“Will do.”
“Report in immediately if you learn anything new,” Pitt said.
“It’s the middle of the night back there.”
“We have seventeen hours until the clock hits zero,” Pitt said. “No one here is going home before then.”
“Understood,” Paul replied.
Pitt waited for him to sign off, but he didn’t. “Anything else Paul?”
Static buzzed for a moment. “You didn’t ask. But I thought I should tell you we haven’t found Kurt or Joe.”
“Keep looking,” Pitt said.
“We will. Gemini out.”
The line went quiet, and Pitt leaned back in his chair. He glanced through the window at the lights twinkling in the dark on the other side of the Potomac. He could not in good conscience order the Gemini to risk the same fate as the Orion, but how else could they hope to find Thero and stop him?
He jabbed at the intercom switch, pressing in the number for Hiram Yaeger’s floor.
“Yaeger here,” a tired voice said.
“Tell me you have something new, Hiram.”
“I have something,” Yaeger said sheepishly. “But I don’t think it’s going to help.”
“I’ll take anything at this point,” Pitt said.
“I have the computer on an autosearch mode,” Yaeger said. “It’s looking for anything of significance. The same way it found connections between the obituary notices of Cortland and Watterson.”
“And what has it found this time?”
“It’s discovered another odd coincidence,” Yaeger said, “regarding the handwritten notes sent to the ASIO.”
“Go on.”
“By comparing the samples, the computer determined with a ninety percent probability that both the handwritten threat sent to Australia and the documents sent to the ASIO by the informant were penned by the same person.”
Pitt sat back. “I thought the ASIO had ruled that out. One written by a lefty and the other by someone who was right-handed.”
“The handwriting is disguised to make it seem different,” Yaeger said, “but the word choices, pressure points, and stroke lengths are similar.”
Pitt’s mind raced to the conclusion. “But the threat letter has already been matched to Thero’s handwriting sample.”
“I realize that,” Yaeger said. “So either the computer is wrong or this man Thero is acting as both the perpetrator of the crime and the informant.”
Pitt had no idea what this latest bombshell might mean, but he guessed there was some sinister reason behind it. Certainly he knew better than to second-guess Yaeger’s computer.
He glanced at the clock on the wall as the minute hand ticked over to the wrong side of midnight. Whatever the significance of this latest twist, it would have to wait till later.
“I don’t care how you do it, Hiram, but you have two hours to figure out another way for us to find Thero. After that, I have to order Gemini to power up their sensor array.”
Yaeger grumbled something that Pitt couldn’t make out and then said, “I’m on it.”
Pitt cut the line and turned back toward the window. It was the dead of night in Washington, D.C., but broad daylight over Australia. If they didn’t find Thero and stop him, it might be the last peaceful day that nation experienced for a very long time.
THIRTY-THREE
The Russian helicopters had launched from the pitching deck of the MV Rama in the middle of a snow flurry. Loaded down with maximum fuel, they lumbered westward into an oncoming weather front. Turbulence shook them almost constantly. The visibility dropped to less than a mile. And, soon enough, the temperature had fallen so far that ice was forming on the inside of the unheated cabin.
Hayley scratched some of it off and it fluttered down like snow. “Reminds me of my freezer back home.”
“Condensation,” Kurt said. “From our breath.”
“Never thought I’d know what a box of frozen peas felt like,” she replied.
A new wave of turbulence buffeted them, and Hayley gripped the arm of the seat.
“You’re holding up pretty well,” Kurt said.
“I’m kind of numb to it all now.”
“Look on the bright side,” Kurt said. “If we survive, your fear of flying might be cured.”
He smiled, but she just stared blankly. He knew the look of someone falling into despondency. She was going forward now without much hope, emotions drained, doing what she was supposed to do.
Kurt let his smile fade. “Once we get on the ground, who knows what’s going to happen. I need to know if I can trust you.”
“You can,” she insisted.
“Then tell me what you’re hiding,” he said. “You’ve kept some secret locked away since the very start. Time to come clean.”
She stared up at him, her brown eyes quivering. “I think I know who the informant is,” she said. “It’s Thero’s son, George.”
“Thero’s son?”
She nodded.
“What makes you think that?”
“The handwriting looked like his,” she said. “And in the first letter the informant wrote that he was acting out of his better conscience. Most people say they’re acting in good conscience, but George always used that other term instead. There were times he even insisted he was his father’s conscience. Times he persuaded Thero not to take some risk or fly off the handle at some random event.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“So did I,” she said. “But, then again, we all thought Thero was dead too, didn’t we?”
Kurt nodded.
“There wasn’t much left after the explosion,” she said. “There were funerals but with empty caskets, you know?”
“So if Thero survived, it’s possible his children did as well,” Kurt said. “So why keep this to yourself?”
“I wasn’t sure at first,” she said. “By the time I convinced myself that it could be George, we’d already seen the first two couriers intercepted and killed. At that point, it became pretty clear there was a leak inside the ASIO. I figured any information I passed to Bradshaw might have wound up making its way back to Thero as well, so I kept it to myself. Assuming I was right and George did survive the Yagishiri explosion, I didn’t want to get him killed for trying to stop us.”
“I think you probably made a wise choice,” Kurt said. “Do you really think it could be him?”
“He was a good person,” she insisted. “He didn’t want to go to Japan. He didn’t want to continue the experiments. But he figured if he didn’t go, there would be no one to rein his father in.”
“That’s why you’re plowing forward? You think you owe him?”
“Don’t I?”
“I’m not the one to answer that,” Kurt said.
“If we can get inside and find him,” she said, “he may be able to help us.”
Kurt nodded. “Maybe,” he said guardedly.
A new series of downdrafts hit the copter, and Hayley grabbed Kurt’s arm. He patted her hand, and then took the opportunity to get up and make his way toward the cockpit. Poking his head in, he found Gregorovich and the pilot staring through helmet-mounted goggles. He sensed the craft slowing.
“Are we there yet?”
“Almost,” Gregorovich said.
Kurt glanced through the windshield. He saw nothing but white clouds and the snow streaking past them. He guessed the view through the goggles was better, probably enhanced by the laser range-finding and infrared pods he’d seen attached to the helicopter’s nose.
“I hope you have our deicing equipment on,” he added.