Fatal Error

  Joy, relief, and fear roiled within her. It was over, she had a baby, but what was she going to do with a baby? Oh, right. He was already adopted.

  “Is he all right?”

  “He’s . . .”

  Dr. Landsman seemed at a loss for words. She could see his head framed between her raised thighs. He was gazing down at the baby in his arms, well below Dawn’s line of sight, with the same fascinated expression she’d seen during the ultrasounds.

  The nurse and the anesthetist flanked him, each looking over a shoulder. Their expressions reflected different emotions. A certain fascination, yes, but tinged with something else. Revulsion?

  “He’s what?”

  Dr. Landsman shook himself and looked at her, then looked down again. “He’s stopped breathing! Quick! We’ll need to suction him!”

  As he shot to his feet, cradling the baby, Dawn caught a glimpse of her child.

  And screamed.

  He had hair—a full head of black hair and a dark down covering his skin. But what were those things under his arms? They—

  Snakes!

  Two baby snakes, maybe four inches long, had sunk their fangs into his armpits and were writhing—

  No! Tendrils! That’s what they were. No—tentacles! Two smooth, twisting, coiling tentacles. No suckers like an octopus. Flesh colored . . . looked like rattails.

  Dawn screamed again as Dr. Landsman rushed away with the baby. Her little boy’s eyes opened and he looked at her with a black gaze. As she screamed again she saw the anesthetist injecting something into her IV line.

  “You’ve done your job,” she said softly. “Now rest.”

  Something warm in her arm, and then the world faded to white . . .

  4

  The phone startled Munir out of a light doze. Confusion jerked him upright. What was he doing in his office? He should be home . . .

  Then he remembered.

  Jack was on the line: “Meet me downstairs.”

  Out on the street, in the pale, predawn light, two figures waited. One was Jack, the other a stranger—a thin man of Munir’s height with light, shoulder-length hair and a goatee. Jack made no introductions. Instead he led them around a corner to the front of a small all-night coffee shop. He stared through the window at the lights inside.

  “This looks bright enough,” Jack said.

  Inside he ordered two coffees and two cheese Danish and carried them to the rearmost booth in the narrow, deserted store. Jack and the stranger slid into one side, Munir the other, facing them. Still no introductions.

  “Okay, Munir,” Jack said. “Put your hand on the table.”

  Munir complied, placing his left hand palm down, wondering what this was about.

  “Now let’s see the merchandise,” Jack said to the stranger.

  The thin man pulled a small, oblong package from his pocket. It appeared to be wrapped in brown paper hand towels. He unrolled the towels and placed the object next to Munir’s hand.

  It looked like a finger. Not Robby’s. Different. Adult size.

  Munir pulled his hand back onto his lap and stared.

  “Come on, Munir,” Jack said. “We’ve got to do a color check.”

  Munir slipped his hand back onto the table next to the gruesome object, regarding it obliquely. So real looking.

  “It’s too long and that’s only a fair color match,” Jack said. “After all this time I thought you’d do better.”

  “Hey,” the stranger said, “I have to be careful. I not only gotta find the right shade, the boarder’s gotta be a John Doe, and one that’s headed for the oven or med school real soon.”

  Jack shook his head. “Still . . .”

  “It’s close enough. Pretty damn good on such short notice, I’d say.”

  “I guess it’ll have to do.” Jack handed him an envelope. “Here you go.”

  The goateed stranger took it and stuffed it inside his shirt without opening it, then left without saying good-bye.

  Munir stared at the finger. The grisly flesh on the stump end, the detail over the knuckles and around the fingernail—even down to the dirt under the nail—was amazing. It almost looked real.

  “This won’t work,” he said. “I don’t care how real this looks, when he finds out it’s a fake—”

  “Fake?” Jack said, stirring sugar into his coffee. “Who said it’s a fake?”

  Munir snatched his hand away and pushed himself back. He wanted to sink into the vinyl of the booth seat, wanted to pass through to the other side and run from this man and the loathsome object on the table between them. He fixed his eyes on the seat beside him and managed to force a few words past his rising gorge.

