All right, it was a lead, no matter how meager. Four possibles, based on the license plate and the rental sticker that Colby remembered. Don divvied them up, sent Megan and David after one set of rental agencies and kept Colby for himself on the off chance that the younger man might remember the car when he saw it.
The first place was a bust. Don had flashed his badge, cowed the young girl behind the car rental desk into doing whatever he wanted without a squawk, and checked out the car with the suspect license. Colby took one look and turned it down. "No go, Don. Sorry. Sedan, yeah, but this model has a rounded end. The car I saw looked more like a Lincoln, or a Cadillac. Square backside. This ain't it."
Even a lead that went bust was still progress, Don kept reminding himself. It meant one less avenue to chase down, less time wasted for other things. They drove to the second rental place, Colby taking a call from Megan telling them that her and David's first possible also went bust. David and Megan had identified the people renting the car as a nice little old couple from Milwaukee visiting the grandchildren. No mystery there, and no kidnappings; not unless one wanted to count the fact that Grandma had kidnapped thirteen year old Brittany and taken her clothes shopping at South Coast Plaza, bringing her home with a few hundred dollars' worth of new outfits, only half of which were appropriate to wear to school. David and Megan headed off toward the next possible.
Don pulled into the Wings For Rent Car Rental agency. The lot was only half filled with cars, suggesting that the business was doing fairly well and that most of the cars were out fulfilling their primary function of providing temporary transportation. He jumped down from the driver's seat of his Suburban, Colby letting himself out on the other side, walking toward the main office building.
Colby grabbed his arm. "Don, wait. What's the plate on that sedan over there?"
"Which one?"
"That one." Colby pointed and, without waiting for an answer, started over toward it. "Look at the plate. C nine, with a Z then an S at the end. Not quite what I remembered."
"Close enough for government work," Don told him. "Aren't we lucky that we work for the government?"
Colby was already getting excited. "I think this is it, Don. I can't be certain, but it sure looks like it. It feels like it." He walked around the vehicle, carefully taking in all the details, trying to remember whatever he could through the fading adrenaline haze. "I think this is it," he repeated.
Satisfaction. "Let's go see a man about a car," Don said, jerking his thumb toward the office building.
The desk clerk was an old man with a fringe of white hair looking morosely at the ledger in front of him. Why he should be morose, Don couldn't tell, since it appeared that there was no red ink in the balance column. The business was doing well.
And another thing: this man's ancestry had been in the Middle East. Don couldn't tell exactly where, and there was no handy little name tag anywhere to give him a clue, but the dark skin and fine features were unmistakable. It could be coincidence, but Ned Ames had been working in the Middle East. And the kidnappers, in the short glimpse that Colby had seen, had looked Middle East. And the Middle East could boast no shortage of terrorists these days.
Don didn't like coincidences.
He pulled out his badge, letting it flash in front of the man's nose, watching for a reaction. "Special Agent Eppes, FBI." He tucked it away, noting the freeze frame of fear that fled across those fine features. No help there; most people had some guilt somewhere that they were afraid would get found out. Most of it was petty stuff, not worthy of the FBI. Still, there was almost always that flinch. Don would have been surprised if it hadn't occurred; that would have been suspicious. "This is Agent Granger. We'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Of course," the man replied smoothly.
Yup. Suspicious. Didn't the guy want to know what this was about? Or did he already know?
As if reading Don's mind, the man added, "what's this about?" Trying to keep it cool. There was just a hint of an accent there, as if the man hadn't grown up in this country. A bit British, perhaps, or a country that had had lots of colonial contact with the Empire in the not so distant past.
Too late. The hesitation gave it away. Don's spidey sense was shrieking 'guilty, guilty, guilty!' He zeroed in. "We're investigating a crime that may have used a car rented here," he said, keeping it pleasant, keeping the urge to go for the man's throat in check. "Do you have a sedan with these letters in the license plate?"
The man looked back at him guilelessly. Too innocent, Don interpreted, hoping that the expression didn't come across his own face to tip the man off. The man turned to his computer, tapping in a few data points. "Let me see. I should have an answer for you momentarily."
