietly. It hurt him to say it, and his sore throat had little to do with that. "I made those πs. They were directed specifically at you."

"And if you hadn't built them, we would have had to come up with ideas of our own and work out more elaborate algorithms. Our actions are always of such a degree of complexity that –"

Before his friend could delve deeper into a philosophical treaty about causality, Charlie interrupted him, "I'm sorry."

He could hear a sigh at the other end. "Charles – I'm sorry if I failed to make myself clear, but none of us is making you any reproaches."

"But…" Charlie started, though he couldn't go on and swallowed the words down, But only because you don't know that I've given up. That was something he couldn't tell them, however. He couldn't. What would they say when they learned what he'd done? They'd be disappointed, certainly, probably angry too, at least some of them. Don would certainly be angry.

When they had ended their conversation few minutes later, Charlie forced himself to make a decision. He knew he couldn't go on like this, he couldn't remain in the indefinable balance between knowing what he'd done and not knowing if the others would ever learn about it. He had to decide whether he would tell them or whether he would keep it a secret forever, he needed certainty, something to hold on to.

So what should he do? Something told him that it made no sense burdening them with that kind of knowledge, but he had the nagging suspicion that the thought was nourished by feelings he shouldn't be too proud of, namely fear and shame. He was ashamed for what he'd done, ashamed for giving up, and he was afraid of their reaction, afraid of being repudiated once they found out how he'd let them down.

But in the end, he was right, it was irrational, wasn't it? There was no reason to tell them, because it was over now, and it hadn't had any effect in the real world, none they could see. For everything had taken place solely in his mind and it would never come out into the open if he didn't let it. In the end, wouldn't it be cruel to tell them? Wouldn't it make them unnecessarily sad and angry? What good could come out of telling the truth? It would be so much better for all of them if he just buried this knowledge deep down inside him.

A cold hand had taken hold of his heart, making him gasp. That was it, that was the mistake in his logic. Even though all those things had taken place in his mind, he was wrong in assuming that they had no effect on the outside. He had proof that they had, because he'd made that mistake once already. He'd convinced himself that burying the truth about his identity and denying his innermost feelings was the best way to keep himself safe, him and his loved ones. In the end, however, that was exactly what had broken him last fall, and he couldn't let it happen once again.