  “Where . . . ?”

  “He works at the city morgue.”

  “Please . . . take . . . that . . . away.”

  He heard the soft crinkle and scrape of paper being folded and dragged across the tabletop, then Jack’s voice:

  “Okay, Cinderella. You can look now. It’s gone.”

  Munir kept his eyes averted. What had he got himself into? In order to save his family from one ruthless madman he was forced to deal with another. What sort of world was this?

  He felt a sob build in his throat. Until last week, he couldn’t remember crying once since his boyhood. For the past few days it seemed he wanted to cry all the time. Or scream. Or both.

  He saw Jack’s hand pushing a cup of coffee into his field of vision.

  “Here. Drink this. Lots of it. You’re going to need to stay alert.”

  An insane hope rose in Munir.

  “Do you think . . . do you think the man on the phone did the same thing? With Robby’s finger? Maybe he went to a morgue and . . .”

  Jack shook his head slowly, as if the movement pained him. For an instant he saw through the wall around Jack. Saw pity there.

  “Don’t torture yourself.”

  Yes, Munir thought. The madman on the phone was already doing too good a job of that.

  “It’s not going to work,” he said, fighting the blackness of despair. “He’s going to realize he’s been tricked and then he’s going to take it out on my boy.”

  “No matter what you do, he’s going to find an excuse to do something nasty to your boy. Or your wife. That’s the whole idea behind this gig—make you suffer. But his latest wrinkle with the fingers gives us a chance to find out who he is and where he’s holed up.”

  “How?”

  “He wants your finger. How’s he going to get it? He can’t very well give us an address to mail it to. So there’s going to have to be a drop—someplace where you leave it and he picks it up. And that’s where we nab him and make him tell us where he’s got your family stashed.”

  “What if he refuses to tell us?”

  Jack’s voice was soft, his nod almost imperceptible.

  “Oh . . . he’ll tell us.”

  Munir shuddered at what he saw flashing through Jack’s eyes in that instant.

  “He thinks I won’t do it,” he said, looking at his fingers—all ten of them. “He thinks I’m a coward because he thinks all Arabs are cowards. He’s said so. And he was right. I couldn’t do it.”

  “Hell,” Jack said, “I couldn’t do it either, and it wasn’t even my hand. But I’m sure you’d have done it eventually if I hadn’t come up with an alternative.”

  Would I? Munir thought. Could I have done it?

  Maybe he’d have done it just to demonstrate his courage to the madman on the phone. Over the years Munir had seen the Western world’s image of the Arab male distorted beyond recognition by terrorism: The Arab strapped bombs to women and children to blow up school buses; the Arab videotaped the beheading of helpless hostages; Arab manhood aimed its weapons from behind the skirts of unarmed civilian women and children.

  “If something goes wrong because of this, because of my calling on you to help me, I . . . I will never forgive myself.”

  “Don’t think like that. It gets you nothing. And you’ve got to face it: No m
atter what you do—cut off one finger, two fingers, your left leg, kill somebody, blow up Manhattan—it’s never going to be enough. He’s going to keep escalating until you’re dead. You’ve got to stop him now, before it goes any further. Understand?”

  Munir nodded. “But I’m so afraid. Poor Robby . . . his terrible pain, his fear. And Barbara . . .”

  “Exactly. And if you don’t want that to go on indefinitely, you’ve got to take the offensive. Now. So let’s get back to your place and see how he wants to take delivery on your finger.”

  5

  Dawn blinked in the dimness. Where was she? This wasn’t her bed. She—

  The baby!

  It all rushed back at her—the labor, the delivery, the glimpse of her baby and his . . . tentacles?

  No, that couldn’t be. It had to be a dream. Had to be . . .

  She looked around and realized she wasn’t in her room in the penthouse. Some sort of hospital room. The shade was pulled on the single window but daylight seeped around the edges. She pushed herself up to a sitting position and hung on to the bed rails as the room spun. They’d doped her with something last night, injected it into—

  She looked at her arm and saw the IV was still running into her.

