“I don’t understand how we can find him if we don’t know where he is,” she said.
Zeichner stopped at the hatch and looked directly at Montague, his back to Gainer. “Where does everyone go when they have finished work, whether the work is legal or illegal? Where do they go?”
She shrugged.
“They go home,” Zeichner said. “Home is where you sleep. Home is where you have your belongings. Home is where a man, or a woman, feels safe and able to relax.”
“Home? On Sea Base?”
Zeichner smiled. “You’re new to the game, Angie. Home can be anything from a million-dollar mansion to a homeless campground on the banks of the Mississippi. It’s where you sleep. It’s what you call your place.”
“Then he’s heading back to the Regulus,” Gainer offered. Zeichner took a step back so both Gainer and Montague were beside him. “Right on target, Kevin. He may not be there when we get there, but eventually, Dr. Zheng is going to return to his quarters. When he does, we’ll be waiting.”
Montague’s eyebrows furrowed. “But if he isn’t there, then he could be anywhere.” A motion with her arm encompassed Sea Base. “And doing anything while we wait in his stateroom. Don’t you think that is risky?”
Zeichner nodded. “If we don’t go where we definitely know he will show eventually, we’ll be wandering around this huge man-made island searching for him forever.”
“What if he is intent on sabotaging Sea Base; blowing it up?” Zeichner’s lower lip pushed into the upper for a moment as he thought about her question. “We have not had any problems since the death of the God’s Army person over four months ago.” He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “No, this man doesn’t want to blow up Sea Base. He just wants to get as much intelligence and data as he can for his country. If he wanted to blow up Sea Base, he could have done it many times during the past five months.”
“He’s an American citizen,” Gainer said.
Zeichner shook his head. “He may think so, Kevin, but in my book, when the man started giving away our technology and secrets to another nation, he lost his right to citizenship. He lost his right to freedom. And he definitely lost his right to get off Sea Base before we catch him.”
“So, you’re convinced the spy is Dr. Zheng?” Montague asked.
Zeichner looked at Gainer and pointed at the hatch. The younger man opened the hatch, lifting the heavy door. Zeich-ner started down the ladder with Montague following. Zeichner was on the first platform of the four-story-high ladders leading down when the hatch clanged shut behind him. He heard Gainer twist the watertight lever securing it before starting down toward the main deck. They were silent as they descended, the clanging of the metal steps mixed with the noise of Zeichner’s rapid breathing.
At the bottom of the ladders, Zeichner stopped. The others waited for him to catch his breath. A couple of minutes passed before Zeichner turned to Montague. “Angie, I heard your question. No, I don’t know if he is the one Headquarters thinks is on board. I’m not even sure we have a foreign agent on board, but they think we do and obviously you think we do also.”
“But…”
Zeichner held up his hand. “Kevin and I have given all eight suspects an in-depth look. Four of them have no access to any classified material. They are seldom topside where the most sophisticated weapons systems are located. And none of the four have any reason to be near the UUV compartment — the other new technology we are testing.
“Two of the remaining four are providing technical assistance in the engine rooms of the Fast Sealift Ships. Both of them are in their mid-sixties because they are the only ones who have any experience with the 1970s engines steering those ships.
“That leaves two: Dr. Zheng and a David Bassett. Mr. Bassett is handicapped, but he does work in the server farm. He is in the right place where a foreign agent could download everything he or she would want, and then sink Sea Base by pulling the proverbial cord.”
“Maybe we should be looking at him instead of Dr. Zheng?” Montague asked. “Sounds as if he might be…” Zeichner shook his head. He lifted his hand and waved it a couple of times while glancing down for a moment at his feet. “No way. Mr. Bassett has been doing this work for over thirty years. He has been investigated more times than the two of you put together. He is in a wheelchair most of the time because of severe joint problems, and the paucity of handicapped facilities within Sea Base precludes him from ever leaving the vicinity of the server farm in the main cargo hold of Pollux.
“Additionally, during his thirty-plus years with the Defense Information Systems Agency, Mr. Bassett has been polygraphed a minimum of four times. And not just your counterintelligence polygraph, but the full-scope polygraph.” “Full-scope polygraph?”
“Yep, sometimes referred to as the lifestyle poly.”
“Then, that leaves Dr. Zheng.”
“That leaves Dr. Zheng.”
Zeichner held up one finger. “Though we are barred from racial profiling, Headquarters believes the agent is Chinese. Dr. Zheng is Chinese American. Two…” A second finger went up. “He has a job that keeps him topside as much as he wants. He doesn’t have the highest security tickets to get him into some of the more restricted spaces, but he has unfettered access to any ship, most compartments, and anything topside.” Zeichner lowered his hand. “Look at where he had himself assigned for General Quarters; the highest point on the ship where he could photograph and see everything.”
“You’re right, Boss,” Gainer said. “When I talked with the young sailor in the crow’s nest earlier, he said Dr. Zheng should have been there.”
Zeichner lifted three fingers. “A third indicator.”
“Did the sailor know where he was?” Montague asked.
“I asked if he had seen him. He said no, but that he’d be easy to spot because Dr. Zheng was never without his binoculars or camera strung around his neck.”
Zeichner chuckled. “Something, isn’t it? Here we are in the Pacific Ocean where we may have to fight the most populous nation on this planet. A country that is the economic powerhouse of the world and that holds nearly a third of the United States debt, and they have someone walking freely about Sea Base watching everything and photographing anything he wants.”
“How does he get the information to them?”
Zeichner looked at Gainer. “We’ll know that when we arrest him.”
“I would like to try the ploy Headquarters proposed before we arrest him,” Montague said. “That would be the fourth nail in his coffin, if he is truly the person we want.”
“We will have to ask the Air Force and get their buy-in. Asking them to leave the panels of one of their stealth bombers open without anyone around is like asking…” He glanced at Gainer and then Montague. “I don’t know, it’s just they won’t like it.”
“I would still like to discuss it with them.”
Gainer scratched his head. “Angie, you wanted to find him and arrest him a few minutes ago. If we arrest him, how are we going to have time to arrange the Air Force trap?”
“Well, we should arrest him if we discover him spying,” she said, the words coming in jerks. “But the trap we planned at Headquarters would prove it.”
Zeichner nodded. “Okay, we can try that if you want, but for now, let’s go see if he’s in his stateroom. And if he isn’t, then we may invite ourselves inside to wait.”
TWELVE
“Raptor Formation, this is Mother; steady on course one-nine-zero, descend to angels twenty.”
“Roger, Mother,” Johnson acknowledged. “Descending to twenty thousand feet.”