Appropriate Sanctions
by Michael Grant
Copyright 2012 Michael Grant
Smashwords Edition
Chapter One
Rahim Barazani, a short, thickset Pakistani didn’t look like a man capable of bringing down the president of the United States.
With only an hour of his life remaining—although he didn’t know it—he stood at the window of his twenty-seventh floor hotel room admiring the majestic view of Washington spread before him. To him, America’s icons—the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, and the Jefferson Memorial—never looked more magnificent bathed in the glow of white floodlights.
The swarthy man studied the vista with large brown eyes that managed to look sorrowful even when he was happy. But now he was sad. He knew it was the last time he would see this inspiring sight and he was surprised at the depth of emotion he felt. By nature he was not sentimental. How could he be, considering the nature of his business?
Over the years he’d come to be on intimate terms with every major city in the world, but Washington was his favorite. He reveled in the excitement and mystery of America’s capital—the seat of so much power and intrigue.
Barazani genuinely liked Americans, even if they were enigmas. They were in turn generous and open, but at the same time, devious. Not unlike himself. Only more polished in their treachery.
He noticed his hands were shaking. He went to a well-stocked bar and poured himself a tumbler of Chivas Regal. He gulped the expensive liquor down and winced. He’d learned to drink scotch, but he’d never learned to like it. Still, at a time like this—when he was about to consummate the biggest deal of his life—the alcohol helped sooth his jangled nerves.
For the third time in as many hours, the restless Barazani opened his valise and studied his new Saudi passport. A face stared back at him—his face—with those sad, droopy eyes and dark lined cheeks. But the name on the passport was not his. Not yet.
In the next twenty-four hours he would assume a new identity and leave his old life behind. He would become Bahram Afshar, retired Saudi businessman. According to the agreement, he would live a low-profile life in Brazil, never try to communicate with anyone in the United States government again, and—more importantly—never engage in his old business. Not a bad tradeoff, he thought. If one must go into paid exile, the sandy beaches of Rio, swarming with thong-clad beauties, was not too great an imposition.
He studied himself in the gold-framed mirror behind the bar and assessed what he saw with the same brutal detachment he brought to his business dealings. He’d just turned sixty, but he looked ten years older. He was short, balding, and forty pounds overweight—looking more like a peasant camel driver than an extremely wealthy businessman.
“Fortunately for you, my friend,” he said aloud to his image in the mirror, “looks will be of no consequence.”
The hundred million dollars he was about to receive would more than compensate for his physical shortcomings. Over the years he’d learned one unassailable truth: money counted more than looks. In truth, in all things money counted more than anything else.
As he poured himself another scotch, he recalled with great satisfaction the weeks of tough negotiating that had led up to this moment. When it came to haggling, Americans were no match for Pakistanis. Had his ancestors not been merchants since the time of the Swati dynasty? Bartering was in their genes and the art of haggling came naturally to them.
He, himself, had been selling black market goods in the bazaars of the Kashmir valley since he was a child. From those humble beginnings he’d clawed his way out of the slums to become the world’s most successful importer and exporter—a genteel euphemism for arms dealer. The Americans had been adamant: ten million dollars, not a penny more. But of course, as far as Barazani was concerned, that was merely a starting point. In the end, he’d held out for a hundred.
In all modesty he had to admit it wasn’t just his exceptional skills as a negotiator that had gotten him the extra millions. The truth was, he held the trump card of all trump cards. It was he, and he alone, who possessed the critical information that could bring down the president of the United States.
He was brought out of his pleasant musings by a soft, insistent knock at the door. He looked through the peephole and recognized the dark-eyed, handsome face of Ross Serrian. Of all the Americans he’d had dealings with, he liked Ross Serrian the best. The negotiator for the American side had an easy, disarming laugh and possessed an impressive knowledge of art and music. The two had spent many delightful hours talking about everything from Persian art to Wagner’s ring cycles. But as open as he was about music and art, Ross Serrian had been secretive about everything else.
In his many years of hard and perilous negotiating, Barazani had trained himself to observe the subtlest of body language, to detect the slightest change in voice inflection. And these skills had given him an advantage over his opponents. But Ross Serrian was an enigma. He offered no clue as to what was going on behind those intelligent, black eyes. Indeed, he seemed, at times, to be a man devoid of all emotion. Barazani assumed he was CIA, but he’d never gotten Serrian to admit it.
He opened the door. “Welcome, Ross. Did you bring the package?”
Serrian stepped into the room. Just a shade over six-feet, he towered over the diminutive Pakistani. “Of course, Rahim,” he said, holding out a battered leather briefcase.
Barazani snatched the briefcase from Serrian and immediately chided himself for appearing too anxious. It was unprofessional and totally out of character for him. But, then again, he’d never made such a lucrative deal. He flipped the briefcase open and, in spite of his resolve to remain unruffled, sucked in his breath at the sight of the neat stacks of money.
“The first half of the bargain is complete,” Serrian said. “A million dollars in cash now, the rest to be deposited in your offshore accounts as soon as you set foot on Brazilian soil. Want to count it?”
