The Last Second

by Catherine Coulter

  Broussard waved this away. “When her own people cast her out, I gave her a home, a mission, ample money to accomplish anything she could dream of. Trust. Responsibility. A life, a respected life. If Kiera is devoted to Nevaeh, I could easily say Nevaeh is devoted to me. To think otherwise—I don’t think I could bear it.” Broussard looked away from her and closed his eyes again.

  Mike sent Adam a quick text—Got a name for the woman in the photo. Check out Kiera Byrne, Nevaeh Patel’s head of security. She got a bottle of water and settled back in her seat. She’d done all she could for the time being. She knew objectively why Broussard was holding fast to his belief in Patel’s innocence. They would simply keep him off his phone until they could prove to him he’d been betrayed.

  And time was running out.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  T-MINUS 31 HOURS

  May 4, 2018

  A small amount of radioactive, weapons-grade plutonium about the size of a U.S. quarter is missing from an Idaho university that was using it for research. The amount is too small to make a nuclear bomb, agency spokesman Victor Dricks said, but could be used to make a dirty bomb to spread radioactive contamination.

  —Associated Press

  FBI New York Field Office

  26 Federal Plaza

  Adam was alone in the office. He’d been running names and flights for three hours, looking for anything that could tie Nevaeh Patel to the Idaho Research Facility. He was ready to quit, but since it was new code he’d written expressly for this task, and they were trying to stop a nuke, he was willing to let it run for a full twenty-four hours before admitting defeat.

  He’d finished reading the AP report on the missing plutonium in Idaho. He was on his third Red Bull, fingers sore and wrists aching, his eyes burning. When the program dinged to indicate a match had been found, he at first couldn’t believe it. Then he punched a fist in the air. Of course he should have known it would work. There it was, a flight manifest—it made him sit up, heart revving.

  The manifest was for a private jet company out of Duluth specializing in deadhead flights—when the plane was empty of passengers but needed to be moved to a new airport for a client pickup—and allowed the empty seats to be sold at the last minute at a fraction of normal cost so the planes wouldn’t fly empty and waste more fuel.

  This particular flight, in July of 2015, originated in London, England, and ended in Boise, Idaho, where it picked up a full load of passengers and continued to Los Angeles.

  There was one listed passenger on the London-to-Boise leg of the flight. The passenger’s name was K. R. Byrne.

  The moment Adam saw it, he knew he had her. K. R. Byrne.

  Kiera Rachel Byrne.

  Bingo.

  Nevaeh Patel’s bodyguard had gone to Idaho the same week the scientist was killed? Was this when the plutonium had gone missing? What about Dr. Patel? Had she been there as well, taken a separate flight? Using a fake ID and passport?

  Adam sent a message to Mike’s computer, telling her what he’d found, then he set about tracing the rest of Byrne’s whereabouts. Knowing she traveled under the name K. R. Byrne helped. He adjusted his coding and waited.

  Sure enough, he was able to find another flight, this one a return, a week after the incoming flight. It went to Cuba, then directly to French Guiana, and two days later, back to London.

  Had Kiera Byrne taken the stolen plutonium to South America and stashed it there until they were ready to use it? Three years was a long time to keep something so volatile hidden. But it wasn’t like she could take it to France and keep it in her desk at work.

  Yes, Guiana made sense—it’s where the signature was spotted by the U.S. Strategic Command nuclear division. So how had she kept it hidden for so long? Where had it been? Did she give the plutonium over to a terror organization that in turn made her the bomb? French Guiana was north of Brazil—not exactly a hotbed of insurgency, but close enough to Venezuela, where there were many reports of bourgeoning terror organizations.

  He went back to the travel schedule of K. R. Byrne.

  She was a busy woman. He had to assume most of the legitimate travel she did was based around guarding her boss, who also traveled a great deal. For the most part, they flew on one of the three Galactus Lear jets, regular jaunts between Lyon and French Guiana for launches of Galactus rockets. Those were easily searchable, registered flights, all assigned to one of three tail numbers. No, they weren’t hiding or doing anything shifty on those flights.

