Gemini Series Boxset

by Ty Patterson

  Meghan scrolled through the newsfeeds on her phone, read the Treasury Department’s statements and the rest of the events unfolding outside the hospital. The latest development was that the Northlyn plant was owned by a Chinese company. The ownership of the Ohio printing press was still being investigated.

  Message boards and forums were filled with angry posts about counterfeit currency in people’s possession. She thumbed rapidly and skipped through most of the repetitive coverage and paused when a Breaking News bar flashed on her screen. Government placed order with Northlyn? screamed the headline.

  The report took pains to point out that while it was an unsubstantiated rumor, their ace reporters were digging into it and would soon have more.

  That’s some accusation to make! She pocketed her phone in disgust and went back to Cali’s room and took her position next to Burke.

  ‘I don’t know why they kept me alive,’ Cali anticipated Burke’s question. ‘I asked him once and got no reply. My suspicion is that they wanted a bargaining chip if the kidnapping exploded in their faces.’

  She described the way she was moved from apartment to apartment, the care and the planning that seemed to go into each move. ‘That accident was sheer, dumb luck. They couldn’t have anticipated it, lucky for me.’

  ‘I never saw anyone other than the interrogator and the second guy, but there was one other guy for sure. He gave orders in Mandarin. I could sense the two guys with me feared him. I had picked up some of the language after spending time with Lian Cheng, but all I heard was driving instructions. No mention of any neighborhood or where we were. No names were used.’

  ‘The first time they moved me, I tried to listen to the traffic and counted the turns we took. I couldn’t place the neighborhood. I’m sure they took several detours before they approached the hideout.’

  Once she had spilled her knowledge of the undercover agents, the interrogator had moved to her research. ‘He wanted to know what its applications were, how the military would use it. I told him we were far removed from those decisions, but he didn’t believe me.’

  She shuddered at a memory and turned her head away. ‘Was Lian Cheng found?’ she asked when her composure returned.

  Burke expelled a breath, glad that the elephant in the room had finally come up. ‘Her body was found. Cut up by Cain. Cain himself is dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ echoed Cali. ‘How?’

  Meghan broke her silence and described the events that had amped up the search for the missing woman.

  ‘Lian Cheng knew I suspected her… it showed in her.’ Cali filled in more blanks for them. ‘Especially after our last visit to her home. During that visit, I overheard a call she had with someone in Hong Kong. She didn’t know I was close by. I had gone out for a run, but had returned early. I had a spare key and when I entered the home, I heard her.’

  ‘She was talking about me, about her suspicions. She spoke fast and I didn’t get a lot of it. I heard the Triads mentioned, and that was when I got scared. I thought they’d put a hit on me.’

  ‘My fears eased when nothing happened, we continued as before, each of us maintaining our façade. She left the program to join her dad who was ailing and I felt better.’

  She laughed without humor. ‘That didn’t last, did it?’

  They took another break and when the FBI agents returned, Meghan noted the strained look on Burke’s face. Betcha she’s also involved in that counterfeiting case.

  ‘Cain was theirs.’ Cali said positively. ‘It makes sense, given the few scraps I heard. The interrogator laughed when I once asked about Lian Cheng. She’d served her purpose. They had a disposal unit.’

  ‘I didn’t get to ask him more since he broke my pinky finger, just then.’

  ‘All the women that Cain killed – they were given to him by this Chinese gang?’ Burke rubbed her left palm absently; it had red marks where her nails had bit into the soft flesh. When she had clenched her fist at the horrors her agent had undergone.

  ‘Probably not,’ Meghan spoke up when no one had any answers. ‘The NYPD investigated the victims. Nothing came up. Cain needed victims. Somehow the gang knew about him and how to reach him. They gave him Lian. Maybe other victims too, we just haven’t heard about them.’

  ‘They watched him,’ excitement flared through her when another piece of the puzzle fell into place. ‘They killed him when they saw he was heading to meet me. That kill was so smooth, we still don’t know who the assassin was. Feels like the same gang who abducted Cali.’