Colby was letting his interest wander around the office. He picked up a business card. "Wings For Rent," he read, as if the name didn't hang over the front entrance. "You own this place, Mr…?" He let the words trail off, clearly fishing for a name.
"I just work here," the clerk replied. "No, I don't think we have any car here with those particular letters in them." Wrong! The man started to shut the computer down. All the way down. So that no one could get back in without a password or a lot of determined hacking. It was an action that was very out of place; no one would shut down the business computer in the middle of the day.
Don leaned over, placed a hand on the old man's arm to stop him. "I think I'll need to see some ID, sir," he said. "Do desk clerks handle the books? Not in my experience." He jerked his thumb at the obligatory business license posted on the wall, stating that Wing For Rent was owned by one Khalid al-Farouhk. Don's voice was still pleasant but the steel underneath was not. "ID now, sir."
The old man's voice quavered artistically. "I think I left my driver's license at home…"
"And you're still driving those cars around? Moving them here and there? I saw you with one on the road just a few moments ago," Don lied with a straight face. "Driving without a license? That's a crime here in California." He pulled out his cell phone. "I'm certain that my colleagues in the LAPD would like to know about this." He smiled, with no warmth in it. "And, as an added benefit, we can establish your ID as soon as we run your fingerprints. Just for the record."
"I—I think I have my license in my wallet," the old man stammered. He had lost the gambit, and was now looking to escape Don's trap with as much salvage as he could. "I'm Khalid al-Farouhk," he admitted, fear in his heart.
Don forebode to remind the man that he had just lied to Federal authorities. He could always pull that back out if he needed to squeeze. Right now, information was more important. "The black sedan that we're looking for is right out there, in your lot. We've already identified it," he pushed, not letting al-Farouhk off the hook. "It was involved in a crime yesterday. Now I'm going to assume that you weren't behind the wheel when it happened, but you are going to allow Agent Granger and I to go through your records to find out who was. In fact, you're going to help us. Is that clear?"
"Yes." The man's face went wooden, and Don could all but read his thoughts: those men will kill me. But if I don't give in immediately, these agents will arrest me right now. Rock and a hard place.
"Of course, if you simply tell us who rented the car, Agent Granger and I will simply 'forget' that we were ever here." Don dangled the bait. "We might even let out that we obtained the information elsewhere." He tightened his lips again. "Just to confuse our suspects, you understand. It would be entirely in our own best interests, not in anyone else's, and certainly not for the advantage of any fine and upstanding business owners."
Snatch. Grab. "One name was Abdu Sadiq. The other never gave me his name."
"Address?"
al-Farouhk gave it up without hesitation. In for a penny, in for a pound. "That's what they told me. It was on Sadiq's driver's license. I didn't ask any further."
Meaning you didn't want to know, was Don's unspoken response. By the look on Colby's face, the younger man was thinking the same thing. "What did they want it for?"
al-Farouhk shrugged expressively. "I rent cars. I don't ask. None of my business."
"You've never seen them before?"
"Never." al-Farouhk put a hand over his heart, eyes wide with innocence.
Right. Don pulled out his cell, watching al-Farouhk like a hawk. "LAPD? Special Agent Don Eppes, FBI. Put me through to Captain Gomez. Ray? Don Eppes here. Listen, I need to borrow one of your guys, nothing too hefty. You can send a rookie to handle this. I just need to make sure that a fine, upstanding businessman in the car rental business doesn't make a call that he's not supposed to. Don't need to shut down his business, just keep an eye on him for an hour or two. For his own protection, of course." Don winked at al-Farouhk. "Mr. al-Farouhk just identified some possible suspects for us, and we'd like to be certain that no harm comes of it with to Mr. al-Farouhk or to anyone else. Can you arrange it? Thanks, Ray. I owe you one." Don snapped the phone shut. He smiled, teeth showing. "We'll wait right here, Mr. al-Farouhk, until the nice man from LAPD gets here, just in case those two men that rented the sedan show up here again. After all, they may be dangerous criminals. We wouldn't want anyone to get hurt."
