Mike said, “You were right, Ben, about Sophie Pearce. She flat-out lied to us, and, of course, so did Adam. Now, why is she hiding her relationship with him? And why did he show up out of the blue hours after his father was killed?”
Ben said, “Maybe he wanted to see his family, maybe he thought we’d be off his scent. I’ll admit, though, the timing is certainly coincidental.”
Mike said, “Is there a special meaning for Eternal Patrol?”
Nicholas said, “It’s an old naval term, actually. For a lost ship. There are hundreds of ships and submarines that have been lost in the various wars. Traditionally, when they go down and no one knows where, they call it being on eternal patrol.”
“Well, that makes sense, at least. His dad was a naval history buff. Ben, put out a BOLO for Adam Pearce, and we need to go talk to Sophie again. Find out if this was all she was keeping from us.”
Ben said, “Already did. We also need to look at what Adam Pearce has been into lately as EP. If he crossed the wrong people, perhaps his father was killed in retaliation, or to draw him out. If that’s the case, Sophie isn’t safe, either.”
“She’s safe enough,” Mike said. “We’ve got eyes on her. No one’s going to get close to her. Have them pick her up, Ben, we’ll see if she knows where her brother’s hiding. Nicholas, we’re outta here.”
When Mike had cleared the garage doors and turned the Crown Vic onto Worth Street, Nicholas said, “I have something to tell you.”
She knew that tone, he’d decided to tell her something that he’d thought to hold back. Good, it meant he trusted her, at least every once in a while.
She looked over at him. “Your dad told you something super-secret, and you’re not supposed to say anything?”
Nicholas had to laugh. “You’re too smart for your own good. Yes, he told me something very disturbing. The Home Office believes Alfie Stanford was murdered.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. I thought he was old enough to die on his own?”
“Yes, he was, but he wasn’t ill. One of the medics found a needle mark on his neck.”
“That’s not good. Do they have a suspect?”
“If they do, he didn’t tell me. I don’t believe in coincidences, Mike, and here we are, hit in the face with a huge one. Alfie Stanford and Jonathan Pearce have clear ties, and they’re both murdered on the same day?”
She didn’t believe in coincidence, either. “And Adam Pearce is an über-hacker, and his sister lied to us. But how is it all related?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Ah, here we are, your inaugural FBI autopsy. Let’s hope Dr. Janovich found the poison pill.”
25
Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME)
2:20 p.m.
Dr. Janovich was waiting for them in his office, dressed in stained scrubs, his eyes shining brightly with excitement. He tapped his watch face when he saw them, but without rancor.
“Finally, you’re here. I didn’t want to wait, so I started without you. Come on. I have something to show you.”
They stood over Mr. Olympic’s naked and partially autopsied body. Janovich spoke quickly, pointing to a nasty scrape on the man’s shoulder. “Did quite a job on him, didn’t you, Drummond?”
“I believe the tarmac was responsible for that particular mark.”
“Ah. Well, this isn’t the interesting part.” He pointed at the wall, where X-rays hung on a light box. “Look closely. Do you see the foreign object in his skull? I went digging in his brain, and I found this.”
He used a small set of calipers and showed them a tiny bit of metal, no larger than a thumbnail, thin as paper.
Mike said, “It looks like shrapnel.”
Nicholas’s heart rate jumped, adrenaline poured into his bloodstream. “No, not shrapnel, Mike. Dr. Janovich, can I see it under the microscope?”
Janovich beamed at Nicholas. “Good, good.” He set the rectangle of metal on a clear glass slide. “Try it at one-hundred-times power. It’s quite illuminating.”
The metal object came into clear focus. Nicholas’s breath caught. He hadn’t wanted to be right, but—“It’s an implant. There must be two hundred filament leads off this.” He stepped away so Mike could take a look. “Dr. Janovich, where did you find this, exactly?”
