“Unless he eats them first,” says Joselyn.
“Cut it out,” I tell them. “This is serious. I’m going to have to deal with Sarah, and that’s not easy.”
“One thing’s for sure,” says Harry. “You can’t take Sarah and leave the dog. He’ll tear the place apart and then eat the help when they come to clean it up.”
“You’re right. We’ll have to leave Sarah and the dog. The question is, who’s going to tell her?”
“Sounds like a father’s duty to me,” says Harry.
“Yeah, I know, but how?”
“If we move quickly, get over there and back in three, maybe four days,” says Joselyn, “perhaps you can talk Thorpe into having Sarah remain here. And she’ll have the dog. You’ll have to explain to her that that’s the reason she can’t come with us. There really is no other way. Unless she wants to put the dog in a kennel.”
“And I suppose you’d want to draw straws to see who gets to talk to the dog about doing time in a kennel?” says Harry.
“OK, you sold me. Sarah stays here,” I tell them.
“Now you just have to convince her and the dog. I hope she keeps him on a short leash when you’re discussing all of this,” says Harry.
“And you think Thorpe is going to let us go, just like that?” asks Joselyn.
“Not if I tell him we’re going to Thailand. I’ll tell him Harry and I have some pressing business to take care of back in Coronado. Something that can’t wait. We’ll be back in three or four days. We’ll be very careful. We won’t stay at the house. We’ll stay in a hotel.”
“What about me?” says Joselyn.
“I’ll just tell him you’re coming along.”
“Good, then let’s hope he buys it,” she says. “Cuz if he doesn’t, I’m telling him you’re going to Thailand.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“In a word-no,” she says.
“And what if he wants to take our passports or assign agents to accompany us to California?” says Harry.
“Then I suppose the urgent business in Coronado is somehow going to resolve itself, avoiding the need for any travel. It’s worth a shot.”
“There’s a Wi-Fi hot spot in the lobby downstairs,” says Joselyn. “I saw it on my cell phone when we were down there yesterday. If you loan me a credit card, I can book the tickets in the morning. Right after you talk to Thorpe.”
Chapter Twelve
By the time Bill Britain got to Thorpe’s office on the fourth floor of the FBI building, he was running late. Thorpe’s secretary had called him away from a staff meeting. She told him to drop what he was doing and come up immediately.
“Go on in, they’re waiting for you.” Thorpe’s secretary gestured toward the closed door.
Britain opened the door and stepped into Thorpe’s office. “What’s going on?”
“Close the door,” said Thorpe.
Britain knew it was something big the minute he saw Herb Llewellyn closeted inside with his boss. Britain was the head of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. Llewellyn headed up the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Directorate.
“Take a seat.” Thorpe picked up the receiver to the phone on his desk and punched a button. He waited for a second. “Nancy, I don’t want to be disturbed. Hold all my calls and clear my calendar for the rest of the morning. I’m not sure when I’ll be available. Good.” He hung up the phone. “What I’m about to tell you doesn’t go beyond the confines of this office, is that understood? I am told that any other assistance that we might need has to be cleared by the White House.”
Llewellyn and Britain glanced at each other and then nodded toward Thorpe. “Must be pretty bad,” said Britain.
“Less than an hour ago I received a phone call from the White House. I was told that a weapons program, something that DARPA has been working on with the air force and NASA for a number of years, now appears to have been compromised. We don’t know the full extent of the damage yet. NASA and DARPA are still doing an assessment.”
“When you say compromised, you mean information has found its way into the hands of a foreign power?” asked Britain.
“We don’t know for sure, but it’s a possibility,” said Thorpe.
“The White House wouldn’t get involved in something like this unless there was a top-of-the-line national security breach or the prospect of some lethal political fallout,” said Llewellyn.
“In this case it may be one and the same,” said Thorpe. “They wouldn’t give me any details, especially over the phone, other than to emphasize the magnitude. I was told that if there has been a complete breach of the program in question, the damage to national security could be on the order of the Soviet’s penetration of the Manhattan Project.”
“So it’s nuclear?” asked Llewellyn.
“No. I asked them that,” said Thorpe. “That’s the only thing they would tell me. It’s not nuclear.”
Llewellyn issued a subtle sigh and settled back into his chair, as if suddenly he was off the hook.
“According to what I was told, it could be much worse. What they said was that the loss of the information in question could be catastrophic.”
“What the fuck are they working on over at DARPA,” asked Llewellyn, “a doomsday device?”
DARPA was the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the technologic black-ops tool designer for the Pentagon. It had been on the cutting edge of every advanced weapons system from the stealth bomber to the latest generation of aerial killer drones. DARPA possessed classified futuristic projects on its drawing boards and computer screens that made Star Trek look obsolete. It might have been fiction, except that the agency had a track record for making sci-fi dreams come true. It was through DARPA that the United States maintained its edge of technologic superiority on the battlefield.
“According to the phone call, the project was right down DARPA’s alley. They simply wanted to get a handle on it before somebody else did. That’s what I was told, and that’s their job,” said Thorpe. “We’ve got a big bull’s- eye painted on our ass. So if it’s that dangerous, whatever it is, we better find it, get it, and keep it. Otherwise somebody’s gonna use it to put an arrow in our butt.”
“Point taken,” said Llewellyn.
“Here’s what we do know,” said Thorpe. “Two NASA researchers scheduled to attend a conference at the European Space Agency in Paris failed to show up. They never checked into their hotel, and nobody knows where they are. They’ve been missing for two days now.”
“Maybe they’re off having a frolic,” said Britain.
“Yeah. That’s what I said. But it gets worse. NASA has information that somebody has been downloading data from the project. There’s only a handful of people with clearance to access the data. The two missing researchers were cleared since they were working on the project on a daily basis. They don’t know how long the unauthorized downloads have been going on, so they can’t be sure how much information may have been taken. DARPA had NASA install some security software on the system. From what I gather, this was fairly recent. Immediately afterward, the software indicated that data was being copied, downloaded to an unauthorized device. NASA figured it was probably a glitch in the new security software. They thought they’d take a look at it and test it before they got all excited. It wasn’t a glitch. The data was downloaded to a device connected to a computer on the desk of one of the two researchers who is now missing.”
“Any chance these guys might have fallen prey to foul play?” asked Britain.
“Anything’s possible,” said Thorpe. “I’ll get more information, names, and backgrounds later this morning. I’m scheduled to be in briefing at the White House in an hour. I’ll bring back as much as I can. But from what I gather, they’re going to be tight-lipped. I have a feeling it’s going to be on a need-to-know basis, and I’m afraid they’re