Barazani slapped the case shut. “No need, my friend. I trust you.”
“Where are the clothes?” Serrian asked.
A scowling Barazani nodded toward a suit, shirt and tie laid out on the bed. “It’s all there as you requested, including my favorite London tailored suit, which, I want you to know, costs more than five thousand dollars. Why you must use such an expensive suit for a faked suicide, I will never understand.”
Serrian smiled, scooping up the clothing. “You never wear cheap suits, Rahim. Why would you commit suicide in one?”
“That is true,” Barazani answered grudgingly, but he was still unhappy with the thought of an expensive suit being discarded on a bridge walkway. In spite of his wealth, Rahim Barazani still retained the iron-fisted thriftiness of his street urchin days.
“Besides, you won’t be needing it where you’re going,” Serrian said.
Barazani, always alert to danger, was instantly on guard. He searched Serrian’s black eyes for a clue as to what was behind those ominous words. “What do you mean, Ross?”
Serrian winked. “No one wears English wool in Rio.”
Barazani roared, relieving his tension. “That is true, my friend. Very true.”
~~~
Less than an hour after they cleared the glut of Washington’s chronic traffic congestion, Serrian pulled off I-95 at the Quantico exit and turned into the sprawling Marine installation. He drove along a quiet, unlit road, far from the base proper where the troops were housed and trained. Twenty minutes later, he pulled off onto a dirt road and stopped at the edge of an unused airstrip. The headlights, shining out into the opaque darkness, barely penetrated the moonless night.
Serrian turned off the motor. The sudden silence made Barazani vaguely uneasy.
“I don’t know why I couldn’t have flown out of Regan,” Barazani groused, anxiously gazing into the impenetrable dark night.
“You’re a famous man, Rahim. We can’t afford to have the press spot you leaving town, now can we?”
“Arrangements could have been made.” It was true that he had agreed to this unusual method of leaving the country, but now that he was here in this quiet, godforsaken airstrip, he was beginning to have second thoughts.
“Relax, Rahim. The plane will be here in a few minutes. You’ll be taken to Guantànamo and from there you’ll board a chartered jet for Brazil.”
Barazani lit up a Cuban Partagas cigar. Serrian looked at it disapprovingly and yanked the door open. “I’ll wait outside in the fresh air.”
Leaving Barazani to puff contentedly on his cigar and fantasize about the warm, soft women he would seduce in the coming days, weeks, months—and given his libido—perhaps years, Serrian walked a short distance from the car and took out a cell phone.
He punched in a number and a man’s voice answered.
“Yes?”
“Is it a go?” Serrian whispered into the phone.
“Yes.” The line went dead.
Serrian slipped the phone back into his pocket. He unholstered a 9mm Beretta and screwed a silencer onto the end of the barrel.
Barazani was studying the red ash on his cigar when Serrian appeared out of the darkness. He motioned Barazani to open the window. Barazani pressed the button and the window rolled down with a soft hiss. The cold night air rushed in, chilling him. “Is the plane coming?” he asked.
Serrian leaned down and smiled. “No, Rahim, change in plans.”
Barazani looked questioningly into Serrian’s smiling face and suddenly saw something he had not seen before. The American’s normally tranquil black eyes had turned to cold, hardened steel. Alarm bells began going off in his head. Then he saw the gun.
Like a drowning man watching his life flash before him, Barazani suddenly realized with the sharpest clarity the foolish mistakes he’d made. He never should have asked for the extra millions. He never should have allowed Serrian to take him here. He never should have allowed the engaging Serrian to gain his trust. He’d survived all these years living on the edge, dealing with—and besting—every manner of mass murder and cutthroat. And now, because of his stupidity, he was going to die alongside some pathetic, abandoned airstrip in the middle of Virginia.
Instinctively, he thrust the briefcase in front of him and fumbled for the door handle. With professional detachment, Serrian unhurriedly pushed the briefcase aside, jammed the gun into Barazani’s temple, and pulled the trigger. The Pakistani arms dealer’s head snapped back and his body went limp.
Serrian pried the briefcase from the dead man’s grip. Then he redialed the number.
“Yes?” the same voice answered.
Ross Serrian looked down at the little arm dealer, whose now lifeless, sad brown eyes stared out at the darkened airfield, and whispered one word. “Done.”
Chapter Two
Paul Ducane turned into the faculty parking lot and grimaced when his Volvo’s tailpipe bottomed on the high curb cut. It always happened when he drove too fast and he was driving too fast now because he’d gotten stuck in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and he had just fifteen minutes to make it to the dean’s office.
As he hurried out of the lot, buttoning up his trench coat against the bitter December wind sweeping off the Hudson River just a few blocks to the west, he muttered under his breath when he saw the homeless man. He was here every morning, wearing the same grungy Mets baseball cap, and hanging around the entrance to the school looking for handouts. To Ducane’s irritation, he saw that this morning he’d brought along a partner, who was shivering in a light windbreaker. The two men lurched toward him.
“Hey, mister,” Mets cap said in a slurred voice, “got a couple of bucks for some food?”
