“Excuse me,” said a female voice from the front of the line. “Excuse me, Mr. Kattab,” the voice said. It was Margaret and her voice sounded like she was making a great effort to maintain control of the situation. As usual, Avery was on one side of her, Dr. Spellman on the other. Like Margaret, Avery seemed to have recovered a bit. His half-vacant, half-scared expression was gone and he had started to get his usual glower back.
The Chechen turned to face Margaret, his face impassive. She took that as an invitation to continue.
“Look, Timothy told me about some of your conversations, about what you were offering,” she said, turning to Dr. Spellman and nodding to him. Something about the way she looked at him confirmed to Alex that Margaret was in love with Spellman. Then she saw something very different flash in Avery’s eyes. He was jealous.
Were Margaret and Avery dating before she started seeing Dr. Spellman? At least Avery’s perpetual glower now made more sense.
“Offering?” Kattab said. His voice still seemed flat, with an edge of…what? Amusement? Anger?
“I know you have some information about a potential virus that we can all use. I mean, we do all have the same goal,” she said, her voice getting more assured as she spoke.
“If we’re on the same side, there is no reason for guns,” she said. Then she gestured to Spellman. “Or violence. We should all be working together.”
“You do not understand…” Kattab said.
“No, sir. I do not think you understand,” Margaret snapped at him.
What happened next happened so fast that even Alex was surprised.
Kattab drew his pistol, pointed it at Margaret’s chest, and pulled the trigger. The bullet caught her chest dead center and threw her backwards. She hit the ground hard, blood spreading out from the clearly fatal wound.
Avery screamed and went to her, while Spellman and the others watched in stunned silence.
Alex turned her eyes to Kattab, who was pointing the gun at the group. “You are dogs, and we do not work with dogs. We will tell you what to do. You will do what we tell you or you will die. Does anyone else have anything to say?”
Chapter 21
“Morgan, I think I may have something,” Shepard said.
Morgan and Dobrynin huddled around Shepard, who was studying his monitors intently. However, nothing in the myriad of open windows on the various screens made any sense to Morgan.
“It’s not much, but another student seems to be missing. And it doesn’t look like he’s part of Spellman’s group,” Shepard said.
“What’s the connection?” Morgan asked.
“He’s on Alex’s floor, a student named Jason Fitzpatrick. He’s actually Alex’s RA. I started expanding my email and text searches beyond the bio-chem department and included people in Alex’s classes and students who lived in the same dorms as Alex or Karen. Same protocols, looking for people who have been missed by their friends or family. This Jason showed up and then I got a hit on his car. It turned up in a body shop in San Francisco. I cross-checked the body shop against law enforcement databases and it’s tied to a number of stolen cars.”
“It’s a chop shop,” Morgan said.
“Looks like,” Shepard said.
“Could be that the kid just got his car stolen and he’s on a bus back to school,” Morgan said.
“That’s what I thought at first, but then I saw that he had texted Alex in the morning about meeting up in the afternoon,” Shepard said.
“Could still be that he had plans with Alex and then just got his car stolen or hijacked,” Morgan said.
“Like I said, it isn’t much,” Shepard said.
It wasn’t. In this case, a stolen car was easier to believe than the idea that someone who had nothing to with this radical group would somehow get caught up in an international terrorist operation. Occam’s razor said that the simplest explanation for any turn of events was usually the correct one.
“Bloch can have local PD check out the car,” Shepard said.
“No,” Morgan said. He didn’t want a well-meaning local cop who wasn’t cleared for the real details of the operation to nose around looking for…what? Signs that the car might be tied up with a terrorist plot to end the world?
Even local operatives familiar with intelligence work might miss something. The reality was that Morgan would only trust Zeta personnel for this task. And even then, it had to be someone who understood the stakes and the particulars of the case. It would also have to be someone who would be able to improvise if the situation got tactical.
“I’ll go,” Morgan said. “Brief Bloch, tell her I’m going to check it out and I’ll need a jet standing by at Logan,” he said.
“I’ll go with you,” Dobrynin said.
“What?” Morgan asked.
“I am no more good here. Mr. Shepard knows what I know about the project. I’m just a pair of eyes reviewing the same footage and data over and over. I need to do something,” the Russian said.
That Morgan understood.
“Also…” the Russian began. “I was part of this project in the beginning. I was against it, but there were orders.”
Well, it was true that Dobrynin was the most expendable member of the computer search team. This wasn’t his country and he hadn’t been an active agent in years. And it wouldn’t hurt to have help if the situation got…tactical.
“Okay, but this might require some finesse,” Morgan said.
To that Dobrynin let out a hearty laugh. “Then I had better go without you.”
“I’ll be making a special effort,” Morgan said. It was true. More than anything, he wanted a target, something to smash through to get to his daughter and close this operation.
But this trip would be closer to investigative work than to a mission. They were looking for clues and connections, not targets for their rage.