“Embedded behind the optic nerve. The incision was well healed, which means it’s been in his brain for a good while. I also found a very small feed into the auditory nerve as well, so small I nearly missed it. All in all, it’s amazing.”
“Sight and sound? Is that even possible?”
Janovich said, “Evidently, it is. I’ve never seen anything like it. This is incredibly advanced technology. And this implant? It isn’t a metal alloy I’ve ever seen. It’s biologic in nature, meaning it can merge with the brain tissue it’s implanted in and not be rejected. If it does what I think it does, well—” He shrugged. “It’s huge, terrifying, really.”
“Could it be running now?” Nicholas asked.
Janovich shook his head. “I don’t think so, not without its processing power. It shouldn’t be able to stand on its own.”
Mike held up a hand. “I know about implants used for people who’ve lost limbs, to help them control new arms and legs. Through thought-controlled action.”
“Yes,” Dr. Janovich said. “Yes, implants are very big in robotics and nanotechnology. There are even implants for the blind, those with progressive diseases like macular degeneration, to restore their sight.”
Mike said, “Let me look again; talk me through this.” As she studied the implant, Nicholas said, “Do you see the filaments coming off the edges? They’re thinner than a piece of hair.”
“It looks like a metal millipede. So this is a brain implant. It’s tiny, wafer-thin. It was implanted behind Mr. Olympic’s optic nerve?”
“Yes,” Dr. Janovich said.
“And not because Mr. Olympic was going blind.”
Nicholas said, “Oh, no, quite the opposite. Dr. Janovich, correct me if I’m wrong, but I assume it was mono-vision—meaning the people who were getting the feed from the implant could only see out of Mr. Olympic’s left eye?”
“You’re right, Drummond.”
Mike’s head was cocked to one side. “You’re saying that someone could see through Mr. Olympic’s eye? See what he was seeing?”
Nicholas said, “Implanted into the optic nerve, it’s possible this works something like a video camera, uploading images as the user sees them. And since Dr. Janovich also found the thin thread that fed into the ear, I’m guessing the person behind this could hear what Mr. Olympic heard as well.”
“A visual recorder, then,” Mike said, “and the audio part as well. Sight and sound.”
Dr. Janovich said, “Since I pulled this implant out of his brain, your wild speculations aren’t so wild after all. If someone was watching, and hearing, remotely—”
“Holy crap,” Mike said. “It makes sense and it sounds insane.”
Nicholas was so excited he was nearly vibrating. “It’s possible, though. Look how tiny the implant is. Think of the uses. You could send someone into the field and all they’d have to do is stand around looking at the target, and the chip would do the rest, relaying the information to a remote server. And if it can be done live, it would change the face of intelligence gathering forever.”
Dr. Janovich said, “It’s entirely possible.”
Nicholas said, “Dr. Janovich, you’re certain the device only works with active brain waves?”
“I believe so. It definitely runs biologically. There is no battery, nor any way to take it out and recharge without surgical intervention. It used the suspect’s brain to charge and run. Without its electrical plug, so to speak, it can’t work. Once his heart stopped, transmission stopped as well.”
Mike said, �
��Who has the capabilities to make such a thing? And the ability to make it work?”
Nicholas said, “I reckon any of the private firms who do this sort of research. It’s one thing to develop a prototype. It’s a whole different level to put them into action. We’re talking billions of dollars. The list of firms capable of doing this can’t be very long.”
“You could look at universities, too,” Janovich said. “No, forget it, not enough money.”
Mike said, “No chance there’s a serial number, like we see on other implants?”
Janovich said, “Good thinking, but I wasn’t able to find one. If I can get the device open, I might see something, but I really don’t want to try it. I think we need someone well versed in nano-biotechnology to autopsy the chip. I have a friend at MIT who’s quite accomplished in the nanotech field. I’d recommend bringing him in to have a look inside, see if we can identify a manufacturer.”
