“We can rally some assets. Help you track them, and if they’re found, get you there. We have people on the ground in Sri Lanka. We can send them along with you.”
“That’s a lot to coordinate.”
Grace said simply, “I’m a good coordinator. It’s what I do best. How do you propose tracking them?”
“I could make a cell phone call sharing the good news Jean-Pierre Broussard is alive. That would do it. Especially if the call came from Patel and Byrne’s business partner, Al-Asaad.”
Grace said, “We’ve tried it. She’ll scramble the call. They’ve always been exceedingly careful with their communications. We’ve never been able to pinpoint Byrne, it’s part of our problems with this. They’re very smart.”
“I’m not worried about what she says. I want to verify she’s in Sri Lanka. A call from a trusted source, with the infrastructure in place to capture its location, or at least triangulate—”
“I know what you’re thinking. She uses a satellite phone that has tracking, yes, but she always, always has it turned off. And you know a satellite’s tracking is much broader than a cell phone tower. When she has the tracker off, we have one chance, only one, that the phone might register a single ping before it scrambles. Thing is, the ping is rerouted multiple times. So far, we’ve never been able to capture it. We’ve tried this before, following Byrne. She’s never had the GPS on. She’s been very careful.”
“We have nothing to lose trying again, and this time, we’ll use a deencryption tool of my own design. See if it works.”
There was a slight pause, then, “You’re telling me you have better toys than the CIA?”
“Not better, necessarily. Different.”
“By all means, then, let’s try. What sort of gear would you need?”
Nicholas said, “I need the brand and age of the sat phone, and a computer line.”
“You know, if this works, you may have to share the protocol with us. Ah, in the spirit of national security. Be at the Mont Verdun Air Base in an hour. I’ll have everything you need waiting. Now, may I speak to Vince?”
Nicholas turned on the speaker. “Talk away.”
Grace said, “Privately, Drummond.”
“Sorry, Mr. Grace.”
“Fine. Have it your way.” Grace changed to Arabic, had a short, terse conversation with Mills. Nicholas caught a few words—he was by no means fluent, but he’d spent enough time in the Middle East to understand a bit—help, trust, and a highly idiomatic version of don’t cock it up.
Then there was a click. Grace was gone.
“Might we dispense with the handcuffs now, Drummond? We need to get to the airbase pronto.”
“You have a plan for waltzing past the Lyon police, do you?”
“Waltzing, no.” He gestured toward the window, thought a moment, then grinned. “But I assume there might be a few gurneys and body bags out there, don’t you?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Boise, Idaho
July 2015
Nevaeh stood near Paulie’s diner, rain striking her like pellets. She was wearing a low-brimmed hat and sunglasses, but no raincoat. No matter, she was here to do a job and there was nothing that could stop her.
She glanced at her watch. Three minutes late.
Is he going to bail on us? After all the work, the planning? No, no way. Kiera has his wife tied up and gagged, her life depends on him showing up.
There. A light blue Ford pickup pulled into the lot. Nevaeh took a last glance around the diner, stepped from the shadows, and got into the passenger seat, slammed the door.
She never looked at him, only said, “All right. Let’s go.”
“No way, not until I know my wife is all right.”
Nevaeh turned, leveled a look at him. “She’ll be dead within the minute if you don’t start driving. Now.”
He put the truck in gear.
“Drive faster. The sooner we finish this exchange the sooner you get to see your wife. You shouldn’t have tried to back out, it was a serious mistake on your part.”
He was quiet, driving carefully, maddeningly slow. “How much do you know about plutonium?”
“Enough to know I’ve paid you handsomely to bring it to me. And that’s all you need to know.”
“I’m going to lose my job if they ever find out I’ve stolen the plutonium. Maybe even go to jail.”
“Really? You’re worried about losing your job now? Going to jail? It didn’t seem to bother you when I paid you one hundred thousand dollars.”
“How are you planning to get this on a plane? Unless you have a private jet—oh, of course you do.” He sighed deeply, kept driving. Slow, too slow. She wanted to slam her fist into his skinny jaw, get his attention.
