Chapter 37 Jo
Jo
Agent Minnihan looked at the splintered doorframe and the fragments of wood littering the floor and he said: “I don’t want to know how this happened.”
“And I don’t want to tell you,” said Jo.
“You had no search warrant. You’re out of your jurisdiction—”
“Forget all that for the moment. We can deal with that later. Just go in there and take a look at what we found.”
Minnihan walked through the ruined doorframe and into the windowless room, where Declan and Ben stood waiting.
They watched as Minnihan surveyed the multiple computers, the spaghetti tangle of cords, the heavy-duty cable climbing toward the satellite dish on the roof.
Then he crossed to the open cabinet and stared at the rifles and suppressors, the 9mm handguns and boxes of ammo.
But what drew his attention was not the firearms but the stilettos, suspended by wires as delicate as strands of hair.
“Just like the one that killed Karen O’Brien,” said Declan.
“Did any of you touch this stuff?” Minnihan snapped.
“We left everything right where it is in that cabinet. Hannah Murray’s fingerprints should be on all of these items. Now we’d like to know how the FBI failed to find out who Hannah Murray really is. Didn’t you people run a background check on her?”
“Of course we did. We ran backgrounds on all the hotel employees, plus the guest speakers and the out-of-town attendees. We waded through a very long list of suspects.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” said Ben. “How did Hannah Murray escape your notice?”
“There was nothing in her background check that set off any alarms.”
“Seriously?”
“Look, I went back and reviewed her file. Everything seemed perfectly legit. She was born fifty-two years ago in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Parents were Deborah and George Murray, both now deceased. No siblings, and no first-degree relatives who are still alive. She graduated from a community college in Philly, and before moving to New England, she held a series of hotel jobs on the East Coast, but it seems she’s recently been using this house as a home base.
There were absolutely no red flags, nothing to make us take a second look.
On paper, she looked like any other natural-born American. ”
“Except she isn’t, is she?” said Declan. “Not American. And not born here.”
“How did you know that?”
“An educated guess.”
Minnihan sighed. “You people.”
“Did you locate her death certificate?” asked Ben.
Minnihan rubbed his forehead, as if trying to stave off a massive headache. “Yes. A few hours ago, after you called me. Hannah Murray died of bacterial meningitis when she was sixteen months old.”
“And our Hannah Murray is a dead double.”
“It appears so,” Minnihan admitted. “She took on the identity of the deceased child. Obtained a birth certificate, Social Security number, and carried on from there. Community college. Employment.”
“That’s not so easy to do these days, with advanced biometrics,” said Declan. “The Russians must have inserted her into the country decades ago, when she could still pass as a college student.”
“That took a lot of advance planning,” said Minnihan.
“Oh, they’ve been doing this for a very long time. They probably have illegals all over this country, just waiting for Moscow to activate them. They could go undiscovered for their entire lives, unless they slip up.”
“I interviewed her and she completely fooled me,” said Jo. “She didn’t have any trace of an accent. She sounded American.”
“Probably due to native talent, plus rigorous language training,” said Ben. “These operatives are identified when they’re still children, and Moscow selects the ones with an aptitude for languages. She would’ve been groomed for years to speak without an accent. To pass as American.”
“All this, just to work as a hotel housekeeper?” said Jo.
“Consider the type of guests who stay in high-end hotels in DC or New York, where Hannah sometimes worked. Foreign diplomats, politicians, businessmen. Think of all the information you can collect from a hotel room: a guest’s medications, copies of their documents.
The Stone Coast Conference brought some high-value targets to Purity.
In particular, a certain bioweapons scientist that Moscow has long wanted dead.
Dr. Maslov wasn’t easy to reach in Uganda, where he was protected by UN security, and that trip was arranged hastily, just as the Ebola outbreak was picking up steam.
But it’s been known for months that Maslov would be speaking at the Stone Coast Conference, so Moscow had time to move Hannah into place, and to deliver a supply of polonium to her.
All she had to do was plant a bottle of polonium-laced water in Maslov’s hotel room. ”
“But you never found a bottle,” said Jo.
“She must have removed it after Maslov drank it,” said Declan. “To get rid of the evidence.”
Jo pictured the sequence of events late Friday night: Maslov, sick and vomiting in his room. Hannah, slipping in to retrieve the empty water bottle. But at that moment, someone else showed up in that same hotel hallway, delivering a room service meal to a guest a few doors away.
“Karen O’Brien must have seen her,” said Jo. “She was a witness. That’s why she had to be killed.”
“That makes sense,” said Minnihan. “Yes, that would explain everything.”
“Not everything,” said Ben. “We still don’t know how Ingrid became a target. But at least we know who we’re looking for. We just have to—” He stopped and looked down at his ringing cell phone.
Now Declan’s phone was ringing as well.
Simultaneous calls. This can’t be good, thought Jo as she watched both men answer their phones. She saw Declan’s face suddenly go gray. Saw him reel backward, as if he’d been slammed with a body blow.
“What?” said Jo. “What’s happened?”
In all the time she’d known Declan Rose, she’d never seen him at a loss for words. He was the Martini Club’s peacekeeper, the diplomatic charmer who was always ready with a smile and an affable quip. Now he just stared at her, too anguished to utter a word.
It was Ben who answered her question. “Maggie’s missing.”