Chapter 35
“She’s back,” Piper said when we returned to the boat.
“Kara?” I said with surprise.
“She doesn’t look too good either,” she said, making a grave face.
“Where is she?”
“In her stateroom, I guess.”
I cringed. “I’ll go check on her.”
“Take a look at this first.”
We huddled around her laptop at the bar on the sky deck.
"Yan Zheng is funded by the Chinese government,” Piper said. "It looks like he's part of an operation making large land purchases across the United States in close proximity to military bases.”
"That's nothing new," Jack said. "We’ve known about that kind of thing for a long time."
"Yes, but this talks about strategic plans for drone attacks deployed from those sites against U.S. military installations,” Piper said.
“This is hard, concrete evidence. The marina Mr. Yan was looking at here is a perfect place to launch a drone strike on the nearby naval base.” Piper paused, looking over the data on her laptop.
“Now I can't discern if there is an actual attack planned, or if these are just contingencies in case of a future event. Either way, it poses a national security risk.”
"We need to get this information to the proper authorities,” Jack said.
I said, “Perhaps Kara can cut a deal for immunity."
“Immunity isn’t going to do her much good at the moment.” In a hushed voice, he said, “We don’t know she didn’t kill Zheng.”
“We don’t know that she did.”
"I'm trying to make sense of all this. Let's just say the CIA hired Kara to seduce Mr. Yan, access classified information, and deliver it. They poisoned her to cut the trail, so it wouldn’t lead back to them. Some kind of plausible deniability. But why kill Mr. Yan? Makes no sense. Draws too much attention.”
“I'm thinking it wasn’t the CIA,” I said.
“If it’s not the Company, who is it?”
“I have theories about that. Someone who wanted to crash global markets or start a war.”
“I tell you, I would have shorted the market if I knew this was coming,” Jack said.
My phone buzzed with a call from Isabella.
"I got a hit on that chemical structure you sent me. It's a toxin developed by the CIA and the Defense Research Initiative for covert assassinations. Hard to detect. Looks natural. Won’t get picked up on a standard tox screen. Death will look like a stroke, heart attack, aneurysm.”
The info made me reevaluate my theory. "So the Company is responsible?”
"I'm not saying that. I’ve done some digging, and I can't find any information on an operation like this. If it does exist, it is way off the books. Perhaps another private clandestine agency is handling it. Perhaps they are the ones who hired and poisoned Kara. If that's the case, their OPSEC is fantastic, ‘cause I'm not hearing any chatter, and they haven’t left a trail.” Isabella paused. “There’s something else. There’s a slight alteration in the chemical structure of the toxin. This could be a modified, gen 2 version. Leaner, meaner, and more lethal.”
I sighed. “Great.”
“The news gets better,” she said dryly. “No cure. No known antidote.”
I cringed. “There’s got to be something that can be done.”
“You need to track down Dr. Vernon Malcom. He’s the chemist who created the damn thing. Did a lot of contract work for DRI and CIA. It’s a long shot, but he might know a way to counteract the effects.”
“Where do I find him?”
“He’s in your neck of the woods. But he can be a little hard to pin down.
He's an anchor-out liveaboard and moves around quite a bit. No cell phone, and I haven't been able to connect a burner phone to him. The boat registered in his name is a 42-foot sailboat named Covalent Bond. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t like to be found. I'll keep looking into this.”
"Is he still working for the Company?"
"Not officially. But who knows? There's something funny about this scenario, that’s for sure. Give me enough time, I'll figure it out."
"I don't need to remind you, time is in short supply."
"I'm aware.”
“By the way, I’ve got intel that needs to get into the right hands,” I said.
“Did you crack the encryption?”
“Yep. Well, not me personally, but…”
“What about the beacon?”
I called to Piper, “Is the beacon disabled?”
“I wouldn’t be good at my job if it wasn’t.”
“Yep,” I said to Isabella with enthusiasm.
“Sounds juicy. What did you find?”
I told her.
“Send it to me. I’ll make sure it gets to the right people. This is a big deal. Especially with the current climate.” Then she added, “Who’s your hacker? I can always use a good asset.”
I handed the phone to Piper and let them chat, then went below deck to check on Kara. I knocked on the hatch, and she groaned.
I cracked open the door and peered inside. Kara stirred from a nap. She peeled open weary eyes and gazed at me.
"How are you feeling?”
"Tired.”
"Wasn't sure you were coming back."
"I had to get out and clear my head for a bit. Don't worry, I wasn't followed back here. I didn't break any laws while I was out, if that's what you're worried about.”
I chuckled, then told her Piper had cracked the encryption. I filled her in on the scenario, including the toxin.
She perked up. "Where's this chemist, and how soon can we get to him?"