The agent said nothing; she had nothing to add. She wondered how Trask knew and why he was telling her this, but asking wouldn’t get him to say anything he wasn’t already planning to tell her.
“While you process that, here’s the rest,” Trask went on. “We believe she is in the United States, possibly in New York. You are to find her and recapture her if you can, remove her if it’s necessary. You will have the proper authorization, in writing, within the hour in your personal e-mail. Encryption code Date Three is being used.”
Each agent assigned a date to the standard codes, an assignation known only to him- or herself and the high-security dispatcher. For Muloni, Date One was the day of her high school prom, Day Two was the day she saw Rush in concert, and Day Three was the day she had her appendix out. None of these were likely to be guessed by a hacker.
“The reason you are here, the reason I am telling you this, is that we believe she is in the custody of people who are in my employ. I have been watching them for some time, concerned that some of our technology was showing up in foreign weapons systems. Were their rogue status to become commonly known, the impact on my business—much of which involves government contracts that affect your own organization—would be disastrous. Your superiors have authorized you to be seconded to my own security team to track and eliminate my employees and their assassin. Your record is impressive and, now that I’ve met you, I believe what I have been told. You are someone that people know they can trust.” He took a long drink, his steely eyes never leaving the agent. When he finished, he said, “And no. I do not know why they want her. But I can only assume one thing.”
“They want to kill you,” she said.
He regarded her, his gaze grown colder. “Why is that the first thing that came to your mind?”
She tensed, wishing she hadn’t spoken. “I read the corporate file. There is no acknowledged successor. Removing you would create conflict, a distraction. I thought it might open your contracts to other bidders.”
He nodded. “A reasonable guess. Most of my business is built on long-standing relationships. But I don’t believe that I am the target. Besides, these men already have access to me.”
“With her, their hands would be clean.” She corrected herself quickly. “Cleaner.” They were already dirty to some degree. Otherwise, Trask wouldn’t suspect them.
He considered this before dismissing it. “No. It is someone else and for some other purpose. They have access to our technology. They could take the company down by corrupting our resources.”
“You found out you’d been compromised by reverse engineering the situation,” she said. She was in this far with her pushing. She might as well go all the way. “How did you identify the personnel?”
He grinned. “Reverse engineering the situation,” he said. “I like that. It’s exactly what we did. Found our technology, and instead of suing the Chinese company, we infiltrated their plant, found the source of the leak, traced it back to our R & D division, known, ironically enough, as MoleS—Molecular Studies. They’re responsible for making electronic relays from single molecules.”
She probably looked as surprised as she felt. She thought single-molecule wires and conjugated molecular on-off switches were still mostly theory.
Back to silent mode, Muloni decided. She was out of her element on all fronts.
“We do not know if the industrial saboteurs are aware that we know what they’ve done,” Trask went on. “What’s more, though they have been watched here, their personal communications monitored, there appears to be only one connection between them and the escape of Ms. Rassin. The Pakistanis on board the incoming flight were using our Minotaur secure phones. Two separate systems, interfaced internally, impossible to crack without the exact code because the components separate if there is any unauthorized access. The electronic bridge between receive and transmit literally breaks down, sealing memory from even the user. Those phones were hacked. The arrival time of the jet was known, the movements of the Pakistanis were also known, and they were slain inside the terminal where you searched the prisoner. Their bodies were found two hours after takeoff—by which time the jet had landed at JFK. We assume your target is still there. Otherwise, why fly her to such a heavily monitored area when a smaller airport in another city would have sufficed?”
Because it’s easier to stay lost in a crowd, for one thing, she thought.
Trask drained the water glass. She had a sudden image of him as a cactus, lean and thirsty, with invisible thorns. Maybe it wasn’t just noblesse oblige this man was about. Maybe she was sensing something dangerous.
“If they are aware of us watching them, that does not mean they are aware of you,” he went on. “Security personnel come and go frequently. That shouldn’t raise any red flags.”
“Unless someone links me to Rassin,” she pointed out.
He grinned. “That will make your hunt a little easier, not to mention more exciting. But I don’t think that has happened. We had people at the airport, looking for anyone who might be tracking Elisabeth. Your pickup was clean. They will be there when you depart to make sure it stays that way.”
He put the glass on the tray and rose. She did as well. Apparently, the audience was at an end.
“Thank you for making the trip,” he said, offering both hands again. “I wanted to meet you and to tell you personally how important this is to me, to my business, and to our nation.” He locked her hand in his again. “You will have whatever resources you need to carry out your assignment, the only caveat being that you keep this to yourself.”
“Mr. Trask, there is someone I’d like to talk to.”
His face and body locked. He did not release her hand. He was like a machine that had died suddenly. “Who?”
“I would like to consult with a colleague at the FBI about his operational checklists.”
“You have none of your own?”
She smiled a little smile. “Our organization is not chartered for domestic surveillance as such. I don’t want to miss any potential red flags the target may throw off.”