Ducane stiffened in disgust. Even from four feet way he could smell the alcohol on the man’s breath. He’d complained to the school’s security department countless times about the bum’s presence in front of the school, but they’d done nothing. He made a mental note to take the matter up with the provost.
Ignoring the man’s filthy, outstretched hand, Ducane said, “If you got a job, you wouldn’t have to beg.”
The man stared at him with blank, alcohol-fogged eyes. Clearly, he’d heard that admonition before. The man in the windbreaker unscrewed the cap on a cheap bottle of wine and muttered, “Fuck him...”
Mets cap turned around and saw his partner take a swig. “Hey… you’re gonna drink that whole bottle yourself…”
He threw a drunken punch and it glanced off the side of the other man’s head. It wasn’t enough to hurt him, but he dropped the bottle and it smashed on the sidewalk.
Windbreaker looked down at it incredulously. “Look what you made me do…” He threw a wild punch at Mets cap, catching him square in the face. With blood gushing from his nose, Mets cap lunged forward and, locking in a drunken embrace, both men fell to the pavement.
Ducane pulled them apart. “Stop acting like animals,” he shouted, stunning the two men into instant docility. “You’re human beings for God’s sake. Where’s your dignity?”
Mets cap looked at windbreaker with rheumy red eyes. “Dignity? You got any dignity?” he asked.
Windbreaker grinned, showing a mouthful of missing teeth. “I think I lost it a long time ago…”
Waving a hand in dismissal, an exasperated Ducane dashed across the street, dodging honking cars and trucks, toward a wide arch with a gold leaf lettered sign that said: The Hudson Institute of New York.
Ducane shook the unpleasant encounter out of his mind. He had more important things to think about, he reminded himself as he passed under the arch and stepped onto the campus grounds. The sudden change in setting never failed to make him feel the child-like awe of a Dorothy opening the door to the breathtaking Technicolor world of Oz. In the space of fifteen feet he was transported from a horn blaring, car-infested city street populated with bums, to a serenely bucolic setting of trees and lawns.
The grounds of the Hudson Institute couldn’t compare to an Ivy League campus, but still, the unique, eight-square-block area of lawn and trees surrounded by a perimeter of weathered limestone buildings was a welcome sanctuary for students looking for a momentary reprieve from textbooks, lectures, and exams.
It was a popular place to walk, sit, and read—except when the weather was inclement—as it was today. He hurried toward the administration building, glancing up at an angry sky the color of pewter. If the weatherman was correct, sheets of rain, chilled by a thirty-degree temperature, would soon be whipping the leafless trees.
~~~
At the elevator bank, just as Ducane about to press the up button, the doors opened and a student dressed in scruffy high-tops and a baggy parka stepped out.
“Hey, Professor Ducane, you gonna teach the Ethics in Government course next semester?”
“Yep. Why?”
“I tried to sign up for it this semester, but it was closed out.”
Ducane stepped into the elevator and winked. “Must be a snap course,” he said, as the doors closed. “I suggest you register early next time.”
Ducane pressed four and stood back in the empty elevator feeling pleased with himself. His classes were the first to close out every semester, but it wasn’t because they were easy. On the contrary, he was known as a tough, but fair, grader. The reason for his popularity was that at thirty-eight he was still young enough to identify with his students and passionate enough to make his lectures interesting and challenging. Some of his colleagues saw the classroom as an irritating interruption of their research, but Paul Ducane saw the classroom as the primary reason for being a teacher.
He’d learned that quaint notion from Professor John Hillbrand when he was a fledgling college freshman at Auburn. The gruff old curmudgeon had become his mentor and, over the next four years, had encouraged him in his academic pursuits, offering the kind of wisdom and guidance that a bewildered, lower-class kid from the mean streets of Brooklyn sorely needed.
In the past nine years Ducane had done his best to give some of that back. He lent money to needy students, took them into his home when they had no place to stay, and interceded when they ran afoul of the Institute’s policies.
And now, he was on his way to the dean’s office to defend another of his wayward students. But this time he was uneasy, because this morning he would be butting heads with his pompous and irritating department chairman.
~~~
When Ducane walked into Dean Walter Mosley’s office, Wendell Green was already there. The department chairman, whose moon face, ruddy complexion, and bulging eyes gave him the perpetual look of a spoiled child holding his breath to get his own way, nodded curtly to Ducane and turned his attention to a hangnail.
A bushy-haired, rumpled Dean Mosley sat behind a cluttered oak desk reading Green’s memo. He motioned Ducane into a seat and continued reading.
Ducane took the opportunity to check out Mosley’s latest acquisitions. The dean was a collector of Meerschaum pipes and his extensive trove of unusual pieces, competing for shelf space with scores of books and manuscripts, seemed to be winning. Ducane wasn’t a smoker, but he did enjoy looking at the collection of intricately crafted pipes.
The dean, puffing on his favorite Meerschaum—a carved buffalo head—regarded Ducane with his hooded gray eyes. “Wendell wants Levin expelled,” he said in the matter-of-fact tone he always used. “What’s your position?”