"I couldn't put you to any such trouble—"
"No trouble at all," Don assured him, the smile fixed and vicious on his face. He opened his cell phone once more, pushed a speed dial. "David? We have a lead." He paused. "A flak jacket type lead. Be prepared."
It came: the dreaded hand upon the door knob. It was the sound that Charlie had been waiting for, the noise that he both anticipated and feared. It meant that time was up. It meant that one of the figures in the three photos tacked on the wall leering down at him would be the target of these terrorists that held him captive, forcing him to decipher the code that would tell them where a stash of enriched uranium had been hidden. It meant that unless Charlie told the terrorists where the stash was, one of those three people, one of those people that he loved, would die.
And Charlie wasn't ready. He hadn't deciphered the message. Not all of it. He'd gotten through a good chunk of it, but not enough to bluff it through. Not yet.
It was a damn tough code. Charlie had designed it that way, had incorporated both the Heidinger Principle as well as the Foramen Theorem into the weave which had made the coding astonishingly flexible yet almost impossible to break without the key. Given the key, any half-competent staff worker could decipher it in a matter of hours. Without it? Charlie hadn't been kidding with Don when he said that it would take weeks.
Weeks that Charlie didn't have.
So he took short cuts. The short cuts were down and dirty and relied more on guess work than math, and drew on Charlie's own memories of working with Take Ames back when Charlie was a full time consultant with the NSA. But it still took too long.
There was no doubt in Charlie's mind: when they had the uranium, these men would kill him. It was the way they worked. He had heard the stories from Rob Derrick and others sitting around coffee and brandy late at night. The stuff he'd heard from Don pretty much confirmed those stories.
All right: Charlie was a dead man. Work from there. Charlie took a deep breath. Once you accept that as a postulate, the equation becomes less difficult to solve. Hoping that Don and his team would arrive to bail him out wasn't realistic, not under these circumstances. His brother was good, but these men had left no clues for him to follow. Therefore the new primary desired outcome, the outcome that was achievable, was that these terrorists not acquire the uranium. The secondary desired outcome was that the terrorists not harm either Amita, Larry, or his father. Or anyone else, for that matter, but that too was a postulate. Those outcomes were achievable, with only a little more time.
Time which he didn't have. The door knob turned.
Don's cell buzzed at him. Damn. Forgot to turn it off. He couldn't have it distracting him in the middle of taking these terrorists down. They had the address, it was just a matter of suiting up, surrounding the place, and busting in with a warrant. They were almost ready to roll. He could let voicemail get the caller's message. But, automatically, he glanced at the cell screen to see if he knew the caller. To see if it was important.
It was his father. Guilt stabbed through Don; Alan Eppes was nearly frantic over Charlie's disappearance, wanting to help, wanting to go look, both understanding and resenting the request to stand by the home phone in case Charlie called in. His father, not able to stand the suspense, was calling for an update. Don grimaced. He owed his father that much. And what if—miracle of miracles—his father had heard from Charlie? That could change this whole operation. The four of them, already buckled into flak jackets, could take off those jackets and go and collect a certain mathematician and pump him clean of whatever had happened.
Don flipped open the cell. "Dad?" Hoping. Praying.
"You heard anything, Donnie?"
Damn. Nothing. "We've got a lead, Dad," Don admitted. Not going to tell you how slim it is. "Has Charlie called in?" Maybe, perhaps, it would really be nice?
"No." The volume of misery in his father's voice told Don just how much this was wearing on the older man. Alan Eppes had come to terms with his eldest son's choice of careers and the hazards that it posed but Charlie had always been the younger son, the one who needed special handling. That handling had included splitting the family in two on both sides of the country for years, but it was still ingrained in them all: protect Charlie from real life so that he could produce intellectual miracles for the good of the entire world. Maybe that wasn't fair to Charlie either, to keep thinking of him as something both less and more than adult, but the habits of a lifetime were hard to break. For both of the older Eppes men. Maybe all three of them.
The heavy sigh wasn't diminished by distance. "I haven't heard anything," his father told him. Another sigh, coming to terms with the situation. "Donnie, I appreciate the man you stationed outside. You can tell him that it's okay to come in for coffee. The waiting is hard. He shouldn't have to stay out in the cold." Despite the fact that it was a balmy autumn afternoon warm enough to qualify as summer.