  But Byrne herself continued to make random trips here and there, some to the U.S., some to other European destinations, a few to more exotic locales, like India and Sri Lanka. There was even one flight into the heart of Nepal.

  Either she had an inordinate amount of vacation time to burn, or Patel had sent her to scout, plan, get ready for the launch of the nuke, put together the source material to be taken to Guiana and attached to the plutonium. Were the two involved with a terrorist organization?

  He created a chart of the flights with their dates, and was about to send it to Mike and Nicholas when he saw a flight to Corsica, with both Patel and Byrne on board. It was August 18, 2015. Adam stared at two grainy photographs that came up with it. The first showed Patel and Byrne sitting at a table at the Hotel Corsica restaurant at 10 p.m. local time, and a man sitting at the bar, looking at them. In the second, the three were sitting together in an outdoor café.

  Who was he? Adam felt a niggling recognition. He called up a series of terrorist photos, most of them barely recognizable, but he was certain. It was Khaleed Al-Asaad sitting at the bar. Well, the database gave it an 85 percent match.

  Adam pulled the face from the photo, lined it up side-by-side with Al-Asaad’s last known photograph. The database program ran, lining the screen with red, diagramming the two faces, measuring angles and giving comparisons.

  It was Al-Asaad all right, though Adam thought he’d probably had some surgery to alter his looks. His chin wasn’t as strong, nor his nose, and his cheeks were rounder. But the basic measurements—pupillary distance, the set of his ears—these couldn’t be falsified. The program finished running and gave him an official match confirmation. This was Al-Asaad and he was there meeting with Patel and Byrne.

  Al-Asaad was on the terror watch list for suspected activity with Al-Qaeda from well back in the early 2010s. And he was on record calling for a nuclear strike against the United States, and known for trying to buy a suitcase bomb. He’d been off-grid for several years, assumed to be killed by the CIA in one of the cave bombings in the Afghan War.

  But here he was, in 2015, on the coast of Corsica, drinking a glass of wine at a bar, alive and well. Nicholas and Mike were going to love this. So the renowned and respected, possibly crazy, Dr. Nevaeh Patel was in league with one big scary terrorist for sure—Al-Asaad—and that was why her minion had stolen the plutonium from the Idaho facility.

  He reached for the phone, but Gray walked in at the same moment, hair standing on end.

  “Did you sleep here?”

  Gray nodded. “Didn’t feel like fighting the traffic. Why do you look like you’re about to burst?”

  “Check this out.”

  Adam turned the screen and explained what he’d done.

  Gray said, “So, Al-Asaad isn’t dead. That’s a bummer. Where’s he been all this time? I’ll tell you, Adam, if he has anything to do with this EMP, we’re in trouble. I have a call with Strategic Command shortly. They’re the ones who’ve been tracking the satellite to see if they can find it. What we know so far: Dr. Patel lied when she said it didn’t make orbit, it did. Only it’s not in the place it was supposed to be. Looks like someone with serious hacking skills managed to reroute the satellite. It wasn’t damaged.”

  “Patel claims Galactus has been sabotaged. She made a statement earlier.”

  Gray said, “Sabotage. Clever. A story like that could buy her some time.”

  “You think she launched it with code meant to move it from its or
iginal elliptical to another spot?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You know, if Strategic Command can locate the satellite, I might be able to break into the programming and shut it down.”

  “Finding it seems to be an issue. Space is a pretty big place, and it’s a small satellite.”

  “I was about to call Nicholas and Mike, tell them about Al-Asaad’s involvement—”

  “Let them sleep. There’s nothing they can do from the air anyway. You can tell them when they land. Right now, you need to get some rest, too. No, don’t argue with me. Go grab a bunk, sleep for a few hours. Cross my heart, if something happens, I will come get you.”

  Adam stood, dropping candy wrappers and crumbs on the keyboard. An empty can of Red Bull spun away with a clatter. Gray laughed.

