Reeder said, “And that’s where you found out about Senkstone.”
“Not quite. I found rumors of a compound that was said to be the next generation of plastic explosives... but at first it was like a sea creature said to inhabit a certain loch in Scotland — lots of talk, no proof. Then, at the Armory site, I found a chat room where guys were talking about how cool this compound would be if it did exist.”
“What would make it ‘cool’ to a chat room like that?”
The lightness went out of Miggie’s tone: “For starters, it could be made into anything.”
“Molded,” Rogers said, “like plastic explosives?”
“No,” Miggie said. He tapped his desk. “I could use Senk to make this desk or that tablet or anything in this office. The chairs you’re sitting on could be fashioned from this explosive material, and you’d never know it... till it went off.” Miggie’s eyebrows went up, then down. “Well, actually, you still wouldn’t know, because you’d be dead.”
Reeder’s brow furrowed. “Sounds like a geek fantasy. How could that even be possible?”
“Because,” Miggie said, “you could theoretically put liquid Senk into a 3-D printer and just ‘print’ yourself a desk, a chair, whatever, and it would also be a bomb. A very lethal one.”
“How lethal?”
“A pound of the stuff would take out a three-story building.”
Reeder and Rogers exchanged slow glances.
“And,” Miggie was saying, “because Senk was deemed unstable, and never went to market, there are no dogs trained to sniff it. Airport-style puffer machines don’t work on it. It’s plastic, so metal detectors won’t pick it up. There’s just no good way to know for sure what it is you’re sitting on.”
Rogers shifted in her chair. “If this Senk stuff got out into the world,” she said, feeling a little sick, “it’d make terrorists unstoppable.”
Miggie just nodded.
“But you said it was unstable,” Reeder said, “and research was shut down...?”
The computer expert’s excitement, at sharing what he’d discovered, had vanished. He was coldly serious now, even somber.
He said, “After I left the Armory site, I got into some secure DOD files...”
“What?” Rogers said.
“... which might, technically, be above my clearance and pay grade.”
“You hacked the Department of Defense?”
Miggie shrugged, smiled sheepishly, but Reeder gave him a grin and a nod and said, “Good man.”
Rogers knew that Miggie’s actions could come back on her, but — like Reeder — she cared more at the moment about moving forward than worrying about trifling repercussions, like losing her job or going to prison.
She asked, “What did you find?”
Very quietly, Miggie said, “A company called Senkian Chemicals developed Senkstone eight years ago, on a DOD contract, working on it for three years and a few months. Five years ago, the DOD shut down Senkian’s research when an explosion killed three employees, including one of the company’s main partners.”
“If they were shut down five years ago,” Rogers said, “why is Senk a topic of discussion now? Even if it’s just limited to the Dark Web.”
Miggie said, “For a year after the Pentagon shut them down, Senkian was in limbo. The company was built strictly around that one area of research — this new breed of explosive. Then, four years ago, an obscure firm called Chemical Solutions, Inc., bought Senkian out.”
Reeder frowned. “And the DOD didn’t stop it?”
Miggie nodded. “Why that’s the case, I haven’t found out yet — it’s all very hush-hush. Payoff to someone high up to sign off, maybe. An elaborate black op, possibly. Anyway, after that, Senkian dropped off everybody’s radar.”
“Absorbed,” Reeder said, “into Chemical Solutions.”
Rogers asked, “What do we know about Chemical Solutions? What’s the ownership?”
“That’s just it,” Miggie said, with a shrug. “They’re a shell within a shell within a shell — if the trail has an end, I haven’t found it yet.”
Reeder asked, “A shell that owns the two buildings that blew up in Charlottesville?”
“No — that’s a company called Barmore Holdings. Who and what that is, I don’t know yet.”
“Any sign of Barmore Holdings in the ownership chain of Chemical Solutions?”
Miggie shook his head. “Not that I’ve found. Haven’t tracked down the actual owners of any of these companies, but this kind of entity is created to protect the anonymity of owners. These aren’t exactly publicly held companies. I know it’s a familiar refrain I’m singing, guys, but it’s going to take time. I could have a team on this for months, and it would still take time. Doing it by myself, it’s slow going.”
“Stick with it,” Rogers said. That had been a lot to absorb, and in truth she hadn’t absorbed it yet. But she pressed on. “Anything else, Mig?”
“Yeah,” he said, and turned to Reeder and said, “Your instincts were right about our friendly neighborhood would-be assassin, Thomas Stanton.”
“How so?”
“Stanton’s sons have Cayman Islands trust funds — each with one hundred K in them. Opened two days ago.”
“By whom?”
“That’s still murky,” Miggie said. “These people clearly don’t want to be found out. Let’s face it, they were paying for an assassination.”
“Keep an eye on those accounts,” Reeder said. “Since Stanton failed, maybe whoever paid him will try to renege. Might provide a path.”
Rogers said, “How about the body Joe and I hauled out of that building? Any luck with facial recognition?”
“Yes!” He summoned a front-on mug shot — type photo on his tablet screen of a man Roger immediately recognized as their half-charred, all-dead rescue. “Our latest double-tap is one Lester Blake.”
Leaning in for a look, Reeder asked, “Did he work for Barmore? Or whatever the business in those buildings was calling itself?”
“No, surprisingly. Actually, Lester Blake was employed in the maintenance department at the Capitol.”
“The US Capitol?”
“The one and only.”
“Maintenance,” Rogers said, frowning. “A janitor?”
“Limited information on that so far. But I’d say, probably, yes.”
Reeder said, “Jay Akers’s last words weren’t limited to ‘Senk’ — he also said ‘Capitol.’ And now a Capitol Hill maintenance man winds up dead in a building that exploded after he was killed? A building that may have been a site of manufacture for a highly dangerous, impossible-to-find plastic explosive?”
Rogers said, “Sounds like we better get over to the Capitol and find somebody to talk to.”
Reeder was already on his feet.
She said to Miggie, “While we’re gone, we need you to run a discreet background check on Detective Woods.”
“Oh, that’s already done,” Miggie said. “You have to multitask when you’re running these searches, or you’ll go gonzo waiting.”
“What do you have?”
“Detective Peter Arthur Woods,” Miggie read. “BS in criminal justice from Virginia Commonwealth, high marks, spotless record, citations, youngest on DC PD to make detective in twenty-five years. Seems like a really good guy.”
“So,” Reeder reminded him, “did Thomas Stanton.”
Miggie shrugged. “I’ll dig deeper.”
Rogers said, “Incredible job all around, Miggie. Uh, did Lester Blake have a family?”
“Wife and three kids.”
She sighed. “I’ll have Hardesy and Nichols make the survivor visit. While Reeder and I go over to the Hill, make the same level search on Blake that you gave Stanton — okay?”