Red flags went up. "Dad, what man outside?"
"There's a man in a car almost a block away. He's been there for a couple of hours. I assumed that you assigned him—"
"Doors locked?" Don snapped out, waving frantically at his team. They gathered around, faces reflecting their concern, ready to run at their team leader's signal. Aren't we lucky that we already have our flak jackets on?
"Locking them right now." Alan Eppes didn't need to be told twice. "He's alone, Donnie, sitting in a little silver compact, not looking this way. I gather that he's not one of yours."
"Dad, get away from the windows. Better yet, close the blinds." Don was already on his way out the door, the others crowding behind. "Don't let him see you."
"I can almost make out the license plate," his father continued. "It looks like California plates. I think the second digit is a two."
"Dad! Get away from the window!" Don felt like screaming at his father. Didn't the man understand the danger? Don took a deep breath. "Dad, listen to me. Step away from the window. Do not, under any circumstances, let that man see you. Stand to the side as you close the blinds."
"They're already closed, Donnie. I can't see the license plate now," his father complained.
"That's okay, Dad. We'll look at it as soon as we get there. I'm going to stay on the line with you until then. Please do as I say, Dad," he begged. "Listen, I'm going to turn the phone over to Megan so I can drive." And not scream at you, he added mentally. "Megan, it's my father. And there's a man stationed outside the house."
"Got it." Megan knew the implications of that as well as Don did. "Mr. Eppes? It's Megan. You're away from the window, right? We're coming; we'll be there in just a couple of minutes. Don't do anything."
"What if he decides to come in? I won't see him coming."
"You'll hear him," Megan promised. "Don't let him in, and don't answer the door. If he does come to the door, we'll hit the sirens and be there in seconds. You just listen for him, and keep talking to me."
We'll do the praying on this end.
Scarface was the first to enter the room, followed by one of the others. Charlie could identify them now, not by name but by features. Yet another indication that they didn't intend for him to live after deciphering the code. Terrorists wouldn't want to be identified, and killing a certain mathematician would go a long way toward making absolutely sure that an identification wouldn't happen. Charlie tried not to show any reaction. Where were the other two?
Scarface noted the tremor in Charlie's hand. "Finished cracking the code, Professor Eppes?" he asked in an emotionless voice. To the terrorist, it was all business. Charlie was a tool to be used.
"I—I just need a little more time," Charlie stammered. "Please, just another hour or so. I almost have it."
"Time's up." Yet another tool for Scarface. His original tool—Charlie—was not performing up to specifications. It was time to tweak the tool, make it more efficient.
His partner set up a laptop beside the one that Charlie had been using. The biggest difference, Charlie noticed right away, was that this model had internet capabilities. In fact, the man was setting up a link right now. One that included a webcam. One that was showing an ongoing scene in real time.
The scene, Charlie recognized immediately, was the quadrangle at CalSci. It was bright and sunny outside—Charlie couldn't tell while being locked inside with windows boarded shut—and looked to be shortly after the noon hour. There were a couple of groupings of students sitting on the grass, most nursing bottles of water with heads bent over textbooks. Several more were taking advantage of their own laptops with battery packs to pound away at obligatory freshman English papers. It was enough to make him homesick.
The distant cameraman dollied in toward the library. A man was mounting the steps, headed in toward the massive white building. The camera almost wasn't powerful enough to traverse the distance, but the figure was clear enough for Charlie to guess at his identity: Dr. Larry Fleinhardt.
It wasn't hard to guess what the message was.
"Don't!" Charlie cried out. "Don't do this! I'm working as fast as I can!"
"Have you decoded the message yet, Dr. Eppes?"
"Not yet! Not yet! Please, wait just a little bit longer! I'm working as fast—"
Crack!
It wasn't a particularly loud sound. Charlie had heard guns with silencers before, working with Don. There was just a hint of a puff of smoke at the corner of the computer screen, suggesting that the shooter was located just beside the camera, but the sound was muffled.
