Friedman took the cigarette out of his mouth and tucked it into his suit jacket pocket. “We obviously never found a body. Never heard another thing about Luria. Guy disappeared like a bad one-night stand.”
That drew a slight chuckle from Skylar.
“We never received any indication that he was compromised, either,” Arnon said. “None of the assets he’d previously worked with disappeared. No one came forward to demand any political favors or ransoms. And we closely monitored Ballard for a couple years, but his cover was never compromised, either. We assumed that Elad Luria really was dead.”
“Now he claims to have forgotten who he is and everything that happened to him,” Friedman said. “Sounds like someone hit him over the head with a hammer and knocked his memories out.”
“Do you believe him?” Alex asked.
Friedman flicked on a computer near him. A CT image of another brain showed, similar to Skylar’s. Only the white Ring of Solomon in this one was much denser.
“He, too, was infected with the Ring of Solomon,” Arnon said.
“It looks worse than mine,” Skylar said.
“It was even worse than you can imagine,” Friedman said. “You two aren’t the only ones who stumbled on this Ring. When we first noticed unexplained incidents like the ones your team put together, we managed to get ahold of a couple of the victims.”
“How?” Skylar asked.
“Let’s just say our operations aren’t so nice and friendly like yours,” Friedman said. “You’re better off not knowing.”
An almost cruel grin passed over Arnon’s face. “You must remember Mossad’s objective is to protect Israel in a world where sometimes even our closest allies hate us. We do what we have to do.”
“Where are these victims now?” Alex asked.
“Not your concern,” Arnon said. “But I want you to see what we learned from them.”
Friedman tapped the computer mouse. This time, a series of images flickered across the screen. “This is one of the, uh, patients we recovered. A middle-aged woman from Syria.”
The leftmost image of her brain showed a brilliant white halo within the gray matter. The one on the right showed barely a shadow of the ring.
“We took a series of scans over a week,” he said. He pointed to the image on the right. “As you can see, the ring degrades over time. Fizzles away in a matter of days.”
Alex watched as realization seemed to dawn over Skylar.
“That’s why I completely lost it in Amman, but things were better in Aqaba,” she said. “The Ring had already partially degraded.”
“That’s correct,” Arnon said.
Alex thought back to how bright the halo was in Elad’s head. “That means Elad must’ve had a much denser ring to begin with.”
“Again, correct,” Arnon said. “We have recorded incidents of temporary episodes of amnesia in victims of the Ring. None of these victims had memory loss as dramatic as Luria, though.”
“So the Ring did knock out his memories,” Skylar said.
“Sure seems that way.” Friedman plucked the cigarette back out of his pocket and rolled it between his fingers. “Of course, he could still be lying, but we are giving him the benefit of the doubt. We haven’t uncovered any patient with as high of a projected initial dose of the Ring as him.”
“Do you know how people are infected with it?” Alex asked.
“We believe it’s inhaled,” Arnon said. “But there may be other methods. We think the videos your agency and ours have collected are only tests.”
“We have heard rumors that whoever is developing the Ring of Solomon wants to produce it and distribute it in mass quantities,” Friedman said. “There is talk that it makes for an excellent crowd control method. Which means they must be figuring out how to infect large populations of people at once.”
“And they’ll either turn them into raging demons or make them all zombies who they can just scoop up into their paddy wagons,” Skylar said.
“Do you know how they control people with the Ring?” Alex asked, thinking of how quickly Skylar, Jaber, and Elad had been altered.
“We haven’t figured that out yet,” Arnon said. “Luria’s collection of samples is the first time we’ve obtained a fully intact version of the Ring before it infected someone.”
“And rest assured, we also sent a few of those samples to your friends back in the States,” Friedman said, pointing his cigarette at them. “Kasim says your people can take this thing apart molecule by molecule even faster than our people can. I told him I’d give up my allegiance to Israel and join your team if he was right.”
“Who says we got an open spot for you?” Skylar asked.
Friedman laughed, but Arnon didn’t.
“I don’t care who wins this race,” Arnon said. “I just care that we stop whoever is making this Ring of Solomon. It is only a matter of time before they use it in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Maybe your country too.” Her eyes seemed to radiate a quiet fury. “Can you imagine what would happen if someone released these particles in Times Square?”
Alex could. He didn’t like it.
“That is why I propose we work together,” Arnon said. “We recently intercepted a message indicating someone has shipped another batch of the Ring to Lebanon.”
“To the terrorists in Hezbollah?” Skylar asked. “ISIS sympathizers? Or something else?”
“We don’t know for sure, but all signs point to a terrorist organization,” Friedman said. “Either way, we know that there is a massive protest being organized in Beirut in four days. If ever there was an opportunity to demonstrate the power of this Ring, that would be it.”
-23-
Frederick, MD
Never again would Kasim take for granted his tenuous relationship with Rahel Arnon at Mossad. When he had finally gotten ahold of her, she had promised to retrieve Cruz and Wolfe. So long as Kasim vowed to support Mossad’s efforts to find and stop the Ring of Solomon distributor.
