Fire in the Sky Read online

  Greggson cleared his throat and opened a file folder onto his lap. He frowned at the contents for a moment. "First off," he said finally, "I think we've managed to keep the government out of this completely. The D.C. police have been cooperative, and are representing the matter to the press as a straightforward rape-murder, while working with my office on the government angles."

  "How long can that hold up?"

  "How long does it need to?"

  Brognola smiled. "I wish I knew. I suppose all we can do is take this a day at a time and hope for the best."

  "And meanwhile," Greggson continued, "we've managed to glean a few interesting facts from our investigation of the house and the Price woman's bank accounts."

  "Just a second." Brognola pulled a small spiral notebook and pen out of his sport jacket pocket. "Okay. Let me have it."

  Greggson pulled a pair of black-framed glasses out of his own jacket and put them on to ride halfway down his nose. He pursed his lips, then spoke, his eyes fixed on his reports. "Whoever killed her and the boy did a pretty good job rifling the house. They must have done it in the middle of the night, because none of the neighbors saw anything at all. There were a great many pieces of charred paper and photographs in her fireplace, however. So maybe they burned everything. But we did manage to find a key to a safety-deposit box and called around until we found the place. I got them to open up the bank yesterday —using government authorization but no paperwork — and got into her box. It was a big one, and it was full of cash... several hundred thousand dollars in cash. There were also uncashed checks totaling over fifty thousand dollars drawn on the account of a firm in Florida called the Baylor Goggle and Optical Company."

  Brognola looked up from his notebook. "That name," he said, putting the notebook on the floor, "is incredibly familiar."

  He began to go through the preliminary printouts of the information Bolan had asked him to glean from the matériel manifest of the Challenger flight. He found what he wanted almost immediately and read it off to Greggson. "A subsidiary of the Baylor Goggle and Optical Company called GeoScan had cargo on the fatal Challenger flight and on the previous three flights."

  "What sort of cargo?" Greggson asked, staring over the rim of his glasses.

  Brognola flipped through several more pages. "Apparently GeoScan sent up several satellites from which they can take infrared pictures of the planet and somehow find the absolute best places to drill for oil. It's simply a service industry to the oil business."

  "Why did they give Marie Price so much money?" Ted Healy asked.

  "I don't know," Brognola replied, "but from the way she set it up, it looks like she wasn't declaring it on her income tax. We'll check that." He made a note on his printout and looked up at Greggson. "Did you find out when she opened the safety-deposit box?"

  "Yeah." Greg referred to his own notes. "She took the thing out in April 1983."

  "Jesus," the head Fed whispered, and pulled the woman's personnel file out of his stack. He held it up, pointed to the first page. "That was just two months after she came to work for Justice."

  "I think that maybe it's time to concentrate on GeoScan and Baylor."

  "I'll take care of that." Brognola made another note. "Did you find anything else?"

  "Yeah, a little," Greg replied. "She didn't have any really close friends, but there's a woman in the office she used to take lunch with named Lydia Green, who told us that Marie had been dating an officer connected to the Pentagon, named Michaels. We checked that out and found that General Leland has an adjutant named Captain Norman Michaels. We showed the Green woman a photo and she said it was the same man she saw Marie Price leaving the building with once."

  "Leland again," Brognola said wearily. "Everything keeps coming back to him, doesn't it?"

  "Do you realize," Greggson said, "what would happen to us if we tried to pin something on Leland?"

  "He's only the most beloved man in the Administration," Brognola returned. "Why should there be a problem?"

  "All we've got is extremely circumstantial," Greggson said. "I would never walk into court with a case like this."

  "I went to Marie's funeral today. There was nobody there but family."

  The door burst open, and Oscar Largent stuck his head in. "Someone's coming."

  "Get in and close the door," Brognola ordered. "Ted, hit the lights."

  Healy flipped the light switch, and the windowless room was plunged into total darkness. Largent opened the door a crack to peek through, a shaft of light from without slicing through the room.

