Page 27 of Identity Unknown

The countryside becomes more desolate as we cross I-81, cutting through the wilderness of Lost River State Park, nothing much to see but trees and rocky outcrops. As we get closer to West Virginia, Lucy describes the damage Carrie Grethen could inflict were she to take control of the radio telescopes at Green Bank and Sugar Grove. From them she could hack into others around the world and in outer space.

“We’re talking about the Naval Observatory’s atomic clocks, for example,” she’s saying. “The Department of Defense relies on them as the time standard for our GPS satellites, the time on our phones and everything else. Nothing would be safe, including NASA telescopes and probes in our solar system and beyond. Everything’s connected.”

“Imagine the computer programs that depend on the accurate time,” I reply. “It would be catastrophic.”

“And that’s just the beginning of the damage. What a coup, ensuring Carrie’s status with the Kremlin,” Lucy says, and it continues to bother me how easily she utters that name. “The havoc she could cause is unthinkable. I’m talking apocalyptically bad.”

“Where is she? Do we know? Still in Russia, far away from here, I hope, doing her maliciousness by proxy.” I watch Lucy carefully, her dark-tinted glasses monitoring a passenger jet at our eleven o’clock. “Do you have any idea of her whereabouts? Specifically, at this very moment?”

“I wouldn’t assume she’s still in Russia,” Lucy finally says.

“Assume?That’s a word I don’t want to hear.”

“When she wants to be off the radar she will be, and we don’t know where she is right now.”

“You’re saying that our government has lost track of her,” I reply as my heart sinks.

“Yes.”

“I was hoping that wouldn’t be your response. When?”

“After Thanksgiving.”

“Any chance she’s in the U.S.?” I hope to God the answer is no.

“We don’t have a reason to think it. But that doesn’t mean much.”

“No, it doesn’t. And she could be. That’s what you’re saying, Lucy.”

“She might be close by, for all we know. Which is why I want to identify everyone who’s accessed Sal’s property in recent memory.”

We’re nearing Harrisonburg, and I recognize James Madison University’s Federal-style brick buildings, red-roofed and columned. Then we’re gaining altitude, flying over the Blue Ridge Mountains, the winds blowing harder. Lucy’s known for months that Carrie Grethen is unaccounted for. Benton would have the same information, no one telling me.

I understand why they can’t and have been kept in the dark before. I’m used to it, but that doesn’t make it less hard to take. The fact that Lucy is admitting it now also tells me she strongly suspects Carrie is a clear and present danger.

“I think we should check on Marino so he doesn’t feel we’ve forgotten him.” My impulse is to keep turning around to look, but there’s nothing to see except the partition.

“He’s still got his eyes shut,” Lucy replies. “And it’s not even all that turbulent yet. Nothing like it’s going to be.”

We’re now twenty minutes from crossing the border into West Virginia, and there’s the not-so-trivial problem of getting Sal’s truck out of the ravine.

“I’m going to have to sling-load it up to the road before the rain moves in,” Lucy explains. “The body’s protected in an enclosure, but Sal’s wrecked pickup is out in the open. We don’t want to lose any evidence. And look who’s back. Sleeping Beauty has opened his eyes at long last and put his headset on.”

She switches the intercom setting as I gaze at the Appalachian Mountains in the distance, an ocean of rolling hills under our feet thick with dark green trees.

“Marino, you still with us?” Lucy asks.

“You seeing the damn weather coming toward us like a freight train?” His voice is tense in our headsets. “And how is it okay for you to fly this thing inside the Quiet Zone?”

“Doctor Rao is one of the astronomers Sal had dinner with last night. By the time we get close she’ll have the telescope in sleep mode to protect it from our transmissions,” Lucy explains.

That also means they won’t be able to pick us up on radar or anything else, making it tricky to communicate our location and what we’re doing, she says. The only recourse is to talk over the helicopter’s satellite phone.

“Let’s give her a try,” Lucy says, and I hear the ringing through my headset.

“Welcome back,” Dr. Rao answers.

“A race against the storm,” Lucy says.

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