As usual, the dean, a man of few words, had cut to the chase. Out of the corner of his eye, Ducane saw Green watching and cautioned himself to weigh his words carefully. Earlier, while he’d been stuck in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, he’d given a lot of thought to the best way to handle this delicate situation, but he’d been unable to come up with an easy answer.
The facts in the case were clear. Jeff Levin had been caught hacking. There was no disputing that. Green wanted him tossed out of school. No disputing that either. Thus the dilemma. Politically, it was in his best interest to go along with the wishes of his department chairman, especially since he was up for tenure.
But Jeff Levin was a promising student who was capable of doing great things. More than that, Ducane personally liked the iconoclastic young man. Perhaps because he saw a lot of himself in the young graduate student. He, too, had been academically bright—and woefully lacking in common sense. As a student, he’d bridled at authority and marched to his own drummer. He would have been tossed out of Auburn his first year, but for the intervention of John Hillbrand.
He came to a decision. He’d gotten a second chance. Jeff deserved as much. Ignoring Green’s intimidating glare, he said, “I think we should put Levin on probation. Give him a chance to—”
“I just don’t think that’s advisable,” Green interrupted. “Faculty members at the Hudson Institute must not condone computer hacking.”
Ducane heard the petulance in Green’s voice and knew he was in trouble. The department chairman did not like dissent. In Wendell Green’s book, dissent was disloyalty and he would find a way to exact his pound of flesh for that disloyalty.
“I don’t condone hacking, Wendell,” Ducane said evenly. “Levin made a mistake and he knows it. But, he’s one of the best minds here. His dissertation is going to be absolutely brilliant. We have to nurture that kind of talent.”
Ducane studied Green’s pouty face and realized he was wasting his time. The chairman was unimpressed with scholarship, especially from freewheeling types like Levin. He preferred mediocre students who didn’t cause him trouble.
“The rules are clear,” Green intoned.
The dean tapped the ashes out of his pipe. “I already know your position, Wendell. I want to hear Paul’s.”
“Yes, of course.” Green sat back in resignation and his face became a darker shade of red.
“Jeff Levin has a fine mind,” Ducane continued carefully. “I believe he’ll make a valuable contribution to society and he’ll be a credit to the Hudson Institute. I think he deserves another chance.”
The dean repacked his pipe and relit it. After a moment, he said, “I think you’re right, Paul. I’m going to give him a chance and put him on probation for a year. But if anything like this happens again, he’s out.”
Green started to protest. “But, Walter—”
Mosley serenely puffed on his pipe. “I’ve made my decision, Wendell.”
Green pursed his lips. “Of course.” He turned to Ducane. “If you have a moment, I’d like to see you in my office.” The chairman’s syrupy demeanor was a sure sign he was furious.
Chapter Three
When Ducane walked into Green’s office a few minutes later, the department chairman was sitting in his over-stuffed chair clasping his pudgy fingers together and twirling his thumbs, as was his custom when he felt betrayed or didn’t get his own way.
“I think it’s a mistake to allow someone as dishonest as Levin to remain at the Institute,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. “But it’s out of my hands. What I’d like to know from you is how do you propose to prevent another hacking incident?”
Ducane knew that Green was looking to escape accountability and he gave the chairman a way out. “He’s my graduate student. I’ll take full responsibility for his actions.”
Green exhaled in relief. But he couldn’t leave well enough alone. “Very well, but remember, Paul, you’re up for tenure, and the tenure committee does not look kindly upon faculty members who pander favor with students.”
Ducane, bridling at the unfair charge and the implied threat, struggled to control his anger, but in spite of himself it leaked out in his tone. “I don’t pander favor with anyone, Wendell. Student or faculty.”
Wendell pursed his lips. “I believe this meeting is over.”
~~~
Ducane scrawled several names across the chalkboard in his expansive handwriting. Then, wiping the chalk dust from his hands, he turned to face the twenty-five students sitting in tiered, semi-circular rows above him. Some were as young as nineteen; others were in their early thirties. They comprised the usual ethnic mix found in most big-city universities and they were dressed in everything from jeans and sweatshirts to business suits and dresses. The manner of dress depended on whether they were going to work, to the health club, or to the local pub after class.
Ducane scanned the sea of faces and thumped the board with his open palm, making each name sound like an accusation. “Yellowcake... Valerie Plame Affair... Charlie Rangel... Lewis Libby... Jack Abramoff... John Kennedy… Bobby Kennedy… Martin Luther King… Vince Foster... Monicagate. What do they all have in common?”
A female student wearing bib overalls and a flannel shirt—an outfit more suitable for milking cows than discussing political science—said, “They’re all part of a conspiracy.”
Other heads nodded in agreement.
Ducane began to pace, as was his manner when thoughts began to flow. “Why do you say that, Ms. Parker?”
“A lot of people think they haven’t been told the real story.”
Ducane pointed to a student seated in the last row. “Mr. Carlin, way up there in the cheap seats. Why is that?”
“Because the government isn’t always honest with us.”
