going to be operating on the basis that we don’t need to know.”
“Find out if these two missing guys are critical to operations of whatever the device is. See if it’s just the data they’re worried about or if the two researchers could be part of a package,” said Llewellyn.
“Do we know whether either of them has any kind of ideological bent, political, philosophic, religious?” said Britain.
“I don’t know. I’ll try to find out,” said Thorpe. He made a note.
“And try and see if they’ll tell you anything about the nature of the device itself,” said Llewellyn. “If we don’t know what we’re looking for, we’re going to be terribly hobbled trying to guess who might be in the consumer pipeline.”
“That’s why you’re here,” said Thorpe. “From the telephone conversation, I got the distinct impression that that’s the one thing they’re probably not going to want to talk about. For whatever reason, unless we run into a brick wall. And by then it may be too late. I was wondering if perhaps I could get enough information as to the background on these guys, where they got their education, their field of study, maybe a resume if we get lucky, do you think you might be able to piece together some clue as to what they were working on?”
“It’s possible,” said Llewellyn. “But it’s probably a long shot. I mean, they’re gonna have science backgrounds of some kind. You can be sure of that. It depends how much information they’re willing to give you.”
“I’ll try to get as much detail as I can,” said Thorpe.
“Get it,” said Llewellyn, “and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Beyond that, we do have one lead. What’s the latest information we have on Bruno Croleva?” Thorpe looked to Britain for a response.
“Last time I looked he was still near the top of our hit parade. We don’t know where he is, if that’s what you mean. Probably in the Middle East somewhere,” said Britain.
“Who’s Bruno Croleva?” said Llewellyn.
“International arms merchant,” said Britain. “Supplier of merchandise to needy warlords and aspiring terrorists.”
“Bruno Croleva is an upwardly mobile jack-of-all-trades” said Thorpe. “If you check his jacket in the file, you’ll find that at one time, in another life, Bruno trafficked in drugs. He had extensive connections in Colombia and North Africa as well as in Marseilles in the south of France. Narcotics is where he got his start. It was from his connections there that he moved into arms sales. A lot of his early deals were to the cartels in Colombia.”
Thorpe had a file on his desk containing two intelligence reports from the CIA. Together with the sparse information given to him over the phone from the White House, he was beginning to connect the dots.
“Bruno is becoming a regular rainmaker of violence,” said Thorpe. “He’s been slipping into the middle of some really big international transactions and making himself indispensable.”
“In what way?” said Britain.
“He’s no longer just selling guns, bullets, and explosives. He’s now peddling some major ordnance. Just before you came over here today I pulled a couple of intelligence reports. It seems Bruno was partnered up with Victor Soyev.”
“Soyev peddled the thermobaric device that landed in the rail yard at Union Station,” said Britain.
“Right. When we took Soyev down, Bruno inherited the entire business,” said Thorpe.
“Now, do you remember the Mexican assassin, the one the cartels called Liquida?”
Britain had to change gears for a second to think. “Yeah, I remember. We kept wondering why his name was popping up around the fringes in the two terrorist attacks. The one in Coronado, at the naval base, and the aerial bomb that hit the rail yard here.”
“Liquida is always around the edges,” said Thorpe. “Never in the middle. We were wondering what a contract killer for the cartels was doing involved in the two terror attacks. The answer is Bruno Croleva,” said Thorpe.
“According to the intelligence reports, Croleva has done business with the FARC in Colombia,” Thorpe went on. “He has connections in Cuba where he has sold weapons as well as in the Middle East, in Iran …”
“And we know he had a connection in North Korea because that’s where Soyev got the thermobaric device,” said Britain.
“Correct,” said Llewellyn.
“All the places where weapons were used in the last two terrorist attacks were either obtained or transited during their shipment to the United States,” said Thorpe. “And it seems that in addition to peddling blockbuster ordnance, Bruno has become a major talent agent. He doesn’t just sell the weapons. If you require it, in a pinch, he can rent you the services of specialists who can wield them and do so with great discretion. According to the CIA, one of his principal artists in this field is a professional assassin known only by the alias ‘Liquida,’ which in Spanish means ‘water.’ In other words, if you’ve got a deal going down and suddenly somebody’s getting ready to drop sand in the works, Bruno can commission Liquida to lubricate the gears with blood.”
“OK, I understand all that,” said Llewellyn, “but how does that give us a leg up on whatever it is that has the White House in such a shit storm?”
“That’s the thing about information,” said Thorpe. “Whoever has it possesses power. In this case, the power to know more. During the telephone conversation, the White House let it drop that apparently the National Security Agency has no file on Bruno.”
“I don’t understand,” said Britain.
“The NSA managed to track some Skype traffic, Internet telephone communications, and apparently a chat line message left by one of the missing researchers from NASA to someone named Bruno Croleva. They wanted to know if the bureau had anything in its files on a man by that name. I’d suggest that gives us two leads, not one, Croleva and Liquida. And we’d better find them fast,” said Thorpe.
Chapter Thirteen
Five hours out over the Pacific and my body is beginning to cramp up in the tight coach seat. We are thirty- two rows back in the big 767, and not even halfway to Taipei. There we have a two-hour holdover before we fly on to Bangkok, another three and a half hours in the air.
Harry, Joselyn, and I flew directly from Washington to L.A., not even going near San Diego. We booked a midnight flight on EVA Air, the national airline of Taiwan. I can’t begin to calculate the number of time zones we will cross, let alone the international date line.
By the time we arrive, we will be the walking dead, talking in our sleep, terminally jet-lagged with no chance to get over it before our scheduled return flight in three days.
The lights are out in the cabin, and the shades are all pulled. Most of the passengers are in various states of disarray. Some of the pros brought bedclothes, loose sweats or shorts to sleep in. There are bodies under rumpled blankets, some of them hugging pillows. The guy behind me is slouched in his seat snoring like a foghorn with his knees buried in the back of my seat. The interior of the plane has the mood of an opium den but without the benefit of the drugs.
Joselyn’s head is tilted on my shoulder. She is snoring gently in my ear, making harmonics with the foghorn behind me. Harry is just across the aisle. He is snoozing when he can, but like me he is having trouble finding the sandman.
He looks at me and sees my eyes open. “Who was the Sherlock who thought this one up?”
“You wanted to come,” I whisper to him.
“What’s the time difference in Thailand?” says Harry.
“I think it’s fourteen hours ahead of the clock on the West Coast,” I tell him.
Joselyn begins to stir. She lifts her head from my shoulder and stretches. “You still awake?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Take a pill,” she says. “Want an Ambien? I’ve got some up in my bag in the overhead.”
“No. I want to try and keep my head clear.”
“For that you need sleep,” she says.
“I keep thinking about Thorpe,” I tell her.
“What about him?”