Anyone watching and unaware of what was going on would have seen Dr. Fleinhardt stagger and fall. The students on the quadrangle would have assumed that the professor, busy with his thoughts, had failed to anticipate the next step in the tall stack of stairs leading to the library, and had tripped. That his failure to rise and brush himself off immediately following the unfortunate accident indicated that perhaps he had hit his head on the afore-mentioned concrete steps, stunning himself. The more self-serving of those students in Dr. Fleinhardt's basic Physics for Pharmers course (required for graduation by those in non-science related majors) jumped up to assist the man, clearly hoping that physical assistance would be allowed to stand in for an 'A' on an exam. Charlie even recognized one of those students as one who'd squeaked by in his own freshman calc course with a 'C'.
All else faded into nothingness. Larry lay at the bottom of the steps, not moving. The camera was too far away to tell if the man was breathing, or if he was bleeding, or anything else but—
The picture turned black.
Scarface grabbed Charlie by the arm, shaking him. The sudden movement caused Charlie's ribs to grate against each other, shocking him back into the present. "You—you killed him—"
"Yes!" Scarface hissed, his face two inches from Charlie's, his breath reeking of garlic. "You have six hours, professor, before another one dies!" He slammed Charlie to the floor. Charlie curled up on himself, clutching at his ribs. Blackness watered in front of him.
Scarface didn't care. He ripped Larry's photo from the wall, tearing it into shreds and dropping those pieces of paper like rain onto Charlie. "Six hours!" he snarled. "No more!"
Six hours.
Not enough time.
"No time," Don snarled into his cell. "You in position?"
"On your signal, boss." There was no humor in Colby's voice.
"Go."
Both vehicles leapt out of hiding around the street corners bracketing the house that Don had grown up in. The silver compact had no chance. Don swerved his Suburban around in front, blocking an exit from that direction and David put his own V-8 sedan behind. The man didn't even have the opportunity to stick the key into the ignition.
He still had legs, and the brain to use them. In a flash, the car door swung open and the man took off like a frightened jackrabbit.
Don automatically took mental notes: five foot ten. One hundred seventy five pounds. Black hair. Light skin, but with even, almost handsome features. Middle Eastern origin, dressed in western jeans and a tee. Slender black beard fringing the jawbone.
"FBI! Freeze!" That came from David, the man already out of his car and brandishing his weapon.
Either the man didn't speak English—unlikely, given the circumstances—or he intended to outrun them. That scenario was much more convincing. "Megan, check out the house!" Don called out. This man had kidnapped his brother, had threatened his father. There was no way that he was escaping. Don called on the speed that had been the envy of several of his teammates in the minor leagues, hunter-vision narrowing to the one fleeing figure.
The man turned around, saw Don in hot pursuit, and doubled his pace. Not in this lifetime, scum! Don put on yet another burst of speed, leaving the ground in a flying tackle. He took the man to the ground, rolled into the dirt. The concrete hit hard, didn't matter.
The man spewed something coarse in a language that Don didn't understand but could guess at the content. Unimportant; Don blocked the first blow, and his return jab was more than a little love tap. He felt something break under his knuckles; a rib no doubt. Good. Don wanted answers, and he wanted them fast, and he wanted them now. Let this goon squirm.
The man tried once more, this time kicking out to try to remove Don's head from his shoulders. Don was ready. A grab, a snatch at the ankle with a ferocious twist, and the man collapsed to the ground with a grunt that suggested that walking was no longer a reality and wouldn't be until after a bit of surgery. Don pounced on him, wrenching the man's arm behind him and shoving his face into the dirt.
"Where is he?" Don snarled.
"Who?"
Don applied pressure to the arm. "You damn well know who!"
The man shrieked. "I don't know! I don't know! I want a lawyer!"
More pressure. Another shriek.
"Don!" Colby pulled him away. "Don, back off!"
"He—" Don caught himself. It wouldn't do any good to let this man go free on a technicality. Not that it was likely to happen; too many points against him, in a country terrified against a repeat of 9/11.
But they needed information. They needed to know what the code said. They needed to know where the nuclear material was. They needed to know where Charlie was.
