She shook her head slowly. It was too incredible to believe. "B-but Haim is Jewish."
"Neither of these men is a friend of Israel, Angel."
She didn't know what to say. The connection to David was starting to become clearer now, though it was all still just circumstantial. If Norstrom knew about Sharansky, then he would know that David had been the one to introduce the scientist to her.
The two men had met at a conference on synthetic genetics in Haifa several years back and struck up a friendship. This was back when David was still trying to commercialize the work he had developed during his doctoral studies. The intro had taken place mere weeks before David stunned her by abandoning their marriage. Yet despite that, she and Sharansky continued to correspond informally. He was very supportive of her switch in careers from practicing medicine to writing about medical injustices. A year later, he would seek her out with details blowing open Israel's secret cloning program.
Was it possible all of the evidence he had given her was fabricated, just as the Israelis claimed?
"For a long time, we couldn't figure out how al Tadmir was funneling money to CdÉ," Norstrom continued. "There was no direct link. Then, just this morning, we began to break the code on a chain of monetary transfers detailed in the Panama Papers. One of the hits belonged to a long defunct corporate account that was reactivated about a year ago. Large sums of cash have been moved through it."
He pulled a piece of folded paper from his pocket and gave it to her. One of the long string of numbers was circled, and a name was handwritten beside it in the margin: Mech InVivo, LLC.
"Is this supposed to mean something?" she asked. "I have never heard of this company before."
"It's a company on paper only, a holding company established eight years ago," Norstrom replied. "It has since been acquired and made a part of what we call a corporate nesting doll, or Matryoshka. These are companies hidden inside other companies to obfuscate financial and legal dealings, including transfers of high-value assets and funds. It took some digging, but we managed to identify the company's founder through its sole asset, a patent filed nearly six years ago."
He pulled out another sheet of paper.
"By your husband."
Chapter Nine
"Let's go for a ride," Norstrom abruptly announced. "It's starting to get dark in here."
On their way out of the room, he placed a call on his phone, speaking only three words before shutting it off again: "We're coming down."
Wan light filtered in through the thin, dusty windows high up in a second stairwell. This one appeared even less used than the one they'd ascended earlier. They navigated down the steps as carefully as they could in the gloom, avoiding boxes filled with old paint cans and other debris, and exited out into a narrow covered alleyway. Norstrom went first, glancing quickly at the surroundings, then nodding for her to follow.
Not more than a second or two later a car entered from the street and drew up to them. The rear door popped open.
"It's okay," Norstrom said, gently nudging her. "It's my driver, iPod. You can trust him."
"iPod?"
"Padraig. And he's Irish, thus the i. But we don't hold that against him, do we?"
"No, Siri," Padraig replied, eliciting a snort from Norstrom.
Angel slid in and he followed right behind her, pulling the door shut as the car drew away. They soon entered the flow of traffic onto the Boulevard de Magenta.
Her thoughts were a jumble, buffeted by the whirlwind of new information refusing to settle in her mind. It didn't make sense. Norstrom had to be wrong. Or the person who had decoded the papers was wrong. David simply wasn't like that. He wouldn't get involved in terrorist activities. Or sell his invention to a terrorist group. She knew him well enough to be certain of that.
And yet you failed to know he owned a company by that name.
Granted, he had formed it before they were married, but still . . . .
She looked over to ask Norstrom a question, but he seemed just as consumed by his own thoughts. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he judging her differently based on this new information? Was he asking himself, what kind of woman marries a man who does business with ter—
David is not a terrorist! It is all a misunderstanding!
Or maybe he wasn't judging her at all. Maybe she meant nothing to him, just another asset, a source for his spy games.
She reminded herself that she knew nothing about the man. In fact, everything she thought she knew about him was based on a few hours together under extreme circumstances. What she remembered seemed inconsistent with what she saw now. That man had methodically controlled the situation, at least until Aston entered the picture and put a couple bullets into his body. Even then, he had somehow remained calm, despite the fact he was bleeding to death.
But this was not that man. Was it possible she misremembered him, romanticizing an idea rather than the truth? Did she want him to be her notion of a knight in shining armor? And was that why she was so disappointed in him now?
He's changed, Angel. How could he not? A thing like that changes a person forever.
She knew it was true. A person might never recover from such horror, such trauma. By all rights, he should have died back there.
And yet he hadn't. Why didn't he?
Do not think it, Angel. Do not go there.
His face tightened, as if aware of her suspicion, the corners of his lips twitching downward ever so slightly. The dashboard lights in the front cast a pale green glow upon his face, accentuating his features and making him appear ill. His hair was thinner than she remembered it being, grayer.
No, she didn't believe it. He had survived, but he had done it by sheer will, not through any unnatural agency.
They drove around for several more minutes, Padraig apparently just waiting for instructions.
The last remaining daylight leaked from the sky. Mist coated the windshield. The wipers made a faint scraping sound as they brushed it away. Angel thought how beautiful the city was at times like this, the lights fractured into multicolored diamonds, glimpses of la Tour Eiffel with its recently installed glittering display over the trees.
