Manipulation Part 9

By Ecri

Don pulled away from Terry's embrace, a mixture of emotion in his eyes and his heart in his throat. Buchmann's reaction had been controlled and precise, but the result would be catastrophic. His threats were vague but effective. Don was terrified. He turned away from Terry. "He won't release Charlie."

"Maybe he will"

"No!" The lump in his throat kept him from saying more, and, as he turned to face Terry again, he saw her turning up the volume of the stereo. He nodded at her, berating himself for his lapse, and dropped his voice to a level he was certain only Terry could hear.

"He's going to hurt Charlie. That's how we play this game. He hurts Charlie, and I do whatever he wants." Frustration set him pacing his apartment. The entire incident seemed surreal to him. How had his life gotten so out of control? Why was Buchmann doing this? He started speaking his thoughts aloud, hoping that hearing the words would help him reason things out. "If this is vengeance, like Charlie thinks, shouldn't I remember havingI don't know...met Buchmann before? Put him in prison? Something?"

Terry stayed out of his way, allowing the space. "Maybe it's not aimed at you. Maybe it's aimed at Charlie."

Don scoffed. "How could Charlie have an enemy this powerful."

"Don," Terry whispered. "He works as a consultant to the FBI, to the NSAfor all you know, he works for every alphabet group in the countryif not the world. He's sworn to secrecy. You have no idea what's gone down in any of these cases, or who Charlie may have crossed. White-collar crimes can make for strange bedfellows. He's not going to call you up one day and say, 'Hey, Don, guess what equation I just solved for the CIA'".

"You're right. Of course." He checked his watch. He wanted to see Kraft. Demand that he get Charlie released somehow, but Kraft wouldn't be in the office this late. He had to wait at least until morning. Maybe then he could find a way to get Charlie out of harm's way. He turned his attention to Terry. "We need more than guess work. We need to know more about Buchmann and his motives."

She nodded. "I know."

Buchmann could not speak around the white-hot rage that surged through him. This last call had not gone at all as he'd planned. Eppes should have been falling all over himself to appease Buchmann's demands. Instead, he'd had demands of his own. It was inconceivable that Agent Eppes could make demands of him! Buchmann cut off the line of thought. Things had not gone as he'd intended, but that only meant that it was time to play the other Eppes. Perhaps the genius was finished with those equations. If he was, then Buchmann could spring the next surprise on the hapless mathematician.

It took next to no effort at all for him to arrange a visit with Charlie Eppes even in the middle of the night. Much as he had the last time, Buchmann had arranged for the young genius to be drugged and brought to him. This time, it was done while he slept.

Buchmann stood in the doorway watching the young man. The confusion in his face as he awoke somewhere other than his own cell was priceless. Buchmann relished the moment, and walked into the room to confront him.

He watched the surprise on Eppes' face as he recognized him. He saw the false bravado and the silent straightening of shoulders, and almost laughed out loud. The Eppes men were truly pitiable.

"Dr. Eppes, I was wondering how the project was coming along."

"II still need to run a few computationsto check my numbers."

"I'm sure they're accurate."

Charlie shook his head. "I never release the results of a project until I'm sure the equations are accurate."

From the set of Charlie's jaw, Buchmann guessed that to be true, but there was too much fun to be had here. He would see the mathematician squirm.

"Give them to me. I'll have them checked."

"No. They're incomplete."

Buchmann smiled mirthlessly. Charlie Eppes was brighter than he'd imagined. Genius mathematicians couldn't always see the applications of their projects, but Eppes obviously could. "You know what they are and you don't want me to have them."

"I know what they are and I don't want anyone to have them."

Buchmann did laugh now. "This is not a negotiation. There is no room for ideals here. You and I have an agreement." He paused as though considering his options. "Should I pay a visit to your fatheryour brother?

"No!" Charlie tried to raise his hand in a placating gesture, but stopped as though noticing for the first time that he was restrained. "PleaseI'll have them for you. Give me another week"

"You have two days. No more."

He saw the fear in Charlie's eyes and he wondered what the young man would do when he realized there was no way he was going to make his deadline.

Larry worked hard to keep his own spirits up, and, when he could, he would try to check in on Amita. The poor girl seemed lost without Charlie, and Larry wanted to reassure her.

Discussing Charlie's equations early one morning, Larry discovered that Charlie's paranoia–the paranoia that had led him to leave his notes for Larry in the first place–was contagious. It hit him when he and Amita hit a snag. Some of Charlie's notes seemed incomplete.