  ‘That would tally with that line in his journal. However, why would he break cover to meet you?’ Burke put her hand behind her back when she felt Zeb’s eyes on her wrists. She knew about Meghan’s theory about Cain; it still didn’t make sense to her.

  ‘Who knows?’ Pizaka growled. ‘He was a serial killer, not your average dude.’

  ‘I think he found out something about the gang. Something that was so enormous, that he had to act.’ Meghan stuck to her ground, looking at each person, daring them to shoot her down.

  No one did. No one knew any better.

  ‘Do we know who this gang is?’ Cali changed the topic.

  Meghan got a go ahead, answer her look from Burke and turned to Cali. ‘They’re the 41S.’

  Zeb had shared his hunch that the 41S was more deeply involved than the twins suspected, after their return from Baghdad. They in turn had briefed Burke, and Chang and Pizaka, a download that wasn’t necessary. The FBI and the cops had been looking into the gang, independently.

  ‘You didn’t share,’ Beth had accused Chang.

  ‘You folks aren’t the only one with secrets,’ Chang had retorted.

  Zeb had then mentioned the Chinese ghost and that made the FBI and the NYPD sit up and take notice. There was no such ghost in their database. All three agencies set out to work on identifying him and piecing together more about the 41S.

  There hadn’t been much progress by the time Cali had recovered.

  ‘41S,’ Cali rolled the name around her tongue, her eyes shut as she went back in time. ‘Nope,’ she shook her head finally. ‘They were all Chinese, that’s all I remember. No gang names were mentioned, no visible tats on anyone. Who are they?’

  Meghan and Chang told her and despite the sombre mood in the room, Beth couldn’t help giggling at Cali’s dumbstruck expression when Baghdad was mentioned.

  ‘You went to the other side of the world to search for me?’

  ‘Chill, Cali. We’d do that for anyone.’ Beth brushed away the underlying thanks in the undercover agent’s comment. ‘Maybe not for Pizaka, though. We’d go to the end of the block for him. No more.’

  That drew a laugh and a palpable relaxation in the room.

  ‘You questioned the gang members?’ Cali addressed her superior.

  ‘Peng Huang the leader, has gone into hiding,’ Burke replied. ‘We’ve got a few of his men in custody, however they’re pretty low level. He has a right hand man, a ghost, according to Zeb here. This dude followed the twins and in all likelihood, orchestrated the attack on the twins outside your home.’

  ‘We saw him once, when we were on a run in the park. Zeb’s sure he tailed us a few times.’ Meghan described the ghost’s looks to Cali who shook her head in frustration.

  ‘Nope, I didn’t see anyone like him. He could be the man issuing orders,’ she fell back against her cushions and continued her statement, with Burke making her repeat details, events, faces, several times.

  Daylight turned to dusk, which became dark night when they finished. Cali was talked out and exhausted. Burke called an end to the statement taking, knowing that her team as well as the NYPD would listen to it several times and act on the revelations.

  The NYPD would go through Cain’s victims’ files again, to see if there were any links to the 41S. The FBI would have to withdraw all its undercover agents and cleanup the failed operation. Both the law enforcement agencies would try to identify the ghost.

  And who’s be
hind the gang? Burke figured there was someone else pulling the gang’s strings. The gang could place spies in the various research programs, but they wouldn’t do that of their own accord. Someone was paying them.

  Unless they stole the research and sold it to the Chinese government. That’s farfetched. It’d require more organization and a bigger gang than what they’ve currently got. Nope. Someone paid them and probably even provided them with researchers like Lian Cheng. They did the monitoring and the reporting back.

  She stifled a tired yawn and squelched a bitter thought that somewhere, someone had spun a web that she and her agents had walked into. She mussed her hair and held the door open for Meghan who whispered ‘don’t dwell on it,’ as they left Cali’s room.

  ‘Wait,’ the injured agent called out, stopping all of them.