“We’ll leave in five minutes. There’s something I have to do first,” Morgan said.
He turned and walked to his wife’s workstation. Jenny was glued to the screen, scanning images and documents almost as fast as Shepard did.
“Jenny,” he said gently. “There’s a lead in San Francisco. It’s small but I’m going to check it out.” Then he explained what they had.
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
“You’ll do more good here. I don’t expect to get much out of this but I’ll be closer if you manage to find them,” Morgan said.
It was true, mostly. Jenny would be more help here. She was better suited to this kind of data-driven search. Plus, she was the only one doing the job now who didn’t have traditional military or intelligence training. That might mean she would see something the rest of them would miss.
“I have a feeling that the terrorists are in California, or at least nearby. I want to be there if something breaks,” he said.
Morgan braced himself for an argument but she simply got up and hugged him. “Find her and bring her back.”
Her voice caught at that and she squeezed him once, pulled away, and kissed him quickly.
Bloch, Shepard, and Dobrynin were waiting at the elevator when he got there.
Shepard, he noted again, didn’t look good. Too much coffee and worry and not enough rest.
“Mr. Dobrynin tells me that you are prepared to use finesse on this one,” Bloch said, the ghost of a grin on her lips.
“Desperate times,” he replied.
Morgan waited for the lecture. He only hoped it would be quick.
“Do what you have to do,” Bloch said simply.
Morgan tried to cover his surprise. “Go to the Zeta hangar at Logan, one of our jets is fueling now,” Bloch said.
Morgan said his goodbyes and stepped into the elevator. He checked his watch; it was just after 10:00 p.m. They would be in the jet in less than an hour. Then there was the six-hour flight, and travel time
to the body shop. They expected to arrive just before the body shop opened.
That was fine with Morgan; he was looking forward to his chat with the proprietors.
* * * *
Two of the Chechens had taken Margaret’s body, after they had pried Avery off of her. Alex presumed they had gone to put her out back somewhere, perhaps to bury her.
Alex felt a ball of anger growing in her stomach. Margaret was clueless. But in a rational world she would have had a chance to grow out of her cluelessness. It didn’t help that she’d had the misfortune of falling for her professor—who was a special brand of clueless. Of course, even that should have been something she grew out of—just an embarrassing period in her youth.
Unfortunately, that relationship had gotten her caught up in a squabble between a group of Chechen separatists and, apparently, the rest of the world.
Alex felt the beginning of a dull anger at Kattab and his terrorist friends. They had already taken everything from a young woman. And they had taken something from Avery, she noted, who now looked like a zombie.
The Chechens ushered the students into the sleeping area and let each of them choose their own bunks.
Kattab and three other terrorists chatted normally, almost casually, and Alex understood something: shooting Margaret was a message to all of them. If she had died for simply talking too much, there was zero chance that the students would dare to speak back to them, let alone get any ideas about escape or overpowering their guards.
From this point forward, the hostages would be docile.
Of course, Alex didn’t feel docile. Instead, she felt the ball of anger in her stomach only growing. She found herself sizing up each of their captors, looking for quirks, weaknesses, anything she could exploit in a fight. Part of it was her training. She knew there was a good chance she would prevail against any of the men if it came to a fight. And if she got her hands on a weapon she had a good shot at putting the Chechens down and getting most or all of the hostages out.
She resolved to keep her feelings under control. Properly channeled, anger could be an asset, though left unchecked it could be a serious liability. But curse or blessing, anger at injustice was built into the Morgan DNA.
The irony was she hadn’t even particularly liked Margaret.
Alex grabbed a bed in front of one of the padlocked doors to the outside. Jason took a bunk next to hers. As he passed her, he put a hand gently on her shoulder. It was meant to comfort her, to tell her that everything was going to be all right. However, Alex knew that there was a very good chance that everything would not be all right.
Nevertheless, his hand on her shoulder undeniably made her feel better. Before he could pull his hand away, she put hers on top of his and turned to face him before they separated and sat on their own bunks.
Alex lay down in her own narrow bed. Karen took the bunk on the other side of her. The other woman acknowledged her with a nod and Alex saw something that surprised her: Karen was scared.
Of course, this was Karen, so to most people she would just look like her normal, serious self. However, Alex saw Karen’s eyes darting around the large room. Alex also saw that as the older woman sat on the bed, she clutched the thin bedding in each hand and simply held it tightly through white knuckles.
For Karen, those two things were the equivalent of a normal person running around the room screaming. Alex understood the fear. Like everyone else in the room, she felt it herself.
But her growing anger dwarfed the fear. She lay back on the bunk staring up at the ceiling, doing her best to will the anger down. She would need it when the time came, but right now she needed her mind clear if she was going to find away to stop Kattab and his terrorist buddies. She also needed to rest. Whatever happened tomorrow, she wanted to be physically as well as mentally sharp.