She should have known what David was doing. She'd known about the patent, of course. He had told her about it, had even mentioned he'd incorporated in order to protect it. He'd probably even told her the name of the company at one time.
She glanced again at the paper, but the name still didn't ring any bells.
It was her own fault for being so uninvolved in his affairs. She had never really believed his ideas to be all that practical. But that was okay. She had fallen in love with his passion, not his ideas. In truth, they had kind of bored her. She didn't even care when he tapped into her family's money to pursue them.
But there were other reasons to believe he simply couldn't be involved. David's family was Jewish. He wasn't a practicing Jew, but there was still no way in hell he'd support an organization threatening that heritage. Or humanity in general.
You thought Haim Sharansky was Jewish. You failed to recognize he was misleading you.
How much else had she missed?
No. It was a mistake. Either the account number was wrong — digits transposed or misread or decoded incorrectly — or the document was wrong. Or fabricated.
Or maybe everything was correct, but the connection Norstrom was implying didn't exist in the way he suspected it did.
Or David had succeeded in selling the company off and was no longer involved.
Or the company's name was misappropriated.
Or even if it wasn't any of those possibilities, even if David was still part of the company, people moved money into and out of accounts all the time. What happened to it beyond one's reach was out of their control. David couldn't be held responsible for laundering money if he had no idea it was happening.
Could he?
"I suppose I should tell you about Alvin Cheong," Norstrom said, breaking into her thoughts. "Coi
ncidentally, his activities indirectly inform my work now, at least as it relates to our trying to understand the terrorists' timetable."
"Cheong?" She was unable to hide her surprise. "I thought you said he is a nobody, just some rich grown-up child playing a game about the end of the world."
"He is, but he also has a lot of connections to people who aren't nobodies. 6X, in particular, is able to tap into a highly sophisticated information network that we've been unable to access. But we can still learn a lot about what they know just by monitoring him."
"And what have you learned?"
"That a global scale event appears to be on the horizon— at least that's what they seem to believe. We still don't know details, where or when or how."
"This is not news. We know that 6X has been preparing for such an eventuality for a long time."
"Yes, well, it seems they know something specific, because their level of urgency has increased recently. About a month ago Cheong flew into Keflavik Airport in Iceland. He has been there ever since. For a man who rarely stays in one place more than a couple days — Shanghai today, Madrid tomorrow; Singapore, Nairobi, Quebec, Sydney — it struck us as peculiar. I mean, this guy racks up air miles like a child collects colored eggs during an Easter egg hunt."
"Maybe he is on vacation. I understand it is a beautiful country."
He grunted. "An odd place to take a holiday, especially at this time of year. He can vacation anywhere he wants and he chooses to go to a desolate volcanic island north of the Arctic Circle in the winter?"
"So, why then?"
"They're preparing a secret survival bunker. We sent a man to tour the facility, hoping to get inside."
"That does not sound very secret to me."
"The power plant it was secretly built beneath gives daily public tours. Unfortunately, he was unable to get inside the bunker itself. And everybody he spoke with denied its existence."
"Then how do you know it is there?"
"Cheong's arrival in Iceland coincided with the appearance at Keflavik seaport of several daily cargo ships over a period of some three weeks. These were small vessels, not big enough to trigger any alarms. Each one carried only a half dozen or so shipping containers, which were off-loaded and delivered by truck directly to the power plant. Copies of shipping manifests from one of the ports-of-origin show they were filled with food, furniture, textiles, barrels of diesel, caviar, alcohol— the good stuff. Not anything you would expect to be needed in a working power plant. We estimate that there are enough supplies to sustain a couple hundred people ten to twelve years. Very comfortably. The deliveries stopped last week."
"And you believe this means they are preparing for something big to happen."
"The timing coincides with a significant uptick in chatter between terrorist groups in recent weeks."
"So, radical jihadists are talking to each other about killing people, like they do all the time anyway, and a crazy rich man hides in a survival bunker that he fills with expensive alcohol and fish eggs. Plus, a bunch of bank statements suggests a terrorist is masquerading as a charity. And you think it all means the end of the world?"
"When you put it that way . . . ." He sighed and shook his head. "Like I said, we just don't know where or when or how."
She stared at the sheet of paper in her hands, her eyes skimming over the words. There were other companies she didn't recognize, all handwritten in the margin. Some of them sounded like biotech firms, others like they were in the high tech space. SYNGENCIA BIO, AFFINITY PARTNERS, ASTRACORP . . . .
And then one name she thought she did recognize: QUANTUM TELLIGENCE.
"Angel?"
She could hear Norstrom saying her name, but she couldn't move, couldn't respond, couldn't breathe. She was back in China, inside the empty stationhouse where the train would stop to pick up the villagers to deliver them to the place where they would be experimented upon.
