The door opened, the overhead lights came on, and Pender found himself blinking rapidly. His face sagged when he saw who’d entered the room.
“You?” Pender said.
“Me,” Nicolas Creel answered as Caesar stood silently behind him.
CHAPTER 85
WHILE APPARENTLY the government could spy on its citizens without benefit of a court-issued search warrant, determining whether a certain car had gone through a certain tollgate at a certain time was far more problematic. Shaw and the others found out that the video camera at the tollbooth Pender had taken was not working. Apparently so many motorists had run the booth without paying, been filmed, gotten a fine in the mail, and refused to pay it that the highway folks had simply given up. Now the camera was there as a deterrent, they were told. However, everyone knew it wasn’t functioning because a local newspaper had done a story on it, and so there went the deterrent.
Frank had next checked with the electronic toll payment company. They had balked at giving out the information to him, despite his credentials. He had summoned assistance from the police in Virginia. Armed with this official backing, another attempt had been made to get the information. Then they were told that there apparently had been a server glitch, electronic bug, or inadvertent file wipeout that happened from time to time. They were working on it and would get back to them.
“Get back to us!” screamed Frank over the phone. “Get back to us? The whole freaking world is about to go up in smoke and you’ll get back to us?”
The woman on the other end of the line told Frank that she didn’t care for his tone and they were doing the best they could, but that computers were not perfect.
“Well, honey,” Frank said, “by the time this is all over and the world has come to an end, who’ll give a shit about imperfect computers?”
The woman apparently had not been listening but rather reading from her script. She told Frank to have a nice day and if he had any other questions or concerns they’d be happy to help because customer service was their number one priority.
Frank slammed down the phone and would’ve ripped the hair off his head if he had any left.
He looked at the others. “Now what? We just wait for the first nuke to launch?”
Royce shrugged. “What’s the alternative?”
Shaw rose. “We do a little digging on our own.”
Frank said, “What kind of digging?”
“In the dirt,” Shaw answered as he closed the door behind him.
Katie looked at the other two men.
“What’s with him?” Royce wanted to know.
“He’s been through a lot,” she said defensively.
“We’ve all been through a lot,” snarled Frank.
Katie didn’t hear this. She’d already hurried out after Shaw. She caught up with him as he strode down the hall.
“Shaw?”
He stopped, waited for her to catch up.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Just like I said. Dig.” He started walking again.
She had to skip along to keep up with his long strides.
“But how, where? It’s not like you can just pull this guy out of a hat.”
“You never know.”
“Do you have to be so damn secretive? Because let me just tell you, it’s frustrating as hell.” She put a hand on his arm. “And can you please stop for a sec? I haven’t run a marathon in a while.”
He faced her. “I’m not asking for you to help.”