“Give that man a front row seat,” he said in his best carnival barker voice.
His attention was drawn to an unfamiliar face seated next to Carlin. She looked a little older than most of his students—mid-thirties, he judged. She had long, silky, brown hair, the high cheekbones of a model—and she was sleeping.
He was about to toss a piece of chalk at her, but then someone in the front of the room said, “Professor, are you saying there’s a government conspiracy behind all these events?”
Ducane looked away from Sleeping Beauty. “No, not at all. What I’m saying is that duplicity in government spawns suspicion. It’s a Petri dish that breeds all kinds of lunatic conspiracy plots. Was there more than one gunman in Dealey Plaza? Did the Mafia kill Martin Luther King? Did Vince Foster really commit suicide? Suspicion generates speculation and that leads to cynicism.”
Ducane saw confusion, bewilderment, even anger in their faces. He had them thinking, doubting. This was the fun part of teaching.
“How about the alleged suicide of Rahim Barazani?”
Ducane turned toward the familiar voice of a slightly built student with unruly hair and small, wire-rimmed glasses. It was Jeff Levin, the subject of this morning’s meeting. “Good point, Jeff. Do we all know who Rahim Barazani was?”
There were some nods. He was gratified that at least some of them were keeping up with current events, but there were far too many who apparently had never heard of Rahim Barazani.
He stopped pacing. “Hey, guys, we’re talking current events here. You’re going to be the future leaders of this country. Don’t you think you ought to know what’s going on in your government?”
“What’s the difference,” the girl in the bib overalls muttered. “All politicians are the same.”
In a display of great theatrics, Ducane clutched his heart and fell against the chalkboard. “That is cynicism, Ms. Parker. And cynicism is anathema in my classroom.”
She giggled self-consciously. “Sorry about that.”
Ducane pointed to a young man wearing a Cardinals baseball cap. “And how do we avoid cynicism, Mr. Aronson?”
“By becoming involved in the political process,” Aronson said, parroting Ducane’s oft-spoken mantra.
“Thank you, Mr. Aronson. I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
He sat on the edge of Parker’s desk. “Would you like me to tell you who Rahim Barazani was?”
“Some kind of Middle East arms dealer, right? Wasn’t he a key witness for the special prosecutor in a trial involving something or other?”
“A government cover-up,” Levin shouted in frustration. “Doesn’t anybody read the newspapers?”
“Involving what?” Ducane asked Levin.
“The allegation is that person or persons unknown in our government paid Barazani to smuggle uranium rods containing enriched 235 uranium into Iran.”
“Why would we do that?” the girl in the bib overalls asked.
“To give our government an excuse to invade the country,” Levin shot back.
“Come on, because of a few rods?”
“Hey, we invaded Iraq because they supposedly had weapons of mass destruction, right?”
“Wow, that’s right.”
“Yeah, wow.” Levin snickered. “Let history repeat itself. Uranium rods in Iran? Hell, we just have to attack the country. Maybe the administration could back Bush and Cheney in as consultants.”
“Is there proof of this rods stuff?”
“That’s what Barazani was supposed to testify about. They say his testimony would have implicated the president and other top officials in our government.”
“That sounds nuts,” someone muttered.
“It does,” Ducane conceded, “but we’ll never know. A week before he was to testify, he committed suicide by jumping off the Potomac River Bridge.”
Levin snickered. “Pretty lame suicide. They found his clothes, but not the body.”
“Spoken like a true conspiracy theorist, Jeff. Have you been talking to Oliver Stone?”
“It ain’t a theory if Barazani didn’t drown in the Potomac, Professor.”
Ducane’s grin faded. He felt the same way, but this was not the place to say so. He clapped his hands. “Okay. Quick opinion poll. How many of you think Barazani committed suicide?”
No hands went up.
“Okay. How many think the suicide was faked and he’s still alive.”
Almost every hand went up.
Ducane was stunned at the unanimous response. “This,” he said softly, “is a tangible example of the cynicism that I’ve been talking about. And this is why we need more transparency in government.”
The bell rang. As the class rose to leave, Levin drummed his hands on the desk for attention. “Hey, guys, listen up. Professor Ducane is going to Washington next week to testify before the Enterline committee, which is going to look into the events surrounding Barazani’s death. Our Mr. Ducane goes to Washington. Yeah.”
Ducane waved off the applause. “Flattery will get you nowhere. Come in here tomorrow ready to discuss that Robert Reich article in The New York Times.”
As he watched his students filing out, he tried to read what was going on behind those faces, but it was a hopeless exercise. After nine years of teaching, he’d learned there was little truth-in-advertising in student’s expressions. Sometimes complacent faces concealed brilliant, inquisitive minds and it was the perky, bright-eyed ones who didn’t have a clue.
As the mysterious brown-haired beauty walked by, he said, “Excuse me, are you registered for my class?”
“Caught like a rat.” She flashed a dazzling smile and held out her hand. “Claire Gerardo. I’m thinking of signing up for the graduate program and I was auditing the class. Should I have checked with you first?”