“You may talk to your associate discretely,” Trask said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“You understand,” Trask went on, his voice thicker, her hand still his prisoner, “we will be dealing with the industrial sabotage on our own. What I’m concerned about—all you need be concerned about—is your target. You will kill to protect it. You will die, if necessary, to protect it. Those points may not be in your friend’s checklist.”
“Fully understood,” she replied. Something about the way he said that chilled her. Then again, everything about this man was a little off-putting. ”But there may be tracking mechanisms embedded in the MoleS operation that can lead us to Rassin. Some angle, some component my colleague might think of. Something I can pass along to your people to investigate.”
She said that a little stubbornly, she hoped.
It took a moment but Trask relaxed. The smile returned. He released her hand. He studied her for what felt like an interminably long time. “Do you understand the instructions, or must they come from your Director?”
A man did not go from being a wealthy dilettante to a major power broker without having a will of iron.
“I understand, Mr. Trask,” she replied. She did not want her disobedience booted up to the director.
“And you’ll follow those instructions?” he added. It wasn’t so much a question as a command.
“Of course,” she said—a little too obediently to sit well on the conscience, but that was what was needed. Muloni also appreciated—despite the part of her that hated the reality of it—that she was an African American woman of Muslim heritage who was being given an opportunity to land some very big game. That was the kind of takedown that made careers and helped to dispel Islamophobia inside the Company and out.
Trask continued smiling “You will wait at your hotel until we receive an update on your target.”
“Hotel, sir?”
“In New York,” he said. “There is no time to waste. Elisabeth has the details of your flight, your hotel, and the number of the taxicab that will be waiting for you. The driver’s name is Shrevnitz. He will have a weapon for you. There are clothes and cash already in your room. There will also be a Minotaur phone in a desk drawer. Please use that for any calls pertinent to the mission.”
“Yes, sir,” Muloni said. She turned and retrieved her telephone. When she turned back, Trask was already at the door.
“Have a safe and successful trip,” he said.
“Thank you,” she replied to his back.
Robinson eased in as Trask strode out.
Something dangerous indeed, she thought. But then, people didn’t achieve what he had by being sweet and yielding.
Still, it was her life that was at risk. And whether he liked it or not, she might need to contact Reed Bishop.
Trask went to his study, which was at the far end of a long corridor. His footsteps fell lightly, briskly on the cherrywood floor. On the walls of the corridor were historical documents signed by each of the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence, a collection that ranged from a ship’s multi-language passport signed by John Adams to a receipt for hay signed by Arthur Middleton. Trask often stood in contemplation here, going from name to name, considering how these men of diverse backgrounds overcame their differences to agree on a defiant statement of liberty; how they risked their lives and the well-being of their families to turn a vision, an idea, into a reality.
That was how Jacob Trask had always lived his life, from the first aluminum spring trap he built as a young teenager to the fragmentation bullet he invented to help his sight-impaired grandfather bring down deer. That was what he was doing now.
He shut the heavy oak door and picked up the phone. He pressed a familiar speed-dial assignation.
“Yes, sir?” the voice on the other end answered.
“She’s on her way,” Trask told him. “Employ her as our lion if you can, as a lamb if it becomes necessary.”
“She was deferential?”
“Only to a point, as you said,” Trask told him. “She was prepared to challenge me on the mute order.”
“Just like in the terminal in Quebec,” the voice said. “A by-the-book team player ... until she’s not. We need to push her when she arrives.”
“Agreed. It must be this agent Bishop, then,” Trask said. “Are you certain you can get him?”
“Positive, Mr. Trask,” he said. “We’ve been watching him because he was involved in similar operations.”
“In what capacity?”
“Preventative, guarding against leaks on the inside,” the voice said. “We needed to get his eyes somewhere else while we made our move.”
“Why would the Bureau put a paper pusher on a field operation?” Trask asked.
“Because he is uniquely motivated for this job,” the voice said.
“In what way?”
The voice said, “His daughter was killed in Baltimore. The Bureau would assume, correctly, that he was not involved in the attack.”
The revelation about his daughter pinched. No suffering was greater than to see one’s child dead or dying or incapacitated. He had witnessed his own daughter in anguish. As a young girl, Kate had become increasingly withdrawn. The “highs” of childhood were smothered by her frequent tetchiness and insoluble feelings of hopelessness. She would lash out over insignificant, everyday actions, at least Trask thought they were, like the occasional grinding of her mother’s teeth during dinner or if she didn’t get an immediate response to a question. And Kate would somehow manage to sustain that seductive anger throughout the next few weeks, and sometimes into months.