  ‘Something came back to me. Something the third man said.’

  ‘Containers. He said something about containers to my interrogator.’

  Containers. Meghan frowned and let her mind roam, to see if her subconscious could pick up any clues. It didn’t and she hurried to join Zeb and Beth as they left the hospital.

  A shriek made her falter and when she saw it was Beth, she swore softly. The next moment she was grinning goofily and running towards a petite woman that her sister was hugging.

  ‘Chloe! When did you get back?’ she exclaimed. Chloe’s answer was drowned out when a man guffawed, a tall, bearded man who was slapping Zeb’s back.

  ‘Yeah, that’s Bear,’ Chloe answered, following Meghan’s eyes. ‘He never could do quiet. Not even in a hospital.’

  ‘Rog’s back along with Bwana. We came with them,’ she answered Beth’s rapidfire questions, ‘Broker too. He’s gone with Sarah. Nope, no mission. Zeb asked us to–’

  ‘Bear and Chloe will be Cali’s protection detail,’ Zeb came up from behind them and completed her sentence. ‘We’ll find something to occupy Roger, Bwana, and Broker. Let’s roll,’ he pointed at his SUV.

  Meghan climbed into the vehicle and was shutting the door, when the lights on the hospital’s roof caught her attention.

  Of course. Why didn’t anyone think of that?

  ‘Cali’s return is public knowledge, isn’t it?’ she asked without turning her head.

  ‘Yeah. What’re you looking at?’ her sister craned her head and peered through the darkness.

  ‘Don’t you think the 41S would’ve staked out the hospital?’

  ‘Possibly, but not now. Not with so many cops and FBI agents around. They’re checking every vehicle in the yard, in the parking lot, and on the street.’

  She smacked her forehead with a palm when her eyes rested on the object Meghan was pointing at.

  Security cameras. The hospital had several of them facing the front and the street.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Meghan connected to Werner through her screen, as Zeb drove, and got it to search for the hospital’s security system. Werner came back in less time than it took for Zeb to reach the exit and hit concrete.

  The cameras were part of a standard security install that were routinely seen in hundreds of public buildings. Over the years, the twins and Broker had written programs to hack into most of the off-the-shelf security systems.

  You’re sure it’s that make? Meghan typed.

  Yes, Werner sniffed and rolled its electronic eyes. It was a supercomputer, one of a kind in the Western world. Its word was not to be doubted.

  Meghan activated the program and waited for Werner to inject it into the hospital’s network. Done, Werner blinked when Zeb reached the first stoplight.

  Get the camera logs, she commanded.

  The logs were conveniently named by floor and position. She skipped over all the internal ones and went to a folder labelled exterior. That folder had twenty-five cameras, Left, Right, Rear, Parking lot, Entrance, and Exit.

  She clicked on the entrance file and it opened to reveal two more files. Driveway, and Front-Facing.

  The files had a week’s footage, one for each day. The system probably dumps a week’s coverage in these folders and older ones are dumped into some hard drive. Meghan didn’t want the older coverage. She opened the day’s recordings and got Werner to search for all vehicles that passed the entrance and approached the front of the hospital.

  You want to search for the whole day? Werner lifted an eyebrow. Humans were so illogical.

  Of course, not, Meghan furiously keyed in. She would have added idiot, but that would have been lost on the supercomputer. Search from half an hour before Kalecki’s arrival.

  Werner didn’t whir, those days belonged to the stone-age days of computers. It came back by the time Zeb reached Bronx Zoo and had started across the city. Werner had forty cars whose drivers’ faces, caught on the cameras, didn’t match their DMV pictures.

  Meghan asked it to dig into their identities and was biting her lip as she stared at an Oriental face on her screen, when Werner popped up a message box.

  Maybe you’ll be interested in this Ford. It was seen outside your office a few times. Its owner isn’t the driver. Two images came on the screen.

