by Steven James
A stunning amount of money. No wonder Weatherford hadn’t led the officers here. Half a million dollars can buy an awful lot of silence.
We came to a dusty, wood-paneled lounge. Weatherford went directly to the far wall and pressed open a doorway that had been cleverly and imperceptibly hidden in the paneling.
A set of steps descended to a lower level. Lien-hua and I drew our weapons.
I passed Weatherford and jogged down the stairs, slightly off-kilter as I tried to keep pressure off my ankle, then proceeded through a door that read “Authorized Service Personnel Only” and entered a dim hallway with rooms on either side.
“Which room?”
Weatherford produced a key card and approached the second door on the left.
Secure the scene, Pat. Then assist the victim.
I motioned for Lien-hua to take the key, and as soon as she’d unlocked the door I flung it open and swept inside, leading with my Glock.
Kayla Tatum lay tied up on the king-sized bed and appeared only semi-conscious. Lien-hua rushed to her side while I quickly scanned the room for Alexei or any accomplices.
Saw no one.
Weatherford gasped when he saw Kayla. I didn’t want to take any chances; I pointed to the floor. “Get down. On your knees.”
“I didn’t know—”
“Down.”
He knelt, and I holstered my gun and quickly patted him down, found no weapons.
Protocol called for me to handcuff him to something in the room. I chose one of the sturdy chairs near the wall.
I doubted I would get cell reception this far underground, but I pulled out my phone and was surprised to see two bars. Good enough. My initial thought was to call 911, but then I remembered that Alexei had taken out the EMS dispatch line.
Try anyway!
Flicking open my knife, I slit the ropes that bound Kayla’s ankles while Lien-hua bent over her wrists. I dialed 911 but got nothing but dead air, so I put a call through to Tait. “When are your officers going to be here?”
Lien-hua finished freeing Kayla, helped her sit up.
“Julianne’s on her way; should be there shortly. Jake said he’d come over too, but that’ll take longer. He’s on the other side of Woodborough.”
“What about an ambulance? How long till you can get one here?”
A pause. “All of ’em are on call. After the dispatch line went down, people started phoning the hospital directly, asking for help. It’s been a nightmare trying to sort out what the real emergencies are.”
Natasha’s close; she’s in the cabin Alexei used. She could—
No. She needs to stay there in case he returns to retrieve or destroy evidence.
“All right,” I said, my thoughts swirling. “Maybe Julianne can take Kayla to the hospital to get her checked over. Any news on Alexei?”
“No. Nothing. Burlman and Marty Lane—he’s the dispatcher—they’re on their way to the hospital. They’ll both survive. But 911’s gonna be out for a while. Chekov fried the system.”
The conversation ended, and I saw that Lien-hua had an arm around Kayla’s shoulder, supporting her, comforting her.
Kayla had a slim build, light brown hair, delicate features. She was in her late twenties and wore black jeans and a blue long-sleeved sweater, but the sleeves weren’t long enough to cover the bruises on her wrists where she’d evidently struggled against the ropes that had bound her.
I felt a renewed sense of anger rising against Alexei Chekov.
But he called you, Pat. He wanted you to find her. He didn’t want to hurt her—
Maybe, maybe not. Right now I was caught in a thick coil of lies, and I thought it best to work from worst-case scenarios.
I put a call through to Natasha, and when she didn’t answer I left an urgent message for her to get in touch with me immediately. “We found Kayla at the Schoenberg. She’s all right. Be on your guard. Alexei might return to the house.”
End call.
Lien-hua was talking softly, reassuringly, to Kayla. “My name is Lien-hua Jiang.” She gestured toward me. “This is Patrick Bowers. We’re FBI agents. You’re safe now.”
Kayla didn’t reply. Just nodded, wide-eyed.
“How are you feeling, physically?” Lien-hua asked her.
Kayla’s eyes were red, and obviously she’d been crying, but she appeared to be regrouping, gathering her senses. “I’m okay.” Her voice was delicate. Words of glass.
“The man who took you,” Lien-hua said, “did he hurt you?” The slight pause that she added before the word hurt lent a deeper meaning to the sentence, and I took it to mean “Did he assault you?” or perhaps “Did he rape you?”
Kayla shook her head. “He actually seemed . . . I don’t know. It was almost like he didn’t want me to be afraid.” She looked around distractedly. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“Do you know where you are now?”
Kayla shook her head.
“We’re in a hotel. The Schoenberg Inn. Does that ring a bell?”
“No.”
“Okay. Do you have any idea where he might have gone? The man who abducted you?”
She shook her head.
“Can you remember,” I asked, “did he bring you here right away or stop someplace first?”
Kayla thought about it. “We were in a cabin. I remember that. I don’t know exactly where. The walls were these really thick logs. He gave me something that made me sleepy. Some kind of shot. I don’t really remember anything else.”
Lien-hua placed a gentle hand on her arm. “You’re going to be all right.”
