“What does this have to do with anything?”
“It’s who owns it. Yousseff has a string of companies and ownership hidden behind trusts, but he owns fifty-one percent of this company.”
“Who owns the rest of it?”
“That is the mystery. There is a company called Erbium166. It owns the rest.”
“Erbium166? That’s an odd name. Who owns it?”
“I do not know for sure. But I think Yousseff made a deal. He is very smart, and he could see that between what Zak had figured out and the digging that had been done by TTIC, he was exposed. He made the occasional comment about it, before he realized that I was no longer in his camp. I think it is possible that senior American officials have a piece of Erbium166. Along with other Americans who, you know, control things. But I can’t prove it.”
Turbee let that sink in and went back to the group. He relayed the information he had just learned from Kumar. The post-pizza chatter stopped cold. Richard broke the silence. “What did you say, Turbee? What did Kumar say? What . . .?”
Kumar was summoned to the central lounge and was peppered with questions for several hours. While he appeared to be somewhat affected by the alcohol he’d consumed, his tale remained consistent.
“So,” said George. “So now we know the ‘why’ of CJ’s report. Now we know why anyone who points to Yousseff’s culpability is instantly branded a conspiracy theorist. Now we know why you two, Zak and Richard, have apparently gone rogue. Senior political people have a personal piece of Afghanistan.”
“And that’s why Buckingham and the admiral and Liam are all in jail,” Richard added.
“Now we know why we’re fugitives,” said Turbee. “Why we’re all rogue and all of that.”
“Actually,” said Khasha, “we don’t know anything. We’ve got one very drunk terrorist with strange motives fingering the man who is trying to kill him. We have a bunch of thirdhand hearsay, and while it certainly explains a lot, we really are no further ahead.”
“If what Kumar says is correct, though,” said Richard, “we are all in danger. It sounds like ADC owns the rights to anything that’s valuable in an entire country. This is hundreds of billions of dollars. People kill for a tiny fraction of that. Face it, we all know that the president is a psychopath. I think he’s completely capable of doing something like this. And anyone who gets involved in deals like this will kill to protect their interests. We need to be very careful.”
“We don’t know the president’s involved,” said George. “That’s pure speculation.”
“Jesus,” said Zak. “Yousseff really has bought Afghanistan. He used the few billion he made from the terrorist attack to purchase an entire country. This is incredible.”
“He hasn’t just bought a country,” added George. “He’s created the mother of all conspiracy theories. That Colorado report is designed to deflect any accusations that might be made against him. This goes pretty deep, you guys.”
“We should figure out how we can prove this,” Khasha said. They discussed that topic for a while, considering various witnesses and documents they could gain access to. It was Turbee who stated the obvious. “I have a back door into TTIC’s supercomputers,” he said. “My laptop isn’t powerful enough to do what I need to have done. Tomorrow, let’s put together the most powerful computer that we can, George, and I can use that as a gateway into TTIC. We can start with Erbium166 and the ADC. We may be able to piece this together.”
53
Tyra and Keith were busy constructing the Raytheon M17 Sentry drone, which had been disassembled to fit into duffel bags and make it through customs at South Terminal. Ron was assembling the three Barrett M82 sniper rifles and attaching the Nightforce Optics scopes. The sniper weapons had been perfectly sighted and set up at a gunnery range in Maryland; it was a simple matter of reconfiguring everything to the previous settings.
While still in Washington, DC, Tyra had booked the Four Seasons penthouse in Vancouver for a night and a half-day. She did this through an Amex account held by a CIA incorporated numbered company in the Bahamas. The penthouse was above the hotel’s regular floors and was not accessible through the normal guest elevators. Most people thought that the top floor was the highest number on the guest elevators. There was, in fact, a penthouse floor above it, accessible by only the service elevators. This suite had a balcony that faced west, toward the courthouse, and had an unimpeded view of the east end of the courthouse. Courtroom 401 was adjacent to the eastern outer wall of the building.
Robson Square was a large public area between the hotel and the courthouse. A large set of double doors connected the western edge of Robson Square with the eastern side of the courthouse. This foyer covered more than 50,000 square feet. Its glass roof sloped to the north, from a height of seven floors to two. It was a stunning architectural achievement, and was one of the must-see sites for tourists visiting the city. During adjournments, the public, lawyers, witnesses, and individuals interested in whatever legal proceedings were going on flooded the foyer and the terraces along the southern edge of the foyer that led to the courtrooms. Because of the location of Courtroom 401, the gallery emptied into the foyer and onto the west end of Robson Square. The distance from the Four Seasons balcony to the courthouse was 1,800 feet, slightly beyond the Barrett sniper rifle’s preferred range of 1,500 feet, but in the hands of a consummate expert, on a calm day, a doable range.
A cube van had been rented and modified. Tyra had one of her agents crisscross the city to find some orange cones and signs that said CITY OF VANCOUVER PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT, signage that was, according