“Do it,” Mike said. “Right away, if you please, Doc.” Mike drew in a deep breath. “Imagine, someone was watching remotely as Mr. Olympic murdered Jonathan Pearce. Hurry, sir, we don’t have time to waste.”
Dr. Janovich said, “There’s a lot of money in nano-biotech, a lot of private investors. It might be harder than you think to find out who developed and placed this particular device. Especially if he doesn’t want to be discovered.”
Nicholas said, “Oh, we’ll find him. I have an idea of where to look.”
Mike squared her shoulders. “And knowing who Mr. Olympic is will go a long way toward helping us ID the maker of the implant. There still haven’t been any matches on his fingerprints?”
“Not yet,” Janovich said. “I don’t think he’s a local. If he’s in CODIS, we’ll have a match soon.”
Nicholas said, “We heard him curse the victim in German.”
Dr. Janovich nodded. “Sounds right. He was wearing a pair of socks with a small Metro label, and that’s a European store, in Germany as well.”
Mike asked, “In all this excitement I nearly forgot. Have you isolated what killed him, whether it was a poison of some sort? Or how it worked so quickly?”
Janovich stepped back to the body. “I need toxicology to be specific, but it was some sort of deadly neurotoxin. It caused an almost immediate heart arrhythmia, followed quickly by cardiac arrest. Take a look.” He used his calipers to spread the man’s upper lip back from the teeth, showing a small gap in the gingiva. “It came from right here, I think. There’s a pocket of sorts, almost like a small abscess, but it’s definitely man-made. There’s a scar, in the tissue, from a laser cut. There was also some sort of residue, in a gel form. Thicker than saliva, clear and tacky. I swabbed it and sent it to tox, but like I said, it’s going to take some time to identify what exactly it is. Currently, I have to list it as undetermined. But whatever was in here, I’m certain it’s the culprit.”
“Did I kill him?” Nicholas asked.
Janovich put a hand on Nicholas’s shoulder and said, not unkindly, “You fought with him, true, but based on his facial bruising, I believe the gel pack was hit externally, and that broke open the abscess and activated the poison. But, Agent Drummond, it was an accident, you are not to blame.”
26
26 Federal Plaza
3:00 p.m.
Mike called Ben the moment they got in the car. “We’re on our way back. We have big news. Do you have Sophie Pearce?”
“We do,” Ben answered.
“Good. Ask Gray to scan photos of all the German nationals who entered the United States in the past week, see if he can find Mr. Olympic on a flight manifest.”
“Will do. See you in ten.”
She hung up her cell and looked over at Nicholas. He was staring at his tapping fingers on the dash.
She said, “I know you’re frustrated, Nicholas, but stop it, okay? Dr. Janovich was right, it wasn’t your fault.”
“Of course it was. I was the one who popped him in the jaw with my elbow, I think. And that means we’d know what all this was about if I hadn’t killed him.”
“Your activating the poison was a fluke. Look at it this way. If Mr. Olympic hadn’t died, and Janovich hadn’t found the implant in his brain, we could never have known that someone was watching everything through his eyes, listening to everything we said. And now we know it’s someone who’s connected to one of the big nano-biology firms. It’s all good.”
Nicholas stopped tapping his fingers. “Yes, of course you’re right.”
Still, she understood. Any death, even accidental, unleashed demons that visited in the night. She said simply, “We all live with it, Nicholas. You know even better than I do that it’s something we have to deal with. Now snap to, Superman, I need you.” And that made him smile.
“Good. Now, we’ve got to figure out what we’re missing. Jonathan Pearce was lured to Wall Street by Mr. Olympic and killed. Sophie Pearce lied through her teeth to us and her brother, Adam, is probably wanted by the intergalactic police. What are they hiding? What are they up to?”
He was focused again. “I’m going to go out on a short limb here and say Mr. Olympic, our dead German, was sent to access Pearce’s files. He’s definitely the one who broke into the system before we arrived at Mr. Pearce’s apartment.”
