Sunshine or Lead

by Adam Van Susteren

  Chapter 27

  An hour outside of San Diego, Aaron read a text message on his phone. “What the fuck?”

  Nat asked, “What?”

  “Nannette Allenby is dead,” Aaron said shocked, loud enough for everyone on the plane to hear him. Kor, Leonard, and Josh were all hung-over and laughing about the night before in between bouts of napping. James, Manny, and Nat stopped scouring the internet for information about Ameriprobe.

  Aaron continued with disbelief, “During an interrogation by Enloe Burden, she attacked her attorney who killed her by injecting her with a syringe containing traces of etorphine that was in the evidence box.”

  “I take it the lawyer is in custody and they have it on tape?”

  Aaron shrugged his shoulders and went to the California State Bar website. There was no record for the attorney Anthony Wai.

  Manny performed a Google search and found the law firm of Oseff, Wai & Cantwell. He found a picture of Anthony Wai. “Mr. Wai is of Chinese ethnicity and his law practice involves multinationals doing business in China. Coincidence?”

  Aaron asked Nat, “Is Aurora back in the States yet?”

  She shook her head. “Probably incommunicado for another two or three hours. We will be back off the ground from San Diego before they are in Philly.”

  Aaron sent a text message to the unknown person that spied on him for the NSA just a month ago. “Can you find any information about a guy named Anthony Wai?”

  Nat asked, “Who did you just text?”

  “A guy in D.C., for a little favor.”

  “Aaron, stop. No more favors. Your last one got our key witness killed. Who did you text?”

  “The guy that was spying on Tina and me for the NSA. I don’t know his name, but we have kept in touch and he has answered questions for me. He felt bad about the eavesdropping and spying and has been helping me secure my communications.”

  Nat scowled. “You don’t even know this guy and you are asking him for help and bringing him into the loop?”

  Nat’s cell phone rang. “Agent Rosetti.”

  “CIA Director Larry Sawh, calling from the Situation Room in the White House. I was just told by NSA agent Justin Chernick that you have identified Anthony Wai as a person of interest.”

  Nat was taken aback by the swiftness in the phone call prompted by Aaron’s text message. “Yes sir.”

  “We have Justin leading a team looking into it now. Do not, I repeat, do not contact anyone regarding this. We need to control this and keep our investigation private. This is a direct order, stand down until you return here for debriefing.”

  “Yes sir, I am at the agency’s disposal. Am standing down and awaiting further instruction,” Nat said compliantly. Her voice did not betray her anger at not being in control.

  Director Sawh audibly took a breath. “You uncovered something big, good work. We need to be incredibly careful from here on out.”

  “Understood, sir,” Nat said, feeling completely unappeased by her superior’s attempt to compliment her.

  Nat heard, “Hold on a sec,” come through the phone followed by some background chatter and then Larry relayed a message to her and hung up.

  Nat looked at the phone and saw the connection had expired. She looked at Aaron. “Ozymandias says hello. Whatever the hell that means…”

  Aaron pulled his face back up from his cell phone. “Who says what?”

  “I think his name was Justin Chernick, he’s the NSA tech guy in the Situation Room.”

  Aaron pressed eight fingers against his forehead hard and rested his two thumbs on his jaw. He tried to massage away the hangover and comprehend that the man who was spying on him, and has since provided privacy support, was now in the White House helping him. He asked himself out loud, “Is Ozzy in on this because it’s related to the dollar or because he’s the best?”

  Nat asked him to explain.

  Aaron explained his fear that China could be planning on dumping its United States bonds and how that could lead to hyperinflation and derail the entire United States economy. He also explained how the man in charge of hacking into his cell phone and monitoring and recording everything he did and said in Washington D.C. had given him some advice on privacy afterwards. That this was the man in the Situation Room with her boss right now.

  “This kind of synthesis is above my pay grade and I was told by Director Sawh to stand down.”

