Chapter 39

They wended their way through western North Carolina, down into Georgia. The rain had started and was making driving difficult. About dark, he decided to stop a little bit outside of Gainesville, Georgia, where they checked into a Holiday Inn. One room, Michelle insisted. She wouldn’t feel safe with the kids on her own. Besides, it would be cheaper.

“Headed for the Super Bowl?” asked the desk clerk. Eric blinked. Right. This weekend was Super Bowl Sunday. It wasn’t his sport. He shook his head in the negative and took the key.

Because of the rain and because Gainesville, Georgia wasn’t exactly the New York City of the South, they ate in the motel coffee shop then tucked the children into bed while they watched the world skating championships at a low volume.

Michelle got into bed with her daughters, and he showered and jumped into the bed on the other side of the room. Not once had she asked about David, he thought. Not once. He closed his eyes. She crawled into bed with him. Oh, hell. He put his arm around her and sighed. His strength of character was fading rapidly. Their mouths entwined. It had been a long time since he had last kissed her.

He kissed her again and his hands explored her body. He got on top of her and looked into her still-innocent blue eyes. He actually hadn’t intended for this to happen.

“Mommy,” piped up a little voice. Eric rolled off of Michelle, his heart thumping. He let out his breath. He sighed again and pulled the covers back up. Oh, man.

He must have been sleeping, because he wasn’t aware of the moment she got back into bed with him. He turned around and faced her. Could he really kick her out of his bed? It didn’t seem plausible. She smiled as if she knew what he was thinking. “I’m not letting you off that easy,” she whispered. She pulled up her nightgown. He was a lost soul.

He flew back to New York Saturday evening, even though Michelle had said she would leave the kids with her mom and they could spend a second night together in a nearby motel. One night he could write off as a mistake, a little moral weakness. Twice and he would be culpable both of cheating on Helen (really?) and gypping himself.

He drove by Fort Benning, but didn’t try to get past the guard, though he could with his ID. He went and had a club soda at a bar—still there—where the guys sometimes hung out near the base. Not only did he not know anyone present, but they all looked so young. Their youth came as a terrible shock. If they were that young, then he was old. He didn’t feel all that ancient, but it was happening.

On Sunday, he picked Helen up at the train and they drove to the office to greet the FBI agents who were coming in with an FM-AM spectrum analyzer, along with a telephone and wiring analyzer. The feds were also bringing an instrument used to brush the walls and detect electronic circuitry, even circuitry not in use.

The plan was to not discuss any bugs and/or taps found—or anything else of importance—but to leave the electronics in place for the moment. They couldn’t hide the fact that they were searching for gadgetry—since the hunt would be picked up by anyone snooping—but they could keep it a secret if they found any units.

“Where were you on Saturday?” Helen asked in the car. “I thought you might want to come over. I called and left a message.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. He kept his eyes on the road. “I had to fly down to Virginia. Sorry.” She didn’t say anything.

At Westlake, he sat in Helen’s office while she went to see if Ryan had arrived. She came back and gave him a funny look. “He wants to see you,” she said. “He’s in a pissy mood.” She must have meant that Ryan was half-pissed because he was somewhat intoxicated when Eric walked in the door. Eric checked his watch. Ten o’ clock. Not too early to start drinking, perhaps, but a little early to have already socked away a few.

Eric plopped himself in a chair uninvited. “Have a drink,” offered Ryan. Eric shook his head. “You’re right,” said the ex-cop. “Drinking really isn’t good for you.” Eric didn’t answer. “It’s about money,” Ryan went on.

“Of course,” agreed Eric consolingly. Maybe Ryan was about to confess to having stolen Dr. Sommers’ research. Eric’s ears pricked up. “I’ve checked it out in the meantime, since you first came on board. We’re paying you at the wrong salary level.”

Eric smiled. He was being paid almost adequately, but he hardly felt like a bandit. “I’ve had accounting re-calculate the figures. You owe Westlake three-thousand dollars,” finished Ryan, taking a generous gulp from his glass. His eyes met Eric’s and he seemed very, very pleased with himself.

Eric laughed. “Westlake hasn’t gotten my bill for additional services yet,” he told Ryan. Ryan was climbing a slippery slope with this approach.

“Then there’s the matter of days off,” Ryan began again. His eyes were not only hard but beginning to glaze over with drink. “You’ve taken quite a number of days off, for which you were paid. Where were you Friday, for instance? The company will have to deduct those days from your next check.”

“Okay,” accepted Eric. He stood up. He had expected something from Ryan. Not exactly this, but something. “As I said, however, I’ll reconcile Westlake payments against fees due. My attorney will figure it out.” Eric didn’t need his sister to tell him he didn’t have a leg to stand on in terms of additional payments, although he also believed that Westlake would never insist on his repaying salary already handed over. He left Ryan’s office.