"My father?" Don asked harshly.
"Safe, inside. Megan's with him. He's okay, Don."
"Good." One civilian safe. One member of his family unhurt. "I want a bodyguard with my father at all times." Don pushed his way to the suspect, shoving his face close. "Where is he?"
Spate of curses, in an unknown tongue.
Not really unknown. David moved closer to Don, getting in the suspect's line of sight. "Talking about your own mother? Street-walker, right?" David added something vicious, something learned on the streets of Cairo during his military intelligence days.
The suspect snarled, struggled in Colby's grasp. "I tell you nothing! Torture me, I will die a martyr to the cause!"
He would, too. Of that, Don was certain. Don wanted to beat the information out of him, but the rational part of him said waste of time. Time that they didn't have to waste.
Don turned away, mastering himself. "Get a Forensics team down here ASAP," he growled. "Tear the car apart. I want to know everything about this man as of now." He clenched his fists, fighting the urge to beat it out of the man.
"Don! Don!" Megan called to him from the house. She rushed across the lawn to meet him.
Don's heart hit the dirt. Not his father? What—?
"Don, it's Larry!"
"Larry?" Too much information to process. What the hell did Larry have to do with this suspect?
"Larry's been shot!" Megan was more upset than Don had ever seen her. "It's LAPD. They're investigating it. The beat cop taking a statement is with him, and Larry's insisting that they talk with us."
"Damn right, they will." Don snatched Megan's cell from her hand. "This is Special Agent Eppes, of the FBI."
The cop identified himself on the other end of the phone. "This guy here a suspect? You want me to cuff 'im?"
"Hardly. He's a consultant." Stretching the point; Larry had never been formally consulted, no contracts drawn up. Inconsequential, at the moment. "What happened? Is he all right?" Is there a two-for-one sale on murdering geniuses going on? More important: did the terrorists realize that Larry Fleinhardt was helping to decipher the coded message?
"He's going to be," the cop reported. "Took one in the arm, cracked his skull pretty good on some concrete steps. Doc's are keeping him overnight."
"What happened?"
"Give me that!" Don heard Larry's voice in the background, querulous and thin. "Don, this is Larry." As if it could be someone else. "Don, I insisted that they call you. Don, I've been shot!"
"Are you all right?"
"No, I am not all right! Didn't you hear me? I was shot! The sniper positioned himself in the Snailor Building, on the third floor, facing the quadrangle."
"You saw him?"
"No, of course I didn't see him. Had I seen him, I would have taken steps so that I would not be in this situation! Ballistics science clearly indicates—"
Wrench. Fight over possession of the phone in the hospital; point to the beat cop. "We've got a Forensics Team on the way, Special Agent Eppes," the cop said.
Wrench. "The suspect departed the scene, Don. I saw a man fleeing the Snailor from the side exit. He got into a car and left, taking the northern route to the main road outside of campus."
Wrench. "We're questioning students right now. Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything."
Wrench. "Of course no one heard anything. He used a silencer. I saw him! The car was—"
Wrench. "We're checking with University Security, seeing if they have any tapes of the parking lot—"
Wrench. "Security doesn't use tapes! Don, the car was a ninety-nine Oldsmo—"
Wrench. "They're taking him to surgery," the cop reported, unable to contain the relief in his voice that he felt and Don didn't. Don could hear Larry in the background, demanding to be given the phone, his demands unheeded and diminishing with distance. "Captain says our Forensics people—"
"Call 'em off," Don instructed. "This is a Federal case. My people will be out in a few minutes." He waved at David who was listening in. David took the hint, calling it in. Don nodded at Megan, even though the cop on the other end couldn't see the gesture. "My people will take the statement from the victim."
"Thank you." That was heartfelt from the cop. "He wouldn't stop talking."
Don hung up the phone. Talking is what you want people to do.
He stopped, dead in his tracks, thinking. A cold feeling settled into the pit of his stomach once again as pieces started to come together.
Charlie, kidnapped because he could decipher an undecipherable code. Given all of this, Don was unwilling to accept the NSA's contention that the CIA was the culprit. Possible, sure. But likely? Don ascribed to the KISS principle: keep it simple, stupid. Don and Megan had been shot at—twice!—but the second time Charlie was present. What if the shooters weren't after Don or Megan but something else? What else had been present during both those episodes?