His hands were white on the wheel. The wipers slapped against the windshield, merely spreading the intense rain over the glass instead of clearing it away.
“You’re going to build a nuke, aren’t you?”
She heard the fear in his voice, the awful knowledge that he would be responsible. “Yes, but rest assured, it’s not going to hurt anyone. It’s a deterrent, nothing more. We can’t have these yahoo countries threatening the United States and Europe with their own versions. And our governments can’t be openly building deterrents, or else it would seem like an open threat. They’ve hired us to go this back route. You’ve done your country a great service, Eddie. Anyone tries to strike us, you’ll be a hero.”
“But my wife—”
“Your wife will be fine if you give me the plutonium and keep your mouth shut.”
“But if someone gets ahold of the plutonium, builds a nuke, then—you’re talking about a lot of lives. This much plutonium—the yield of the bomb could take out the population of Brooklyn if it’s mishandled.”
Nevaeh smiled sweetly. “You’re a gambler, Eddie. It’s how we found you in the first place. You made yourself a target. Your debts have grown so large there is no recovering from it, and you knew this, so you agreed to sell us the plutonium to get yourself out of debt. And so far, you’ve been doing everything right, and if you keep it up, you’re going to get the money to wipe your slate clean, and see your wife.
“This is all you need to know. Keep driving.”
Finally, Dr. Edward Linton turned off the divided highway into what looked like an endless field of corn. After bumping a mile up the road, Nevaeh saw a small barn. He pulled to the front.
He said, “Wait here,” but she ignored him, got out of the car, ducked her head to keep the rain out of her eyes. He slid open the barn door. The space was long empty but still smelled of old hay and manure. Inside, a four-foot-by-three-foot lead-lined box rested on top of a roughhewn table. It was surprisingly small, considering. Small, but heavy.
“This is it? The plutonium?”
“It is.”
Nevaeh said, “Thank you, Eddie. You’ve been most useful.” The suppressed gun kicked in her hand, there so quickly he didn’t even have a chance to register that she’d drawn it from the holster inside her belt.
Eddie fell, sprawled onto the leftover wisps of hay, blood leaking from his head.
It only took her a few minutes to clean the scene, collect Eddie’s blood in a Tupperware container, stash his body in his truck. The lead box was heavy, but Nevaeh was strong, and she quickly had it wrestled into the back of Eddie’s truck, alongside his cooling body.
She plopped his baseball cap on her head and set out for his house.
Poor Eddie. He didn’t even know his wife had been dead for hours. Like she’d let them live. For a smart man, a frigging scientist, he’d made very poor decisions.
Nevaeh stopped his truck by her car and stashed the box in the trunk. Imagine, what was inside that box would punch a hole in the atmosphere.
All hail technology.
When she reached Dr. Linton’s house, she pulled into the garage. Kiera was inside. She had turned the air conditioner to its lowest setting; the house was freezing, helping the crime-scene
narrative she was about to create.
“Glad you’re here, I’m nearly frozen. Is he dead?”
“As a doornail. Help me get him into place.”
They carried Eddie’s body into the living room, sat him across from his wife. Nevaeh turned the air back to its normal setting, watched Kiera doctor the scene to her liking. She placed the gun in his hand and took one shot to make sure there was gunpowder residue spread on him. She microwaved the blood, then spread it until the blood pool was just so. The note, crumpled and bloody on his chest, was the finishing touch.
Everyone knew the Lintons were having money troubles. Would he do such a thing—a murder-suicide? Not out of the bounds of reason. Such a terrible event. Good plan.
Finally, they wiped down everything, even though they were both wearing gloves, and went over Eddie’s truck. Kiera put the keys in the sun visor and locked the doors. They jogged through the cornfields, wet with the heavy rain, back to their car.
Kiera said, “It’s a long drive. Why don’t I take the wheel first, so you can get some sleep?”
Nevaeh nodded and tossed her the keys. She watched the skyline of Boise disappear in the rearview as they started south. Then she closed her eyes. It’s done. Finally, things are beginning to fall into place.
