Mortal Fear. Greg Iles

for you waiting in Jackson, Mississippi. It’s 10.50. Can you get to the airport by noon?”

      “Noon today?”

      “Of course.”

      If I drop everything and walk out the front door without a toothbrush. Then I remember Drewe’s voice, tight with anxiety. “Yeah, I can get there. You think there’s a flight?”

      “If there isn’t a direct flight, you’ll find a connecting ticket. Ask for messages at the American Airlines desk.”

      “Okay. I’d better get going.”

      “Just a moment. At the meeting in New Orleans, you mentioned that EROS is patronized by many celebrities.”

      “I can’t tell you any names.”

      “Fine, fine. But what level of celebrities are we talking about?”

      “Well … Karin Wheat was pretty famous.”

      “Yes, but authors don’t get the kind of adulation that Hollywood stars or sports figures do.”

      “Not many sports figures on EROS, Doctor. The IQ level tends to run a little higher than that.”

      “So what level of star are we talking about?”

      “The top of the business. And not just actors. Directors, producers, agents, the works.”

      He digests this in silence.

      “Aren’t you any different from the paparazzi, Doctor? I thought you were trying to solve these murders, not root up juicy tidbits about Hollywood.”

      “In all honesty, I find the whole concept of EROS fascinating. However, there is a point to my questions. Jan Krislov refuses to reveal anything about her clients. Thanks to you, I realize she is not grandstanding but prudently shielding people who have a great vested interest in protecting their public images. People who would not hesitate to sue Ms Krislov and have the funds to pursue such a lawsuit to its bitter end.”

      “No doubt about it. Hell, there are celebrity lawyers on that master client list. Jan Krislov is a lot of things, but she’s no fool.”

      “Do you have any more EROS session printouts?” Lenz asks.

      “No more of the murder victims or Strobekker.”

      “I’ll take anything you have. I’m following a rather twisted trail, and I’d like all the signposts I can get.”

      “I’ll bring you what I have.”

      “Excellent.” Lenz says he’ll fax me directions to his office in case I miss the FBI agents he plans to have waiting at the Washington airport. Then he says, “May I give you some unsolicited advice, Mr. Cole?”

      “People do it all the time.”

      “You’re an experienced futures trader. However, if I were you, I’d clear my current positions. Dump all contracts until this mess is resolved.”

      “You’re not me.”

      “Quite. Well … I’ll see you this afternoon.”

      While Lenz’s fax comes through, I call Drewe in Jackson and explain what I’m about to do and why. She warns me to be careful, then goes back to her patients.

      I pack a briefcase with a toothbrush, five hundred dollars in cash, and a few EROS folders from my file cabinet. Before I leave the office, I almost pick up the phone and follow Lenz’s advice. Getting out of the market now would cost me money, but that’s not what keeps me from doing it. The truth is, I feel a simple bullheaded resistance to letting Arthur Lenz tell me what to do. If I lose a few thousand bucks because I’m in a daze, so be it. It’s happened before.

      I am almost to the Explorer when I remember Lenz’s fax. Running back inside to get it, I hear the phone. It’s my office line. I debate whether or not to answer, then pick up.

      “Hello?”

      “Moneypenny? This is Bond. James Bond.”

      “What is it, Miles? I’m in a hurry.”

      “Brahma went back online five minutes ago.”

      “Have they traced the call?”

      “Yes and no. They took a chance and started at the second Jersey line they wound up at last time. AT&T long line. Anyway, the connection twisted all around the country, but they finally tracked it to Wyoming.”

      “Wyoming?”

      “Yeah. Place called Lake Champion. It’s a tiny little nothing of a town.”

      I feel my heart pumping. “So? Are they going to arrest him or what?”

      “Not that easy, I’m afraid. You’re not going to believe this. Lake Champion, Wyoming, is one of the last towns in America with electro-mechanical phone switching. It’s like the Dark Ages. They actually have these complicated metal gizmos that spin around making physical connections, and there are rows and rows of them stacked on top of each other, from floor to ceiling.”

      “What does that mean as far as tracing Brahma?”

      Miles chuckles softly. “It means it takes an actual human being running up and down the aisles between those switches to trace the connections. With digital tracing, you can move through twenty states in a couple of minutes without getting permission from anybody. But to authorize an actual human being to chase down mechanical connections in one of these little towns, you have to have a court order.”

      “What?”

      Miles is laughing harder. “Here’s the brilliant part. To get that court order, you have to prove that a crime is being committed in the state where that town is. It’s one hell of a buffer system, and Brahma knows it. Rather than going higher and higher tech—which is what most hackers do and which is ultimately a no-win game—he goes to the simplest possible solution. He goes analog. It’s exactly what I’d do, man.”

      Exactly what I’d do … “So what happens now?”

      “Baxter is strong-arming a Wyoming judge as we speak, trying to get permission for a local yokel phone guy to do the trace.”

      “How long will that take?”

      “Hel-lo.” Miles sighs with almost sexual satisfaction. “Your question just became academic. The Strobekker account just went dead. Brahma’s history.” Miles’s voice rises to the exaggerated bellow of a game show announcer: “The switches in Wyoming are no longer connec-ted!”

      I picture blue-suited FBI agents in the EROS office staring at Miles with murder in their eyes. “What alias was he using?”

      “Kali this time. I haven’t seen that one before.”

      “C-A-L-I?”

      “No. K-A-L-I.”

      “Who’s Kali?”

      “The Hindu mother goddess, consort of Shiva, which is one of his other aliases. Kali’s an ugly black bitch. Wears a belt of skulls, carries a severed head and a knife, has six arms. She’s the betrayer, the terrible one of many names. Weird that he’d log on with a female alias.”

      “Severed head? Christ. Are you an expert in this Eastern stuff or what?”

      “I’ve dabbled. Read the Vedas, the Upanishads, some other things. They make a lot more sense than the chickenshit dualism of Christianity. You know, you really should—”

      “I don’t have time for it, Miles.”

      “Neither do I. Someone just told me the Wise and Wonderful Oz wants me on another line.”

      “Oz?”

      “Arthur Lenz. He’s the man behind the curtain on this thing, isn’t he?”

      “I