Of course, once the time came to act, she planned to release that anger, and the soulless man who had gunned down a twenty-year-old girl to send them a message would be first on her list.
* * * *
Conley found that he was actually nervous. That almost never happened to him on a mission. This didn’t make him particularly unique. Agents given to nervousness tended to leave the service in short order. Or they were taken out of the game by attrition—anxiety tended to have a real effect on agent mortality.
It was his nervousness that told him this wasn’t a mission for him, not really. There was an asset: Dani. And there was an objective: get this asset safely to the U.S.
And the fact was that this was simpler than most defection operations he had run. Here, the defection was going to happen in a neutral, even friendly nation. There would be no mad dash through the defector’s native land to get to the U.S. Embassy. And there would be no complications getting the asset out of the country.
This situation was relatively clean. They didn’t have the cooperation of the Filipino government, but they were hardly in a hostile land. When it was all said and done, the Chinese government wouldn’t be happy with the Filipinos, but that—he understood—would actually benefit the U.S.
He should have been at ease.
And yet there was that worry in the pit of his stomach, and he was forced to confront what it really was: Dani wasn’t just an asset to him. And she wasn’t just a vacation fling. The fact that, to Dani, Conley himself was likely an asset did not change his feelings at all.
Something had passed between them. It might not have been the whole story but it was real. And he would have to get her out of the country to find out just how real.
Damn, how did Morgan do it? How did he do the job, knowing that he had a family at home depending on him? And how had he handled the times when his work had put Jenny and Alex in danger?
Just one more day, he told himself.
Bloch had made the arrangements. Later in the day, a Zeta contact would deliver Dani’s new American passport and papers to Conley. Then, tomorrow they would go directly to the airport where they would simply get on a commercial flight and head for Hawaii, where they would then take another commercial flight home.
Compared to his and Morgan’s last mission to Tibet, this hardly even rated as work, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something would go wrong.
Conley felt naked without his Glock. He envied Morgan his Walther PPK. The weapon was small enough that it could be concealed even in the shorts and Hawaiian shirts that had been Conley’s uniform for the last few days.
Checking his watch, Conley realized that it was time to keep his usual schedule. He signed the check and got up from the café. Amado greeted him with a smile.
“Good morning Mr. Peter,” Amado said.
“Good morning Amado,” Conley replied.
Then he took his paper and parked himself in the lobby as he’d done three times before. Like clockwork, Dani and the rest of the minister’s delegation left the café and collected at the far end of the lobby.
It was remarkable how normal she appeared. She chatted informally (at least by Chinese standards) with the delegation and their Filipino handlers. Her body language was no different than it had been since she’d arrived.
Yet she was a day away from leaving her life, her work and her country behind.
Remarkable.
As per usual, the group moved down the hallway to the conference rooms and then disappeared. Conley decided he would maintain his normal routine: the beach, lunch at the beach bar, and then back to the beach. But first, he decided he’d grab his Glock from the room safe.
Maybe what he was feeling was just worry over someone who was important to him. Or maybe it was intuition, a warning from his subconscious. He never ignored those feelings on a mission and he wasn’t going to start now.
Chapter 22
Morgan sized up the building. Brothers Auto Body was apparently a big business. Four large steel doors covered most of the front of the buildin
g. They were still shut and padlocked.
Checking his watch, Morgan saw that it was nine o’clock. He didn’t think much of the brothers’ work ethic. Reading the sign, he saw they didn’t open until ten.
They might as well have had a billboard out front advertising that they primarily dealt in stolen cars. A good body shop would be open by 7:30 or 8:00 at the latest so people could drop off and pick up their cars before work.
There was a double glass door that led to the office area, which was dark inside. Together, he and Dobrynin scanned the outside of the building. Cameras watched the doors, and if anyone missed those, a large sticker warned that the building was protected by an alarm.
A quick call to Shepard confirmed that the alarm was silent, but noted that the alarm did not flag the police or even the alarm company in the event of a breach. Instead, it reported any unauthorized entry to a nearby residence.
That wasn’t surprising. Clearly the brothers didn’t want the police crawling around their shop, even in the event of a break-in.
Morgan pulled out the small case from his jacket and chose a pick and tension wrench. The lock on the glass door was a simple pin and tumbler design, and he had it open in less than a minute.
He pulled the door open and held it for Dobrynin.
“They will be here soon,” the Russian said.
“I’m counting on it,” Morgan replied. Then, as an afterthought, he locked the door from the inside. It would confound the proprietors when they arrived.
The two men made their way into the shop area. There were about a dozen cars inside. Half of them were late model German: Mercedes and BMWs. That told Morgan what he needed to know. Four of the cars were already in pieces, their body panels laid out on the floor.
That made sense. Body panels on these cars were the most profitable and easiest to move parts, but it offended him to see good cars in pieces. And worse than that, the disassembly had been sloppy. The torch work was rough where the quarter panels had been cut and someone had bent the panel edges with a crowbar after removing the bolts.
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