"Maybe that was as far as he got." Amita's suggestion seemed not to sit well with her.

Larry shook his head as he continued to rummage through the notes and files. "No. I don'tI don't think so. I remember seeing more of this." He began to rummage through the notes on the desk, and the files stacked seemingly haphazardly on the floor.

"Here we are!" He waved a folder in triumph.

"So we misplaced it?" Amita asked.

"No. I was reading this just before my class." He held a page out to her. "See," he said pointing to a yellow post-it note with a name in his own scrawl followed by a telephone number. "That's a message I took earlier when I was on the phone. I took this call moments before I raced out of here to start my lecture, and I left this file on my chair."

"Then how did it get down there?"

"That is a good question." He'd noticed things seemed oddly out of place in his office when he and Amita had met here, but he'd shrugged off the thought. He was hardly meticulous in his own housekeeping. This, however, put a new spin on things. It was painfully obvious that someone had been here and had gone through Charles' work. If someone wanted it, if someone were breaking into the office just to read it, that was information that Don should have.

Decision made, he grabbed his phone, but something made him stop. Shaking his head at the depth of this particular paranoia, he placed the phone back in the receiver and instead stood up, grabbed his jacket and his car keys. "Are you coming?" He asked Amita, though he didn't bother to look over his shoulder to see if she heard him.

Don had never felt so agitated in his own office in his life. It had been a long and sleepless night for him after he'd realized he couldn't get a hold of Kraft until morning. Terry had offered to stay, but he'd needed to be alone. He could tell how much that hurt her, but Charlie had to be his priority now. He'd left home hoping to get away from Charlie, from the stifling world of genius mathematicians, and special tutors. Most of the people he'd trained with at Quantico had had no idea he had a brother.

His assignments with the Bureau since then had been all over the country, and he had reveled in being out of his brother's shadow. He'd called home, of course. He'd made it a habit to call home on Mother's Day, Father's Day, and birthdays, and he had spoken to Charlie, but it wasn't until Kim came back into his life, that he realized how very separate he'd kept everything. He'd never even realized how much he'd resented Charlie when they were kids until he'd come back to LA. Leaving Kim behind, facing Mom's illness, and watching Charlie do his best to avoid processing that information, Don had felt his resentment surge from a pit inside him that he'd thought was gone, that he hadn't missed. Back then, hot, bitter resentment boiled over in his every conversation with his brother. Granted that most of his conversations had been with the back of Charlie's head as the genius scribbled away on a chalk board as though the devil himself were standing beside him forcing him to go on ever faster and faster.

Looking back, Don could still call up the resentment if he concentrated, but it was nowhere near what it was. More and more, it was replaced by a chagrined understanding; Charlie had no control over his downward spiral into P versus NP.

More often than not, he was glad to see his brother, happy to share things with him. More often than not, he felt his relationship with his brother, perhaps tempered by time, perhaps something else, to be changing into what his mother always said it should be. The word brother had, over time, taken a gradual shift in meaning to him. It was no longer a millstone around his neck. It was now a comfort to him.

Seeing Charlie hurt or frightened, as he was seeing him more and more lately, thanks to Buchmann's games, angered Don and awoke the protectiveness he'd struggled against in his childhood when he'd been trying to get away from Charlie and live his own life.

Still, Don had rushed to Kraft's office first thing this morning only to be told that the AD was in conference and couldn't be disturbed. Fuming, he'd returned to his desk and tried to keep himself occupied, but he'd been unable to work. Busywork, desk tidying, and filing were the extent of his accomplishments as he waited for Kraft's secretary to call.

Terry had arrived early and had told him, with nothing more than a light touch of her hand to his arm, that she was there, ready to back him up whatever he decided to do. He thanked her silently, gratitude shining in his eyes, but he couldn't bring himself to talk. Words stuck in his throat, probably, he surmised, because his heart was already there. He'd had nightmares about whatever Buchmann might do to Charlie, most centering on his own inability to save his brother. Time after time, dream after dream, Charlie was in danger and Don couldn't help. He was shot, and Don stood by and watched. He was beaten, and Don couldn't get to his side. What felt like half a hundred dreams, all different, yet all the same tore at his already battered psyche until, at 4:23 AM, he'd climbed out of bed and started reviewing what little they had on Buchmann.

