“Or part of it,” Almeida said. “Does it make sense for him to attack the whole summit? Al-Libbi’s last client was Iran, which has been trading arms from France, so why would they allow France to get bombed?”
Nina Myers said, “We have to figure out who al-Libbi is working for.”
Chris nodded. “What’s al-Libbi’s alignment these days?”
“Money,” Nina said. “The CIA says he lost religion years ago, and now he just works for the highest bidder. Last known base of operations was Iraq, but he was booted out in early 2001 for taking a job with the Iranians. He’s pretty much a hired gun, now.”
“Which means he could be working for anyone,” Almeida piped in. “We’re a target, of course, but with Russia here, too, I wouldn’t put it past the Chechens to go after the summit. They could easily have contacted al- Libbi.”
“Don’t forget China,” Nina said. “Half the protestors out there are upset that the G8 is considering letting China into the club.”
“Where’s our short list of active anti-China groups?” Chris said.
Nina reached for the remote that controlled the conference room’s display screen. She tapped a few buttons and a list popped onto the screen. “There’s Free Taiwan and the religious group Falun Gong. According to the Chinese, there are also about forty groups in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, or what the locals like to call East Turkistan. They vary in size, and some are more violent than others, but all of them are pretty localized.”
Chris nodded. All this had been covered in the advance work done several weeks prior to the summit. Most of the agencies involved — the FBI, Homeland Security, the CIA, and CTU — believed that China’s presence would cause a huge political firestorm, but not a terrorist attack. Organizations with enough muscle and sophistication to launch an attack on U.S. soil, such as al-Qaeda, would go after the United States itself or Russia. Still, it had bothered Henderson during the advance meeting when no one seemed to know anything about these eastern Chinese groups.
“Have we gotten any more intelligence on them?” he asked.
Jessi Bandison, one of the analysts, spoke up, but she didn’t look at Chris. “Not really. The Chinese government plays an interesting game. They work very hard to report on the horrible things that these separatist groups do, but they refuse to give out any real information about them.”
“Do we know if any of them operate in the U.S. at all?” Chris asked.
“Only one,” Nina said. “ETIM, or Eastern Turkistan Independence Movement. But they’re small-scale, never done anything big even in their own region, and the CIA says they have no funding. Their cause isn’t close enough to al-Libbi’s heart to get him to work for free, and there’s no way they can pay his salary.”
Chris sighed. “Well, let’s put someone on it anyway. Where’s Jack?”
Blood pounded in Jack’s ears. He felt his fingers flex involuntarily as he imagined squeezing the life out of this man, whoever he was.
“She’ll be perfectly all right, Agent Bauer,” said his captor. “I have an antidote.”
“Let her go. Let me see her,” Jack demanded.
“I don’t have her. You’re missing the point. I know how these stories go. There’s a murder, or someone goes missing, and all of a sudden the cat is out of the bag. No one is going to go missing, Agent Bauer. Your daughter is going to go about her day. She doesn’t know she has been exposed to the virus. She won’t even become contagious for twenty-four hours. I am going to release you now, and you’re going to go about your day. You are going back to your office, and you are going to sit there for the rest of the day. But you are going to stop your line of investigation. Tomorrow you will receive a small package with the antidote. Give it to your daughter by seven o’clock tomorrow morning, and all will be well. Do I make myself clear?”
“I understand,” Jack growled.
“Good. I would like to tell you one more thing, and then our business will be concluded. I will be watching you, Agent Bauer. And I will be watching your daughter. I will know where you go, and where she goes. So what I expect you to do is go back to your office and sit there all day. If you leave it, I will know. If you try to get your daughter to a hospital, I will know. You will never hear from me again, and your daughter will die. Goodbye.”
Jack heard a faint scuffle — clothing sliding along wood. A few seconds later there was a heavy thud, the sound of a circuit breaker being thrown. Then bright lights came on. Jack, after sitting in the dark, was blinded. He blinked, waiting for his pupils to contract. When he could see again, he found himself in a small, bare basement with a concrete floor. Dust covered the floor, and cobwebs hung in the corners. The stairs, or what was left of them, were broken and rotted, but a brand-new aluminum ladder climbed from the dusty floor to the next level.
Jack ran for the ladder and climbed it quickly. A short hallway led away from the basement, then opened up into a larger room, an abandoned warehouse of some kind. There were windows on all sides of the warehouse, but they’d been papered over. Morning light leaked through and around them. Jack ran for the door, stopping only to pick up a few items that had been left in plain sight: his gun, his wallet, and his mobile phone.
Jack opened the door and walked out onto an asphalt parking lot. There was a faded sign on the warehouse, which was in a row of warehouses packed between two retail districts. According to the street signs he was at the corner of Barrington and Ocean Park. Four or five cars drove by on each street. Any one of them could have held the man who had just poisoned his daughter.
Henderson’s phone rang. “Henderson here.”
“Chris, it’s Jack Bauer.”
“Jack, I thought you’d be here by—”
“I need someone to come pick me up. I’m in Culver City. Tell them to meet me at the corner of Barrington and Ocean Park. Now.”
Chris heard the urgency in Jack’s voice. “Stand by.” He opened another line. “Nina—”
“I’m working on—”
“I need you to get Jack Bauer at Barrington and Ocean Park. Something’s going down.”
“On my way.”
Chris returned to his other line. “Nina’s en route. What can you tell me?”
“Nothing over the phone.” Jack thought fast. He needed people he could trust. “Can I meet with you, Almeida, and Nina when I get back?”
“I can make it happen.”
“Thanks.” He touched the bruise on his left arm. “I’m going to need a medical team and a scanning team at headquarters. I think I’ve got some kind of tracking bug in me somewhere.”
“It’s done.”
“Good.” Jack hung up without further ceremony. He dialed another number. “Kimmy?” he said as soon as the connection was made.
“Hey, Dad! That must be some line for coffee!”
Bauer forced his voice to sound calm. “Sorry. I thought Mom would call you—”
“She did, I’m just guilting you a little. Are you coming back, or should I get a ride?”
“I’ll try to get back. Listen…” He hesitated. “How’s it going there? Any trouble?”
Kim lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Actually, this is totally boring. We’re just standing around. Mr. Cooper says it’s important just to stand up and be counted, but this reeks. All Brad Gilmore wants to do is talk about greenhouse gas.”
“Did you — have you met anyone else? Had trouble with any other groups?”
“Dad, stop asking about trouble. Everything is totally cool. I even got interviewed by a reporter. He’s going to put my name in the paper, which is cool. He was kind of a dweeb, though. He was trying to talk to me and he nearly stabbed me to death with his pen.”
Jack’s heart sank. “His pen—?”
“Well, he didn’t really stab me, but like he poked it at me. I have a red mark and everything.”
Jack had held out the faint hope that his mysterious captor was bluffing. That hope now withered away. “But you’re feeling okay?”
“Dad, yes! You’re totally channeling Mom.”
He couldn’t tell her. There was no reason. There was nothing he could do from here. Not yet. “Okay. I’ll see you soon.”
