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“Okay.” Susan left the room and headed down to the kitchen.
But she couldn’t get rid of the nagging feeling that something just wasn’t right.
The Zermatt Group Offices
West 75th Street, Manhattan, New York
23 February
Friday, 10:55 p.m. local time
Aidan went straight to his apartment building, greeted George the doorman, and then took the elevator up to the seventh floor.
He unlocked the front door and strode in, locking it firmly behind him.
This was home to him and Abby, and often to Joyce Reynolds, Abby’s middle-aged nanny, who spent many an overnight or a late night—such as tonight—in the guest room while Aidan traveled or worked. Joyce had twenty years of experience, an enormously long fuse, and a genuine fondness for her little charge. She cooked, straightened up the apartment, and accompanied Abby to preschool and to all her other activities and playdates. She was a lifesaver.
The apartment was well-appointed and huge, with tons of rooms and a loft-like area that Abby loved to play in. Right now, it was quiet, which meant that Abby was asleep.
He’d check in on her later. At the moment, enjoying his home’s amenities was the farthest thing from his mind.
He headed directly for the windowless room at the rear of the apartment, which served as the strategic command center for the Zermatt Group, a.k.a. the home base of Aidan’s “other life.” They called this space “the Cage” because the entire room was a Faraday cage. It didn’t allow electromagnetic waves to enter and thereby protected all the sensitive electronic devices within its walls from electronic surveillance. All communications to the outside world were hardwired, heavily monitored, and protected with multiple firewalls. When someone tried to reach either Aidan or Terri on their cell phone when inside the Cage, the call could be routed instead to the desk phone in the room.
He paused in front of the solid steel door and the Hirsh keypad controlling access to it. Adjacent to the keypad was a small red light. When it glowed, Aidan was inside and not to be disturbed.
Spotting a crumpled candy wrapper on the floor, he squatted to pick it up and pocket it, a smile tugging at his lips as he thought of Abby repeating to her little friends, “Unless there’s fire, flood, or blood, do not disturb my daddy ’cause he’s working.” So very Abbylike. She defended her daddy’s unusual and über-private work space with absolute loyalty, even if she did have a million questions about it when she and Aidan were alone.
Right now Aidan could see that the red light was glowing, which told him that Terri was already inside. Only the two of them had the combination to the Hirsh. Aidan entered the access code and pushed the door open when he heard the lock click.
“I’m here,” he announced, tossing his jacket on the nearest chair and striding over to Terri’s desk, peering over her head as he did. The entire wall was a panorama of LED monitors partitioned into smaller screens that displayed everything from international news broadcasts to PRISM to computers monitoring events all over the world.
As a former NSA analyst and a sought-after computer security consultant, Terri was an expert on finding people who were trying to stay anonymous. From her stint at the NSA, she knew what worked and what didn’t. Friends and foes quickly learned that she was quite the force to be reckoned with.
Physically, she was also a formidable woman, almost six feet tall, with a figure that rivaled Wonder Woman’s. Her eyes were intense and dark, her hair was wavy and shoulder-length, and her skin was a light golden brown, the product of an African-American father and a Caucasian mother. As head of intelligence for the Zermatt Group and Aidan’s right hand, she’d been an integral part of it since its onset.
Now she glanced up from her laptop, then rose and walked over to the printer, where she retrieved a handful of pages and passed them to Aidan. “Take a look at what Donovan found.”
Donovan, Terri’s artificial intelligence system, had been named by Aidan after “Wild Bill” Donovan, head of the OSS during World War II and regarded as the father of modern intelligence. Terri’s Donovan would sniff out examples of corporations stealing from each other, criminal enterprises working with terrorists, and governments spying on everybody. The Zermatt Group didn’t have the time or the resources to address all of them, only those that were really serious and that they m
ight be able to do something about.
Clearly, this one was really serious. It would be interesting to see if they could impact it.
Frowning in concentration, Aidan flipped through the pages, noting the key briefing points in his hands.
He returned to page one.
“Vance Pennington,” he said, without reading the details he already knew. “He’s NanoUSA’s Vice-President of Manufacturing. They’re in the middle of something very big.”
Terri nodded. “Our intelligence tells us that NanoUSA is about to commercialize a breakthrough manufacturing technology that will turn the electronics industry upside down. The Chinese desperately need this technology—to protect the status quo of their electronics dominance. Over the past few months, my analysis shows increased chatter from Chinese companies about stealing the technology—including hacking attempts targeting NanoUSA, heightened communications between known spies for the Chinese, and Chinese-sponsored agents looking to bribe or blackmail company employees into leaking details.”
Aidan pursed his lips. “I assume that, to date, all attempts on the part of the Chinese have failed.”
“Yes,” Terri replied. “Let’s move on to Pennington’s personal life. Turn to page ten.” She waited and then pointed at the page Aidan had flipped to. “He has a wife, Susan, and three children—Andrew, twenty-seven, Jessica, twenty-five, and Lauren, twenty. Lauren is an exchange student in Munich. She just finished up her winter semester. She’s on her break now, supposedly touring Europe.”
“Supposedly?”
“My system has detected a statistically significant shift in the communication flow from Lauren to her parents. Upon further analysis, I don’t believe she’s the person who’s been communicating with them for the past three days.”