  “Hello?” she called. “Is anybody here?”

  Almost immediately a woman in green scrubs scurried in.

  “You’re awake. Oh, good.”

  As the nurse busied herself taking her blood pressure, Dawn said, “Where’s my baby?”

  The nurse concentrated on the blood pressure cuff’s dial. “Doctor Landsman will discuss that with you.”

  A twinge of alarm fluttered through her. “Discuss? What’s to discuss?”

  “He’ll tell you. He’s down the hall. I’ll get him.”

  She rushed out before Dawn could ask anything more. Minutes later Dr. Landsman appeared with the nurse in tow.

  “How are you feeling, Dawn?” he said as he reached the bedside. “You did really well. No episiotomy or repairs necessary.” He reached over the rail and gripped her hand. “Any pain?”

  Dr. Landsman holding her hand? Something had to be wrong.

  “Never mind me, where’s my baby?”

  He squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry, Dawn.”

  Her chest clenched inside. “Sorry? Sorry for what?”

  “He had neurological birth defects, I’m afraid, ones that didn’t show up on the ultrasounds. And they turned out to be incompatible with life.”

  “ ‘Incompatible with life’? What does that mean?”

  His smile was sad. “An old medical term referring to fatal, uncorrectable birth defects.”

  “You mean his tentacles?”

  Dr. Landsman’s eyebrows rose, then fell. “Tentacles? Where did you get the idea he had tentacles?”

  “I saw them. I—”

  He patted her hand. “You were distraught. You’d just gone through an arduous delivery and suddenly your baby stopped breathing. Your eyes played tricks on you. Your baby had birth defects, yes, but I assure you he did not have tentacles.”

  “I want to see him.”

  “He’s . . . dead, Dawn. Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

  Dawn wasn’t sure what she was feeling—panic or anger.

  “I have a right to see him, and I want to see him now!”

  Dr. Landsman released her hand. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. The baby’s remains were sent to the city morgue.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the law. The baby was full term. His death is reportable.”

  “But I’m his mother!”

  “Not officially. You gave him up for adoption upon birth, remember? I’m terribly sorry. I thought it was for the best. I’ve notified the adoptive parents. They’re crushed, of course, but they said they’d take care of cremation expenses.”

  “Cremation! But I should be able to see him at least once!”

  Dr. Landsman shook his head. “I wish I’d known you’d feel this way. But since you’d put him up for adoption, and did try to abort—”

  “Stop throwing that in my face!”

  He patted her hand. “There, there. I know you’re upset.”

  Upset? Upset didn’t come close to how she was feeling.

  But why? All she’d wanted all these months was to be free of that baby, and now she was. But she hadn’t wanted him dead—at least, not anymore.

  She couldn’t explain this terrible sense of loss.

  Wait.

  She’d seen tentacles, or things that looked like tentacles. She hadn’t imagined them. Were those what had so fascinated Dr. Landsman on the ultrasounds? Was that why he’d never allowed her even a peek? He’d said nothing was wrong, that there was nothing to see, but he’d lied. And if he’d lied about that—

  “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  “Trust me, my dear, he had no—”

  “I don’t believe you about the tentacles. I don’t even believe he’s dead. I think you’ve hidden him away.”

  He loosed a strangled laugh. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “I don’t know.” The words seemed to form on their own and poured from her in a torrent. “But I do know there’s been a lot of strange stuff going on with this baby. Jerry wanted him, then Jerry’s brother stopped me from having an abortion. Those crazy monks wanted him—or at least I think they did—and then Mister Osala came along, and he wouldn’t let me have an abortion. He had a reason for that—supposedly for my own protection—and it sounded good, at least in theory, but I wonder, because the outcome of it all was to keep me pregnant with this baby, not let anything happen to the baby. The baby, the baby, the baby! What’s so damn important about my baby? The tentacles?” She heard her voice rising in pitch and volume but couldn’t help it. “What? Somebody tell me! Somebody stop lying to me for just half a fucking minute and tell me!”