  “This is the type of synthesis that Manny, James, and I get paid to do. And since when did you follow the rules?” He called out, “James, Manny, come sit over here for a minute. I need to run something by you.”

  Manny and James joined Nat and Aaron at the front of the airplane, passing through the three rows of reclining chairs. Kor had to leave the front row and move back to James’ old seat and Manny had to show James how to unlock the recliner so it could rotate and the four could face each other.

  Aaron said, “I was checking my email and got a message from Pat O’brien. There was some heavy option buying on Ameriprobe in the past few weeks. Someone must be expecting a huge pop on a slow and steady stock. Apparently, I told him to buy some for me yesterday. But I don’t remember that.”

  Manny said, “Someone that had inside knowledge of what’s going on at Ameriprobe would make a fortune.”

  Aaron nodded his agreement. “Manny, you’ve been brought into this three-quarters of the way and all this information is coming out soon anyways. Would you agree to be part of my legal team, bound by all ethical obligations for confidentiality?”

  “Yes.”

  Aaron brought him into the loop. “You probably figured out that James’ wife, Xiaowan, was asked by her former government to be a spy at a very young age. She was asked recently to steal the Ameriprobe research on what she was told will be an imminent cure for all of the various influenza viruses.”

  Manny nodded. “I figured that much. I had suspicions from my conversations with Kimbo years ago that he might have been under pressure from China to send back proprietary information.”

  Nat shook her head. “We were told to stand down. I’m all for moving outside the scope of the rule book to get results, but I was given a direct order to stand down and we have no option but to head in for debriefing.”

  “We are standing down. We’re sitting down. We’re not doing anything but trying to build a theory of the case based on the evidence presented before us.”

  James asked Manny, “What’s with Kimbo? What did you notice?”

  “A couple of days ago, Aaron asked me about a guy listed on the Adam Smith Society membership roster from twenty years ago. I knew him when he spent a lot of time at a property that he owned, a small little strip mall with a Chinese restaurant in it that had the best spicy boiled fish. We had some political conversations. He would often speak about the corrupt system in China, but only when we went on walks.”

  James, Nat, and Aaron all understood what Manny picked up on. Kimbo was afraid that he was being spied on. James asked, “He was worried about being spied on?”

  “Yes,” Manny answered. “He never said by whom or hinted that he was being spied on, but I got the sense that someone from China was spying on him based on how and when he would talk about China.”

  James nodded.

  Manny added, “We went to Macau to try to get your wife’s parents to the United States where they would be safe. I presume that someone in China pressured your wife to do something, maybe steal corporate secrets from Ameriprobe, so she brought in Aaron and Nat to help out?”

  James nodded again.

  Manny asked, “What do they want?”

  Aaron said, “I think this article will answer your question,” and he started relaying a story that Pat O’brien had just emailed him about. “The Freedom Financial Press just released a story stating Ameriprobe is sitting on an advanced-stage flu anti-viral that has passed animal testing, and that the Chinese government is looking to buy it based on its success in treating avian and swine flu. And Ame
rican super-agent Aurora Wulfers has been consulting with Ameriprobe’s Xiaowan Lerma to determine if the sale is aligned with United States interests.”

  Aaron looked up. “And there is a picture of Xiaowan and Aurora from yesterday, or this morning, or whenever, at the Ameriprobe facility in Barcelona.”

  Manny asked, “Xiaowan wasn’t tasked to buy it, was she?”

  Nat, Aaron, and James glanced at each other and all shook their heads.

  Manny said, “So rumor and speculation will take hold for a few days until the President addresses the nation and explains what is going on. And in the meantime, you said there was some unusual buying of Ameriprobe options. Whoever made those buys was in the know.”

  Aaron smiled. “If I wasn’t hung-over, I would have beaten you to that conclusion. The stories that have broken are inconsistent. Do we know the truth?”

  Nat said, “We are fairly certain there is no cure in the late stages of research. So this would appear to be a hoax.”