Up close she was even more attractive and she possessed, Ducane noted, a certain self-assurance, a worldliness that his younger students lacked. “No, but you couldn’t have gotten much out of the class. You slept through it.”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” she said. “I had my eyes closed because I have the mother of all migraines. But I heard every word you said. I swear to God.”
Ducane’s grin turned to a look of concern. “Migraines are hell. My sister gets them a few times a year. Sometimes she’s in bed for days at a time.”
“I’m afraid my boss isn’t that understanding.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a detective in the New York City Police Department.”
“A detective! You don’t look like—” He stopped when he saw the amused expression on her face. “I guess you’ve heard that before.”
“Once or twice.”
“What did you think of the lecture, Ms. Gerardo?”
“I don’t agree with a lot of what you said.”
“You’re blunt.”
“I know. It gets me in trouble all the time.”
“So you think a government has a right to keep secrets?”
“Absolutely. Maybe it’s because I’m a cop, but I don’t think the CIA should publish its game plan. Hell, I wouldn’t tell a suspect what I know about a case.”
“What do you think about the Barazani suicide?”
“I’m just glad I didn’t catch it.” She felt a sharp pain over her left eye. The migraine was accelerating. Nausea, she knew, was not far behind. “I gotta go.”
As she started toward the door, Ducane said, “Why do you want a masters degree?”
“Because my burning goal is to shatter the police department’s blue-tinted, macho-reinforced glass ceiling, and more education couldn’t hurt.” The intensity in her eyes belied the smile on her face.
“I’d like you to come into our program,” Ducane said. “But it won’t be easy. Most of our students are full-time.”
“I can hack it. I have a secret fantasy that sustains me through tough times. Someday I’m gonna write a book about my experiences and get interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today Show.”
Chapter Four
As soon as the detective had gone, Jeff Levin stuck his head in the door. “Whoa! Who’s the major babe?”
“She’s thinking of coming into the graduate program.”
“Damn! Things are looking up. I may stay here for a couple more years.”
Paul snapped his briefcase shut. “You may be out of here in a couple of days if you don’t get your act together.”
A subdued Levin put his backpack down. “How’d the meeting go, Mr. Ducane?”
“I don’t know why, but I convinced the dean not to expel you.”
Levin sighed in relief. “Hey, thanks—”
“But you’re on probation. You get caught hacking again, you’re history.”
Levin ran his hand through his unruly hair. “I swear it won’t happen again.”
“It better not. Your dissertation is on ethics in government and there’s plenty of primary research data available without hacking government computers.”
“But, Mr. Ducane, there’s a mother lode of information to be found there that you can’t get in books and journals.”
“Jeff, you’re not a secret agent. You’re a graduate student. I suggest you get yourself over to the library and get to work. Your review of the literature section is still too flabby. Contrary to what you students think, we don’t weigh dissertations. Remember, quality counts—”
“More than quantity,” Levin finished the sentence.
Ducane grinned. “Have I said that before?”
Levin returned the grin. “Only about a million times.”
“Get outta here.”
At the door, Levin stopped, and the impish student turned serious. “I really do appreciate you going to bat for me. I know you’re up for tenure and all and....”
“No problem.”
~~~
Now that he was alone in the classroom, Ducane had an opportunity to rehash in his mind his unpleasant confrontation with Green. What he’d told Levin was a lie. Intervening on Levin’s behalf was a problem. Why, he wondered, was he always challenging people like Wendell Green? People who controlled his career. Lord knows he needed the job and the security that tenure would give him. As Gaby so often reminded him, his consulting business, which was just beginning to take off, was tied to his teaching position at the college. Without the prestige and contacts from the school, his nascent consulting business would dry up.
He wasn’t sure why he challenged authority, but he suspected it had something to do with a misguided sense of himself as the defender of the downtrodden. He hoped to God that wasn’t true. Unlike Don Quixote, he had a wife and child to support.
The sound of lashing rain made him look toward the window. The weatherman was right for a change and the foul weather perfectly reflected his mood. He walked over to the window to gaze out at the bleak landscape. What an ideal time for a vacation.
He and Gaby had been looking forward to a much-needed vacation in the Cayman Islands over the Christmas recess. She’d been working seven days a week on a major merger acquisition and he’d been putting in eighteen-hour days between teaching and consulting on a partnership between the Thai government and an American farm machinery manufacturer.
Since last summer they’d been poring over the colorful brochures and just recently decided on the Cayman Islands. He would dive the North Wall; Sarah would snorkel with the stingrays; and Gaby would veg out on the beach with a trashy novel. It was going to be a perfect vacation. But that was before the doctor uttered those terrible words: Sarah, needs an operation and it must be done as soon as possible.
And with those thirteen words, the world of the Ducane family had turned upside down. The vacation plans had been scrapped and Gaby was using her vacation time to stay home with Sarah.
His daughter’s face suddenly flashed before him. Small, fragile Sarah. Brittle Sarah. As he watched the raindrops trickle down the glass, he recalled last week’s meeting with the neurologist.
