The wooden voice announced: “You are Lt. Col. Jonathan Jackson Smith. Therefore, you may enter.”
“Thanks, Marty,” he said dryly. “I’ve been wondering who in the hell I was.”
“Very funny, Jon.”
A series of dramatic clicks, clanks, and thuds followed, and the woodcovered steel door swung open on a creaky track. Maintenance was not one of Marty’s top priorities, but theatricality was. Smith stepped inside what was a traditional foyer except for one imposing detail— his progress was stopped by a walk-in metal cage. As the front door automatically closed behind, Smith waited, trapped by jail-like bars.
“Hi, Jon.” Marty’s high, slow, precise voice welcomed him from beyond the foyer. As the cage’s gate clicked open, Marty appeared in a doorway to the side. “Come in, please.” His eyes twinkled with devilment.
He was a small, rotund man who walked awkwardly, as if he had never really learned how to move his legs. Smith followed him into an enormous computer room in a state of utter disorder and neglect. A formidable Cray mainframe and other computer equipment of every possible description filled all wall space and most of the floor, and what furniture there was looked like Salvation Army discards. Steel cages enclosed the draped windows.
As Marty’s right hand flopped aimlessly, he held out his left for Smith to shake, while his brilliant green eyes looked away at the left wall of computer equipment.
Smith said, “It’s been a while, Marty. It’s good to see you.”
“Thanks. Me, too.” He smiled shyly, and his green eyes made glittering contact and then skittered away again.
“Are you on your medication, Marty?”
“Oh, yes.” He did not sound happy about that. “Sit down, Jon. You want some coffee and a cookie?”
Martin Joseph Zellerbach— Ph.D. D.Litt. (Cantab)— had been a patient of Smith’s Uncle Ted, a clinical psychiatrist, since Smith and Marty were in grammar school together. Far better adjusted and socially mature, Smith had taken Marty under his wing, protecting him from the cruel teasing of other children and even some teachers. Marty was not stupid. In fact, he had tested at the genius level since the age of five, and Smith had always found him funny, nice, and intellectually stimulating. With the years, Marty had grown even more intelligent— and more isolated. In school, he ran academic circles around everyone, but he had no concept of— or interest in— other people and the relationships so important to preteens and teens.
He obsessed on one arcane curiosity after another and lectured at great length. He knew all the answers in many of his courses, so to relieve his boredom he would disrupt his classes with his wild and dazzling fantasies and manias. No one could believe anyone as smart as Marty was not being intentionally rude and a troublemaker, so teachers frequently sent him to the principal’s office. In later years, Smith had to fight a number of enraged boys who thought Marty was “dissing” them or their girlfriends.
All of this unusual behavior was the result of Asperger’s syndrome, a rare disorder at the less severe end of the autism spectrum. Diagnosed in childhood with everything from “a dash of autism” to obsessive compulsive disorder and high-functioning autism, Marty was finally diagnosed accurately by Smith’s Uncle Ted. Marty’s key symptoms were consuming obsessions, high intelligence, crippling lack of social and communications skills, and outstanding talent in a specific area— electronics.
On the milder end, Asperger sufferers were often described as “active but odd” or “autistic-eccentric.” But Marty had a slightly more severe case, and despite specialists’ attempts to socialize him, except for the few brief trips to court years ago, he had not left this bungalow— which he had carefully and lovingly created as part electronic paradise and part haven for his eccentricities— in fifteen years.
There was no cure, and the only help for people like Marty was medication, usually central nervous system stimulants like Adderall, Ritalin, Cylert, or the new one Marty took— Mideral. As with schizophrenia, the medicines allowed Marty to function with both feet firmly planted on the earth. They restrained his fantasies, enthusiasms, and obsessions. Although he hated them, he took them when he knew he had to do “normal” activities such as pay bills or when his Asperger’s was threatening to spin him completely out of control.
But when medicated, Marty said everything was dull and flat and distant, and much of his genius and creativity was lost. So he had eagerly embraced the new medicine that acted fast to calm him, as most did, but whose effects lasted only six hours at most, which meant a dose could be taken more frequently. Living sealed off from the world in his bungalow, he could be off his meds more than most Asperger’s sufferers could.
If you needed a computer genius to do creative, maybe illegal, hacking, you wanted Marty Zellerbach off his meds. It was then up to you to keep him on track and to know when it was time to bring him back to earth if he threatened to fly off into an orbit of his own.
Which was why Smith was here.
“Marty, I need help.”
“Of course, Jon.” Marty smiled, a stained coffee mug in his hand. “It’s almost time for a new dose of meds. I’ll stay off.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” Smith explained about the report from the Prince Leopold Institute in Belgium that did not appear to exist. About the outside phone calls Sophia could have made or received, yet the records were gone. About his need for any information relating to the unknown virus anywhere in the world. “A couple of other things, too. I want to find Bill Griffin. You remember him from school.” And finally he described his tracking the three virus victims to the Gulf War and the MASH unit. “See if you can find anything about the virus in Iraq as far back as ten years ago.”
Marty put down his mug and made a beeline for his mainframe. He flashed an enthusiastic smile. “I’ll use my new programs.”
Smith stood. “I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“All right.” Marty rubbed his hands together. “This is going to be fun.”
Smith left him working his sluggish, awkward fingers on the keyboard. The meds would wear off soon, and then, Smith knew, the fingers and the brain would fly until they came close to spiraling off the earth entirely, and Marty would have to take his Mideral again.
Outside, Smith walked quickly to his Triumph. As traffic drove noisily past, he did not notice a helicopter pause high overhead and then speed on, making a long loop to the left to parallel him as he drove toward Massachusetts Avenue.
__________
The noise of the rotors and wind through the open window of the Bell JetRanger vibrated the chopper. Nadal al-Hassan cupped a microphone close to his mouth. “Maddux? Smith has visited a bungalow near Dupont Circle.” He located the bungalow on a city map and described the hidden driveway and high hedge. “Find out who lives there and what Smith wanted.”
He clicked off his microphone and stared down at the old, classic Triumph below as it headed toward Georgetown. For the first time, al-Hassan felt uneasy. It was not a feeling he would communicate to Tremont, but as a result he would stay close to this Smith. Bill Griffin, even if he were to be trusted, might not be enough to end the threat.
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CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
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10:34 A.M.
Washington, D.C.
Bill Griffin had been briefly married, and Smith had met the woman twice back before the couple was even engaged. Both times they had been happily out on the town, hitting the noisy New York bars Bill frequented in his army days. Bill did a lot of loud bars then, perhaps because his life was spent in remote foreign locations where every step could be his last and every sound was an enemy. Smith knew almost nothing about the woman or the marriage, except that it had lasted less than two years. He had heard she still lived in the same Georgetown apartment she had shared with Bill. If Bill was in danger, he might have holed up there, where few people would know to look.
It was a long shot, but aside from Marty, he had few options.
When he reached her apartment house, he used his cell phone to call her.
She answered promptly and efficiently. “Marjorie Griffin.”
“Ms. Griffin, you won’t remember me, but this is Jonathan Smith, Bill’s—”
“I remember you, Captain Smith. Or is it major or colonel by now?”
“I’m not sure what it is, and it doesn’t matter anyway, but it was lieutenant colonel yesterday. I see you kept Bill’s name.”
“I loved Bill, Colonel Smith. Unfortunately for me, He loved his work more. But you didn’t call to inquire about my marriage or divorce. You’re looking for Bill, right?”