  They sat there in utter silence, listening to the sound of approaching footsteps echoing hollowly on the concrete floor. The sound peaked, then subsided.

  "He's passed," Largent said. "Looks like one of the maintenance men."

  "We'll give him a minute," Brognola whispered.

  "I feel like an idiot," one of Greggson's bodyguards said dully.

  "You wouldn't," the head Fed replied, "if you'd found a bomb under the hood of your car."

  "Where do we go from here?" Greggson said low.

  "I'm afraid we're going to have to bring more people into it," Brognola replied, his mind just barely a step ahead of the developments. "I think we should start putting tails on these guys — Leland, Michaels and Givan for now, others as they become known. The fact that they had a relatively unimportant secretary under such an incredible payroll says a great deal. Such as, where are they getting so much money and exactly how many people are in on this damned thing, whatever it is."

  "He's coming back," Largent said, and everyone quieted again, listening to the footsteps.

  Brognola sat there, relating to his new world and its new protocols. How much easier, he thought, to simply take a leave of absence and get the hell out of Dodge for a while, just leave this problem for someone else. There was, of course, no one else, and if what he thought about Leland and his bunch was, indeed, true, then he could be the only person standing in the way of a military takeover of the United States government.

  "He's passed," Largent informed them, opening the door wide.

  "Get the lights," Brognola commanded, Healy hurrying to comply.

  "Gentlemen," Brognola said, "I feel that we are engaged in a war here, a war whose consequences could be just as devastating as any war has ever been. Our enemy comes from within and moves with the trappings of right and justice. He will be a tough and a shrewd adversary who, potentially, already has taken many of those closest to us. I'm sorry that we must meet in places like this, sorrier still that we are dealing from the hand of weakness, not of strength. But I mean to see this through, even if I have to live in a place like this. I hope you all feel the same."

  There were mumbled affirmations from the five other people in the room. "I think I speak for everyone here," Greggson said, "when I say that we are in this with you one hundred percent. We are, all of us, committed to action."

  "Good." Brognola continued. "What we have is simple: the Challenger disaster, a cry for help from a top scientist who is then killed, the killing of the rest of the researchers, ultimately tying into Givan's killing of Harry Arnold on a Mississippi back road. We have the bugging of my office, the attempted murder of me and the successful murder of my secretary, all ultimately circling back again to the Challenger disaster. Project GOG is a highly classified reality under the control of General Leland, who ties to everything else that's happened. There is a military connection, though we don't know of what strength. It is now time for us to recruit our own small army to help us in the investigation. I want all of you to think hard and pick out several names you truly believe are clear of this stigma and would be willing to help us. Will you do that?"

  The voices were loud this time. "Yes."

  Brognola nodded. "I can't guarantee anyone's safety, just as no one can guarantee that in wartime. We're going to start putting tails on the people we suspect most strongly and see where they lead us. Meanwhile, from my end, I'm going to dig out everything
I can on Baylor Goggle..."

  "Maybe that's your GOG," Greggson said. "Goggle... GOG, a connection?"

  "Maybe," Brognola said.

  "What about your man in Florida?" Greggson asked.

  "He's had pretty fair success. He's protecting our last researcher, has uncovered the secret of liquid electricity and is working on a code that might shed some light on this whole business."

  "Yeah," Largent said, "living the high life in Florida, not a care in the world, nothing but success."

  "Nothing but success," Brognola repeated, and wondered why he didn't believe it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On hands and knees, Bolan looked under the chassis of the Jeep, his morning ritual before going to work. It looked clear, so he stood, his knee still sore from Saturday night, and unlocked the hood latches.

  The kitchen door opened, and Julie walked onto the stoop dressed in a bathrobe, a paper bag in her hand. "Good morning," she said sweetly, and walked down the three steps to the drive.

  "Good morning," he returned, opening the hood and peering within. "You're up early this morning."