Doctor Simon Andres, a serious man with slicked-back gray hair and the lean build of a marathoner, pointed to an area on the X-ray with a ballpoint pen. “It’s called a berry aneurysm.”
Berry aneurysm? Ducane almost laughed out loud. It sounded like an exotic dessert in an upscale nouveau-cuisine restaurant. Ducane squinted at the X-ray, trying to spot the evil malignancy, the thing that was capable of killing his baby. But all he saw was a white, amorphous blob. How could something like that snuff out the life of his precious daughter?
“We have to operate,” Andres repeated.
Gaby squeezed Ducane’s hand until it hurt. He continued to concentrate on the X-ray, afraid that if he looked at his wife he would lose his composure.
It had begun so innocently. The early signs seemed inconsequential at the time. When Sarah complained of headaches they thought she was trying to avoid school. Nausea? Something she ate. Dizziness? Well, didn’t all kids get dizzy once in a while? But the symptoms persisted.
A trip to the doctor. Routine tests. Inconclusive results. More tests. More inconclusiveness. Nothing to be alarmed about, but just to be on the safe side, let’s have a specialist take a look. And now they were sitting in the neurologist’s office, hardly able to believe what he was telling them.
“What if we leave it alone?”
Ducane heard Gaby’s beseeching voice. It sounded very far away.
“That’s not an option, Mrs. Ducane. An aneurysm can rupture at any time.”
“How serious would that be?” she pressed.
Andres switched off the X-ray viewer. “The mortality rate is more than eighty percent.”
Ducane was silent. His world was crashing down around him, but he found a measure of comfort in remaining detached, viewing the problem as an academic exercise, as though this talk of dying had nothing to do with his little girl. But as comforting as it was, he couldn’t allow himself the luxury of hiding in this make-believe world forever. “What do we do next?” he asked.
“The operation must be done as soon as possible.” Andres slipped the X-ray into a folder. “If we operate now the prognosis is good.”
Ducane glanced at a wall calendar extolling the benefits of a pharmaceutical company’s new sleeping pill. Today was December Eighth. Just seventeen days till Christmas. A jumble of thoughts, all bad, ran through his head. He looked into his wife’s glistening eyes. “I think we should wait until after Christmas.” His tone left no room for argument.
Gaby searched his expression, seeking to discover what he was leaving unsaid. Suddenly, she realized what he was thinking. This could be Sarah’s last Christmas. She bit her lip and nodded silently.
“I’d rather do it sooner,” Dr. Andres said. Then he saw the stricken determination in their faces and added, “However, I guess we can wait until after Christmas.”
Paul Ducane and Gaby rode the elevator to the lobby in silence, not daring to put into words the reason they’d both insisted on waiting until after the holiday.
He switched off the classroom lights and looked at his watch. He had just enough time to get home, change, and make it to Alfred Tomlin’s Christmas party.
~~~
The blinding shafts of light emanating from the red-hot prism embedded inside her skull just over her left eye bent in ways that defied the laws of physics. Take deep breaths. Take deep breaths, she repeated the familiar mantra. Balance the pain. Then there was another blinding flash and the tenuous equilibrium disintegrated.
Pain on pain.
Holding a syringe in her clammy hand, Claire Gerardo sat on the commode in the ladies room in the Sixth Precinct trying to decide if she should take the shot. She stared down at the chipped tile floor. The design of the intricate mosaic tiles made her nauseous. She looked up at the ceiling. The cracked plaster ceiling wasn’t much better. She closed her eyes. Oh, God, what am I gonna do?
She’d already dipped into her arsenal of pharmaceuticals. At the first sign of the migraine this morning, she’d loaded up on coffee. When that didn’t help, she popped a couple of Excedrin. The pills delivered an extra dose of needed caffeine to her system, but not enough to stem the impending storm. Then she’d escalated to eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen just before she sat in on Professor Ducane’s class. It had stalled the headache for a while, but now it was back, a blinding, throbbing beast mauling the inside of her skull.
Time for the big guns: a six-milligram shot of sumatriptan. But that recourse presented another problem. If she took the shot on top of all the other stuff she’d taken, she faced hours of drug-induced lethargy. On the other hand, if she didn’t take the shot, the migraine could accelerate and then the only thing that would stop it would be a trip to the emergency room for a shot of Demerol and a saline drip.
The sudden pounding on the outer door sent shimmering light patterns coursing through her brain. “Hey, Claire, the boss is waiting.”
“Be right out, Sarge.”
She pulled the protective rubber cover off the syringe and jammed the needle into her thigh. She didn’t even blink. When she was a child she used to faint at the mere thought of getting a needle. But that was BM—before migraines. Now, she wouldn’t hesitate to use a pickaxe on herself if it would bring relief. She put her head back and closed her eyes. Please God, let this do it, she prayed as she felt the familiar tingle of the serum coursing through her body.
~~~
She was washing her hands at the sink when she heard the muffled voice of Lieutenant Freddy Lutz outside the door talking to Sergeant Charlie Drew. The lieutenant was talking about her.