He glanced up from his pile of expense reports to check the clock on the wall only to catch a glimpse of someone he hadn't expected to see. He stood and moved with practiced ease through the labyrinth of cubicles until he intercepted Larry and Amita who had just entered.

"Larry? Amita? What's going on?"

Larry sighed. "Idon't know if this is important or not, but well, Amita and I thought" He stopped and looked around, dropping his voice before continuing. "Can we go somewhere private?"

Don ushered them into the conference room, ignoring the blank white boards that stared back at him accusingly. As they'd passed Terry's desk, she knew enough to join them without being asked.

Don closed the door and turned to face his brother's friends. "What is it? Did you find something in the equations?"

Larry shook his head. "Not as such, no." He shook his head again. "Look, if I'm blowing this out of proportion, I do apologize, but, wellI'm very fond of Charles, and I would hate to have kept vital information from you"

"Larry," Don interrupted, though he tried to cover his impatience, "What is it?"

Larry explained about the folder being misplaced and the feeling that someone had been in his office. "There were several things out of place, but that was the most blatant. Nothing was taken as far as I could tell, but things seemed to have been looked atat the very least."

Don's mouth went dry. "Do you know what they were looking at? What the math meant?"

Larry shook his head. "I'm working on it, but I have a lot of Charles' work in my office. I didn't want to leave it unattended. I guess I didn't really do much to protect it."

"No, Larry, you did good. Charlie would have wanted you to keep his work with you."

Larry handed him the file. "This is the one thing that they definitely looked through."

Don took it gingerly, worried that, if Larry were right, he might be ruining any fingerprints they might have found. He paged through it taking care to touch only the edges of the papers. Something caught his eye as he tilted the paper slightly toward the light. "Did you write anything on here?"

"No. I wouldn't want to ruin Charles' work."

"They wrote on it?" Terry asked. "That's a little stupid. Are you sure?"

"Well, they didn't write on it so much as lean on it while writing something else." He angled the page moving it back and forth, left and right, hoping to catch it in the right angle to read it.

"Try a rubbing," Terry insisted, and Amita reached into her bag for a pencil and a clean piece of paper from her notebook.

Don took it and, feeling stupid for using this tired old trick, nevertheless revealed the words imprinted on Charlie's pages. "Too close to truth. Go to source."

"What's that mean? The source of what?" Amita asked quietly.

Larry groaned. "I would think that's obvious. Charles was onto something. They know that, and they know what it is he's close to discovering..."

Don stared at Larry seeing instead his brother in prison, alone, vulnerable. "They want to get to him...stop him...ki..." Don's voice caught on the word, and he spun on his heel and headed toward Kraft's office.

Terry took a minute to thank Larry and Amita, then hurried after her partner.

Don stormed into Kraft's office. He was about to demand to have Charlie released, but what he saw surprised him. "What are you doing here?"

Agent Pierce sat in a chair opposite Kraft's desk. He had a small stack of files with him, and he and Kraft looked like they'd been deep in conversation.

Don turned a questioning look on Kraft just as Terry entered behind him.

"What is he doing here?" She addressed herself to Don, and Don knew that, in Terry's mind, he was now the only trustworthy person in the room. He'd just had the same thoughts about her.

Kraft, who had stood when Don entered, gestured impatiently for them to come the rest of the way into the office. "Shut the door." He gestured to the other chairs in the room, and Terry strategically positioned herself between Pierce and Don.

Kraft sighed, and remained standing. Looking at Pierce, he reached for the files and handed one to Don. "Agent Pierce was just here expressing concern over the evidence against your brother."

"I'm concerned about that myself," Don admitted, as he alternated between glaring at Pierce and paging through the documents in the file.

"Don," Kraft spoke softly, and that, coupled with his use of Don's given name, bought him the full attention of both of the newly arrived agents. "Johnny thinks there's something strange going on, and he wants to work with you. He thinks Charlie is being set up."

Don's eyes narrowed and he glared again at Pierce. "Oh, really."

"Really," Pierce insisted, his eyes contrite. "I saw it in the interrogation room. Eppes, I mean Charlie, was scared, and it wasn't the 'I've been caught' kind of scared. It was more like the 'how did this happen' kind of scared." He sat back in his chair as though needing the support. "The more I go over his reaction to the arrest, his answers to the questions, the suspected motives in the profile," he gestured at the stack of folders on the desk, "the more I realized that someone, somewhere is manipulating this."