Agent Sally Klein and two helpers had arrived and were ready to begin. Klein wasn’t a hard-ass like her boss, Harding, and simply nodded when Eric offered his assistance. He wanted to participate, because he knew he could learn something from it.

Helen greeted Klein with a floor plan to which the special agent now referred. “We’ll start here, and move along this corridor, then down the other wing,” she said, pointing. “These are the executive and research and development areas, Miss Robbins tells me. We’ll do a hands-on check of every room, even where our electronics don’t detect a device. We check walls, ceilings, floor, and doors, heating ducts, junction boxes, electrical switches, and telephone blocks. We check all objects for spaces hidden in them. We look under furniture, behind cabinets, on top of door frames. We look into books. Lift the edges of carpeting. Remove desk drawers and search on all sides. Unscrew wall sockets and use a light and mirror to look into the wall itself. You’ll get the hang of it as we go along,” she told Eric.

Klein looked up and smiled at him. She no doubt could see Eric was a little overwhelmed by the task before them. “Then we turn off the lights and sweep light across the surfaces, looking for pinholes. We investigate pinholes for microphones or tubes that may hold a microphone.”

“And then?” asked Eric, dizzy. He thought this was an electronic thing. He was almost sorry he had volunteered for duty.

“We have ultraviolet lights to sweep the room. That allows us to see any touch-up of the paint where a device has been dropped and the surface scratched and then repaired.” She was practically laughing.

“It’s a bitch of a job,” she admitted. She did laugh. “It’s the sort of thing you do when you work for the government.” They moved forward into the executive offices. An hour later, Eric took a break. Hell, he wasn’t getting paid. No, in fact, his salary was being docked. Klein and her guys were having fun unscrewing lamps, but his head was aching from the tedium of the search—which had yielded nothing so far, to his chagrin.

He walked out to the parking lot to get a bottle of Perrier he had left in the car. Ryan was leaving, he saw, a great deal more than half-pissed by now, unable even to walk a straight line to his vehicle. The man fumbled with the key at his car door. Eric watched, then walked over and cleared his throat so Ryan wouldn’t think he was sneaking up. He grabbed the key out of the security director’s hand. “My car’s over there,” Eric pointed. “I’ll drive you home.”

“I can drive myself.” The words were slurred and Ryan had a vicious expression on his face.

“I’m not letting you do that,” Eric said. Even if Ryan might make it under the best of conditions, the roads were surprisingly slick today, despite a brief thaw. In fact, patches of black ice that motorists couldn’t see were on the roads; in some places a layer of clear ice covered the highway, also hard to tell from the blacktop; and potholes galore, caused by water erosion and salt, lay in wait. Eric had witnessed two cars skidding off the road on his way over here.

“Come on, Ryan,” he coaxed. “Let’s do the sensible thing. You want to get home and watch the Super Bowl, don’t you?” Those magic words calmed Ryan somewhat and Eric was able to steer the older man to the other car, as if he were on a string. Eric bundled Ryan into the back seat. He knew where Ryan lived. He had gotten the address while scrolling through the personnel database and had driven past one night to see what type of lifestyle the man had—in order to judge if he would be tempted to sell secrets.

Eric pulled out of the lot and took a shortcut to the expressway. He felt sorry for Ryan’s wife. How many times had her husband been brought home drunk like this, before noon on a Sunday morning? Suddenly, Eric felt a hand at his throat, then two hands squeezing. Ah, Christ. With the roads so dangerous, he hardly wanted to fight a drunken madman with one hand, while trying to steer with the other.

Knowing he was going to crash anyway, Eric stretched his arm out and reached down to the Perrier bottle on the floor beside him. Ryan wasn’t kidding about choking Eric. The ex-cop was still a brawny guy and Eric was starting to suffocate. He was going to black out. He grasped the bottle in his hand and flailed back at Ryan, landing a solid hit on the top of his assailant’s skull. Ryan’s grip loosened and Eric gasped for breath. He pulled off the road—more dangerous than keeping on it, actually—and tried to recover.

Eric got out and opened the back door to check on his attacker. Ryan was lying half on the floor, half on the seat. How badly had Eric cracked him? He checked for a pulse in the neck. Ryan’s heart was ticking away, strong and steady. Ryan was breathing, too. In fact, the old drunk began to snore. Eric felt his own neck. It hurt. So did his throat. He’d have strangle marks the next day, that was sure.

He’d have trouble forgiving Ryan for this one. In fact, he might never forgive Ryan for any of it. He especially wouldn’t forgive him for what had happened with Helen.