  "Thought I'd see how the other half lives," she said cheerily, and Bolan was immediately suspicious of her saccharine sweetness.

  "We live half-asleep," he replied, and slammed the hood back into place. He pointed to the paper bag. "What have you got there?"

  She held up the brown bag. "It's a meatloaf sandwich left over from last night's dinner. I thought you might be getting tired of all that machine food."

  He took the bag, wishing he could see through the happy mask that was her face. "Thanks a lot." He walked around to the driver's side door to check the hair that he had wet and plastered across the doorframe last night. It was still in place. "And I want to thank you again for making dinner last night."

  "It was a pleasure. What would you like tonight?"

  "Come on, Julie," he said. "What is this sudden turn-around?"

  She shrugged. "Guess maybe I've decided to call that truce after all. If we've got to live here together, at least we can be friendly about it. Besides, this place is bringing out my nesting instinct."

  "Right." Bolan climbed into the Jeep. Something was going on; he just couldn't put his finger on it.

  He started the car, the woman climbing the steps to the kitchen and turning around to wave pleasantly at him. He returned the wave with a pasted-on smile and backed out of the driveway, heading the vehicle down Avondale in the direction of the institute.

  Julie had been acting oddly ever since his return from work last night. Where he thought she would razz him about the too-tight flannel shirt and cords he wore, courtesy of Robbie, she instead was agreeable and sympathetic, greeting him not only with a hot meal, but with cold martinis, as well.

  This was not the same woman whom he'd been living with the past week. Something had happened to change her. He just wished he could figure out what it was.

  The traffic was thick on Aloma, the morning sun, still low in the eastern sky, already heating things up. Bolan drove mechanically, with only half an eye on the road, his mind eaten up with the riddles that seemed to confront him on all sides.

  Of the riddle of Jerry Butler's code, he knew of no solutions. He had spent several fruitless days trying to crack the code within a code, but no amount of substitution of letters, numbers or symbols seemed to have the least effect on the nonsense words of the code. He was thinking very seriously of transmitting the whole mess to Hal and forgetting about it. Yet Hal had already made it clear he didn't want to trust Washington's cryptographers.... Bolan sighed heavily.

  Of the riddle of the spy at the institute, he was a little more sure. Peg Ackerman's employment record was obviously bogus, and though she came to the institute after Jerry Butler's demise, there seemed to be a great deal more than coincidence connecting the two. If that was, indeed, the case, he'd find out today. It was time to run Peg Ackerman up the flagpole and see who saluted. He was tired of waiting for things to come to him. He was tired of the passive approach. It was time to stir things up, time to shake the nest — and he was just the guy to do it.

  He drove through the gates at Grolier feeling better than he had for a while. He had been playing the game under everyone else's rules, but that was about to come to an end.

  He drove into the garage under the building, parking on the second level. He climbed out of the Jeep, jerking a hair out of his head and wetting it across the crack between the door and doorpost.

  He carried his briefcase containing Butler's code and his map of Arizona into the elevator. The map was another riddle that hadn't been solved.

  The car made it all the way to five without stopping. Chuck waved to him as he stepped out. "Morning, Dr. Sparks."

  "Morning," Bolan returned. "Where is everybody right now?"

  "Most of them are down in the break room."

  "Thanks." Bolan had already started toward the offices. He turned abruptly and headed back toward the break room.

  Most of his colleagues were in there, sitting in the living room drinking coffee and smoking. Robbie wasn't there. Neither was Howard Davis. Yuri Bonner sat close to an end table light, furiously writing on a notepad while chain-smoking endlessly.

  "Good morning everyone." Bolan sat in one of the easy chairs, his briefcase on his lap.

  "Our hero," Ike Silver said derisively, shaking his head. "The patient lived, by the way, Doctor."

  "Morty?" Bolan asked. "Good."

  "Yeah," Fred Haines confirmed. "Muscle-bound Nam boy researcher saves talking fish. Pretty good headline, huh?"

  "What have you got against me, Fred?" Bolan growled.