Don looked at Kraft who nodded, answering his unasked question. Kraft believed Pierce. Kraft thought Pierce might be able to help them if they brought him in on this. They were working shorthanded. Don hadn't wanted to bring anyone in on this except Terry, and that only because she thought he was breaking the rules. Without David to help out, it would be good to have another agent on the case. Don nodded in return. "Okay." He turned back to Kraft. "The first thing we have to do is have Charlie moved. He's in danger."

Kraft sat, his brow furrowed in concern. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that Buchmann didn't take kindly to my suggestion that Charlie be released. He's going to have something done to Charlie. I'm sure of it. I want Charlie out of his holding cell and into protective custody."

"That's going to be complicated, Don. I mean, who do we trust? Which agents do we bring in on this?" He shook his head. "We can't go through proper channels. You said Buchmann had access to the prison surveillance equipment. Who knows what other access he has."

"I know, but I won't risk Charlie's life on this anymore."

Terry stood and went to his side but she spoke to Kraft. "I can think of an agent or two we can trust. If we just use a few of us, we can keep an eye on him, keep him safe."

Kraft shook his head. "We're still talking about unauthorized release. If we get caught, we can all face charges."

"Do you want the leak or not?" Don asked.

Kraft hissed his displeasure. "Fine, but we need to plan this carefully." The agents listened attentively as Kraft began to brainstorm. Don kept checking the time, and hoped only that they would move faster than Buchmann.

That night

Charlie lay on his bunk desperate for sleep. He was exhausted. He'd worked so many hours on the equations for Buchmann, he was beginning to see double. When Buchmann had threatened to pay a visit to his father or brother, Charlie's heart had literally skipped a beat. It was the images the threat had produced that kept him from sleep now. He tried to force them out of his mind, but the only way to do that was to cling to the numbers. Without slipping into P versus NP, he had only Buchmann's equations remaining. That was what was in his head. That was what he had to work on.

His mind racing, Charlie wished for daylight. If anything about prison had surprised him, it was how fervently he despised the schedule. He had long been used to keeping his own schedule. Being awake at three in the morning and deep inside some equation was something he'd come to rely on, and being deprived of working on the one thing pounding at his brain made him more often than not spend each night curled in a fetal ball and wishing for daylight.

During daylight hours, he'd developed a talent for hiding what he was doing. His arms, legs, hands, all were adorned with the squiggles and short hand that meant something only to him. With Buchmann's new deadline, however, he had to find a way to keep working through the night.

Lights out was lights outstill, surreptitiously, he took out a penlight and he began to scribble on a note pad his father had sent him. If he could squeeze in a few more hours

The beam of a powerful flashlight hit him at the same instant as a guard called out. "Hey! You! Lights out! What are you doing?"

"Nothing" Charlie called out much as he had as a child when his mom and dad caught him trying to do extra math homework under his blankets.

The guard already had the door to the cell open and came inside. The man grabbed the small light and the pen and paper from Charlie's hand.

"Hey!" Charlie called out and tried to take them back.

The guard pushed him, and Charlie struggled for a moment before a hand reached out from under a blanket on the top bunk and held him steady. A quick whisper was all it took to remind Charlie where he was and how this could be construed. "Fighting with the guards is not tolerated, Professor."

With a gasp, Charlie stopped struggling and tried to explain what he'd been doing. "I'mI'm sorry. I'm a mathematician. I was working on some equations"

"It's after lights out, Eppes." The guard said. He walked to the doorway and held used his walkie-talkie to call his supervisor. Static and a string of words Charlie couldn't understand made the man smile a humorless smile. Charlie instinctively backed away as the guard came back in and took a hold of his arm. "You're going to spend a little time in Solitary."

"What? NoI need tocan't I take"

But Charlie's protestations were useless. The man didn't stop, didn't slow down. He didn't allow Charlie to take anything with him. He simply kept hold of Charlie's arm with a grip like iron and moved down the halls.

Charlie talked the entire way to the maze of corridors. He was trying to explain how sorry he was and how important his work was. The deadline made him desperate and he dragged his feet, tried to pry the man's strong fingers from around his arm, and in general behaved like the child he sometimes thought his family saw in him. The guard didn't even appear to notice. Finally, stopping in an eerily quiet area, the guard opened a thick door, and shoved him inside more roughly than was required.

"You'll stay in there untilwell, until we say otherwise." The man grinned and Charlie got the distinct impression that he enjoyed his work too much.