At first, Trask assumed it was just his lack of experience in nurturing a little girl’s spirit, that perhaps as with his father, his stern comportment was better suited for rearing a boy. But as Kate developed and further removed herself from family, then friends, Trask noticed her issues begin to physically manifest themselves. She no longer had oomph throughout the day, and at night she had trouble sleeping, developing horrible, dark circles under her striking green eyes from staring through her angst all night. She would weep for hours and became increasingly paranoid that she was being analyzed and dissected by her parents. She stopped eating breakfast, then dinner, and lost alarming amounts of weight, when a girl her age should have begun blossoming. Trask and Eugenie could no longer ignore their daughter’s problems, nor could they continue to be argued away. Trask needed to be a concerned father and salvage his fragile daughter’s livelihood, to save her life
After many visits to the hospital for nutrient-infused intravenous therapy, among other recovery procedures, several doctors eventually concluded that she had an extreme case of hypomania: she was bipolar. Although relieved her condition wasn’t something terminal, but rather treatable, Trask couldn’t help but blame himself for her circumstances. Highs and lows were a fact of life he was familiar with, but he’d always had the tools to deal with those burdens, namely, projects and desires that kept him distracted from real life. Goals that kept his mind targeted on the bigger picture.
After many miserable months of trying to maintain Kate’s temperament through heavy medicating, and after her almost successful suicide attempt by overdosing on her pills, Trask was loosely referred by a friend to the radical Dr. Ayesha Gillani, who was curing patients with hypnotherapy, connecting new passageways through the tunnels in their conflicted minds, straightening the lines of their internal communication by gradually guiding them through a seemingly self-actuated choose-your-own-adventure-type scenario. Trask had his doubts, but he also had his hopes.
Dr. Gillani wasn’t too far removed from her Universität Heidelberg postgrad education at the time, a young woman in her early thirties whose light complexion, steel-blue eyes, and short dark hair, mixed with a spicy, almost cinnamon aroma, compounded her image into someone who could be trusted. She dressed professionally, wore very little makeup, no earrings or jewelry, apart from a classic Chanel watch. Simple and well manicured. And after only a few intricate sessions with Dr. Gillani, Kate’s psychologically charged disposition had been virtually rewired. She had been cured. In his daughter’s eyes, at least, Trask was now a hero.
But Trask had caused misery in the sons and daughters of others. Even the most hardened tribal warlord, refusing to become an informant, would change his mind when his young daughter was forced to watch her pet goat being skinned alive. Trask had studied the videotape that had been made of that little girl’s face. There was the key to world peace. There was the inspiration for this undertaking. Not her agony, but the agony of the mothers and fathers of September 11, of the USS Cole, of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where IEDs were used against good-hearted soldiers who were only trying to help packs of ignorant, thankless savages and their equally corrupt spawn.
“Mr. Trask?”
“I’m here,” he said. “The loss of his daughter would suggest, Agent, that Mr. Bishop will be preoccupied.”
“Not this man, sir,” the voice assured him. “Not Reed Bishop. I had my eye on him before this. His wife died when he was in Mumbai, investigating an agent’s death. He stayed with the case, and the funeral had to be postponed.”
“Did he solve that case?”
“He did.”
“Then you’d better be very, very careful,” Trask warned.
“Of course, sir. The Yasmin angle will only strengthen our hand.”
“All right,” Trask said. “We’ll talk later.”
“Good afternoon, sir.”
Trask hung up. The world around him was silent, conducive to reflection. It was a dangerous tactic they had embraced in the run-up to the mission, but Trask enjoyed the feeling it gave him. He hadn’t had that sense of risk for a very long time. He looked at his desk, at the photos of his own family. His wife, Eugenie, whom he adored, and their daughter, Kate. He didn’t know if he respected Bishop for tha
t or found him despicable.
Not that it mattered. What was most important now was the corridor outside his study door. The men who had risked so much. The names to which he hoped one day, in all humility, to add one more.
His own.
CHAPTER 12
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Reed Bishop was cold when he woke.
Cold and very hard of hearing.
His right cheek was on the cool cherrywood floor, his lips were dry, and his lungs were rasping. His body was ... naked, it felt like. His arms, legs, and back felt exposed.
And there was stuffing in his left ear. He moved his hand left, thinking to pull whatever was in there out, saw a cloud drift over.
What the hell? he thought.
Where was he? More importantly, where was his daughter? They had just been looking at someone, an older woman and her husband, talking to them... .
“Laura?” he said, though he wasn’t convinced he had spoken. It sounded more like a thought.
Still thinking of his daughter, he placed his palms against the floor, pushed, and was suddenly surrounded by a cloud.
Did I do that? How?
He raised his head, looked through the haze, didn’t see Laura to his left, didn’t see much of anything that looked familiar, only a jumble of debris. His neck went numb, and he let gravity pull his face down with a hard slap so he was staring across the floor again. With effort, he turned slowly to the right.
There was Laura, he thought with relief.
It looked as though she was sleeping. But she was white, covered with what looked like confectioners’ sugar. And ...
What?
There was only half of her. The top half. He screamed. This time he was sure, because it punched through the thickness in his ears and caused his throat to shake and cleared his head so he could hear the sobs and wails of others. As the dust thinned, he saw them, and more debris, and bodies and parts of bodies and a glaze of blood across everything, which ridiculously reminded him of raspberry drizzle, except for the blood that had pooled around Laura, where her legs used to be... .
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