The Patrick Bowers Files - 05 - The Queen (51 page)

“I know who her father was. Sebastian Taylor.”

“An assassin.”

“Yes.”

“And he trained her to kill, just like—”

“Yes.” Impatience in her voice. “I've read the files.”

“After you send me the schematics, can you get in touch with the CIA and see if Taylor was ever on an assignment at a location where Chekov might have been present?”

“You think they're related?”

“Taylor and Chekov—both assassins—then Taylor's daughter shows up here while Chekov is in the area? It seems like too much of a coincidence for them not to be connected somehow.”

I remembered my conversation with Angela and her list of who she thought might be able to hack into a nuclear sub, and, taking everything I knew about this case and the one in San Diego into account, I tried to process the implications.

Cassandra Lillo? Could she be Valkyrie?

Someone hacked into the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation computers to help her escape . . . Someone called Ardis's phone from Egypt, accessed the DoD's Routine Orbital Satellite Database . . . The name Dana Murkowski didn't raise any red flags at the airport . . .

You'd need a world-class hacker to do all that.

A world-class hacker.

It felt like the puzzle pieces should have been interlocking before my eyes, but I still couldn't see the big picture.

Truth often hides in the crevices of the evident.

“One more thing. This is going to sound crazy, but Terry Manoji. Find out from the CIA if he's still alive. I'm wondering if—”

“He is.”

“What?”

“He awoke from the coma four months ago.”

I pounded the arm of the chair I was sitting in. “How come you never told me!” The people near the front desk looked my way, offered me judgmental looks, then returned to their conversation.

“Do not raise your voice at me, Agent Bowers.” Margaret's tone was cold and censorious. “It was not your concern. Terry Manoji's contacts in China have close ties to three terrorist groups in Pakistan, one of which is Al Qaeda. The CIA concluded it would be in the best interests of national security to keep his existence and his whereabouts a secret.”

“All right.” This was unbelievable. “I hear what you're saying, but where is he?”

“Don't worry, he's at a secure loca—”

“Don't give me that, Margaret, you know—”

“Enough, Patrick.”

Through the window I saw the blue-red-blue flicker of overhead lights from an approaching cruiser.

Julianne. Finally.

“He was in a coma,” I said. “Is he still in a hospital? Still recovering? Because if he is, nearly every one of their systems would be connected to the internet, and anything that's connected to the internet can be hacked into. Given enough time he would find a way to get in—”

I caught myself in the middle of my thought.

Anything that's connected to the internet can be hacked.

Hacked into.

One keystroke away from Armageddon.

“Margaret, all the indicators are pointing toward someone sending an ELF signal to one of our subs. We have to assume it's—”

“That's covered,” she replied. “The DoD raised the alert level to DEFCON 2.”

“Have 'em raise it again.”

“Patrick,” she responded curtly. “The military needs evidence not just conjecture to make an escalatory decision like that.”

I wanted Julianne to help me clear the other part of the basement, make sure no one from Eco-Tech was still lurking downstairs. I started toward the door.

Becker has no history of violence, but Cassandra does. There were two sets of boot prints outside the laundry room of Donnie's house. She was there.

“This guy Becker Hahn was at the Pickron home, and Cassandra, Terry's old partner, is working with him.” The clues were like filaments, narrow, encircling each other, dancing, flirting, never quite touching. “The call to Ardis's phone following the murders on Thursday came from Egypt. If that's where Terry's being held, I'd say that's enough evidence to move forward.”

Margaret didn't reply immediately. “I'll get the schematics to you and track down Terry Manoji. You—find a way to get to that base.”

Julianne arrived, and after we'd confirmed that the other section of the basement was unoccupied, I took Weatherford to her car and had her lock him in the backseat so we wouldn't have to keep an eye on him when we went to get Kayla Tatum.

While Tessa worked at the fire, Amber sat beside her in chilly silence. It made Tessa uneasy and she knew she needed to do something, say something to help her. But she had no idea what in the world that might be.

Three armed CIA agents burst into Terry Manoji's room, strapped his wrists to the arms of his wheelchair, and began methodically searching the room.

Despite himself, Terry felt a tiny wisp of concern.

Without consulting his phone he didn't know exactly what time it was, but he did know that in less than forty-five minutes Cassandra would be sending the ELF signal and eleven minutes after that Jerusalem would cease to exist and he would be free—but someone had obviously tipped off the CIA that something was up.

Terry's phone was tucked beneath one of his useless thighs. As long as the men kept him restrained in the wheelchair he would be all right.