  James asked, “Aaron, you said a financial press had this story. Why would a financial press have access to this story?”

  “If Ameriprobe hasn’t let on that there is a huge drug in its pipeline that will be coming out -” Aaron held up a finger when he paused to figure out if he was going to burp or vomit. He put his hand on his chest and waited a few seconds before continuing. “Release of information on a cure for the flu could cause its stock price to skyrocket. Shareholders would be in for a huge Monday. Assume one in seven people get the flu each year and there are seven billion people on the planet. That’s a billion potential purchasers every single year. And if it works on animal strains of the flu, swine flu, avian flu, that’s billions more.”

  Manny said, “And of course we are talking cure prices, not vaccine prices. A vaccine is what, twenty bucks? One hundred for a cure would be quite reasonable. When you’re sick with the flu, how much would you pay for someone to come bring you the cure? I wish I could get my broker on the phone.”

  Aaron nodded in agreement. “We need to find someone in the SEC to track down who is behind that trade.”

  Manny looked up and mumbled to himself, then he looked at Aaron. “Not sure that I know anyone in the SEC now, but I’m sure that I can find someone who could find out.”

  Nat said, “We were told to stand down. I’m sure that the brain trust in D.C. can handle this. Let’s just keep assembling a report until we hear otherwise.”

  “Nat, you were told to stand down. I’m just a private citizen with a duty to my client, so I’m going to send a message to Ozzy. Whoever bought those options may be behind the entire thing. This whole thing might be a financial hoax.”

  Aaron sent a text message to the number he had for Ozzy. “Need to track down purchaser of unusually large call options on Ameriprobe. That person may be behind this incident.”

  James said, “I never expected this. What do you think this option stuff means?”

  Aaron shrugged his shoulders and answered, “I’m not sure. It looks like there was a lot of money being spent on the options, so the person needed to have at least a million dollars in cash. If they closed out the options then sold short after the initial news popped, they could make billions on this.”

  Chapter 28

  Xiaowan, Aurora, Jessica, and Tina touched down at the Philadelphia airport on Sunday at two pm local time. As soon as the plane was docked at the gate, Xiaowan dialed James’ number, Jessica dialed Kor’s number, Tina dialed Aaron’s number, and Aurora dialed Nat’s number.

  Kor answered his phone lying on his couch with ESPN on in the background. The private jet landed in San Diego an hour ago; Josh’s wife, Darielle, picked Kor, Josh, and Leonard up and dropped them all off.

  In the Gulfstream, thirty thousand feet above Arizona, Aaron’s, Nat’s, and James’ phones all rang. Manny smiled at the reactions of James and Aaron when they got to hear their partners’ voices. He spent the next several minutes watching their reactions as his compatriots told stories and listened in return.

  Jessica told Kor that Tina and Xiaowan emailed her sister who was going to meet her in Boston for a few days of relaxing spa treatments because they had to cut Barcelona so short. Kor admitted he missed her and wanted to see her as soon as she could make it back, but he was happy she would have time with her sister. After their goodbyes, she was the first of the four women to stand up and start gathering her things to deplane.

  Aurora was talking quietly and trying to process all the information Nat was providing. It had been ten hours since she had any communication about the case and she was unaware that a picture of her and Xiaowan leaving the Ameriprobe campus had surfaced. She thought it must have been taken by that drone that she heard.

  Tears streamed down Xiaowan’s face as James quietly recited the goodbye he shared with her parents. She shook her head; she was so tired of crying. James explained that Nat was in contact with the President and someone on his team told Nat that the hotel room her parents stayed in was bugged. James finished telling her everything. Her mouth slowly opened as her jaw dropped in disbelief that the President of the United States asked the Premier of the People’s Republic of China if he would yield and let sunshine reveal the spy program or if there was going to be lead because of her.