The door closed with a sound Charlie was sure was ominous only in his mind. Sound, he reasoned, was sound. It could not be altered except by the interpretations of the person hearing it. The logic didn't make the sense of doom dissipate.

He looked around. The room, big enough only for the cot and toilet it held, had no windows, though there was a ventilation fan high up on the back wall. There was a light, but it was immediately shut off, and Charlie was reminded that it was, of course, time for all the lights to be out. There'd be no chance of running any equations now. No pencil, no paper, no lighthe stumbled blindly in the direction of the bed and prayed, as he lay down to sleep, that he would be allowed back into his cell by morning. If he stayed here much longer than that, there was little chance he would finish by Buchmann's deadline.

Charlie rolled himself into a ball under the thin blanket on the bunk, and, though he was exhausted, he found himself unable to sleep. Staring at the darkness, unable to discern even a hint of an outline of anything, Charlie tried to keep his equations going in his head. When he did finally fall asleep, a nightmare woke him. He blinked helplessly in the pitch-blackness, trying to remember where he was. When he did remember, it was almost too overwhelming. His imagination taunted him with images of what Buchmann might do to his father and brother. To Larry. To Amita. Those images would haunt his dreams for a long time to come.

Next Day

Don ran a hand over his face and wondered about Charlie. He'd intended to race right to the prison to see his brother, but he knew it wouldn't assuage any feelings of anxiety over Charlie's fate. Buchmann had proved that he could get to Charlie whenever he wanted. If Charlie were fine when Don saw him, that didn't mean he'd be fine two minutes after Don left. Plus, the work he and Terry were doing now, tedious as background checks were, could do more to help Charlie than a thousand visits.

He glanced around the office at the other agents working on various other cases. He'd been sure he knew them all well and that they'd formed one of the best working relationships in the bureau. As they tried to match fingerprints to the ones they'd found in Charlie's office and on the file Larry had brought them, he realized he was now questioning every 'fact' he knew about each of them. Had they been in LA longer than they'd indicated? Had they really been educated where they claimed?

If they could isolate even one print, and if that print could be identified, they might have their first solid lead. Of course, figuring out what Buchmann had against him would go a long way in that regard as well. He didn't remember ever meeting Buchmann. Could he be carrying a grudge because of the fate of a family member? He wouldn't be the first man to go after an agent or law enforcement officer because a son, brother, mother, sister, (insert relationship here) was injured, killed or imprisoned.

Could that be what this was? It seemed an elaborate thing to him. He knew he was missing something. There was some piece to this puzzle he didn't have yet. He smiled as Charlie's jargon came back to him. There was some variable that he hadn't identified. Things seemed logical until you got too close. Then, like a house of cards, it tumbled down taking any hope that he could solve the case down with it.

He glanced up as Kraft came over to his desk. He started talking about some other case for the benefit of anyone listening, but the file he passed over to Terry was the results of the fingerprinting of Larry's folder.

It was the match that had been made that sent Don's imagination towards a dangerous level of paranoia akin to Spooky Mulder's. The fingerprints belonged to Jeff Mason.

Later

Terry checked her watch one more time. They were about to do something that could easily end their careers, yet, all she could think about was getting Charlie out of prison and reuniting him with Don. He had balked at the wait, and, in truth, she hadn't been happy about it either, but the timetable was crucial. Kraft was pulling strings somewhere, too far up the chain of command for either Don or herself to see where they started or ended.

She wished they could have brought Alan in on this, just so he would know they were doing what they could for Charlie, but Kraft had insisted no civilians. Don had argued, but had to give it up. Even angry, Don knew how far he could push without jeopardizing everything.

She and Don were supposed to go about their normal duties for the morning and then answer a carefully faked call that would take them to a safe house. There they would wait for Kraft, Pierce, and David to meet them with Charlie in tow.

Don had been against this, but Kraft had had a point. With Don going, it would be too suspicious, too likely to require a check into authorization. David and Pierce, though Don didn't really trust him yet, might be able to bluff. Don's final demand had been that Kraft be there with David in case Pierce proved untrustworthy.

Kraft, slightly disguised, would wait in the car and drive Pierce, Sinclair, and Charlie to the safe house. If Sinclair and Pierce didn't make it out to the car within 20 minutes, Kraft would leave and assume they'd been made.

She glanced at Don as he drove. If Charlie didn't make it to the safe house within the next few hours, she was sure he'd do something drastic.

To Be Continued