She looked over at Norstrom, numb with shock, confused. Scared. Terrified, actually. There were too many coincidences for it to be accidental. And the name of David's company, Mech InVivo? Now that she thought about it, the name sounded exactly what one would expect if you were developing some sort of machine to put inside people.
Black medicine that cured diseases in a day.
A man dressed in silver and black.
And now David?
"I think you're right," she whispered.
He gave her a startled look. "Right about what?"
"But you're also wrong."
"You're confusing me."
"It is China."
She could almost see the wall go up between them. She could feel the coldness rolling off his skin, repelling her.
"I told you—"
"This company," she said, pointing to the paper. "I remember seeing it before, in China."
She told him about the satellite receiver on the roof of the stationhouse at Baoyang Village. "It was attached to an electrical transformer, and there was a label on it: QUANTEL. I thought it was a communications company." She showed him the paper. "But I think it may be high tech."
The frown deepened. He looked suddenly like he didn't want her to continue.
"I cannot be sure," she said. Although she was. She had no doubt it was the same company.
"Angel, I—"
"No, I need to tell you something. It's about the refugees in the encampment under the Pont Charles de Gaulle."
"Stop."
"I have to tell you! There is a man there. He told me something. I think they are being injected with nanites. I believe it!"
She noticed Padraig's head jerk up and to the side as he glanced into the rearview mirror. Norstrom, too, seemed stunned.
"His name was Mahdi. Mahdi Haddad. He said his brother was—"
"I said stop!" Norstrom snapped. "Pull over, Padraig!"
"Sir?"
"Do it!" He turned to Angel, and she could see the anger on his face. "There will be no more discussion about China! We stopped them. End of story. There are no nanites!"
"But you—"
"Dammit, Padraig! I said pull the hell over!"
"Here? Now?" Angel glanced out the window and saw that they had come to a stop outside the back gate of the Père Lachaise, one of the city's oldest and most notorious graveyards. "You are kicking me out here?"
"Not you," he said. "Me. I'm getting out. Padraig will take you back to your hotel." He put his hand on the door handle. "Just get some sleep. I'll call you in the morning. It may be late. Stay put. And it probably goes without saying, do not contact your ex-husband. Please."
"But—"
"Padraig, straight to the hotel."
Then, without even giving her a chance to say another word, he was gone.
Chapter Ten
She had hoped that the night would bring some sort of clarity to her mind, but when she woke the next morning, she felt just as torn about what she should do, and even more uncertain about what she should believe.
Padraig had been no help during the drive back the prior evening. He had refused to answer her questions or engage in any speculation as to why Norstrom had acted the way he had. But it was clear enough to Angel that he knew something, he just wasn't going to tell her.
Restless, angry, and frustrated, she rose out of bed and paced the room for several minutes before grabbing her phone. She considered defying Norstrom and calling David. They hadn't spoken in over a year and just the thought of hearing his voice made her anxious. But Norstrom's warning to her the previous evening kept replaying in her mind.
As much as she didn't want to believe David had any part in funneling money to a terrorist group — most likely her family's money, too — she also had to respect Norstrom's request, because what if it were true? What if David was somehow involved? Then—
He's not! Don't even consider it!
She stared at the phone in her hand, willing it to ring. Wanting it to be David calling out of the blue. Or Norstrom. Anyone.
When it
didn't ring, she dialed the number for Mahdi's phone instead. But though it connected, it just rang on endlessly without ever being picked up or going to voice mail. Neither did Jacques' cell, though that didn't surprise her. He had permanently shut off his mailbox. Whenever she wanted to leave him a message, she would either have to email him or leave one on the home machine and hope he'd listen to it.
Miserable, she put the phone away into her bag and decided to just sit tight and wait for Norstrom to call.
She practiced being calm as she ordered her breakfast and waited for it to be delivered, believing that she could actually trick her body and mind. She took her time spreading jam on her roll, being meticulous to the point of compulsion, and purposefully ate as unhurriedly as she could. She wasn't very hungry to begin with, and didn't even taste the food. Yet before she knew it, the plate was empty.
She watched the news on television, but then couldn't remember seeing or hearing any of it. When some other show came on, she didn't realize it had switched over until the obnoxiously bubbly theme song about some stupid under-the-sea cartoon creature chipped away through her fog and into her consciousness until it grated her back to reality. But instead of turning the television off, she went into the bathroom and turned on the shower and sat on the toilet and stared at the wall. She spent the next half hour sobbing.
When she was finished, she checked the phone again. There was no message.
Eight o'clock came and went and still there was no call. Then nine o'clock. After that, she started to hope that Norstrom wouldn't phone, that he had decided it had all been a mistake and David was innocent. He would be too embarrassed to speak with her, as he should be after falsely accusing her husband of something as horrible as this.
You are an idiot, she scolded. Norstrom wouldn't have brought this to you unless he was sure.
She thought about calling him again. Then David. Then the whole process started all over.
Iceland: An International Thriller (The Flense Book 2) Page 7
