Forget to Remember

others, plus the noise, would mask anything she and Basil talked about.
    His Jeep pulled into the lot in about five minutes. He backed into the space beside her car again. He got out and walked toward her without seeming to look at her. He sat on the bench adjacent to hers. Both were attached to the round table. He didn’t look at her. Carol felt as if she were in a spy movie. She decided she wasn’t going to be the first to speak. After a minute of nervously sipping her tea, this resolution became difficult to keep, but she stuck to it. Finally, he broke the silence.
    “Did you find out anything?”
    “No more than you did. Katherine will be in this afternoon. I take it Paul sent you.”
    A barely perceptible nod. Carol decided silence wasn’t going to educate her. “How did you know who I was?”
    He grinned as if this were a joke. He was holding the envelope he had carried into the foundation office. He undid the clips, opened it, and pulled out a computer-printed version of one of the pictures Rigo had taken of her.
    “Paul must have e-mailed this to you.” She felt stupid. “Is this what you were going to show Katherine?”
    He finally looked her in the eye. “I wasn’t going to show Katherine anything.”
    A light dawned. “You knew she wasn’t there. The envelope was a ruse. You were trying to get information from Betty.”
    “Give the girl a silver cigar. I called the office ten minutes before to find out whether Katherine was there, disguising my voice. What about you? Did you know where Katherine was when you went strolling in?”
    “No.”
    “What name did you give this Betty?”
    “Aiko.”
    “At least you didn’t tell her your real name. But don’t you think Katherine would have recognized you in a nanosecond if she’d been there?”
    “As far as I know she’s never seen me…oh, you mean because of Michael. He would have a picture…”
    “Paul told me to protect you, but if you don’t smarten up, I don’t know if I can.”
    “Basil—”
    “My name is Ivan.”
    Of course. “Ivan, you’re right. I was stupid. I’m sorry. You were trying to get the addresses of the directors, but Betty wouldn’t give them to you.”
    “It was worth a try. Might as well take the simple approach first.”
    He smiled. He actually had a nice smile, even though it was lopsided.
    “Why did you want their addresses?”
    “Let’s focus on the objective, which is to find Michael Sakai. There is no Michael Sakai associated with the foundation. That makes sense because he’s supposed to be dead. Therefore, if he’s connected with it, he must be using an assumed name. It’s likely he’s a director under this name. There are five directors, including Katherine. One of the other directors is a woman. That leaves three male directors. I already know the addresses of two of them.”
    “How did you get them?”
    “The Internet. For most people, if you have a name and approximate location, finding an address on the Internet is easy. You can also find out phone numbers, e-mail addresses, what organizations they donate money to, and then look at the car parked in their driveway with Google Earth.
    “That’s scary.”
    “You bet it is.”
    “But if you already know their addresses—”
    “I couldn’t find one for the name Jake Zimmerman. Sure, there are Jake Zimmermans, but not the correct one. There are a few references to a Jake Zimmerman as a director of Weatherford but no address for him except a P.O. Box. It’s the P.O. Box for the foundation. No phone numbers to cross-reference. He apparently doesn’t even have a driver’s license.”
    “So you think he might be Michael?”
    “That’s my suspicion.”
    “How are we going to find him?”
    “I heard the ‘we.’ Okay. If I’m going to protect you, it’s better if I keep you in sight. Do you mind riding with me?”
    “I’m not afraid of you if that’s what you mean. Michael has tried to kill me four times. It’s him I’m afraid of.”
    “Fortunately—or unfortunately—there’s no reason to be afraid of me. Okay, you can park your car at my office. It’s not far. The last thing we want to do is run around in a vehicle with a North Carolina plate.”

    CHAPTER 36
    Ivan also had computer-printed pictures of Michael and Katherine. In Michael’s picture his hair was brown and fairly short, but the facial similarities to the man who’d attacked Carol dispelled any lingering doubts she might have had that they were the same