But if they decided to move him to the bed, it would be another story.

As he watched the CIA agents scour the room, he began to quietly formulate an appropriate response in the event that they tried to transfer him out of the chair.

8:20 p.m.

40 minutes until the transmission

Julianne Doerr and I arrived in the room where Alexei had left Kayla.

Officer Doerr, a sturdy, serious-looking woman in her early forties, reassured Kayla, “I'm going to take you to the hospital so we can make sure you're all right.”

But even as she said that I realized that in the spate of phone calls over the last few minutes, I hadn't been thinking clearly. You never let a victim ride in a police car with a suspect and you never let a civilian ride in the front of a cruiser, so if Julianne took Kayla to the hospital, Weatherford would need to stay here with Lien-hua and me—but that wouldn't work, since Margaret had been clear that she wanted us to find a way to get to the ELF base.

Quickly, I called Natasha again, arranged for her to come over and transport Kayla to the hospital. Officer Doerr agreed to take Weatherford to the sheriff's department for questioning, since he was already in her car, then she and Lien-hua helped Kayla, who was still somewhat groggy, to her feet.

On the way up the stairs, I thought about Becker Hahn, Alexei, Cassandra, Terry; the loose, tangential web of associations that seemed to tie them all together.

And Valkyrie? Where did Valkyrie fit in? Was there psychological significance to the code name after all, as Lien-hua had postulated?

I like cases in which facts are solid, verifiable; you lock them into place and move on; you discover a truth that you can't disprove and it gives you a basis on which to build your investigation. However, this week I felt out of my element, forced to deal with facts that didn't quite mesh and hypotheses that squirmed out of my grasp as soon as I tried to pin them down.

Maybe I did need to trust my instincts more.

When we hit the lobby, Lien-hua and Julianne waited with Kayla for Natasha to arrive, and I flipped open my laptop to check my gmail account to see if the information from Margaret had come.

It had.

She'd sent a short text message with an attached, password-protected PDF file. In her note she mentioned that the CIA's analysts hadn't found any evidence of instances in which Taylor and Chekov's paths might have crossed. Also, they were sending their interrogators to Terry's room “to confirm that he has had no access to the internet.”

I unlocked the PDF file, and though only moments earlier I'd been optimistic that the schematics would help us, now that I was finally able to examine them, I found their thoroughness and attention to detail frustratingly disappointing.

There were three levels to the underground base, that much was clear: an entry bay for some kind of freight elevator that led to the surface, a middle level of crew quarters, and a command center and power generation facility below that. Eight tunnels led from the facility, but there was no clear indication of where—if anywhere—they might be accessed.

These can't be the most detailed or up-to-date files.

Why would Margaret send me these?

As I studied the diagrams, Natasha arrived. Julianne led Kayla to her and Lien-hua strode toward me.

The underground ELF base was located near the coordinates in the center of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest where the aboveground station had been.
The forest service roads haven't been plowed, we'll never be able to get there by—

“Well?” Lien-hua stood beside me, and I tilted my laptop so she could see the screen. She studied it. “Is that the only entrance?”

“It's the only one visible on this set of maps.” I pointed to the tunnels that spread away from the station. “But I find it hard to believe that there would only be one way into the base.”

“Always leave an escape route.”

“Right.”

“Where do the tunnels terminate?”

I shook my head. “There's no way to tell.”

Unless—

“Hang on.” I closed my eyes and visualized the topography of the area surrounding the old ELF site, evaluating the terrain and comparing it to the snowmobile trail map I'd studied my first night up here. Carefully, I rotated both maps in my mind, overlaying the features.

Donnie took longer than he needed to when getting to work on Mondays and Fridays . . .

“They would have to staff the station . . .” I said, thinking aloud. “That means getting people into and out of the base undetected. But in such a small, close-knit community, how could you do that?”

Opening my eyes I studied the schematics again, scrutinizing the precise geographic orientation of the tunnels. “Where could strangers regularly arrive and leave from without raising any red flags?” I mumbled, but even as I said the words I realized where one of the tunnels, if it were long enough, would lead.

“Oh, Lien-hua, that's it.”

“What? What are you thinking?”

“Renovations in 2004. It would have been the perfect time to—”

She gave me a sudden look of comprehension. “What? You mean here? The hotel?”

“A National Historic Landmark can't be torn down. The government was protecting its investment.” I was on my way to the door, laptop in hand.

“Where are you going?” She quickened her pace to catch up with me.

“Weatherford. He knows more than he's been letting on.”