  “See? Man cannot live on junk food alone. Drink some water, for heaven’s sake, and while you’re asleep, I’ll see if we can’t track Al-Asaad.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Lyon, France

  Galactus Headquarters

  2013

  Nevaeh had to admit her boss and the founder of Galactus, Jean-Pierre Broussard, was proving to be a witty, brilliant man, but unavailable on a day-to-day basis. And this was why he had her, and she intended to prove herself as quickly as possible. She was happy being there, being back at work, using her mind to solve problems instead of obsessing over those who had destroyed her. She had hope, new hope, and she knew she’d figure out how to get herself back with the Numen. She was happy, optimistic.

  Her first day on the job, she began the design work for a new space module that could carry people. She sketched and ran numbers and printed up 3-D models. She spent weeks refining every aspect, discussing options and possible flaws with the Numen. It was interesting how they always agreed with her, tossing her back the same questions she’d asked them, which, of course, made her think and rethink.

  Finally, after six months, she knew she had something stable and sustainable to bring to Jean-Pierre—their very own manned spacecraft, designed for orbit, docking with the International Space Station, and eventual landings on the moon.

  It was going to cost billions, but she could make it work. She would get them into space—and she would be on the first rocket there. The Numen were as excited about it as she was.

  Jean-Pierre loved the idea, approved it immediately. The timeline they attached was nine years. Nine years, even less than the time that he’d originally planned. Still, nine years. She wept when she told the Numen and they wept with her. She told them she had to cut it back, it was far too long, and they readily agreed with her, but how? They had no answer.

  Jean-Pierre gave her a raise and they had a party on the yacht.

  But she also had to run the company. There were board meetings, staff meetings, meetings with the distributors and the buyers, the people she was purchasing the raw materials from. She had to travel, extensively, to Russia and India and China and Malaysia, to other areas of Europe, and to meet up with Jean-Pierre as he floated around the world looking for treasure.

  He was funding the company, funding her personal plans, so she could hardly complain. But all the busywork and management took away from her time to work on their manned spacecraft. She had to cut the nine years down. By a lot.

  The years had slipped by. They built the rockets in-house, in a factory she’d designed on the Galactus campus, then shipped them by boat to French Guiana to launch. The first blew up. So did the second. The third made orbit, and the celebration was insane.

  Kiera Byrne, Nevaeh’s new head of security, had short spiked red hair and long legs, and a brain. She was quiet, more taciturn, really, so very young. Nevaeh learned quickly enough she was also ruthless and bloodthirsty. Ah, but Kiera never left her side, and she felt safe, and then she began to feel more.

  In 2014, she bought her own house, a beautiful chateau she’d purchased and renovated in her spare time near their Lyon headquarters. She’d bought her own sensory deprivation flotation tank as well, and used it nightly to decompress and unwind and report to the Numen what she was thinking, what she was doing. If she was angry about something, they were angry along with her, if excited, they hummed and congratulated her. It was her favorite time of the day. She spoke of the insanity in space, so many satellites hovering over Earth, and they agreed, they hated the noise, the constant interference. She’d wondered aloud, “How can I quiet space so we can speak all the time rather than in my chamber?” And they said, You must find another way. And she knew that, spoke of it all the time to them, but she didn’t know how to do it yet.

  She said to them in the blank darkness, “We’re a small company. It’s going to take time. We’re going to have to invent some of the mechanics for this, they don’t exist yet. We have to build, and test, and test some more. Development of this nature takes time.” But she knew the Numen were getting impatient because she was, too. “How do I do this, short of setting off some sort of nuclear blast to take out the grids—eliminate all the wretched noise so you can—” She stopped, whispered, “You were able to get past the stationary geosynchronous satellites. You came to me at the space station. But I see now it’s the space between the Earth and the space station that is too crowded to let you through. I know you are in need. This plan—this blast—it would be simple, really. A nuclear blast at, say, three hundred kilometers would send an electromagnetic pulse through the surrounding atmosphere. Depending on the yield produced by the bomb, the EMP would allow for a rather large area to be taken off the grid. But I have less chance of getting my hands on plutonium than I do moving up the manned program schedule.” What to do, what to do? What? They didn’t want to wait, she knew it.