“You don’t think it could have been Adam Pearce?”
“No, no reason for him to access his father’s computer since he’d have everything duplicated on his own computer. If you were looking for something specific, and you had a man you could send in who could visually upload everything he saw, and heard? I’d say Mr. Olympic.”
Mike said, “We really need an ID on Mr. Olympic, like now.”
“We also need to look at another possibility here, Mike. The information on the spy satellite is certainly worth spending some time tracking, if that’s what they were after. Again, for a layman to have those plans on his personal computer is more than worrisome.”
“What are you saying? Do you think Jonathan Pearce was involved in some sort of espionage?”
He said, “You saw the list of people he dealt with, they’re all over the world, and all very powerful. Was he simply mailing classified information to the highest bidder inside the books they bought? If so, it’s rather elegant, actually, and very old-school. Al Qaeda, for example, uses handwritten notes for their biggest operational plans since computer communications between terrorist franchises aren’t secure.”
She nodded. “Okay, yes, it’s the only safe way of moving information in this new digital age, especially since it’s virtually impossible to erase information.”
He said, “You’re right. I can resurrect nearly any hard drive. Everything leaves a footprint, no matter how ghostly. And to think, Pearce’s son is a well-known hacker. I’m going to say father and son were in cahoots.”
“Cahoots? From a Brit?”
He glanced at her, saw she was smiling. “I’m flexible. And yes, cahoots. Now I hope Sophie Pearce is going to give us some real answers.”
When they stepped off the elevator, Nicholas said, “I recall something in Pearce’s files about a company out of Germany doing groundbreaking nano-biotech work. There wasn’t a name, but I’m sure it would be easy to find. Do you remember Pierre Menard, from FedPol?”
“Of course. How could I forget him? He was smart, fast on his feet, and the biggie, he really liked me. Maybe you, too, but not as much.” Menard had been a vital part of their search for the Fox and the Koh-i-Noor diamond.
“I’m going to call him. Maybe he’ll know of a German nano-biotech firm that would fit the bill.”
Ben ushered them into the room next to the interview room where they could observe Sophie pacing, back and forth, muttering all the while.
“She’s mad,” Nicholas said. “It’s fun when a witness is mad, they tend to lose control more easily. I really don’t understand, though, why she’s s
o upset.”
“Pretty obvious, don’t you think?” Mike said. “Her dad was murdered this morning and now she’s trying to protect her brother. We’re the cops, her brother’s biggest enemy.”
“Here’s something else,” Ben said, handing Nicholas a transcript. “There was so much, we got Agent Jack McDermitt on loan from the Investigation Unit. He and Gray took apart the forensic data from Pearce’s phone and computer, looking for ties to his son, and to any foreign entities who might benefit from the plans of the spy satellite. Here’s the extended transcript of the texts from Pearce’s phone back and forth to EP—Adam Pearce. Father and son were searching for something, what we don’t know since it’s all coded. But Gray and Jack both think it’s something major.”
Ben was right, the conversations were indecipherable, full of abbreviations and numbers. Nicholas wanted to study them himself, but they didn’t have the time now. He folded the papers, stuck them in his jacket pocket.
“See anything?” Mike asked.
“Like Ben said, it’s all coded. We need some time and the key, a codex of some sort. We’ll ask Sophie, odds are she knows what it all means. Ben, will you watch, see if anything stands out for you?”
“Of course.”
He said to Mike, “Do you want to be the good cop or the bad cop?”
She punched his arm. “Can’t you tell I’m the spitting image of Glinda the Good Witch?”
“Let’s do it, then,” and he crossed the hall into the interrogation room.
27
Nicholas stomped into the room, impatience and annoyance rolling off him, heavy as a noxious cloud. He took a seat across from Sophie Pearce and stared at her, his look dark, violent, scary, because he didn’t say a word. Mike followed him more slowly, stood against the wall, her arms crossed, silent.
The Lost Key Page 11