Page 90 of Secret Weapon

James sighed.“Fine, I’ll ask.Does that mean you’re going to California?”

“Sure, if you pay me the big bucks.”

Another sigh.“Just send the fucking invoice.”

“Three hundred grand for a potted palm?”

This time, he groaned.

“And I need pictures of this Marshmallow thing.If we’re searching for the weapon, we need to know what it looks like.Send the files on Fedorov, Loslov, and Stepanov too.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, I’m desperate for coffee.Plus we have to talk about the Marquette angle.She was running, James, and she has some kind of code that the Russians want.Is that needed to activate the weapon?Like a password?”

“I don’t recall hearing about a code, but I can check.”

“Well, be bloody careful who you check with because if she wasn’t the mole at the lab, then somebody else was.Who worked on the project with her?Are you digging into their backgrounds?”

“Of course we are.”

“And?”

“The team has identified two possible suspects.A materials engineer with a significant amount of gambling debt, and a software tech from Ottie’s team who dropped off the map three days ago.”

“Gambling debt?How did they get a security clearance with gambling debt?”

“It wasn’t an issue at his last renewal.As far as we can tell, he developed a problem after he split from his fiancée two years ago.”

“Any problems with the software tech?”

“Not that we can find.Ottie’s boyfriend said all three of them worked closely together, and Project Marshmallow wasn’t their first collaboration.”

“How would the boyfriend know?I thought the whole shebang was top secret?”

“He also works at Sandy Peake.”

“On Project Marshmallow?”

“No, he led a different team.”

“But I bet he knew what she was working on.Whether it was pillow talk, or he heard whispers at the lab, or he had access to the details as part of his job, I bet he knew.And he’s just devastated, right?”

“I heard he’s upset, but isn’t that to be expected?”

“And he’s beensupercooperative?”

“Everyone who works there wants the weapon found.”

“James, sheran.She saw or heard something that scared her, and she ran rather than voicing her concerns to the one person she should have trusted more than anyone.And somehow, the Russians found her in Oregon with a friend she hadn’t seen since high school.”

“Fuck.”

“If voters could hear you now…” James was always so damned polite in public.“But you get where I’m coming from?”

“They found her because somebody guessed where to look.”

“Exactly.And who better to guess than her nearest and dearest?Send me his file too.What’s his name?”

---