And she couldn’t move them at all. Was she paralyzed?
A moment later she realized what had happened. Van Hutten had placed her in a straitjacket. The heavy white garment constricted her arms tightly and the straps were buckled around her back, with a strap between her legs. Van Hutten had cut out the section of elastic in the front of her panties with a scissors, removing the vital signs monitor, bug, and transmitter.
And he had used several long plastic zip-strips to tie her to her heavy desk. What was going on?
Van Hutten’s resume was well known. He didn’t have any military training. He was a highly regarded physicist, not a spy or a double agent. Yet he had carried out his attack with precision and had used nylon ties favored by police forces and the military.
Then again, thought Kira, anyone with a brain and an Internet connection could become marginally proficient at just about anything these days.
But why was he doing this? Had he gone mad?
Van Hutten returned, pulling a large red wagon, the kind a five-year-old child might play with. Inside the wagon sat several containers, about the size of the clear plastic jugs used in office water coolers, filled with a dense liquid that reeked of petroleum and polystyrene. He had a pump mechanism and sprayed the liquid liberally around the room, before moving into the next, his pace brisk.
Kira fought to get free, but it was hopeless. And the more she struggled the greater the amount of noxious fumes she breathed in. Van Hutten was going to torch the place, that was certain. But would he leave her inside when he did?
How could they have been so wrong about Anton van Hutten? He tested as a good man with a stable personality.
Kira had never felt so violated. This building was their sanctuary. They had state-of-the art electronic security protecting it, but if anyone within Icarus was to turn traitor, which apparently had happened, their security wouldn’t be difficult to defeat. A traitor could figure it out while enhanced and encode instructions to themselves as part of their notes.
They had made the classic mistake, the mistake of Julius Caesar, who was unmatched as a general, survived many a battle against mighty armies, but who was brought down from within by someone he had trusted.
Van Hutten finally returned, fifteen minutes later. He cut her loose from the desk and pointed the stun gun at her. “You need to come with me,” he said gently, his tone and expression conveying nothing but sadness and regret.
He marched her to the back of a van that was similar to the one they used to shuttle visitors back and forth to the airport, containing no windows, and secured her inside. The van smelled of the chemical mix van Hutten was using as a fire accelerant.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this,” he said with all the sincerity in the world. And then he slid the door closed and began driving, pausing only long enough to throw a makeshift torch out of the window and onto a shallow puddle of the liquid he had brought.
***
“Frey was big into saltwater fishing,” said Cohen. “Even bragged about an annual trip he took to Costa Rica to spearfish, using scuba equipment and a spear gun.”
Desh glanced at Connelly. He wasn’t surprised that Frey would get more satisfaction from being able to personally control a spear and watch it plunge into his prey than from having fish bite a stationary hook out of his sight.
“And he had his own boat,” continued Cohen. “For the more traditional fishing, which he did all the time. He docked it in Baltimore.”
“What size boat?” asked Desh.
“Not huge, but high quality. I heard once it cost him almost a hundred thousand dollars. Supposedly very fast.”
“Do you know how often he used it?” asked Desh, as his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Two vibrations, followed by a brief pause, followed by two vibrations again. This was the code they had programmed their central computer to use when a member of Icarus was in trouble. Connelly was just pulling his own phone out with a worried look on his face.
“I’m not sure exactly,” replied Cohen, “but I’d say about—”
“Hold that thought,” interrupted Desh. “Can I use your bathroom?”
“Certainly,” said Cohen, eyeing Desh with a note of disapproval, as if wondering how bad his bathroom emergency had to be that he couldn’t let him finish his sentence. “It’s around the corner to the right.”
Desh removed his phone as he entered the bathroom and scrolled to the proper screen. It was a vital signs alert. Kira had been rendered unconscious. According to the algorithm, she had been shot with a stun gun. Either that or struck by lightning; a possibility that Desh dismissed immediately. And her bug wasn’t transmitting.
Desh scrolled to another screen. After he had discovered Kira’s clandestine activities, he had installed cameras to spy on her. The footage was stored temporarily on a secure Internet site, which he could access from his phone. But he was interested only in what was being transmitted at this moment. He tapped into the transmission and checked three different views.
His breath caught in his throat.
Kira was unconscious, and someone was strapping her into a straightjacket.
It was Anton van Hutten.
Desh didn’t wait to see more. He rushed from the bathroom.
Had the physicist gone mad?
Desh glanced meaningfully at Connelly and turned quickly to their host. “Thanks for your time, Dr. Cohen,” he said. “But an urgent matter has come up that I need to attend to.” Desh walked briskly to the front door and threw it open. “I’ll give you a call as soon as possible,” he finished as he and Connelly rushed to their car.
***
Jake was meeting in his office with his second in command when a light flickered on his office phone. Line four. This was a line he reserved for his Steve Henry alias, a key false identity. He rarely used it for outgoing calls, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had an incoming call on this line.
“I need to get this,” he said to Kolke, pressing a button that would put the call on the speaker. “Steve Henry,” he said.
“Steve, this is Gill Fisher, Denver fire chief. We spoke a few weeks ago.”
Jake eyed Kolke questioningly. Kolke spread his hands and shrugged. He had no idea what this could be about either.
“What can I do for you Chief Fisher?”
“Something’s come up that I thought you might want to know about. It’s the damndest thing. We’re currently battling a fire at a facility that’s the spitting image of the one that was cratered a few weeks ago. The one you asked me to treat with maximum discretion. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was the same building. And it’s a nasty one. Like a grease fire, but worse. Almost like homemade Greek fire.”
“So you’re saying it’s arson?”
“No question about it. And there’s a warehouse about eighty yards to the east that’s burning the same way. Since they aren’t connected, this is even more evidence for arson.”
Kolke and Jake eyed each other in dismay. Icarus had duplicate facilities. A nearly identical main building could have been a coincidence—an unlikely one, yes, but still a possibility. But the presence of a warehouse at the same distance as the other set-up made it a certainty. Not only had Miller and Desh escaped, Jake and his men hadn’t even bombed the right facility. They had been operating under the assumption that Miller and Desh were reeling, without a headquarters and on the run. But they had been played for fools once again.