  Aaron listened intently to Tina’s tale of the short trip. It sounded like a nice pleasant little stay in Barcelona except for the rushed exit. He asked follow-up questions about the gazpacho and paella and tried to enjoy the moment of normalcy with her. She kept trying to ask him about his trip and what was happening but he shifted the focus back to her whenever he could. As nice as the airplane was, Aaron felt queasy and wanted to sleep in his own bed. The more coffee he drank to stay awake and alert, the worse his stomach felt.

  All of the passengers passed by the women as they were engaged in their phone conversations and Jessica sat patiently with her purse and carryon suitcase on her lap. Tina looked up and noticed it was time to deplane so she told Aaron she would call him again once they cleared customs. The conversation ended with Tina telling Aaron that Xiaowan and Aurora found out there was no imminent cure for the flu at Ameriprobe.

  When all of the phone calls ended, Aurora led them off the plane towards a woman in a suit who was waiting to meet them. “Agent Wulfers?”

  “Yes, Agent…”

  “Not an agent; Johee Chang, Senior Associate at Immigration and Customs. We are having your party’s bags pulled and taken to a personal embarkation zone where a car will be waiting on the runway to take you to the domestic terminal. There is a total of four in your party?”

  “Yes,” Aurora confirmed, feeling uneasy about the purported government employee being of Asian, apparently Chinese, descent who was about to whisk them into an unknown part of the airport. “You mean that our bags will meet us outside where a car is waiting for us?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Aurora looked at Jessica. “Are you going on to Boston, San Diego, or coming with us?”

  Jessica looked at Tina and Xiaowan. “If I’m not needed, I’d like to go to Boston.”

  They encouraged her to go to Boston and assured her that they would be fine. Aurora pulled out her phone and dialed the Director of the FBI. She said to Johee, “One second, let’s let them say their goodbyes while I make a quick call.” Something seemed odd by the formality proffered by Johee.

  Aurora connected with the Director, who was in the Situation Room, and confirmed an ICE official was sent to expedite their customs entry. He said he would double-check the name of the associate. Feeling comfortable with partial confirmation, and with the phone still next to her ear, she said to Johee, “Lead the way.”

  “Which one of you is going on to Boston?”

  Jessica raised her hand and said, “Jessica Fell.”

  “Do you know which flight you are taking?”

  “Actually I don’t, we came back a day early. I was just hoping to find a flight or even take a train or something,” Jessica said realizin
g she might be stuck at the airport for quite a while if she couldn’t find a flight.

  “Alright then, this way. We’ll just have you go to the ticket gate once you have your bag. You three, I’ll make sure open seats on the next flight to Reagan are held for you.”

  She then led them up the jet way and through a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only” that clicked open after she punched in a code. They were less than fifty feet from the line at the first customs check when the Director of the FBI came back on the line without the name of the customs official that was supposed to be meeting them.

  The door shut behind the five women. Johee pointed, “There’s another door that will bring us out to the general gate area.”

  Aurora surveyed the area. She saw a few empty desks and a few offices that appeared to be for private interrogations rather than desk jockeys. After an uneventful walk to the baggage claim area after they skipped the customs lines, Aurora said, “Johee, we had a long flight and are about to get on another. I think the four of us need to use the restroom before we board.”

  “Of course, there’s one just ahead,” Johee said as she pointed to a sign for the women’s restroom.

  The three other women’s spider-sense tingled at Aurora’s request. They felt that they could still be in an unsafe situation and that something may be amiss. Johee waited outside the restroom watching over several of their carryon bags that Aurora purposefully left with her to help avoid suspicion.

  Tina asked, “What’s wrong, Aurora?”

  “Something felt off with how formal Johee acted so I called the Director of the FBI, who confirmed that an ICE official was sent to meet us. There isn’t a huge Asian population in Philadelphia. What are the chances that a high-level person of Chinese descent meets us at the airport and arranges for a car to take us to another terminal when we have so much going on with China right now?