'Listen,' he said, 'there's something I want you to know.
I have a hidden copy of the data. If something happens to me, I want
you to have it. Sell it, give it away, whatever you want, I don't
care, but--sell it to anybody but the Chinese.'
'Nothing is going to happen to you.'
'I believe you. But just in case. This is the only original research
I've ever done that amounted to anything. It's important work. I
don't want to see it lost.'
'If it makes you feel better, fine. I'll see that it gets to a good
home.'
'It's not here,' he said.
'The copy.'
'All right. Where is it?'
Morrison told him. When he was done, Ventura smiled.
'That's pretty clever.'
'Maybe the Pakistanis, they hate the Chinese. They'd find a use for
it.'
'This is all moot. I can guarantee you, the Chinese will not be
walking out of this theater with you as their E
hostage. At the first sign of trouble they will all become past tense.
This is what I do, Patrick.'
The use of his first name rattled him even more. Morrison took a
ragged breath, let it out, then took a larger one and held it for a
moment. Deep breaths. Calm down.
'All right.'
The movie wasn't scheduled to start for another thirty minutes--but it
was definitely show time.
Wednesday, June 15th Quantico, Virginia
Toni had planned to sit down and tell Alex what she felt, to apologize
for losing her temper, and to try to get him to see her side of
things.
It seemed like it would work out, because the first thing he said was
'Listen, I'm sorry about losing my temper.'
That was a great start. She said, 'Me, too.'
But that was as far as it got. Alex's secretary opened the conference
room's door and said, 'Commander, we just got a distress call from Jay
Gridley's virgil.'
'What?'
'District police are on the way. Here is the location.'
Alex came to his feet.
Toni said, 'I saw Jay earlier, he was here--' 'He went into town,' Alex
said. He headed for the door in a hurry. To his secretary, he said,
'Get the helicopter warmed up and get the GPS location to the pilot. I
want to be in the air in three minutes.'
'Alex?'
'This place is falling apart,' he said.
'Nothing is going right!' He looked at her.
'You coming?'
She nodded.
