‘Breakfast is going cold.’
She opened both eyes. The guy would never shut up. ‘Hi’ she smiled at Sean.
‘Hi to you too, miss’ he replied. ‘Time to wake up and get busy.’
She looked at the bottom of the bed where he had laid out some clothes.
‘I don’t know if they’ll fit, but it’s time to move on.’
‘What time is it?’ she said sleepily.
‘Quarter past eleven.’
The memory of the lovely dream suddenly disappeared. ‘Oh my God, Cetus is due to catch up with the Kougar tomorrow!’
‘That’s why we need to get a move on.’
Natasha shivered. She kicked off the duvet and went to examine the clothes he had brought. There was a pair of light coloured jeans (a size too small), a bra (a size too big), some panties and a large tea shirt and wind cheater. He had also bought some toothpaste and a toothbrush, but no makeup, no hair brush and no perfume.
Natasha started to dress quickly. ‘What will have happened to Lomax and DD?’
‘They’ll be in custody. There’s nothing I can do for them now.’ Sean put the cup of coffee down on the bedside table.
While she brushed her teeth she thought about the other things she would need. ‘I need a computer,’ she mumbled through the toothpaste.
‘There’s a store in the mall where I found your clothes.’
‘I need to see if DD’s account has trapped anything useful.’
‘OK, let’s go.’
They crossed the road together. As they entered the mall Natasha’s hand brushed against Sean and they held hands. She looked at him but he was checking the car park and the people in the mall.
In the computer shop she quickly spotted a laptop that had all the essentials she needed. She also picked up a small but fast inkjet printer and a ream of paper. She was about to pay for them when Sean interrupted. ‘Let me pay for them dear’ he said. Natasha looked at him oddly, but allowed him to pay with his credit card.
On the way out Sean leaned over and whispered. ‘I think that’s how Schaeffer and his team traced you. On the way to your cabin you paid for the motel room with your credit card.’
But Natasha was already thinking about the next steps. ‘Sean we have to find a hotel with an Internet connection.’
‘I know. We need to move anyway. From now on we stay in a new hotel every day. We’ll have to ditch the bike and get a hire car too.’
‘Fine, just so long as we are together.’ She saw Sean glance enquiringly at her.
‘It’s nice having you around…’. She struggled to finish the sentence, then decided she’d said too much already.
As soon as they returned to the room she began to pack their few belongings. ‘Where to next?’ Natasha asked when the car details had been sorted out.
She found out soon enough. They pulled into a place about two miles further on. As soon as they entered their room Natasha found the Internet socket and plugged in the laptop. Meanwhile Sean ordered room service and went for a shower. The food arrived just as Sean was drying his hair.
‘Food’s up!’ he announced, but Natasha was not taking any notice.
He came over and stood behind her. She glanced up at last. ‘This is fantastic. Do you know, DD is a genius — a genius!’ she gasped in awe.
‘What have you got there?’ he asked.
She showed him what she had retrieved from the account DD created. There were literally hundreds of emails, some containing attachments. Most were copies of outgoing emails from the Advanced Marine Agency. Some were marked confidential. Some contained a long trail of previous emails. Other emails had attachments containing indecipherable long strings of characters. ‘‘Key-stroke files’ breathed Natasha. The sheer volume of information was breathtaking.
She opened several emails at random. Most were reports on progress of various operations. She found one email containing a history of other emails about the same topic — how ‘the target’ was to be followed and movement patterns monitored. Another had references to Natasha and options on how they might deal with this particular ‘problem’. She tapped the button to printout copies so that Sean could read them also. Half an hour later she began to arrange them in chronological order. For a time they quietly read through the sheaf of papers, passing interesting ones to each other.
‘As you say, DD did well’ commented Sean. ‘What we’ve got here are names, strategy, methods, and hired hands — everything except the name of the person at the top.’
Sean collected the papers and sat back while Natasha searched the Internet for the companies and people mentioned in the emails. Eventually Natasha stopped and drew her hair back. ‘I found some emails from the accounts department of another company. It looks like Advanced Marine Agency is connected to American Submarine Industries. They produce the next generation of submarine for the government. Let me see..’ Natasha searched the Internet. ‘Right, here’s one. The last one they sold to the Defence department cost over a billion dollars! They have numerous contracts for the supply of surface ships too.’
She searched through the paperwork. ‘It looks like they recruited a team early on with the aim of neutralising their main competitor — my company SeaTek. Wait,’ Natasha checked her figures. ‘We can produce fully automated submarines for a tenth of the cost!’
Natasha skimmed through the papers, looking for one in particular. ‘I found one email about how they were going to cause the sub to destroy its support ships using a virus, though I haven’t found anything which tells us about how it was to be introduced.’
She flicked through the papers again, stopping when she found the one she was searching for. ‘I have an email here which talks about Ben.’ Natasha’s voice became quieter. ‘They suspected Ben was on to something two months before he died.’
Natasha pulled out a page. ‘This one says they knew I had found out about the sabotage when I reported my suspicions to Stan! How did they get this amount of detailed information?’ she asked Sean.
‘They might have your apartment bugged and don’t forget they had Langham working from the inside. What else do we know about American Submarine Industries?’
Natasha searched the Internet. ‘It’s big — the second biggest defence contractor in the US. It’s headed by a guy called Dennis Clarke.’ She looked at Sean. ‘I wonder if this is the person we’re looking for?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘The company is so big, surely they couldn’t afford to get mixed up in sabotaging our sub — could they?’
‘Anything’s possible today’ said Sean. ‘You’ve only to look at the latest scandals in my country — the banking system, police, government, the press, even the church.’
Natasha looked up at Sean. ‘My God’ she whispered. We’ve enough information here to bring them all to trial. Let’s just turn over the evidence to the authorities.’
‘We could’ replied Sean, ‘but the authorities have their own timetable. Don’t forget, we have another, more urgent schedule.’ Sean checked his watch. ‘They need to be stopped now.’
‘OK, suppose we leak the information to the media — surely that will get everyone’s attention?’
‘I’ve thought about that too. Believe me if it were that simple I would do it. My guess is there’s a very powerful figure in Washington controlling this operation. There’s a strong chance he would deny it and discredit those bringing the charges. It could be that name you just turned up — Dennis Clarke. It would make good newspaper headlines. But it wouldn’t necessarily stop the project, just make them cover their tracks better.’
Sean thought it over some more. ‘There might be another way — supposing the American government are tipped off? I could ask HM Gov to raise it with your country’s administration.’