THE BANDIT QUEEN - Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

Later the next day, Susan and David Hornung stumbled off the bus and stared bleary-eyed around at the large bus station in the center of San Francisco. Not one person in the crowded waiting room seemed to pay any attention to either of them which was a very big “plus” in their lives right then. Neither one of them had spoken much about their visit to UCLA. Eden had done some research online and found the location of Dr. Evan Phillips’ office. She’d printed out a map and noted down his office hours on the back of it. With their backpacks and jeans, they blended in with the rest of the campus population. They approached the huge science building with great care. Eden sat on a bench outside the front door and pulled a notebook out of her backpack. Using the notebook as a front, she scanned the area for watchers or guards. A couple of men lounging against a tree to her left caught her eye. Her suspicion grew as she realized the men would talk for a few minutes and then look across the wide sidewalk to a gardener who was clipping a hedge. A few minutes later one of them looked down the sidewalk past Eden’s bench and nodded slightly. A younger man stood next to a bicycle rack and held a cell phone to his ear. That made at least four people watching this door. Eden made a show of repacking her backpack and then stood up when a small group of girls walked past. She smiled at one of them and followed the girls past the man with the cell phone.
Deakin appeared in the distance. He’d just turned the corner from the back of the large building and carried a stack of campus newspapers. He waved one at the group of girls walking with Eden. They all stopped and flirted a little with Deakin as they took the papers. As he handed Eden her copy, he whispered in her ear.
“Guards in the back and on the side. Front, too?”
Eden nodded and smiled at him as she took the paper. The other girls walked quickly by on their way to their next classes. Eden pointed to the headline on the paper and laughed up at Deakin. Under her smile, she said,
“Library in fifteen minutes.”
They moved apart and left the science building. Eden walked into the very next building she came to and hunted down a pay phone. She pulled her hand inside her windbreaker to keep from leaving fingerprints on the phone and called Dr. Phillips’ office. A woman’s voice answered the call and asked Eden to hold while she transferred the call. Eden immediately hung up the phone and walked on toward the library. She found Deakin reading a newspaper. She dropped into the chair next to him and said,
“We can’t get close to him. I just called and the secretary put me on hold so I hung up. Do we try e-mail? Even if we do get through that way, how would he get back to us? We can’t wait around in one place for very long. They, whoever they are, will catch us.”
“Well, we have to try. When is his next class?”
Eden walked over to a computer and quickly pulled up Dr. Phillips’ class schedule. Then she walked back to Deakin and shook her head.
“He’s the head of the department and he doesn’t teach big classes or even small ones. He works with his grad students in small seminars. We certainly couldn’t sneak into them. He knows all those people. We can get into the building anytime but you can bet his office is being well-guarded. There’s a big class in thirty minutes. Let’s get inside the building first. After that, we’ll play it by ear.”
Eden joined a large group of students and walked into the science building with no problems. Deakin grafted himself on another group and followed her inside. They milled around inside the building and then Eden climbed the stairs to find a restroom. Deakin staked out a spot next to a vending machine and chatted with anyone who approached. Eden reappeared an hour later with a definite twinkle in her eye. She was followed down the stairs by a hefty young professor carrying a stack of books under his arm. Deakin moved to join her but she shook her head. The professor followed her out the door and away from the building.
Fifteen minutes later, Deakin’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and answered it warily. He laughed when he heard Eden’s voice in his ear.
“Meet me back at the library. I’ve sent a message to Dr. Phillips and we may hear from him this afternoon, hopefully in about an hour.”

Eden sat in the window of the library with a large book on the desk in front of her. She slowly turned the pages as she watched the front door of the library. Deakin sat on a bench across a small plot of grass and alternated between watching the front door and watching Eden through the window. He held the computer on his lap and clicked studiously as he watched. He looked just like hundreds, if not thousands, of other students all over the campus. He noticed a man slide into the chair across from Eden so he closed down the computer and packed it away. He hefted his backpack onto his shoulder and headed for a closer vantage point.
The man paid no attention to Eden while he dropped a stack of books onto the table. He sorted them into stacks and flipped pages in one or two of them. He copied a few things out of one of the books, took another to the copy machine, and then returned to pick up his mess. He carried one book away with him and left the others in a pile on the desk. After a few minutes, Eden pushed her book to the side and picked up the book on top of the middle stack. She took it to the checkout station and used her UCLA identification to check it out. She stuffed the book into her pack and joined Deakin to leave.
They had walked about one hundred yards away when a commotion sounded behind them. Deakin turned slightly and saw several men running into the library. He hustled Eden into the shadows and asked,
“Did you use your name in any way?”
“I used my ID to check out this book. Why?”
“’Cos you sure triggered a reaction. They must have enough clout to access the university computer system. When your ID number hit the system, they knew it immediately. Let’s get out of here now. What do you suggest?”
Eden took her bearings and turned to the left. They hurried along the sidewalks and entered building after building. They would walk in one door and then leave through another one. Soon they’d made it to the edge of the campus. A wide, heavily used street lay in front of them. Eden kept them in the shadows until a city bus appeared on the horizon. Then she pulled Deakin into a crowd of students waiting to board the bus. They took their seats and slouched down like half the other people on the bus.

A couple of hours later, Eden and Deakin sat side by side on a bus heading for San Francisco. Eden had picked seats that had no windows so they couldn’t be seen very well from outside the bus. She had brushed out her long brown hair and put it into long braids on either side of her face. She now wore a black running suit and carried a Walkman in her hand. Deakin had changed into a different colored windbreaker and a Lakers cap. His height and thin physique made it hard for him to change his appearance very much so he’d added a sweatshirt to his ensemble. It added bulk to his body and caused him to walk a little differently than before.
After they were safely away from Los Angeles, Eden had pulled out the book from the library and opened it where the page had been folded down. A small piece of paper had been crammed into the spine of the book. Eden carefully edged it out and opened it up. The scrap of paper was covered with tiny writing. While she tried to decipher it, Deakin paged through the entire book and found four other pieces of paper. He set them out next to the first one and let Eden try to read them.
She read slowly out loud to Deakin.
“Last saw ADK & HRK two months before death. Scared about work. Sent baby to her sister’s for safety. Said were leaving town but not say where. Big blowup after disappeared. Took copies of all research and wiped computers clean. We pieced together as much as we could but all their research was missing. Never talked to them again. Research group split up. Talk to Mala Allen at Stanford. Helen’s friend. Watching me closely. Don’t call or email. Sending grad student to give you this. Good Luck.”
Eden looked up at Deakin and asked, “Do you know anything about an aunt?”
Deakin shook his head and stacked the scraps of paper into a pile. “How do we get in touch with this woman at Stanford? Surely they’re watching her too. Do we even know where to find her? God, what the hell do we do next?”
“We sleep while we have the chance. Stretch your legs out in the aisle and close your eyes. We’ll figure out what to do when we get to Stanford.”