Page 27 of Heart of Danger
That morning,a vein in Lee’s temple started throbbing. He looked at the attendance sheet for work at the Millon facility. Dr. Catherine Young had not clocked in for the second day in a row.
He’d sent the Africa footage to the three research scientists at the Palo Alto lab who were part of the complete protocol. Even so, they didn’t have the full picture, of course. All they knew was that they were engaged in secret military research beyond their normal duties. And that they were earning 100K a year more than the regular research scientists. They had no clue that Lee had another agenda entirely, which was, of course, perfect.
The day Lee defected back to the mainland with a complete program to turn the Red Army into history’s greatest military machine, he’d leave behind a charred corpse in his car at the bottom of a ravine and clues that would implicate the three scientists in treason.
He was so damned close. The Orion Africa debacle set him back at least six months.
He’d told his secret team to break up analysis of SL-58 into four parts—and send the central issue, of duration of effect, to Catherine Young, who was the most gifted researcher he’d ever come across. The data was so scrubbed she had no idea of its origin, but once she solved the central problem, his team could tweak the remaining factors and they’d start the protocol from scratch.
Again.
Damn!
His new life was dancing out of his grasp. He’d been looking at a spacious apartment in a high rise in downtown Beijing, but now it was back to the drawing board.
He tapped a holographic image of a lock and key to his right. It immediately dissolved into Baring’s bullet head.
“Sir?”
“Dr. Catherine Young hasn’t come in to work this morning either. Check hospitals within a hundred mile radius and check police reports. Her address is in her file. Break into her home and see what you can find and make sure she knows we looked. Report back in an hour.”
“Sir.”
Lee drummed his fingers on the shiny teak desktop, the only sign of nervousness he’d allow himself.
What had happened to Young? Had she been mugged, had she had a car accident, was her lifeless body at the morgue? That would be very unfortunate, as she seemed to have an almost uncanny ability to understand the workings of all the iterations of SL on the human mind. If anyone could tweak the molecule, give them another iteration, it was Dr. Young.
She was the very best imaging analyst he’d ever come across. At times it seemed to him that she could look at an fMRI and figure out what the patient had had for breakfast. In her hands, each image yielded so much data they were creating the fullest map of the human brain in existence.
One more thing he was bringing to Beijing when he closed shop here. Not only a great weapon that would turn the PLA into an unmatched fighting machine, the greatest the world had ever known, but enough scientific knowledge to keep Chinese laboratories hard at work for years.
Why wasn’t she at work? The woman who was all work and no play?
She had no friends among her coworkers and the baseline vetting his security staff had done on her hadn’t turned up a large number of friends. Any friends at all, actually.
She seemed to be wedded to her work, arriving early, leaving late. She showed no signs of political awareness or even unusual interest in the company she worked for.
No, Lee decided. She wasn’t spilling her guts to the FBI right now. Something must have happened to her. Had she spent the night with someone and was still there? Somehow Lee doubted that, though. She seemed as sexless as she was friendless.
It had been a real selling point with him.
He regretted bitterly his decision not to place tracers in the cars of his top research staff.
The instant Young showed up, a company transponder was going into her car, one that wouldn’t turn off when the car was turned off. Or better yet, Baring would slip into her bedroom, anesthesize her, and inject minute traces of a radioactive isotope with a specific signature into her. She’d never know, and they’d know her whereabouts at all times.
And when SL-59 was complete, tested and flawless, when it had been delivered to the People’s Liberation Army, Young would be slated for destruction. Together with Clancy Flynn, she would be the only one who could recognize what had happened to the soldiers of the PLA. They both had to be silenced. The loss of one blowhard former general and one mere woman was nothing in comparison to the plan.
* * *
Catherine leaned forwardon her elbows, fascinated. “Come on, Stella. Tell me the truth. Is Gary Hopkins a good kisser?”
God,that scene. The world’s most famous kiss, an iconic image, on the poster ofThe Hunter.Stella and Gary being pulled apart by enemies, their only point of contact lips locked in a kiss.
Catherine put down her perfect cup of coffee next to the plates which had once held a perfect stack of blueberry pancakes, a perfect whites-only cheese omelet and the bowl which had once held perfect home made yoghurt with a dollop of perfect homemade strawberry jam.
It was more food than she’d been able to consume in one meal for as long as she could remember. She’d eaten every delicious bite and had scraped the bowl of yogurt making an embarrassing sound.
It was, hands-down, the best breakfast she’d ever eaten, and that included France. But now that she was replete, fascination with the woman sitting across from her held her in its grip.
