The Green Trap Page 22
He saw recognition instantly change her expression. “You and the senator—”
“That’s politics,” Gould said. “It’s of no concern to you or your Dr. Cochrane.”
Sandoval appeared to think it over for several moments. At last she said, “There’s one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Paul wants his brother’s murderer brought to justice.”
Gould leaned back in the fragile chair, pursed his lips. “That, I’m afraid, is completely out of my hands. I have no idea who murdered Dr. Cochrane’s brother.”
“It wasn’t Kensington?”
“Emphatically not. Michael Cochrane was about to conclude a deal with me. Why would I want him murdered and his data stolen?”
“Which brings up the matter of our financial arrangement,” Sandoval said.
“Ah, yes.”
“We were talking about ten million.”
“That was when I had no inkling of where the late Dr. Cochrane’s data was.”
“I did my part,” she said. “I’ve brought the data to you.”
“It’s not yet in my hands.”
“It will be. Paul will deliver it to you.”
“In exchange for your safety.”
Her lips tightened into a grim line. “Yes,” she admitted.
“You are worth more than ten million dollars to him.”
“I’ve earned that money,” Sandoval insisted.
Gould swung his head in an emphatic negative. “The dynamics of the situation have changed dramatically. I can get the information from Cochrane for nothing more than your freedom.”
“You said I was in no danger. I went along with you just to get Paul to deliver his brother’s data. I don’t want him hurt.”
“Yes, so you said. And he doesn’t want you hurt. So why should I spend any of my hard-earned money on either of you?”
Sandoval bristled. “We had a deal!”
“Had, my lovely young lady. Had. Past tense. The situation has changed and so has our deal.”
Her face set into an angry scowl, but only for a moment. She took a breath, and Gould noticed how alluringly her blouse moved.
“So what is our deal now?” she asked, her voice low, accepting defeat.
Gould smiled at her. “I think one million is fair. Generous, even. One million dollars, tax-free.”
“One-tenth of your original offer.”
“Yes, but this is money you’ll be able to spend. Not talk. Not promises. Cash. Which is good.”
“One million,” Sandoval repeated.
Gould folded his hands over his belly.
“All right,” she said. “One million dollars.”
“When I get the data from Dr. Cochrane.”
“It’s probably on its way to you.”
“And all copies of the data have been either destroyed or delivered to me.”
She nodded, then said, “The National Academy…”
“As I said, I will deal with that aspect of the situation.”
“And Paul won’t be hurt,” Sandoval said.
“Not in the slightest.”
“Then that’s it,” she said, almost in a whisper.
Gould nodded, but then said, “There’s one additional proviso.” Leaning forward to pat her knee, he repeated, “One additional proviso.”
WASHINGTON, D.C.:
J.W. MARRIOTT HOTEL
Christ, Cochrane thought, I’m pacing the floor like a caged animal. But that’s exactly what I am, he realized. A caged animal, stuck in this room, trapped, in prison.
It was full night outside, still raining. The lights of the city were smeared into tears flowing down the hotel room’s window. Cochrane had spent the whole day trying to reach the three men he’d sent copies of the data to, his desperation ratcheting up each time he got the same answering machine replies or the robotic voice of the telephone company’s automated “out of service” message about Cardoza.
His room was a mess: bed still unmade, dishes from his room service lunch scattered over the coffee table and sofa. He forced himself to shave, although his hands trembled so badly he feared he’d slice himself.
Where is Elena? he kept asking himself. What are they doing to her? Kensington said she’d be all right if I delivered the data to Gould. Okay, I’ve e-mailed him everything I’ve got from Mike. No reaction from Gould. No call from Elena. Maybe they killed her. Maybe that Kensington monster…
No, he warned himself. Don’t go there. Don’t start painting pictures in your head.
Did Esterbrook really wipe his files? Or did he just tell me he did and sneak his report to Bardarson anyway? Why haven’t Don or Sol returned my calls? Jesus, I must have called them a dozen times now. Where the fuck is Vic? How can I reach him?
His phone started playing Mozart.
Cochrane swiveled his head, looking for the cell phone. On the sofa, next to the tray that lunch had come on. He scooped it up with shaking hands.
“Hello!”
“Hi, Paulie. It’s me, Don.”
Don Mattson. Cochrane felt a flood of relief surge through him.
“Don! Hang on a minute. Let me put you on my laptop screen.”
The laptop was open on the mussed-up bed. Cochrane tapped keys until Mattson’s face appeared on its screen.
“Hey, Paulie. How are you? What’s going on?”
“You got my message,” Cochrane said.
“All sixteen of ’em. And the e-mails, too. What’s going on? You sound kind of frantic.”
