'Yes?' she said.
'Whatever the patient told you cannot be used in fashioning a legal case against him,' Coffey told her. 'Mr. Tong did not have an attorney present, and he was under the influence of medication.'
'He is also guilty of piracy,' Loh replied flatly.
'Perhaps,' Coffey admitted. 'And if you are inclined to prove that, you will have to do it some other way.'
The woman's aides were standing at the far end of the corridor. Unschooled and very young, they both knew virtue from criminal behavior better than these older, highly educated men beside her. Knowledge and liberality had crowded common sense from their brains.
'Gentlemen, I am returning to my patrol ship,' she said. 'It is probably not a coincidence that this event occurred where it did.'
'What do you mean?' Ellsworth asked.
'You're thinking about the 130-5 site, aren't you Officer Loh?' Jelbart asked.
'I am,' Loh replied. 'I would like to go there and look for evidence of a conflict or perhaps the target vessel itself.'
'Excuse me, but what's the 130-5 site?' Coffey asked.
'It's the point of intersection at one hundred and thirty degrees longitude, five degrees latitude,' Jelbart replied. 'That's where Japan and China are permitted to dump their nuclear waste.'
'But Officer Loh just said these pirates wouldn't have attacked a vessel of that sort,' Ellsworth said.
'They would not have,' the Singaporean agreed. 'What I'm afraid of is something else.'
'What?' Ellsworth asked.
'That they attacked a vessel that may have just done business with one of those vessels,' Loh replied.
Chapter Sixteen
Paul Hood was about to leave when the phone beeped. It had been nearly five hours since he turned over the running of Op-Center to the evening shift. That was the only time he got to catch up on E-mails, intelligence briefings, and personal matters.
He snatched it up and sat on the edge of the desk.
'Evening, Paul,' Coffey said.
'Good afternoon,' Hood replied. 'So? Did your patient wake up?'
Coffey told him he had. Before the attorney briefed him, Hood conferenced in Mike Rodgers and Bob Herbert. Both men were at home. Rodgers was up watching old action movies, as usual. Usually John Wayne or Charlton Heston. Herbert was getting ready to turn in.
Nothing Coffey said surprised Hood.
'Do you have any information about the bullets they pulled from the pirate or the wreckage?' Rodgers asked.
'Yes, I wrote that down,' Coffey said. 'Jelbart had one of his men come over and take a look at them. He just received word that they were from a.380 double-action semiautomatic. The initial forensics tests said that the bullets were remanufactured with a tungsten-polymer coating—'
'Which means that they're doubly difficult to trace,' Rodgers said.
'How so?' Hood asked.
'Remanufactured, meaning that the shell and casing came from different places,' Rodgers said, 'and designed so as not to retain evidence of the rifling from the barrel that shot them.'
'Bullets without fingerprints,' Herbert said.
'More or less,' Rodgers replied.
'Would it take considerable financial resources or a special laboratory to create ammunition like that?' Hood asked.
'Not necessarily,' Rodgers replied. 'Depends on what scale they're making these things. A few dozen, even a few hundred could be done in a shack with easily obtainable gear.'
'So that's pretty much a dead end,' Hood said.
'There is one thing that we need to talk about,' Coffey said. 'Brian Ellsworth, the chief solicitor for the Australian Maritime Intelligence Centre. He is very keen to have the United States as a part of this investigation.'
'Officially, you mean,' Rodgers said.
'That's what I mean,' Coffey said. 'I'm here as an independent adviser, not as a representative of Op-Center or the United States.'
'What is Mr. Ellsworth looking for?' Hood asked.
'A formal commitment that we are a part of this investigation,' Coffey told the others.
'Why should that matter?' Herbert asked. 'There isn't a convenience the Australians need or a challenge that scares them.'
'They could certainly do this by themselves,' Coffey agreed. 'At the same time—'
'They would prefer not to go it alone,' Hood interrupted. 'Especially if they need to put pressure on Singapore for access to intelligence or background information on this pirate.'
'On Singapore, Malaysia, China, anyone who could be involved in this,' Coffey replied.
'Frankly, I don't think the pirate is going to matter much anymore,' Herbert said. 'He and his guys were just unlucky.'
'Possibly,' Hood agreed. 'I'm curious what they'll do if they discover that any Australians are involved in this.'
'I'm sure that's another reason Ellsworth wants us involved,' Coffey said. 'If there is an Australian component to this, we can help pressure anyone in Canberra who might be in denial. That's one thing they don't do very well, Bob. Self-examination. There's a very strong blue-wall component in their thinking. It's them against the Rim, fighting for European values in an Asian world. They don't like attacking their own.'
'Is anyone going out to the site of the attack?' Rodgers asked.
'Loh and Jelbart are both going on separate vessels,' Coffey said. 'I'll be joining the Australians.'
'Lowell, if these pirates had attacked a vessel involved in the legitimate transport of nuclear material, there would be a record of the transit. Isn't that correct?' Hood asked.
'Yes,' Coffey said. 'Also a report would have to have been filed about the attack. The International Nuclear Regulatory Commission demands that an accident or attack involving any nuclear vessel, military or civilian, must be reported to both the home and destination port. That hasn't happened.'
'How do you know?' Rodgers asked.
'Because the INRC must put out a bulletin immediately, warning of potential dangers to shipping or possible radioactive contamination,' Herbert said. 'The Australian Department of Defence, the Department of National Emergency Services, and the Communicable Disease and Public Health Center are among those institutions that would be notified.'
'And have not been,' Hood said.
'Right,' Coffey said.
'Are the public health people down there taking any special precautions?' Hood asked.
'They're going to increase coastline patrols off the major cities,' Herbert said. 'They'll be looking for radioactivity, of course, as well as any ships that look as though they've been damaged.'
'Bob, is there anything the National Reconnaissance Office can do to help look for the mystery ship?' Hood asked.
The National Reconnaissance Office was the highly secretive government agency that controlled and processed satellite imagery as well as other electronic surveillance capabilities.
'We're talking about a very large area with a great deal of shipping,' Herbert said. 'We don't know which way the other ship may have gone or exactly where the sampan was. I'd like to try to narrow the search area before we ask the NRO to tie up resources.'