Don already knew the answer to his own question: the code, in an undecipherable paper form. It wouldn't do anyone any good to have a code expert if they didn't have the code to begin with. That let out both the NSA and the CIA; Don had sent them copies early on in the case. Both agencies had their own experts working on it, trying to figure out what it meant. Both wanted Charlie's expertise, but, given enough time, they could do without him.
So who needed the original code and someone to decode it? There were a number of terrorist cells in the area, all groups that the FBI were keeping under routine surveillance but Don wasn't about to swear that his agency knew about all of them. Splinter groups were always budding off and dying out like amoebas. One of those groups could have known that Ned Ames was here, could have been the culprit and tried to get the key. The key wouldn't have done any good without the message, and, according to Gatsbacher in Forensics, the key was half-demolished. Hence the need for an expert code-breaker.
But why shoot Larry? Why have someone watching Don's father? No, that wasn't the right question to ask. What Don ought to be asking was: why have someone watching Charlie's father?
Answer: because Alan Eppes was Charlie's father. A lever, to force Charlie to do something that he wouldn't want to do. The same went for Larry: look what we do to the friends of people who don't cooperate. A very clear message to a very stubborn math genius.
Don didn't like the way his thoughts were going. There was another person that he needed to worry about, someone who was actually working on the cipher. He flipped open his cell, searched for a number that he hoped was there. Yes, there it was. He pushed the speed dial.
"Hello?"
"Amita! Are you all right?" Rush of relief.
"Don!" It was almost a wail. "I was just about to call you."
"Are you all right?" Don demanded, suddenly scared. Had she too been attacked? "Where are you? I'll send out someone—"
"No, I'm all right, but it's the computer!"
"The computer? You're okay?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" Amita sounded frustrated with a heavy layer of despair. "Don, the computer got wiped! Someone must have wiped it while I stepped out, right after I talked with that guy that you sent over. Don, all the work that I did is gone! I'll never be able to decode the message in time!"
"What are you talking about? What guy?" Confusion was uppermost, but only because Don didn't want to be right. "Amita, did you talk to someone claiming to be from the FBI?"
"Well, yeah." Pause. "Didn't you send him, Don? He said that you did."
The only reason that panic wasn't called for was that Amita was all right, talking on the phone. "No, I didn't send anyone," Don said grimly. He snapped his fingers, got Colby's attention, and mouthed silently: get someone over to Amita now! The younger agent nodded, flipped open his own cell. Don continued, to be on the safe side, "is he there now, Amita?"
"No. He left about half an hour ago. Why?"
Don ignored the question. "Where are you?"
"Charlie's office. Don—"
"Stay right there," Don ordered. "I'm sending someone over to get you."
"Get me? Why, Don?"
"Because people who try to work with Charlie's code are getting grabbed and hurt by Middle Eastern terrorists," Don told her. "I don't want you to be next."
"Oh. It's okay, then. This guy wasn't Middle Eastern. He had blue eyes, I think; maybe green. And really light skin. Not mid-eastern."
"What? Are you sure? Not from the mid-east?"
"Don, I'm sure. Light brown hair, light eyes, light skin. I don't remember how old he looked."
"What was his name?"
Puzzlement. "You know, I'm not sure? He gave it to me; he must have. I think."
More clues, and none of them fitting together. But first, he needed to make sure that Amita stayed safe. "Are you anywhere near other people?"
"I think Professor Langston is next door."
"Go there," Don ordered. "I don't want you to be alone. Humor me," he added, before she could object that Langston was a dirty old man who tried to grope the co-eds and wouldn't stop at groping an attractive younger colleague verbally if not physically. "I don't understand what is going on, and I don't want you to take chances. Go. When my people get there, ask for ID and then call me back to make sure that those are the ones we expect to be there. You're the only one around working on the code, Amita," he told her. "Like I said: stay safe."
But who the hell was it that scoped out Amita and wiped her computer? More to the point: why?