Cochrane hadn’t seen his friend since Jennifer’s funeral. Mattson had a long, bony face. He wore plastic-framed eyeglasses. For the first time, Cochrane realized that Don’s hairline had receded noticeably. He remembered in high school Don wore his sandy hair down to his shoulders. Now it was cropped stylishly short, like a businessman or some executive.
“I’m in a… a situation, Don. I need you to erase that first e-mail I sent you. The one with the attachment. It’s important.”
“Can’t do it, pal.”
Cochrane flared, “Whattaya mean you can’t? You’ve got to!”
“Wish I could, Paulie, but some sumbitch kids broke into the house last night while we were at the movies and took my damned computer.”
“What?”
“Ripped it right out of my desk, printer, scanner, microphones—the works. Took the whole entertainment center out of the living room, too, the little bastards.”
Cochrane felt a cold shudder run through him. “Took your computer?”
Mattson nodded unhappily. “That’s where Trudy and I were all day: first talking with the cops and then shopping all goddamned afternoon—Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Best Buy, the works.”
Of course, Cochrane told himself. They’d want the computer’s hard drive, to make certain nobody could make any more copies off it.
“They stole your computer,” Cochrane repeated.
“Sure as hell did. And this used to be a perfectly safe neighborhood. Now Trudy wants to rig the house with a goddamned burglar alarm system.”
Cochrane thought, Well, they got Don out of the picture. Without hurting him.
“What about Sol and Vic?” he asked.
“Sol and Judy took their kids to Israel. Sol Junior’s bar mitzvah. They won’t be back for another week.”
And when they get back they’ll find that their home’s been burglarized, too, Cochrane said to himself. His computer will be gone.
“Vic?” he repeated.
Mattson shook his head. “He’s off in the Wild West someplace. Got fed up with Lillian and just headed for the hills.”
“But his e-mail address is still working.”
“Maybe so. But who the hell knows where he is? You know Vic, he could be anywhere.”
“Yeah.”
“Like the time he took that model down to Bar Harbor for a weekend. Remember that? Told her he was taking her out for a lobster dinner and—”
“Don, I’ve gotta run now. Good talkin
g to you. Sorry about the breakin.”
Mattson looked surprised, then puzzled, then hurt. “Where are you, anyway? What kind of trouble are you in?”
“Don’t have time to explain, pal. Later, when this clears up.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Not really,” Cochrane said, thinking, Just be glad you’re out of it.
“Well… if you need anything…”
“I know, Don. I appreciate it. I really do.”
“Okay.”
“So long.”
“So long, Paulie.”
Cochrane clicked his phone shut and Mattson’s image winked out on the laptop screen.
Kensington’s gotten to Don and Sol, he thought. And he must be hunting for Vic.
Then a new thought struck him: How did he find out about the three of them? I haven’t told anyone but Elena—
Oh, my god! They got it out of Elena! Maybe they drugged her with truth serum or… or…
His cell phone started playing Mozart again. Cochrane flicked it open and Sandoval’s face lit up his laptop screen.
“Elena!”
“Hello, Paul.”
“Are you all right?”
All he could see of her was her face, filling the display screen. She seemed unhurt, no obvious marks on her, just as beautiful as ever. But somber, grave, her green eyes dull and cold, her lips pressed into a bitter line, her dark hair hanging loose, framing her face.
“Have they hurt you?”
“I’m fine, Paul,” she said, her voice flat, low. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“Where are you?”
“That’s not important. Mr. Gould says he received the data from you.”
“Good,” Cochrane said. “How soon can you come back to me? Or do you want me to come to where you are?”
“They know about your three friends,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“They’ve gotten what they want from two of them, but they can’t find the third one.”
“Vic Cardoza,” Cochrane said. “He’s sort of disappeared.”
“You’ve got to find him, Paul. Gould won’t let me go until that third copy of the data is in his hands.”
“But I don’t know where he is! Nobody knows.”
She fell silent for a moment. Then, “Kensington’s hunting for him. It would be better, though, if you found him first.”
“I’m not a detective, for chrissake,” Cochrane said. “How the hell can I find him?”
She shook her head, just the slightest movement, but Cochrane felt as if a load of wet cement had just been poured over him.
“Gould won’t let me go until that third computer is brought to him.”
“Elena, look, I’ve done everything I could. I’ve scratched the National Academy report. I’ve—”
The phone connection suddenly went dead. Cochrane stared at the empty screen, then furiously began to try to return the call. It was useless. The number was unreachable, the phone company told him.
Lionel 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.
Local Man’s Car
Gets 250 MPG
SAN CLEMENTE, 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.”
— ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
DULLES, VIRGINIA:
DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Cochrane’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.”