She heard a soft sibilant voice whisper against her ear, Yes, everything is falling into place. It is all you told us it would be.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Houston
July 2015
The road trip from Boise to Houston was long, twenty-eight hours, through Utah and the southwest tip of Colorado before smoothing into the long flatlands along the Texas highway. They’d stopped overnight at a motel in Four Corners, the area where the borders of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona touched, but Nevaeh couldn’t sleep more than a couple of hours. She was vibrating with excitement and anticipation, and the Numen were as well. She’d gone over in detail her need to destroy the people who’d destroyed her, and they’d agreed.
Soon, she’d bring them to Earth. And the beginning was in a box in the trunk of the car.
Finally, in the early evening of the second day, they saw the lights of Houston.
Nevaeh knew Rebecca Holloway’s address from a long-ago party during astronaut training. She lived in an ostentatious Spanish-style five-bedroom near the Bay Oaks Country Club in Clear Lake, full of travertine floors and a giant lagoon pool in the backyard. Holloway was childless—probably a good thing, she had little compassion and no discernible maternal instincts, rare for a psychiatrist—and her ex-husband worked in the oil business, traveled out of town when he wasn’t drunk at the clubhouse.
Poor, lonely Dr. Holloway, all alone in that massive house.
Nevaeh couldn’t help but smile.
The drive was gated, but the gate wasn’t too tall. Thank goodness there was no one at the little gatehouse at the entrance to the neighborhood—it was only for show. The neighbors here weren’t on top of each other, either. Not as easy to slip in unnoticed as it had been in New York, but easy enough.
Kiera pulled to the curb several blocks away, turned and asked, “Are you absolutely sure you don’t want me?”
“We’ve been over this. Now, I will see you at our arranged meeting site in one hour. If I have a problem, I’ll call.”
Nevaeh climbed out of the car. She was dressed in jogging clothes, black leggings and a black top, and a baseball cap, her hair tucked inside. She imagined there would be security cameras, so she was very careful approaching the house.
It was nearly ten o’clock, fully dark now. Perfect. She inserted her earbuds and jogged to Holloway’s gate. She waited, heard nothing, saw no one. She slipped over the black metal gate and made her way to the back door.
She had a gun with her, but she didn’t want to use it. Actually striking down Fontaine had been so satisfying, much more so than simply shooting Eddie.
Another accident, that would do it.
Nevaeh was inside the house two minutes later. Kiera had done reconnaissance on Holloway, too. If she was sticking to her routine, Holloway should be getting ready for bed now, in good time to get up tomorrow and maybe ruin another astronaut’s life. Nevaeh went upstairs slowly, her sneakers silent on the carpeted treads. She didn’t hear anything. She looked through the rooms on the second floor, but no one was there.
She knew Holloway was here, she’d seen two cars in the garage. Where was the bitch?
She made her way back downstairs, looking into every room—so many, musty with disuse, and no one here but her.
Nevaeh went through the kitchen, silently opened the back door, and stared out onto the patio. She heard music, the strains of a Chopin étude.
She stood in the shadows and watched Rebecca Holloway methodically swim laps. Her strokes were smooth and steady. She normally swam in the morning before work. Why the change in her schedule?
Nevaeh went to the deep end, lay down on her stomach, and waited. When Holloway started to tuck and turn, Nevaeh reached out a hand and grabbed a hank of Holloway’s streaming dark hair.
Surprised, Holloway gasped and jerked, brought up flailing arms, but Nevaeh had a brutal grip on her long hair and pulled hard, brought her head out of the water. She stared into Holloway’s shocked eyes. She saw the recognition, then only a brief instant of relief, gone quickly enough.
“Hello, Dr. Holloway. I’ll bet you never expected to see me, did you? Did you know I killed Dr. Fontaine? Both of you conferred and decided I was crazy. You always hated me, didn’t you? Made up stories about me because you were jealous. You tried your best to destroy me, but you didn’t. And now I’m going to kill you.”
