Steven James - The Queen

No email from Natasha either.

And nothing from Angela.

“Agent Bowers. The email was sent.”

“No…”

Oh.

Wait.

This morning Alexei hacked into your account.

No!

“Chekov might have gotten into my account, downloaded the file.”

“How could he get access to your email?”

“He has a source. An inside man. I don’t know who.”

Valkyrie?

Is Valkyrie someone in our government?

I told Margaret the address of a gmail account I keep so I don’t have to give credit card companies my Bureau address. “Resend the file. I’ll download it from there.”

“I’m not at my desk.” I noted the change in her tone that you hear when someone you’re talking with on the phone starts moving around. “It’ll take me a minute to log into my office computer.”

“Did you know Cassandra Lillo traveled up here with Becker Hahn, one of the Eco-Tech activists?”

A pause. “I hadn’t heard that.”

“Her father was-”

“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.