Kasim was only too happy to comply. Not only did it serve Vector’s interests, but she’d warned him that Cruz and Wolfe had been just a few hours away from some rather intensive interrogations. Israel had been on high alert for terrorists seeking to wreak havoc since their discovery of the Ring. And when Vector’s field team had sped straight over to Israel with a wounded Mossad agent in captivity, Israeli Border Security had more than enough questions to justify keeping the two Americans locked up and questioned for weeks to come.
He almost fell into the trap of calling it lucky that Rahel had offered to help. But he knew her better than that.
Cruz and Wolfe might not know it, but the only reason she had spared them was because she was just as stumped as Vector.
No one had a clue where the Ring of Solomon was coming from or even what it really was.
That was about to change.
Rahel had arranged the immediate secure shipment of a few vials from Elad Luria’s samples. Those samples had been transported into Vector’s Clean Room. That was where Vector did all their most sensitive electronics and chemical work. The air filtration systems vacuumed up dust, aerosol particles, and chemical vapors. Those precautions ensured no foreign particles interfered with the equipment within the lab—or escaped into the rest of Vector HQ.
Beyond the plexiglass windows were rows of storage cabinets and benches with plastic containers full of chemicals. His people had access to everything from lithographic printers that could 3D print objects at the nanometer scale to e-beam evaporators that could create nanometer-thick films of various metals for high-tech applications.
He entered an anteroom and donned a white bunny suit, gloves, booties, and a mask. Once he entered the Clean Room, he was greeted with the quiet hum of the ventilation system. Two other people in white suits were working on a silver cylindrical machine at a far corner of the lab. Signs around the machine warned of not approaching too closely due to the magnetic field.
“Please tell me you have answers,” Kasi
m said, approaching the two scientists.
Park patted the machine. “We just finished up our nuclear magnetic resonance analysis.”
“We also performed X-ray adsorption spectroscopy,” Weber said. “We’ve got some answers but just as many questions.”
“Start with what we do know,” Kasim said.
Weber held up a vial with viscous silvery liquid. “This isn’t our usual chemical weapon. Definitely not biological. At least, not completely. These are nanoparticles. Extremely tiny, smaller than many viruses. All highly concentrated.”
“The bulk of these particles are made of silver too,” Park said. “But as we’ve been characterizing them, we also detected a high number of carbon-to-carbon bonds.”
“Which means what?” Kasim asked.
“It’s not just silver in these particles. We’re looking at some organic components, possibly biological in nature.”
“If these nanoparticles are indeed connected with Dr. Smadi’s work, you told me he uses antibodies to target specific cells within the brain,” Kasim said. “The antibodies might be a match for the organic components you’re detecting.”
Weber nodded, her whole suit rustling. “Not to mention there are likely some other chemical components attached to these nanoparticles, which could explain the carbon composition we’re seeing. They might be drugs, steroids, or some other biomolecules.”
“Those could be neurotransmitters,” Park said. “Something effecting the neural tissue which results in the behavior changes we’ve seen in the Ring of Solomon victims.”
“I assume you are already characterizing these molecules.”
“We’ve set up a series of chromatography and spectroscopy experiments,” Park said. “So long as these chemicals or drugs are something we’ve got in our databases, it should be easy to identify.”
“And if they aren’t?” Kasim asked, fearing what that would mean for their studies.
Weber shrugged. “Then we are in trouble. No sugarcoating it.”
“Tell me how I can make your job easier.”
Park grinned behind his visor. “You want to make this easier, find out where these particles came from and go ask the people who made them.”
After Kasim’s visit to the Clean Room, he returned to Vector’s operation center with Morris. The analyst had already finished his second energy drink in less than two hours. He crumpled the can and tossed it into the trash.
“You’re going to destroy your heart,” Kasim said.
“Park and Weber will make me a new one.”
“They’re good, but I don’t know that they’re that good.”
Morris patted his chest. “Then we better work fast, huh?”
“I want you to look at any and all contracts that Dr. Smadi had. Any government agencies, any agreements with industry. Better if you can find relationships to a defense contracting organization or companies that sell peacekeeping equipment.”
“Companies?” Morris asked, leaning back in his chair. “So far, we’ve only got suspicions that these technologies are being sold to terrorist groups. Why do you think Smadi would be working with the private sector?”
“Look, consider it this way. Every picture you see of some terrorist posing with a gun, what are they carrying?”
“A set of terrible morals and ethics.”
“Without a doubt,” Kasim said. “But in their hands.”
“Uh, I guess maybe it’s a stereotype, but an AK-47.”
Kasim dragged a chair over to Morris’s workstation and dropped into it. “The terrorists aren’t the ones that make the AK-47s.”
“They certainly aren’t walking into gun stores and buying them, either.”
