Dan Brown - Deception Point

“Two ppm?” Corky blurted. “Meteorites have thousands of times that!”

“Exactly,” Xavia replied. “Which is why Pollock thinks his sample’s chondrules are not from space.”

Tolland leaned over and whispered to Corky, “Did NASA happen to measure the titanium/zirconium ratio in the Milne rock?”

“Of course not,” Corky sputtered. “Nobody would ever measure that. It’s like looking at a car and measuring the tires’ rubber content to confirm you’re looking at a car!”

Tolland heaved a sigh and looked back at Xavia. “If we give you a rock sample with chondrules in it, can you run a test to determine whether these inclusions are meteoric chondrules or... one of Pollock’s deep ocean compression things?”

Xavia shrugged. “I suppose. The electron microprobe’s accuracy should be close enough. What’s this all about, anyway?”

Tolland turned to Corky. “Give it to her.”

Corky reluctantly pulled the meteorite sample from his pocket and held it out for Xavia.

Xavia’s brow furrowed as she took the stone disk. She eyed the fusion crust and then the fossil embedded in the rock. “My God!” she said, her head rocketing upward. “This isn’t part of...?”

“Yeah,” Tolland said. “Unfortunately it is.”

Alone in her office, Gabrielle Ashe stood at the window, wondering what to do next. Less than an hour ago, she had left NASA feeling full of excitement to share Chris Harper’s PODS fraud with the senator.

Now, she wasn’t so sure.

According to Yolanda, two independent ABC reporters suspected Sexton of taking SFF bribes. Furthermore, Gabrielle had just learned that Sexton actually knew she had snuck into his apartment during the SFF meeting, and yet he had said nothing to her about it?

Gabrielle sighed. Her taxi had long since departed, and although she would call another in a few minutes, she knew there was something she had to do first.

Am I really going to try this?

Gabrielle frowned, knowing she didn’t have a choice. She no longer knew whom to trust.

Stepping out of her office, she made her way back into the secretarial lobby and into a wide hallway on the opposite side. At the far end she could see the massive oak doors of Sexton’s office flanked by two flags—Old Glory on the right and the Delaware flag on the left. His doors, like those of most senate offices in the building, were steel reinforced and secured by conventional keys, an electronic key pad entry, and an alarm system.

She knew if she could get inside, even if for only a few minutes, all the answers would be revealed. Moving now toward the heavily secured doors, Gabrielle had no illusions of getting through them. She had other plans.

Ten feet from Sexton’s office, Gabrielle turned sharply to the right and entered the ladies’ room. The fluorescents came on automatically, reflecting harshly off the white tile. As her eyes adjusted, Gabrielle paused, seeing herself in the mirror. As usual, her features looked softer than she’d hoped. Delicate almost. She always felt stronger than she looked.

Are you sure you are ready to do this?

Gabrielle knew Sexton was eagerly awaiting her arrival for a complete rundown on the PODS situation. Unfortunately, she also now realized that Sexton had deftly manipulated her tonight. Gabrielle Ashe did not like being managed. The senator had kept things from her tonight. The question was how much. The answers, she knew, lay inside his office—just on the other side of this restroom wall.

“Five minutes,” Gabrielle said aloud, mustering her resolve.

Moving toward the bathroom’s supply closet, she reached up and ran a hand over the door frame. A key clattered to the floor. The cleaning crews at Philip A. Hart were federal employees and seemed to evaporate every time there was a strike of any sort, leaving this bathroom without toilet paper and tampons for weeks at a time. The women of Sexton’s office, tired of being caught with their pants down, had taken matters into their own hands and secured a supply room key for “emergencies.”

Tonight qualifies, she thought.

She opened the closet.

The interior was cramped, packed with cleansers, mops, and shelves of paper supplies. A month ago, Gabrielle had been searching for paper towels when she’d made an unusual discovery. Unable to reach the paper off the top shelf, she’d used the end of a broom to coax a roll to fall. In the process, she’d knocked out a ceiling tile. When she climbed up to replace the tile, she was surprised to hear Senator Sexton’s voice.

Crystal clear.

From the echo, she realized the senator was talking to himself while in his office’s private bathroom, which apparently was separated from this supply closet by nothing more than removable, fiberboard ceiling tiles.

Now, back in the closet tonight for far more than toilet paper, Gabrielle kicked off her shoes, climbed up the shelves, popped out the fiberboard ceiling tile, and pulled herself up. So much for national security, she thought, wondering how many state and federal laws she was about to break.

Lowering herself through the ceiling of Sexton’s private restroom, Gabrielle placed her stockinged feet on his cold, porcelain sink and then dropped to the floor. Holding her breath, she exited into Sexton’s private office.

His oriental carpets felt soft and warm.

Thirty miles away, a black Kiowa gunship chopper tore over the scrub pine treetops of northern Delaware. Delta-One checked the coordinates locked in the auto navigation system.

Although Rachel’s shipboard transmission device and Pickering’s cellphone were encrypted to protect the contents of their communication, intercepting content had not been the goal when the Delta Force pulse-snitched Rachel’s call from sea. Intercepting the caller’s position had been the goal. Global Positioning Systems and computerized triangulation made pinpointing transmission coordinates a significantly easier task than decrypting the actual content of the call.

Delta-One was always amused to think that most cellphone users had no idea that every time they made a call, a government listening post, if so inclined, could detect their position to within ten feet anywhere on earth—a small hitch the cellphone companies failed to advertise. Tonight, once the Delta Force had gained access to the reception frequencies of William Pickering’s cellular phone, they could easily trace the coordinates of his incoming calls.

Flying now on a direct course toward their target, Delta-One closed to within twenty miles. “Umbrella primed?” he asked, turning to Delta-Two, who was manning the radar and weapons system.

“Affirmative. Awaiting five-mile range.”

Five miles, Delta-One thought. He had to fly this bird well within his target’s radar scopes to get within range to use the Kiowa’s weapons systems. He had little doubt that someone onboard the Goya was nervously watching the skies, and because the Delta Force’s current task was to eliminate the target without giving them a chance to radio for help, Delta-One now had to advance on his prey without alarming them.

At fifteen miles out, still safely out of radar range, Delta-One abruptly turned the Kiowa thirty-five degrees off course to the west. He climbed to three thousand feet—small airplane range—and adjusted his speed to 110 knots.

On the deck of the Goya , the Coast Guard helicopter’s radar scope beeped once as a new contact entered the ten-mile perimeter. The pilot sat up, studying the screen. The contact appeared to be a small cargo plane headed west up the coast.