"Yes, but-" Karla seemed flustered. "Do you think all this gibberish means anything?"
"Just curious," Barrett said.
"We should follow any lead, no matter how seemingly frivolous," Austin said. He glanced at a wall clock. "I've got to get moving. We'll meet back here in a couple of hours."
He asked Zavala to talk to the Trouts and have them follow up on the transmitter ships, then turned to Karla. "I can give you that ride Austin offered to the hospital," he said.
"I'll see Uncle Karl later. If I go now, he'll demand that I help him escape from the hospital. I'd like to go with you to see Mr. Pitt," she said.
"I don't know," Austin said. "It might be safer if you stay out of sight."
"Maybe, but I don't feel like being stashed in a safe house. There's a good chance that whoever ordered my murder doesn't know that I'm still alive."
"I'd like to keep you that way."
"My grandfather's work started this nonsense. I owe it to him to stop his research from being perverted."
Seeing the determined jut to Karla's jaw, Austin knew that no argument he advanced would be able to sway her.
Fifteen minutes later, Austin and Karla were picking up a car from the motor pool in the NUMA garage. As Austin drove out of the garage exit to join the Washington traffic, he and Karla were observed from behind the one-way windows of a van crammed with the latest electronic listening and watching equipment. The letter on the van's door identified it as belonging to the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
Doyle sat inside the van puffing on a cigarette as he and a helper monitored several screens that showed the street scene around the NUMA building. Hidden cameras in the van and a similar vehicle parked outside NUMA's main pedestrian entrance recorded the face of everyone leaving the building and compared it to images in its database. The facial recognition system was capable of checking more than a thousand faces a second.
The monitor alarm buzzed. The signal for a hit. A picture of Austin behind the wheel of a turquoise Jeep Cherokee that had emerged from the garage was projected on one of the screens. Below Austin's face was a summary of personal data. Doyle's hard eyes gleamed with excitement. Bingo! He had just ordered his helper to get into the driver's seat and follow the Jeep when a second monitor buzzed. The picture of the attractive young woman who was a passenger in the Jeep filled the screen. The database identified her as Karla Janos.
Double bingo!
A smile came to Doyle's thin lips. He couldn't wait to see Gant's expression when he told him that Karla Janos was alive and well and cons
orting with the enemy. As the van pulled away from the curb and tailed the Jeep, Doyle called a motel in Alexandria where six Harley-Davidson motorcycles were parked. Minutes later, six men emerged from the motel, hopped on the motorcycles and roared off to rendezvous with Doyle.
36
Karla surveyed the men in Confederate gray and Union blue who were crowding the suburban roads in their pickup trucks and SUVs.
"I must have been mistaken," she said. "I thought the Civil War was over."
"You have led a sheltered life," Austin said. "The War of Northern Aggression is still alive and well. Holler the name of Robert E. Lee out the window and you'll recruit enough Rebel volunteers to reenact the Battle of Gettysburg."
Austin followed the traffic to a parking lot adjoining a large open field of a dozen or so acres. After parking the NUMA car, they joined the throng of spectators and Civil War reenactors streaming toward the field. Signs along the way announced that the military demonstration and steam car parade were being held to raise money for the Friends of the Manassas National Battlefield.
Austin stopped a bearded man dressed in the butternut gray of an officer in Lee's army to ask directions.
"Stonewall Jackson at your service," the man said with a courtly bow.
"Nice to meet you, General. You're looking well, considering. I wonder if you might know where the antique steam cars are gathered," Austin said.
Jackson squinted into the distance, tugging thoughtfully at his beard. "Technically speakin', cars weren't invented in 1861, so I don't know what you're talking about, suh. But if I did, I'd suggest that you might find what you're looking for near the Porta Pottis, which we didn't have back in my day."
"Thank you, General Jackson. Hope you enjoy the battle."
"My pleasure," he said, tipping his hat at Karla.
As she watched Jackson melt into the crowd, she said, "He really takes the part seriously, doesn't he?"
Austin smiled. "Manassas was the first big battle of the Civil War. The Feds thought they were going to walk over the Rebels. People even came down from Washington with their picnic baskets to watch the battle, pretty much the same as they're doing today. The Confederates caught the breaks that day, but the Union eventually rallied."
"Why aren't we at the actual battlefield?" Karla said.