Holloway began fighting her in earnest, and she was strong. No choice. Nevaeh quickly brought up her gun and struck her hard on the side of the head. It didn’t knock her out, but it stunned her. Nevaeh leaned close, twisted Holloway’s long hair around her fist. “I waited to kill you last, my dessert, you could say. I thought about killing Franklin, but decided his only crime was his weakness. He was afraid of you. But I’m not.”
Holloway stared up at her with blind eyes. “You think I betrayed you? That I lied? I didn’t, I didn’t. I only did my job. You were crazy then, you’re crazier now. You can’t kill me, you—”
“Goodbye, you worthless bitch.” Nevaeh shoved her head underwater and held her down, difficult because even stunned, the woman was amazingly strong. Finally Holloway slowly weakened, finally she stopped thrashing. Another minute, Nevaeh counted it off in her head, then one more for good measure. She was smiling, singing under her breath, “Ding, dong, the witch is dead.”
She let her go and shoved. She slowly rose, pulled the wet strands of black hair from between her fingers. She was soaked from Holloway’s struggling, even her hair was wet. Who cared? She watched Holloway float away, barely disturbing the surface, then, ever so slowly, she watched her sink to the bottom of the pool.
Nevaeh breathed in the hot, humid night air. She felt exhilarated.
Such a terrible accident. Poor Dr. Holloway had drowned in her beautiful Olympic-size swimming pool.
Poor old Rebecca.
She sang to the Numen as she climbed back over the gate, “She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead.” And the Numen sang back to her, Yes, she’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
T-MINUS 18 HOURS
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Carlton Grace paced his office as he waited for the telecon to start. He had a briefing at the White House in forty minutes and he needed as much background as he could get to fill in the blanks on Nevaeh Patel.
If only Strategic Command could find the satellite. If they knew for sure whether Patel had the means to blow it up remotely, or if it was on some sort of timer. Then again, they weren’t used to dealing with actual EMP threats. Who knew what Patel and Byrne had managed to come up with?
He gulped down some water and forced himself to stop glancing a
t his watch. Then he closed his eyes. Too long, you waited too long. It’s your fault, your fault, if the bomb goes off.
Finally, the screen flickered to life and a man with gray hair and a matching mustache, wearing a yellow short-sleeved button-down, came into view. He had on thin silver wire-rimmed glasses and looked like everyone’s favorite grandfather. It was the famed NASA flight director himself, Dr. Franklin Norgate.
“Mr. Grace? I understand you’re CIA. What’s the matter? They said this was an emergency. What’s happening?”
“I apologize for disturbing you at home but we need to talk about your former astronaut Nevaeh Patel. I know you were asked to make available the tapes showing her spacewalk. You’ve signed the nondisclosure?”
“I have, though it’s hardly necessary. I have clearance.”
“Not for this, you don’t. We are tracking the movements of a nuclear EMP and we think Dr. Patel is behind it. You look shocked, and I don’t blame you. But believe me when I say she’s been playing a long game and we’re out of time. I need to know her state of mind, see if I can get any clues to what she’s up to, and you’re the one who knew her best. You’re also the reason she’s no longer an astronaut, which could mean you’re in danger.”
Norgate was shaking his head in disbelief. “No, this can’t be true, there’s no way. Yes, nearly a decade ago, Nevaeh was disturbed, angry she’d been grounded, but for her to set off a nuclear EMP? It’s a long way from hearing voices in space to destroying a large segment of society.”
“It is, Mr. Norgate, no question, but here are the facts: She managed to stow the bomb on a satellite that was launched on July 14, and her company, Galactus, claims the satellite wasn’t inserted into orbit. We believe this was a lie. We believe she programmed it to be on a different, unexpected elliptical. We also believe it is designed to go off during the apex of the lunar eclipse tonight, which is going to coincide with the passage of the International Space Station over Nepal. We are making an educated guess as to where it’s going to go off, but the information we’ve pulled together is sound. Now, I need the tapes from her spacewalk. She claimed she met up with space aliens and they saved her life. And I need the tapes immediately.”
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