Considering what she’d been through, Kayla seemed to be doing remarkably well, and I was thankful, but this conversation didn’t look like it was going to lead us any closer to Alexei or the Eco-Tech team he’d told me about.
My thoughts shifted to the ELF station.
See if those schematics have arrived.
I had my phone with me, and although I could access my email with it, my laptop would be better for analyzing data. It was still in the cruiser.
“Lien-hua, are you good here?”
“Yes.”
“I’m gonna grab my computer. I’ll be right back.”
“We’ll find the man who took you,” Lien-hua said to Kayla. “I promise.”
Kayla gave a weak smile. “Thank you.”
I freed Weatherford, hauled him to his feet. “You, come with me.”
Even though I was walking with a hitch because of my ankle, I was in a hurry and he struggled to keep up. As we returned up the stairs, I asked him, “The man who bribed you, did he give you any indication where he might be going?”
“No.”
“What about the other people who paid you to use the basement? The Eco-Tech members? Where are they?”
“They were in the other part of the basement. But they’re gone.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I swear they’re not here. I don’t know where they might be.”
“How many of them were there?”
“Ten. Maybe eleven.”
We passed through the paneled lounge containing the hidden doorway, and I thought of the ELF station, of how we might get there.
The Navy would need to staff it, transfer people into and out of the base, deliver supplies, remove waste.
Forest service roads?
Maybe. But then how would they do it during the long Wisconsin winters with those roads closed?
What about Project Sanguine, the buried cables? The underground bunkers? Is it possible there are still tunnels leading to the base?
As we neared the lobby, Natasha phoned me. “I got your message,” she said. “So, Kayla’s safe?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no sign of Alexei here. Did you get my email?”
“I’m on my way to check my messages now.”
Donnie has worked at the sawmill since 2004.
What about his Monday and Friday trips to work? Why did it take h
im so long to get to the sawmill from home?
She went on, “The Lab finally identified the prints on the light switch in the Pickrons’ study. I sent you the report.”
“Whose prints are they?”
“Becker Hahn’s.”
That made sense; he was one of the Eco-Tech members whose photos Alexei had forwarded to me, but I couldn’t understand why the Lab had taken so long to identify the prints. Maybe someone’s been tinkering around on AFIS, deleting data? The same person who got into the ROSD?
“But,” she said, “here’s the big news. Angela found he was on the same flight last week to Milwaukee as Dana Murkowski, an alias used by Cassandra Lillo. She and Becker traveled up here together.”
“Cassandra Lillo?” I was stunned. “What? Are you sure?”
“It’s confirmed.”
Why wouldn’t her alias’s name have been on a watch list!
Weatherford and I arrived at the lobby and I hustled him toward the front door.
Last winter I’d tracked a team of—for lack of a better term—domestic terrorists who were trying to steal a classified military device that could be used to cause a stroke or a catastrophic cerebral event in another person. Cassandra Lillo was a scientist who’d partnered with her father and my NSA friend Terry Manoji to steal the device and sell it to the Chinese. Right before she was taken into custody Cassandra had said to me, “You have no idea what we have planned.”
I’d thought she was talking about the device.
Was she talking about this? About something now?
Cuffing Weatherford again, this time to a table near the hotel entrance where I could keep an eye on him, I exited the building to get my computer from the cruiser.
A tirade of thoughts, of puzzle pieces.
I remembered Cassandra’s escape in November: a transfer order to send her to another detention facility had come through, and during transport she’d strangled one guard and overpowered another, permanently disabling him, before making her escape. Later, the request for transfer was found to have been caused by a computer glitch. I’d never believed that, and now, in light of everything that was going on, I was even more convinced it was not a random processing error.
At the car, I grabbed my laptop.
At least the submarines are on alert. At least that’s covered.
“Pat? Are you still there?” Natasha asked.
“Yes, sorry.” Cassandra’s father and Terry are both dead, both out of the picture. I turned back toward the hotel. “Is there anything else in the report that I need to know?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“Stay where you are. Watch out for Alexei. And find out where Jake is.”
“I will.”
Terry was a spy for the Chinese government.
Eco-Tech consulted with foreign governments. We knew about Brazil and Afghanistan, but it was possible—
Truth often hides in the crevices of the evident.
Secretary of State Nielson was in Tehran this week in bilateral talks with Iran about their nuclear program.
As soon as I entered the lobby I pulled up Margaret Wellington’s cell number and punched it in.
Tessa and Amber had just finished cleaning up the glass from the shattered painting and were putting the garbage can and vacuum cleaner away in the kitchen when the electricity went out.
This far out in the country with no street lamps or city lights, the house was immediately swallowed in a deep, corporeal darkness. The two women each had a flashlight that Amber had scavenged. Tessa flicked hers on. A moment later so did Amber.
The beams of light slit the kitchen’s black air like long, narrow knives. Tessa saw the flash of her own face as her flashlight beam danced across the framed photo that Sean had shown her earlier of her at her mother’s wedding, the picture in which she was smiling, lighthearted, a photograph that seemed like it must have been taken in another life.