“It’s always something, Charlie. PMS, stomach cramps, bullshit headaches. All these broads are walking wounded. I feel like I’m running a goddamn infirmary instead of a detective squad.”
Claire rested her clammy forehead against the cool mirror and listened to Charlie come to her defense.
“Loo, she’s on top of her caseload. That’s more than I can say for some of the guys.”
As Claire listened to Lutz rant, she was reminded of something her friend, Wilma Brown, a black, single mother, had said about succeeding in the police department. “Girl, it ain’t enough that we do as good as the guys. We gotta do better.” They had been rookies in the police academy at the time and Claire didn’t believe her, but she’d come to realize that Wilma was right.
Claire didn’t want to hear any more. She opened the door, stopping Lutz in mid-sentence. Charlie had the common decency to look embarrassed. Lutz just glared at her. “Can we have the meeting now, Gerardo?”
Claire forced a smile. “I’m heady with anticipation, Loo.”
She followed the lieutenant and the sergeant into Lutz’s office where a dozen grim-faced detectives were listlessly drinking coffee or flipping through the sports pages of the Daily News. Clearly, she wasn’t the only one not looking forward to another one of Freddy Lutz’s “inspirational meetings” in which he wasted everyone’s time by rambling on about the “good old days”—code words for an era when the police department wasn’t burdened with women, minorities, and the Constitution.
Claire squeezed into a chair against the wall and studied her competition. She didn’t like to think of her fellow detectives as competition, but that’s what they were. Her goal since the first day she’d come into the job was to make First Grade detective. Unfortunately, it was also the goal of almost every other detective in the room. Although there were only a limited number of slots and an awful lot of detectives looking to fill them, she refused to be discouraged by the odds. One way or another she was determined to fill one of those slots.
Making First Grade meant everything to her. Of course she could use the extra money, but it was more than that. First Grade was the highest rank a detective could attain. It meant you were the best at what you did. Well, at least most. Some detectives made grade because of a “hook”—a political friend in high places, but Claire had no hook. If she were going to make First Grade, she would have to do it by demonstrating to one and all that she was the best damn detective in the New York City Police Department.
Lutz slipped behind his desk and lit up a foul-smelling stogie. Smoking in the station house was prohibited, but Lutz, emperor in his own domain, was accustomed to doing all sorts of things that were prohibited.
“Now that we’re all here”—he scowled at Claire—“maybe we can get started. There’s gonna be a realignment.”
That announcement brought muffled groans and headshakes from the assembled detectives. The only thing worse than Lutz’s inspirational meetings was his obsessive reassigning of teams. His “musical partners” concept had become a running joke throughout the Detective Division. Lutz had a mistaken belief that change meant progress and every six months he reassigned detective teams in the hopes of increasing productivity. But all it brought was chaos as detectives struggled to adjust to working with new partners. Claire mentally added up her partners. She’d been through five in the last two years!
As the lieutenant began to read off the new assignments, she glanced down at a tiny red dot on her thigh. Damn. She’d been in such a hurry that she’d forgotten to blot the puncture wound and the blood had seeped through her brand new Donna Karan slacks. What the hell do you use for bloodstains? Cold water. She eyed the water cooler on the other side of the crowded room. Too far. She leaned over to a detective sitting next to her and whispered, “Ralph, I need a cup of water. Pass it on.”
Ralph whispered to another detective, who whispered to another detective. By the time the message got to Larry Sanchez, who was sitting by the water cooler, Lutz had stopped talking and was glaring at him.
“Sanchez, what the hell is going on?”
The puzzled detective shrugged. “Beats me, Loo. Claire wants a couple of quarters.”
“Water,” Claire yelled over the guffaws and cackles. “A cup of water.”
Sanchez chuckled. “Hey, we did that experiment in a psych class once. The message never comes out right. It was supposed to—”
Lutz slammed his hand down on the desk. “Shut up.” The room went silent. “This is a police facility, not a kindergarten. Gerardo, why don’t you get your own damn water?”
“I didn’t want to disrupt the meeting,” she answered with a straight face.
Over more guffaws and cackles, Sanchez shouted, “Hey, Claire, you still want a quarter?”
Claire looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes. “Can it, Sanchez.”
As Lutz went back to reading the reassignments, Claire returned to monitoring the progress of the migraine. It had only been a couple of minutes since she’d taken the shot and she wasn’t sure the pain was going to lift. To take her mind off her head, she began to wonder who her new partner would be. There weren’t many left. There was happy-go-lucky Sanchez, always ready to laugh and a damn good cop. She’d worked with him on a high-profile murder case and she’d learned a lot from him about how to handle the media and the empty suits downtown. He’d make a good partner.
So would funereal Jerry Wilson. The oldest detective in the squad was humor challenged, but he was a bulldog investigator. She could learn a lot about interrogation from him. Sitting right in front of her was Vince Marion. She’d worked a wiretap with him for three weeks. Vince, who thought he was God’s gift to women, was good-looking and charming. But after a disastrous relationship with a married man, she swore she would never get involved with a married man again. Once Vince realized that, they got along just fine.
And then there was—