"You used to work at Frontier pharmaceuticals, right?" Shy asked.
"I sure did. I used to be a chemist, until they fired me for insubordination for refusing to work on a project on my own time."
"That’s not right," Shy said. "What I need Jackie is for you to tell me everything you know about Frontier."
While Jackie sipped on Hennessey and munched on her Shrimp Dumplings steamed in a jalapeno sauce, she told Shy what she wanted to know. Once Jackie was finished Shy told her exactly what she wanted her to do.
Chapter Thirty-nine
At the home of Martin Marshall the party had begun. The house was packed to overflowing with his guests, talking, drinking, and snacking on finger food. Marshall’s guests were the rich and powerful. The political crowd for the most part, a few wealthy campaign contributors, and the usual array of hangers-on who always seem to show up at these types of events.
Earlier in the evening, when Nick and Travis picked up Monika, she came out of the house dressed in beautiful electric blue silk gown by Stephen Yearick. It had a straight neckline, multiple beaded straps over the left shoulder, low asymmetrical back, asymmetrical beading in silver and midnight blue. She had wrapped her head with a scarf that matched her dress to cover her bandages and a patch over her eye. The sight of her walking toward the car caused Nick to laugh at her struggling to walk in heels and Travis to sit up straight in his seat and take notice of her hips swaying from side to side. "Only for you, Nick," Monika said as she got in the car. "And not a word about these heels. I don’t know how I ever got anywhere in these things."
After Nick filled Monika in on the details of the job they were going to run, they went and picked up their surveillance van. While Monika gave Travis a crash course on the equipment and what he had to do, Nick caught a cab to pick up Wanda and Glynnis.
Once they were inside, Glynnis drifted off to socialize with her colleagues leaving Nick and Wanda alone. Wanda looked at Nick. "You look very nice in a tux, Nick."
"I was just about to tell you how beautiful you look tonight, but you always look beautiful."
"Well thank you, Nick." Wanda blushed. She wore a black crepe gown with a sweetheart neckline with beaded straps from the center bust and sheer insets at the waist. "I thought that you were going to bring someone else with you. I was hoping to meet her."
"She’s here. I saw her wondering around when we first got here. I didn’t want us to be seen together, you’ll meet her soon enough. She’s checkin’ out the house to get the lay out in case we need to come back again. In fact, do you see that woman over there with the blue dress?"
"The one with a patch over her eye?"
"That’s her," Nick said.
"She pretty, Nick."
"You’re not jealous are you, Wanda?" Nick hoped.
"No, of course not. Why should I be jealous?"
"Why should you?"
Truth be told, Wanda was beginning to enjoy Nick’s company and was just a bit jealous, but she wasn’t ready to admit it, not even to herself, so she changed the subject. "Have you spotted Marshall yet?"
"No, not yet," Nick replied and looked around the room. "But he’s here somewhere, I don’t think he’d miss his own party."
While Wanda and Nick waited for Marshall to show himself, Travis sat outside in the van. It was like being a kid on Christmas morning, as Travis played with all of the devices that Monika had introduced him to. His assignment in this operation was to watch and listen. Monika explained that the image on screen before him was a satellite generated, 3-dimensioal thermal image of Marshall’s house. She told him that the red lines represented wall so he could see each room in the house. "What are those dots in each room?" Travis had asked earlier.
"Those represent everybody in the house. But we’re not gonna use that this time," Monika said and turned that function off. "Once we get inside you’ll see two moving indicators. One will be me and the other will be Nick. Are you familiar with the Greek alphabet?"
"Yes."
"Nick is alpha, I’m beta and you are omega. Once we identify Marshall, I’ll tag him and you’ll be able to track him too. He’ll be gamma."
The other device that Monika had Travis monitor and was a parabolic microphone. That device magnifies distant sounds allowing them to locate the source of sound and suppress background noises. "Because of its special design, it is capable of picking up and magnifying signals up to 75 times that of a normal omni-directional microphone," Monika told him.
While he waited for Monika to tag Marshall, Travis was amusing himself by listening to different sounds and conversations going on around the house. He listened to a couple of boring conversation at the party, picked up and identified where the kitchen and the bathroom were, he even overheard a couple having sex in one of the rooms on the second floor.
Travis was drifting from conversation to conversation when he found one that interested him. He knew he had something when he heard Black’s name mentioned and immediately began recording the conversation.
"- — I don’t want there to be anyway this can come back and bite me."
"You worry too much, my friend. Once the word begins to spend about his involvement in this business, his political allies will run for cover and you will have no need to fear him."
"But if you can’t find that package or whatever you call it, and it becomes public it will put me and a lot of our friends in an extremely compromised position."
"If that happens, which it won’t, because I assure you that the package will be recovered, we have set these things in motion so the spot light will be on Mike Black — ," the man said and laughed. "and others that I will make known to you when the time is right."
"There is one other thing that concerns me."
"What is that, my friend?"
"DeFrancisco. He’s shaky. I am not sure we can trust him to keep his mouth shut if anything goes wrong."
"How much does he really know? What have you told him?"
"I only told him what he needed to know to put the operation in motion. Still, he has me, and I don’t need any more heat. I just got somebody else’s stink off me."
"He is your man. When he has outlived his usefulness you will have to insure his silence."
"I’ve got to get back downstairs."
"I understand completely. I will leave through the service entrance."
After that, Travis heard what sounded like foot-falls walking and the door opening and closing. He tried to follow the walking sound, but he couldn’t stay with it.
"This is beta," Monika said into her wireless microphone. "Objective acquired. I’m moving toward him."
"Acknowledged," Nick said.
"Acknowledged beta. I have you," Travis said feeling like old times.
Monika began to approach Marshall, who was standing with a woman and a man. She grabbed a glass of champagne from a waiter as he passed and stood close to Marshall. When he turned to walk away, Monika stepped in his path and purposely bumped into him. She placed a very small device on the sleeve of his jacket. Marshall smiled when he saw Monika. "I am terribly sorry, miss?"
"Ryan, Jeri Ryan," Monika said.
"Martin Marshall."
"I know who you are, and it’s a pleasure to meet you. And it is me who owes you an apology. I should watch where I’m going. A bit too much champagne," Monika said and raised her glass.
"Are you okay? Do you need somebody to drive you home?" Marshall looked at Monika the way a predator looks at his prey and took a step closer.
"No, I’m sure I’ll be fine," Monika said and tried to move away from him.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I quite sure, but thank you for the offer."