  "Nothing, Nam boy," he returned. "I like you. I just don't know who you really are, that's all."

  "And why you're really here," Ike Silver added.

  Bolan sat up straight. "What difference does it make?"

  "We don't need nobody in here spying on us," Haines said, his smile fading. "So, why don't you stop screwing around and tell us what you want."

  "I wonder who's kept the suspicion high about me," Bolan said, looking around the room. "Could it be...you, Peg? You're certainly being quiet now."

  The woman glared at him over her coffee cup.

  "It don't matter who said what about what," Haines retorted, angry. "Fact is, you ain't who you said you were."

  "Who am I then?"

  "Maybe an Air Force snitch," Peg put in.

  "And who might you be, Peg?" he asked. "I mean, really, who are you?"

  "I don't have to answer…" she began, but Bolan interrupted.

  "You don't have to answer, but I do." He laughed shortly. "Is that it?"

  "Now, don't go changing the subject," Silver chided.

  "I'm not." Bolan turned to Peg. "Okay. Where did you work before you came here?"

  She sat staring at him.

  "Listen, Sparks…" Haines began.

  "No, you listen," Bolan said. "I'm sick of the third degree I get around here. Your background isn't so great, either, but right now I'm asking the lady a simple question. It shouldn't be too difficult to answer, an easy, declarative sentence." He turned to Peg again. "I'm asking you where you worked before you came here."

  "I don't have to answer your questions." She stood as if to leave.

  "Yes, this time you do have to answer," he said. "Just like you wanted to make me answer your chemistry questions the other day like a schoolchild."

  "And I recall you didn't answer," she returned, and moved across the room. Bolan moved to block her escape.

  "But you're going to," he insisted. "Come on, this is easy. Neatness doesn't even count. Just tell me where you worked."

  Everyone was staring at her; she raised her hand to nervously rearrange her already perfect hair. "This is...silly."

  "Just answer," Haines urged her. "That's all."

  "Where?" Bolan persisted.

  She looked around again, licking dry lips. "Well, I used to teach chemistry at Bowling Green, I…"
r />   "No," Bolan interrupted her. "I mean right before you came here. What job did you give up to take this one?"

  She cleared her throat and looked down at the floor. "I, ah, was in the biochemistry department at Boston College."

  "Don't be modest, Peg," Bolan said. "You ran that department, didn't you?"

  She looked at him, her eyes hard and unforgiving. "Yes," she said quietly. "I did."

  "Well," Bolan said, "that's quite a trick considering that Donovan Phelps has run that department for many years. What did you do, shove him aside and use his office?"

  "I don't have to answer your questions."

  "Especially if I'm looking for the truth," Bolan replied. "You've wanted to say it about me. I'll say it about you: you're a fraud, Peg. You've lied about your previous employment and maybe you lie about everything else. Just who are you?"

  The woman looked around for support, finding nothing but hard, lined faces peering back at her. Even Yuri had stopped writing and was staring at her with the kind of look probably reserved for Russian KGB informants.

  "Don't listen to him," she pleaded. "He's just trying to throw blame onto me to keep it from himself."

  "I suppose a phone call to Boston College can clear you," Bolan said, walking over to the blue phone that sat on the coffee table and picking up the receiver. "What is the area code there, Peg?"

  She just looked at him, her lips moving soundlessly. Then she bolted, running through the room, the table area and out the door. Bolan watched her go, his suspicions confirmed. Now what to do?

  He wanted to follow it up with her, but the kind of interrogation he had in mind would be frowned upon at the institute. His next step would be to pull her address from the computer records and pay her a friendly little visit later tonight. Peg Ackerman's days as a mystery woman would be coming to an end. He'd pushed her in a direction, now it was time to see just what direction it was.

  "What gives between you two lovebirds?" Ike Silver asked. "You're like two scorpions stinging each other to death."

  Bolan turned to him. "Even here reality intrudes, doesn't it, Ike?"