“Are you any good with starting fires?” Amber asked. “I’ll give you first dibs.”
Tessa had seen Patrick start fires a bunch of times on the camping trips he’d managed to drag her along on. “Sure. I’ll give it a shot.”
82
8:12 p.m.
48 minutes until the transmission
I found a chair on the far side of the lobby, away from Weatherford and the three guests who were chatting near the front desk. Just as I’d finished opening up my email program on my laptop, Director Wellington answered: “Pat.”
“We found Kayla,” I said promptly. “It looks like she’s all right. We’re going to get her to a hospital as soon as possible. Alexei escaped.”
“Leads?”
“No, listen, a couple things: first, we need to see if Eco-Tech has any ties to Iran. The timing of Nielson’s visit there this week with all of this going down, it can’t be a coincidence.”
“I’ll talk with him.” Brisk answers. Everything right now was forthright and down-to-business.
“What about the schematics to the ELF station. Why haven’t you sent them?”
“I did send them. An hour ago.”
“I’m looking at my email right now. There’s nothing here.”
No email from Natasha either.
And nothing from Angela.
“Agent Bowers. The email was sent.”
“No . . .”
Oh.
Wait.
This morning Alexei hacked into your account.
No!
“Chekov might have gotten into my account, downloaded the file.”
“How could he get access to your email?”
“He has a source. An inside man. I don’t know who.”
Valkyrie?
Is Valkyrie someone in our government?
I told Margaret the address of a gmail account I keep so I don’t have to give credit card companies my Bureau address. “Resend the file. I’ll download it from there.”
“I’m not at my desk.” I noted the change in her tone that you hear when someone you’re talking with on the phone starts moving around. “It’ll take me a minute to log into my office computer.”
“Did you know Cassandra Lillo traveled up here with Becker Hahn, one of the Eco-Tech activists?”
A pause. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“Her father was—”
“I know who her father was. Sebastian Taylor.”
“An assassin.”
“Yes.”
“And he trained her to kill, just like—”
“Yes.” Impatience in her voice. “I’ve read the files.”
“After you send me the schematics, can you get in touch with the CIA and see if Taylor was ever on an assignment at a location where Chekov might have been present?”
“You think they’re related?”
“Taylor and Chekov—both assassins—then Taylor’s daughter shows up here while Chekov is in the area? It seems like too much of a coincidence for them not to be connected somehow.”
I remembered my conversation with Angela and her list of who she thought might be able to hack into a nuclear sub, and, taking everything I knew about this case and the one in San Diego into account, I tried to process the implications.
Cassandra Lillo? Could she be Valkyrie?
Someone hacked into the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation computers to help her escape . . . Someone called Ardis’s phone from Egypt, accessed the DoD’s Routine Orbital Satellite Database . . . The name Dana Murkowski didn’t raise any red flags at the airport . . .
You’d need a world-class hacker to do all that.
A world-class hacker.
It felt like the puzzle pieces should have been interlocking before my eyes, but I still couldn’t see the big picture.
Truth often hides in the crevices of the evident.
“One more thing. This is going to sound crazy, but Terry Manoji. Find out from the CIA if he’s still alive. I’m wondering if—”
“He is.”
�
��What?”
“He awoke from the coma four months ago.”
I pounded the arm of the chair I was sitting in. “How come you never told me!” The people near the front desk looked my way, offered me judgmental looks, then returned to their conversation.
“Do not raise your voice at me, Agent Bowers.” Margaret’s tone was cold and censorious. “It was not your concern. Terry Manoji’s contacts in China have close ties to three terrorist groups in Pakistan, one of which is Al Qaeda. The CIA concluded it would be in the best interests of national security to keep his existence and his whereabouts a secret.”
“All right.” This was unbelievable. “I hear what you’re saying, but where is he?”
“Don’t worry, he’s at a secure loca—”
“Don’t give me that, Margaret, you know—”
“Enough, Patrick.”
Through the window I saw the blue-red-blue flicker of overhead lights from an approaching cruiser.
Julianne. Finally.
“He was in a coma,” I said. “Is he still in a hospital? Still recovering? Because if he is, nearly every one of their systems would be connected to the internet, and anything that’s connected to the internet can be hacked into. Given enough time he would find a way to get in—”
I caught myself in the middle of my thought.
Anything that’s connected to the internet can be hacked.
Hacked into.
One keystroke away from Armageddon.
“Margaret, all the indicators are pointing toward someone sending an ELF signal to one of our subs. We have to assume it’s—”
“That’s covered,” she replied. “The DoD raised the alert level to DEFCON 2.”
“Have ’em raise it again.”
“Patrick,” she responded curtly. “The military needs evidence not just conjecture to make an escalatory decision like that.”
I wanted Julianne to help me clear the other part of the basement, make sure no one from Eco-Tech was still lurking downstairs. I started toward the door.
Becker has no history of violence, but Cassandra does. There were two sets of boot prints outside the laundry room of Donnie’s house. She was there.
