“When Suzanna was first talking to me about her son, she referred to him as Robby, not Roddy.”
“Perhaps it was just a slip of the tongue.”
“Yes, perhaps. There’s something else. When I first overheard Suzanna, she was on the phone to Bomani. But her tone of voice was like someone talking to a colleague, rather than to the man who holds your child’s life in his hands. When she discovered I had stumbled in on the conversation, I would swear her tone switched… as if she was trying to sound like the one under control.”
“Have you told anyone? Director Hall?”
“No.”
Lilburn swung his legs off the bed and bent down to his clothes which lay crumpled on the floor. Inside his trouser pocket was his cellphone. He dialed Hall’s number; no reply. “I’ll keep trying. What security did they have on Lopez?”
“I didn’t notice anything. Now that you mention it, shouldn’t they at least have a guard with her?”
“Allan Hall wasn’t born yesterday. There’ll be something in place. Having her in home detention rather than locked up makes me believe he has covert surveillance in place. I need to speak to him first before I jump to conclusions. So… what say I order in a pizza?”
He started to rise from the bed but before he could hands grabbed him around his upper arm and pulled him so he ended up on his back. In an instant he was pinned down, her weight on top of him and a pair of silky smooth thighs brushing his ears.
“I’ve had the main course. Now I want my dessert!”
Chapter Thirty-three
With his hands reaching above his head until they hit the headboard, Lilburn gave a huge stretch, pushing the sheet over the bottom of the bed with his feet. He opened his eyes with the tiniest of narrow slits and light entered between sticky eyelashes. He yawned. Pulling his arms back down to his sides, he used one hand to flop down on what he assumed would be the thigh belonging to one very high performance female. Nothing. He patted again, but only made contact with the sheet. Fully opening his eyes he was greeted by an otherwise empty bed. The clock read 7:30 am in fluorescent orange. Crackling sounds could be heard coming from the kitchen and a distinctive smell wafted in.
Evangeline stood with her back to him dressed in nothing but one of his own shirts, turning over some bacon rashers in a hot sizzling pan. She hadn’t noticed the naked Lilburn. An opportunity, he thought, too good to miss. Sneaking up behind he wrapped his arms around her waist. Evangeline jumped, genuinely startled. Her hand holding the metal tongs which had been splattered in hot fat while turning the bacon involuntarily whipped up through the air and came down to a searing halt on his thigh.
“Shit, shit, hot!”
“Oh my gosh, Matt. I’m so sorry!” Evangeline’s surprise was followed by a fit of laughter.
“Nothing more than I deserved.”
“Well, good morning, Mr. Lilburn. I see we aren’t quite up to it this morning, are we.” Evangeline snapped the tongs together like a set of crab claws. “By the way, one thing you should know.”
“Can it wait?” He had other things on his mind.
“Buenos días. I have remembered your milk this morning…” The same motel worker was at the door. “¡Ay que hombre!”
Lilburn shot around to face the doorway. The lady was staring at Lilburn, her eyes resting just above the kitchen bench. At six foot two, Lilburn wished he was shorter.
“Aw crap!” He bent his knees.
“As I was saying… The one thing you should know? The door is open.”
“I leave the milk here, at the doorway.” With that the woman walked away. Ay ay ay — that gringo must have sex on the brain!
Director Allan Hall looked at the message on his mobile. He’d missed a call from Matt Lilburn, the evening before, who urgently wanted to contact him about Director Suzanna Lopez. It didn’t take him long to hit the intercom button and ask his secretary to organize a meeting at Lilburn’s earliest convenience.
“Take a seat, Matt. You should be enjoying your R&R, not working.”
“Thank you, sir. I was doing my best but Dr. Crawston and I have some concerns which I need to run by you. They involve Director Lopez.”
“I’m listening.”
“First we have the situation with her son. It’s difficult to fathom how the Takfir knew she had a son and we didn’t.”
“Have to agree with you there. It does seem unlikely they would know more about our own people than we do….”
“There’s more. Director Lopez has referred to her son by two different names. She said Roddy to me and Robby to Evangeline.”
“I see where you’re heading… maybe she doesn’t even have a son?”
Lilburn felt uneasy. “It’s looking more and more likely Lopez wasn’t being blackmailed into cooperating with the enemy but colluded with them of her own free will. When Evangeline discovered Lopez in the women’s toilets on the phone, she didn’t sound to her like someone who was being forced to do something, not subservient at all. We think…” The words didn’t come easy. “We think Lopez is part of their régime or at least sympathetic to it.”
“Jesus wept.” The director ran his thumb and forefinger over his forehead. “This sounds very fucking conclusive that we have a traitor within our ranks. And not just any traitor — but a senior one with access to some very sensitive information. CHRIST!” Hall rose from his chair and went over to the window overlooking the grounds.
Lilburn couldn’t see Hall’s face, but he was pretty sure it would show disbelief. He was also sure that when the director turned around it would be with a look as hard as stone, having already resiled to the fact that what he had just heard may be true.
He was right.
Hall abruptly turned around and strode back to his desk. Before sitting down he took a manila folder from one of the drawers and flung it down on the desk. Without uttering a word or looking at Lilburn, he took out a pipe and a tin of tobacco from another drawer. Lilburn watched as the director loaded his pipe then struck a match. Biting down on its stem he gave a few loud sucks; the flame from the match flickered down into the bowl with every draw of breath. Once the pipe was satisfactorily alight, Hall settled into a slow methodic cool puff. Picking up the folder he opened it, settled on a particular page then swung it around to face Lilburn. “Take a look at that. It’s Lopez’s file. A third of the way down the page you’ll see she’s had involvement with the Cerros Project.”
Lilburn studied the page. “I don’t know anything about the Cerros Project, sir.”
“No, you wouldn’t. It was on a need-to-know basis, a Special Access Program. The Cerros Project was carried out in the late nineties, all very top secret. No one outside a select few were to know about that program. You’ll notice the report doesn’t mention what the Cerros Project is actually about. You won’t find any written documentation unless you have SSBI — Single Scope Background Investigation — in other words, top secret clearance. So what I’m about to tell you stays within these walls. You may know that in 1973, a year after the international treaty for the Biological Weapons Convention, our Biological Warfare Program shut down. What you won’t know is that we developed what you could basically call a foot-and-mouth bomb. A weapon that could release a viable virus into the air, similar to an air-burst HE bomb. That was the Cerros Project. The person who headed that project was Dr. Ian Bradley.”
“The same one Dr. Crawston knew at Plum Island?”
“One and the same. Now this is where what you’ve just told me about Lopez links in and gives a hell of a lot of credence to your gut feelings. In her file, the part you wouldn’t normally get to see, an assumption is made… not fact, an assumption. One of Lopez’s superiors thought she was having an affair with Bradley.”