“Exactly,” Kasim said. “They’re getting them through illegal arms dealers. And where do those dealers get them?”
Morris opened his mouth to answer. Kasim waved him off before he could say something smart again.
“End of the day, those guns leave a legitimate factory somewhere. It really doesn’t matter who buys them afterward or how many hands they change before the assholes in the Taliban or Al Qaeda pick them up. If we wanted to know how those AKs were made, we would go straight to the source.”
“I see,” Morris said, stroking his goatee. “I can get access to the Aqaba University of Technology’s intellectual property office. Any tech they were trying to sell would be there.”
“Good. Make sure you check all of the professor’s personal correspondences too. If he was adapting and marketing his anti-cancer nanoparticles for crowd control tactics, there is a very real chance he was working outside the domain of the university. He might’ve been moonlighting with this project. Can you handle that?”
“Is that a serious question?”
“Forget I asked.”
While the analyst worked his magic, Kasim settled in at the conference table with his laptop. He reviewed every file and potential industrial contact of Dr. Smadi’s as Morris provided them. There were countless inquiries from medical companies interested in the professor’s technology. Some supplied the materials to create the particles. Others wanted to pursue clinical studies to show that they actually worked to eliminate brain tumors.
Kasim checked each company’s name and compiled as many records as he could. He wanted to ensure that the companies actually existed and that they had a real interest in anticancer therapeutics using nanoparticles. It was easy enough to verify if they were legitimate enterprises in the medical arena. Most offered other products in various stages of clinical development. Some were merely start-ups and seeking to license Smadi’s technologies as their first product.
Nothing yet that looked suspicious.
Kasim’s eyes were growing tired from reading all these reports on his computer screen. A slight headache was beginning to take hold. He took off his reading glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose.
“Everything checks out so far,” he said to Morris. “You sure you’re not missing something?”
Morris pushed his chair back from his desk and stretched his arms. “You know if there’s something in cyberspace, I can find it. Especially with Smadi and his university.”
“Poor cybersecurity?”
“It’s like they’re a jewelry store, but they forgot to put the bars on the window, kept the doors unlocked, and even left the lights on for me. Way too easy.”
“So what you’re looking for is secured better than that.”
“I’m not finding any traces of some hidden cache of files filled with contracts. There’s nothing else there.”
“I thought for sure we’d find something,” Kasim said. “Did you expand that search to anyone else at the university who might be associated with him?”
“Sure did. My guess is that if he had some morally questionable deal with an arms manufacturer, it was all pen and paper. There’s not a single button on the keyboard I can hit to find that.”
Kasim wanted a better answer. He refused to believe that they had hit a dead end. Reviewing the companies Morris had uncovered was the only way Kasim could distract himself and feel useful. As he revisited each one on the list, an idea began to take root. One that might be a long shot. It deserved consideration anyway.
Because at this point, they really didn’t have much else to lose.
While it was easy to perform a cursory background check on the large companies interested in Smadi’s particles, maybe the start-up companies deserved more scrutiny. All were privately owned, many with no more than a handful of investors. Since none had gone through an initial public offering, that meant less oversight. Fewer eyes scanning over their books.
If someone was going to play a shell game with Smadi’s technology, a start-up might be the way to do it. Throw a website on the internet claiming to be developing a revolutionary new way to fight cancer. And since most budding medical technologies took years of research and clinical trials to go from the laboratory bench to the hospital, no one would be asking those companies what was going on
with their so-called cancer therapeutics if they didn’t have a product on the market yet.
That would be more than enough time to sell the Ring of Solomon to the highest bidders. Then the company might fold, claiming its made-up therapeutic had failed initial investigations.
While Morris continued his search through the cyber version of the back alleys and seedy barrooms of the internet, Kasim sifted through the databases compiled by the US intelligence community documenting foreign business registrations, transactions, and personnel records. He used a program that effectively created a spiderweb between each start-up company on the list.
The work took hours. Time blended together in a mad fugue as Kasim’s thoughts whirred. He wondered if this was a complete waste of energy, if there wasn’t something else he could be doing.
If maybe he was just desperate, looking for connections where there weren’t any.
Then he found it. The fly he had been looking for, twisted in that virtual web.
“Morris, I think I got something,” Kasim said, looking up from his computer. He beckoned the analyst over. “I found this start-up called Nanovations.”
“Clever name,” Morris said with a sarcastic bend to his voice.
“Nanovations is supposedly a fourteen-person company pursuing new therapies for brain cancer. On the surface, it’s a perfect fit for Smadi’s research.”
“But under the surface?”
“The company is based out of the United Arab Emirates in one of their free zones.”
Kasim watched the realization settle over the analyst.
The UAE free zones were specific locations set up to offer enormous tax and customs benefits to foreign investors. They were notorious for offering a safe haven for the wealthy and elite to stash their holdings to avoid taxes in the countries they called home.
Demon Mind (Vector Book 2) Page 21