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“An engineer?”
Hinton nodded. “Brilliant bloke. Quite liked him. He went on vacation the day all this madness began, died the next.”
“Was he one of the people you think America would have to kill to stop the Chinese from creating their weapon?”
At this, Anton Hinton hesitated. He bit a fingernail as he looked off into the distance. “Actually, no. He was an excellent engineer, but he wasn’t a groundbreaking developer. The only thing I can reckon is they killed him because he worked for me, and all the others who worked for me are living in a bunker in Cuba.”
Zack said, “Well, whoever is doing this…we need to continue working under the assumption that they will try again. I think we have to limit your movements to La Finca and the lab.”
Anton started to respond, but then his phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked it, then put his phone down and closed his eyes.
“What is it?” Gareth Wren asked.
“Amir Kumar was murdered this morning.”
Wren put his fork down, reached out, and squeezed Anton on the forearm. “Bloody hell, mate.”
Zack sat quietly. After several seconds, Hinton looked up to him. “The world’s most preeminent electromagnetic scientist. Very involved in the development of the movement of large amounts of data from place to place. A bloody brilliant man, and a friend.”
“I’m sorry” was all Zack could say, but it was his inclination to grab Hinton by the neck, drag him down to a bomb shelter, and keep him locked there until this entire affair was over.
Wren said, “That makes…what…thirteen murders? In four days?”
Hinton just nodded. He looked depressed, but more than depressed. He looked utterly stricken.
Zack said, “You want to call it a day, Anton? Head back to La Finca?”
The man’s head seemed to clear, and then he looked up. “No. I want to get back to work.”
He rose from the table, headed back towards the elevators, and Zack stayed behind, turning to Wren. “How late will we be here today?”
Wren was distracted. He seemed almost as upset as Hinton, but eventually he shook it off. With a shrug he said, “Could be five o’clock, could be ten.”
“Ten?” Zack exclaimed.
“Yeah, he doesn’t keep normal hours.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Zack muttered as the pair headed towards the elevator to catch up with Hinton.
•••
At Operations Center Gama in the Singapore Science Park, the director stepped into the auditorium wearing his gray suit, a red tie, and a freshly shaved face. He’d been getting about four hours of sleep a day for the past week, but he’d been somewhat refreshed with a shower in his quarters and some food delivered downstairs and brought up by the security staff.
And now it was time for the director to get back to work. Their next operation was in the terminal phase now; the kinetic action by the assets on the ground would commence within the hour.
His intercom beeped on his desk; he didn’t have his earpiece in yet, so he tapped the button to open the line. “Yes?”
“Sir? It’s Fifteen. Can I speak with you?” It was the French controller of the asset in the Americas.
The director didn’t want to hear from Fifteen right now; he wanted all his focus to be on his next hit, but he told her he’d come speak to her. He put down the phone and climbed up to her cubicle at the back of the small auditorium.
As he passed the controller from India and approached the controller from France, he noticed that the desk of the controller from Germany was empty.
“Where is Fourteen?” he asked the French woman.
“That’s why I called you, sir. I went to her room last night to return some headphones she loaned me, and she wasn’t there. I didn’t think anything of it, but she didn’t come to breakfast or lunch, either. I know we haven’t been using her drone pilot in the Americas, but I assume she should still be at her desk, no?”
The director didn’t respond. Instead, he turned and headed to the closest security man, a stone-faced Asian in his fifties who stood at the rear auditorium double doors.