  By the end she was screaming.

  Dr. Landsman turned to the nurse and nodded. Dawn saw a syringe in her hand, saw her plunge it into the IV tubing and empty it. She reached over to rip out the line but Dr. Landsman grabbed her wrist and held it.

  “Relax, Dawn. You’re hysterical. It’s a postpartum mood disorder. You’re imagining things. This will relax you.”

  She struggled, but the strength seemed to leak out of her. A moment later she had to lie back. She fought to keep her eyes open but they refused to obey. She heard Dr. Landsman saying something to the nurse but his voice was too far away to understand . . .

  6

  “Mister Tuit?” someone called as Russ stepped off the elevator.

  He mispronounced it as Too-it. Most people did.

  “It’s ‘Tweet,’ ” he said. “Like that thing you do on Twitter.”

  The guy gave him a blank look. Under his topcoat he was thin as a memory board and looked like he had a black BB embedded in the middle of his chin.

  Then he blinked and said, “Sorry, Mister . . . Tuit.” This time he got it right. He extended a hand. “My name’s Belgiovene. I’m with the Operation.”

  That was how they referred to the project—the Operation—and it involved some of the most satisfying work he had ever done. The National Reconnaissance Office, manned by DoD and CIA personnel, operated the nation’s reconnaissance satellites. As such it was under constant attack by foreign hackers. It had secretly gathered a group of veteran hackers—Russ among them—to do some white-hat work, challenging them to push the hacking envelope, to take the most vicious worms and trojans hurled against the NRO’s computers and make them worse. Then find defenses against them. And then develop a virus to breach those defenses. And then a firewall to block that attack. And on and on.

  But as for this guy really being with the NRO, Russ wasn’t so sure.

  “How do I know that?”

  The guy pulled out an ID folder and flipped it open to reveal his NRO ID. It looked good, but Russ still wasn’t satisfied.

  “How come you’re meeting me out here and not in
there?” he said, jerking his thumb down the hall to where the security teams worked.

  The NRO had installed them on the sixth floor of this office building on West Houston. To earn their salary, the teams were required to put in eight-to-five days, but they often stayed late—sometimes all night if things were rolling. Russ appreciated the generous income, but the potential bonus he’d been offered meant more than money.

  “Because the Operation is closing down and your team will be finishing up without you.”

  Russ felt like he’d just been shoved into a black hole.

  “Like hell!”

  He started for the office door.

  “Wait!” Belgiovene called out behind him. “It’s not what you think.”

  Russ ignored him. Something wrong here. He’d done primo work for the Operation, given it his all. They couldn’t—

  He was halfway to the door when it opened and Hart, overseer of the teams, stepped out.

  “Oh, Russ. I see you’ve met Belgiovene. Good news, eh?”

  “Good news? I’m being canned and you call that good news?”

  Hart looked flabbergasted. “Canned? Who said anything about—?”

  “A misunderstanding, I’m afraid,” Belgiovene said, joining them. He put a hand on Russ’s arm. “We’re moving you to a different project.”

  “Yeah,” Hart said. “This one’s done. Just a matter of tying up loose ends. You’re too valuable to waste on scut work.”

  The praise shot a blast of relief through Russ.

  Belgiovene said, “We’re very impressed with your work. And . . . there’s another matter I need to discuss with you.”

  “What?”

  “The terms of your parole?”

  Relief morphed into exhilaration. Was he finally going to stop paying for that bank hack?

  “You mean—?”

  Belgiovene raised a hand. “Not here.”

  “What? Oh, right. Sure. Where?”

  “It’s best we talk in private. We will have to meet with people. It is a delicate procedure. Judicial egos are involved—not local, but federal. We keep our promises. You’ve delivered your end, so we’ll deliver ours. We’ll get this done.”

  Russ followed him toward the elevator, feeling lighter than air.