  She told Kiera about the Numen in 2014, her trusted Kiera, who loved her, believed in her, trusted her completely. Kiera was the closest thing Nevaeh had to a friend. She knew Kiera was not her intellectual equal, but she was dead serious about keeping Nevaeh safe, her shadow at all times. Wherever she was, Kiera was close by. Every time she glanced up, Kiera would go into motion, making sure she had everything she needed. Had their relationship bloomed into love? Nevaeh didn’t know, didn’t really care. Kiera made her happy.

  After a few years of extraordinary discretion, Nevaeh decided it would be easier if Kiera moved into the chateau. They had separate rooms, and outwardly, nothing changed. Kiera was still her bodyguard by day. Now, she was there for her at night, too.

  They dined together most evenings when Nevaeh was in France, and whenever Nevaeh got up to visit the deprivation pod, Kiera stood guard.

  She swore nightly to the Numen she was working as hard and fast as she could, and they listened, always listened. And agreed, yes, she was working hard. But she didn’t see any way to make Galactus’s manned spacecraft program move any quicker. It was already three years behind schedule, simply because the legitimate work was piling up. She sometimes felt getting back to space wasn’t ever going to happen.

  It was Kiera who made her revisit the idea about the EMP.

  It was a quiet winter’s night, with snow billowing across the estate and a fire roaring in the dining room grate. Over dinner and an excellent bottle of Bordeaux, Kiera unexpectedly began to talk about her past. She was from Ireland, which Nevaeh had known the moment they met, her lilt was a dead giveaway. She’d gotten into close protection because she was good with guns, good in a fight, had a double black belt in karate, and had mastered several other martial art disciplines. But that evening, gauzy with wine, she loosened up and talked more than she ever had, about things Nevaeh didn’t know—about her mother, who was in jail for bombing a supermarket in Kerry. Her father, who was dead by the hand of his rival. Admitted her greatest shame, and pride—her parents had been part of the IRA.

  Fascinated, Nevaeh listened as Kiera talked long into the night of the hardships of being the child of freedom fighters. They’d taught her so much about how to survive. How to fight. The many moves to stay ahead of the police, the secret meetings in
the middle of the night, of a child tracked and frightened, of the bombs she’d grown up around.

  As it turned out, Kiera knew quite a bit about bombs.

  Later, in the velvety darkness, as she was twined around her lover, the Numen came to Nevaeh’s dreams. It wasn’t a regular occurrence—they preferred to speak to her in the utter silent emptiness of the deprivation chamber—but in moments of duress or joy, they would appear, their voices great harmonies, merging into a single voice, and she told them about Kiera and how she knew all about bombs, and maybe she could help, and they agreed. Kiera knew about bombs, she could help.

  Nevaeh woke the next morning with a plan. And she whispered to the Numen, “If I can’t come to you, then you can come to me. Let me tell you about it and you can tell me what you think.” And the Numen rejoiced and agreed it was the solution.

  And that meant she and Kiera had to get their hands on some plutonium.

  She could get nuclear material, she could get a bomb on a satellite. And because of Nevaeh’s genius, Galactus’s reusable rockets could take a satellite with the bomb aboard to space, a satellite she could program to be in exactly the right spot in orbit, where it would be detonated at the perfect time, forcing a massive electromagnetic pulse through the atmosphere and down to Earth, taking offline both the satellites in orbit and the electrical grids across a continent. Everything she needed she could get, including the plutonium.

  And all the satellites in space would be knocked offline, and there would be blessed silence both in space and on Earth. And the Numen would be able to come for her. And when she told them, the Numen rejoiced. But she worried. They were immortal, they’d felt it to her, and she wasn’t. And then Broussard began telling her about the Holy Grail. And time passed, and she began to tell the Numen about her growing belief in the Holy Grail, or the Heaven Stone, as she preferred to call it, since the Numen were, after all, in the heavens. She told them about her studies and discussions with Broussard, and how she knew to her soul he would find it, in the Strait of Malacca, on a shipwreck known as the Flor de la Mar.