Maden Mike - Tom Clancy Firing Point

“And we can assume the two deaths are related?”

“I’ve seen it before. There’s a wedding ring on Dr. Hopkins’s hand. Something went wrong here with Mr. Okwi, Hopkins panics, doesn’t know what to do, instantly imagines the scandal, his wife—children, I suppose—and he’s overwhelmed at the prospects of trials, jail, shame. He isn’t the first person to take the easy way out.”

Moon glanced at the corpse. “I’m not sure I’d call that easy.”

“Yes, quite.”

“And the laptop?”

He nodded toward a large, imposing figure standing guard at a small desk where Hopkins’s laptop rested, unopened. “It’s in the custody of Sergeant Lavin. It hasn’t left his person since we spoke.”

Moon glanced back at the corpse. The iron-hard urgency set in her face faded for a moment. She knew Stanley Hopkins, his charming wife, Sally, and their three adorable young children. She had dined with them only just last month, celebrating Sally’s birthday. Stanley was indeed a brilliant mathematician on the far frontier of quantum cybersecurity. But he was obviously a devoted husband and father, too—something you can’t fake. Drugs, sex, and suicide just didn’t fit his profile.

“You just never know about people, do you?” DCI May said, reading her mind. “It’s a tragedy, certainly. You knew him?”

Moon stiffened, realizing her mask had slipped. “Who else in your department knows about any of this?”

“Myself, Sergeant Lavin, two SOCOs, two constables. Why?”

“Has any evidence or any material been removed from the loft?”

“Not yet.”

“My department is taking over, as a matter of national security. Top priority.”

DCI May’s genteel charm suddenly hardened into something else.

“This is our case, Ms. Moon. It’s simply not possible—”

“Commissioner Grimes will be in contact with you shortly to verify. I want you to gather up your people and vacate the premises immediately. I need you and your team to forget all of this, and to never discuss it with anybody or put any of it in writing under penalty of law. There was no Stanley Hopkins or Joseph Okwi. There was no forensic evidence and no laptop. There was no crime and no suicide. Am I clear?”

The muscle in May’s jaw clenched. “Perfectly.”

“Excellent. And one more thing.”

“Ma’am?”

“I was never here.”

31

BARCELONA, SPAIN

Jack called for a taxi—ride-hailing services like Uber were unavailable in the city. The driver was Colombian and spoke no English, but it wasn’t a problem. Jack showed him his apartment address on his phone and off they went.

The driver was friendly enough and tried to make conversation with Jack. As they made their way toward the old city, he slowed his Spanish down enough that Jack could actually understand him somewhat. The man was from Bogotá and had been living in Spain for seven years, and also that he had a wife and two small niñas at home.

The Colombian cursed as the traffic suddenly halted near the Plaça de Catalunya. It wasn’t hard to guess why. It was another protest, one of several that had erupted over the last month, drawing hundreds of thousands of citizens from all over the region.

The sidewalks were jammed with people, many of them wearing the white-starred red-and-yellow flags of Catalonian independence draped over their shoulders like capes. A lot of young people, Jack saw, but also parents pushing strollers or walking with their school-age kids. Scattered throughout were middle-aged folks and also senior citizens who ambled more slowly with their canes and patriotic hats.

The longer they sat there in the cab, the bigger the crowd became, all moving toward the historic plaza. Many carried handheld flags. A few waved banners proclaiming liberty and democracy or demanding free speech or the release of political prisoners. A few banners were anarchist, and fewer still flew the hammer and sickle.

Mostly people were laughing and talking excitedly. People were flowing through the streets past both sides of the taxi like a rock in the middle of a river. No one was angry or screaming. No fist pounding, no sloganeering, no lighting of Molotov cocktails. There was an incredibly positive energy in the air. Jack didn’t see or sense any rage or revolutionary impulse. If he didn’t know any better, he’d swear these people were headed to a sold-out FC Barcelona soccer match.

The taxi driver turned around. Jack didn’t need a Spanish dictionary to figure out what he was going to say.

“Yeah, I get it. Time to get out and walk.” Jack checked the meter and pulled out his wallet, glad that he’d stopped by an ATM on the way to breakfast with Brossa. He counted out enough bills to pay it along with a twenty-percent tip, though he’d been told that tipping taxis wasn’t necessary in Spain. He didn’t care. He was raised to respect working-class people and to show it by being generous whenever possible.

Jack opened the door carefully so as not to bang into one of the protesters streaming by. He leaned back into the taxi and thanked the driver, wishing him buena suerte, amigo because he was going to be stuck here for hours and was gonna need it.

Jack joined the crowd as tens of thousands of people flowed toward the grand square. He could see the armored riot police and their vehicles positioned on one end of the plaza. He’d read about earlier protests and some of them had turned violent because of hooligans trying to cause trouble. But today was different. Or so he hoped.

But a thought suddenly crossed Jack’s mind. With so many people crowding into the area, and traffic-jammed streets fronted by crowded restaurants, shops, and apartments, this would make one hell of a target for Brigada Catalan.

Jack wasn’t afraid of an explosion so much as the panicked response of several thousand people if a bomb was detonated. As much as he’d like to hang around and actually observe the unfolding of a mass democratic protest—he’d never witnessed anything like this in person—he thought better of it. Anything could go wrong, and usually did at times like these. The last thing Jack wanted was to get clubbed or pepper-sprayed by an anxious cop fearing for his life and just trying to do his duty. He decided to get back to his place.

He checked his phone and found out where the underground metro station entrance was and tried to move in that direction. He might as well have tried swimming up the Niagara Falls. The closer he got to the entrance, the more people he was bumping into and the more densely packed they became, which made them less likely to move out of his way. He almost got into a fight with a couple of guys who thought he was trying to cause trouble. The underground metro station was still a hundred feet ahead but its street-level exit was spewing out people like a gushing fire hydrant. He abandoned the idea of the metro altogether.

It was time to find the least crowded side streets and hoof it. Jack made it two blocks when his phone vibrated. He popped in his AirPods.

“Gav, how are you, buddy?”

Gavin’s hippo yawn roared in Jack’s ears.

“Oh, man, sorry about that. I missed my nap today.”

“Yeah, I hate it when that happens. What’s up?”

“I think I found your guy, Sorry Man. His name is Dylan Runtso. Actually, Dr. Dylan Runtso. He got his Ph.D. from Princeton in quantum physics. He was traveling under a fake name and passport so it took me a while to ID him, and like you said, he’s been scrubbed from the standard facial-recog databases. Sorry it took so long.”

“Are you kidding me? Nothing to apologize for. This is fantastic news. Once again, I bow to your genius.”

“Don’t start bending over yet—wait, that didn’t come out right. What I mean is, I don’t have much more than that. He has Special Access Program clearance, along with SSBI, ANACI, and a half-dozen other clearances I didn’t even know existed until today. He’s supposed to self-report when he travels abroad, but from what I can tell, the only international destination he listed was Toronto for a science conference.”