  The cameras had caught two images of the Ford, one a frontal view with the plates clearly visible, the other, a driver’s side view. The frontal view had windshield glare that hid the occupants.

  The side view showed a lean face, pale, dark haired man who seemed to be shielding himself from the camera.

  ‘Yes,’ Beth, peering over Meghan’s shoulder, yelled and pumped her fist. The sisters high-fived each other and Meghan patted her screen affectionately. ‘Good work, Werner.’

  Werner was above compliments; it went back to playing chess with its Swiss date, a supercomputer that it had met online.

  Zeb risked a quick sideways glance when Meghan turned the screen at him, and recognized the Ford. It was the one that Werner had flagged up for his attention some time back. He made out the profile immediately. The man’s stillness was apparent even in the CCTV image.

  The driver was their ghost.

  Zeb slowed when they approached the Alexander Hamilton Bridge as the traffic thickened and bunched close together. He glanced out idly when they started crossing the river and for a moment his hands slipped and the vehicle swerved.

  Meghan glanced at him and then leaned over him to see what had distracted him. A barge was floating below and on it was a brown container. ‘What? It’s just a barge.’

  Beth peered through her window on hearing her sister and shrugged her shoulders when nothing struck her. ‘You okay, Zeb? You’re seeing ghosts now?’

  Zeb didn’t answer, a slight smile playing on his lips. Meghan looked out of the window again and this time scanned the section of the river in sight.

  Nope. Nothing other than that barge. It seemed to be carrying waste bags, a few men scurrying on its deck, and that brown container.

  Container. Containers, Cali had said.

  Chinese gang. Northlyn. Chinese ownership.

  ‘They’re behind the counterfeiting,’ Meghan whispered when it came to her. ‘The 41S is behind all that’s happening.’

  They reconvened at the FBI office at Federal Plaza, early next day, after Meghan had briefed Chang, Pizaka, and Burke, about the container connection.

  It was Burke’s idea that the three investigations – the NYPD’s, the FBI’s, and that of the Secret Service – come together and a task force be formed. There was a fourth investigation, that by the twins, but she didn’t want to bundle that into the task force.

  She knew the twins would never agree to being part of a larger group, and in any case, less than a handful knew of their investigation.

  Chang and Pizaka had readily agreed to the task force and didn’t mind the FBI leading it. They had worked with Burke in the past and didn’t see any need to indulge in turf wars. Burke would ensure that they, and the NYPD, got credit.

  The Secret Service was a different proposition and after several midnight calls between New York, and DC, it was ag
reed they would conduct their own investigation, but would share intel.

  ‘Northlyn is owned by a Chinese business group, the majority of whose directors are in China,’ Burke began crisply, addressing the large group of law enforcement officers. She had introduced the twins as consultants. No one had raised an eyebrow. Special Agent in Charge, Sarah Burke, was a fast rising star in the FBI. She had clout. She could invite anyone she wanted.

  ‘The group has real estate investments, runs casinos in Las Vegas, and owns the printing plant. The FBI and the NYPD have questioned several of their officers, but we haven’t got anything actionable out of them. Most of them have pleaded ignorance and have lawyered up.’

  ‘The few who have spoken have said they were following orders and pointed at the directors, overseas. Some key staff are missing, and that’s a separate investigation.’

  ‘The plant in Ohio is owned by a private equity company that has its base in Luxembourg. We have similar stonewalling there.’

  Meghan raised her hand and spoke when Burke pointed at her. ‘You’ll find that the Luxembourg group also has Chinese connections. Probably the same ownership as Northlyn, but that isn’t clear yet.’

  Werner had been active throughout the night and had made more progress than the law enforcement agencies. They had to follow procedures; Werner sneered at procedures.

  ‘Thank you, we’ll look into that,’ Burke moved on swiftly before anyone raised questions on how Meghan knew.

  ‘We need to find out how many more plants this group or groups have. We need to find out how much currency is already in circulation. Is there a link between the university research spying and the counterfeiting? We need to crack the 41S.’