The conversation ended, and I saw that Lien-hua had an arm around Kayla’s shoulder, supporting her, comforting her.
Kayla had a slim build, light brown hair, delicate features. She was in her late twenties and wore black jeans and a blue long-sleeved sweater, but the sleeves weren’t long enough to cover the bruises on her wrists where she’d evidently struggled against the ropes that had bound her.
I felt a renewed sense of anger rising against Alexei Chekov.
But he called you, Pat. He wanted you to find her. He didn’t want to hurt her Maybe, maybe not. Right now I was caught in a thick coil of lies, and I thought it best to work from worst-case scenarios.
I put a call through to Natasha, and when she didn’t answer I left an urgent message for her to get in touch with me immediately. “We found Kayla at the Schoenberg. She’s all right. Be on your guard. Alexei might return to the house.”
End call.
Lien-hua was talking softly, reassuringly, to Kayla. “My name is Lien-hua Jiang.” She gestured toward me. “This is Patrick Bowers. We’re FBI agents. You’re safe now.”
Kayla didn’t reply. Just nodded, wide-eyed.
“How are you feeling, physically?” Lien-hua asked her.
Kayla’s eyes were red, and obviously she’d been crying, but she appeared to be regrouping, gathering her senses. “I’m okay.” Her voice was delicate. Words of glass.
“The man who took you,” Lien-hua said, “did he hurt you?” The slight pause that she added before the word hurt lent a deeper meaning to the sentence, and I took it to mean “Did he assault you?” or perhaps “Did he rape you?”
Kayla shook her head. “He actually seemed… I don’t know. It was almost like he didn’t want me to be afraid.” She looked around distractedly. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“Do you know where you are now?”
Kayla shook her head.
“We’re in a hotel. The Schoenberg Inn. Does that ring a bell?”
“No.”
“Okay. Do you have any idea where he might have gone? The man who abducted you?”
She shook her head.
“Can you remember,” I asked, “did he bring you here right away or stop someplace first?”
Kayla thought about it. “We were in a cabin. I remember that. I don’t know exactly where. The walls were these really thick logs. He gave me something that made me sleepy. Some kind of shot. I don’t really remember anything else.”
Lien-hua placed a gentle hand on her arm. “You’re going to be all right.”
Considering what she’d been through, Kayla seemed to be doing remarkably well, and I was thankful, but this conversation didn’t look like it was going to lead us any closer to Alexei or the Eco-Tech team he’d told me about.
My thoughts shifted to the ELF station.
See if those schematics have arrived.
I had my phone with me, and although I could access my email with it, my laptop would be better for analyzing data. It was still in the cruiser.
“Lien-hua, are you good here?”
“Yes.”
“I’m gonna grab my computer. I’ll be right back.”
“We’ll find the man who took you,” Lien-hua said to Kayla. “I promise.”
Kayla gave a weak smile. “Thank you.”
I freed Weatherford, hauled him to his feet. “You, come with me.”
Even though I was walking with a hitch because of my ankle, I was in a hurry and he struggled to keep up. As we returned up the stairs, I asked him, “The man who bribed you, did he give you any indication where he might be going?”
“No.”
“What about the other people who paid you to use the basement? The Eco-Tech members? Where are they?”
“They were in the other part of the basement. But they’re gone.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I swear they’re not here. I don’t know where they might be.”
“How many of them were there?”
“Ten. Maybe eleven.”
We passed through the paneled lounge containing the hidden doorway, and I thought of the ELF station, of how we might get there.
The Navy would need to staff it, transfer people into and out of the base, deliver supplies, remove waste.
Forest service roads?
Maybe. But then how would they do it during the long Wisconsin winters with those roads closed?
What about Project Sanguine, the buried cables? The underground bunkers? Is it possible there are still tunnels leading to the base?
As we neared the lobby, Natasha phoned me. “I got your message,” she said. “So, Kayla’s safe?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no sign of Alexei here. Did you get my email?”
“I’m on my way to check my messages now.”
Donnie has worked at the sawmill since 2004.
What about his Monday and Friday trips to work? Why did it take him so long to get to the sawmill from home?
She went on, “The Lab finally identified the prints on the light switch in the Pickrons’ study. I sent you the report.”
“Whose prints are they?”
“Becker Hahn’s.”
That made sense; he was one of the Eco-Tech members whose photos Alexei had forwarded to me, but I couldn’t understand why the Lab had taken so long to identify the prints. Maybe someone’s been tinkering around on AFIS, deleting data? The same person who got into the ROSD?
“But,” she said, “here’s the big news. Angela found he was on the same flight last week to Milwaukee as Dana Murkowski, an alias used by Cassandra Lillo. She and Becker traveled up here together.”
“Cassandra Lillo?” I was stunned. “What? Are you sure?”
“It’s confirmed.”
Why wouldn’t her alias’s name have been on a watch list!
Weatherford and I arrived at the lobby and I hustled him toward the front door.
Last winter I’d tracked a team of-for lack of a better term-domestic terrorists who were trying to steal a classified military device that could be used to cause a stroke or a catastrophic cerebral event in another person. Cassandra Lillo was a scientist who’d partnered with her father and my NSA friend Terry Manoji to steal the device and sell it to the Chinese. Right before she was taken into custody Cassandra had said to me, “You have no idea what we have planned.”
I’d thought she was talking about the device.
Was she talking about this? About something now?
Cuffing Weatherford again, this time to a table near the hotel entrance where I could keep an eye on him, I exited the building to get my computer from the cruiser.
A tirade of thoughts, of puzzle pieces.
I remembered Cassandra’s escape in November: a transfer order to send her to another detention facility had come through, and during transport she’d strangled one guard and overpowered another, permanently disabling him, before making her escape. Later, the request for transfer was found to have been caused by a computer glitch. I’d never believed that, and now, in light of everything that was going on, I was even more convinced it was not a random processing error.
At the car, I grabbed my laptop.
At least the submarines are on alert. At least that’s covered.
“Pat? Are you still there?” Natasha asked.
“Yes, sorry.” Cassandra’s father and Terry are both dead, both out of the picture. I turned back toward the hotel. “Is there anything else in the report that I need to know?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“Stay where you are. Watch out for Alexei. And find out where Jake is.”
“I will.”
Terry was a spy for the Chinese government.
Eco-Tech consulted with foreign governments. We knew about Brazil and Afghanistan, but it was possible Truth often hides in the crevices of the evident.
Secretary of State Nielson was in Tehran this week in bilateral talks with Iran about their nuclear program.
As soon as I entered the lobby I pulled up Margaret Wellington’s cell number and punched it in.
Tessa and Amber had just finished cleaning up the glass from the shattered painting and were putting the garbage can and vacuum cleaner away in the kitchen when the electricity went out.