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“So we have no network penetration and no one listening into our meetings with bugs,” Juan said. “I’m looking for any other explanation for how the information about where we’d be could have made it into the wrong hands.”
Eric stared in disbelief. “You mean we might have a spy on board?”
Juan sighed heavily. “We haven’t had a new crew member in over a year. We’ve vetted everybody, both financially and personally. I don’t see how it’s possible.”
“Do you want me to start looking into the crew members who weren’t targeted today?”
Juan shook his head. “Not yet. I can’t accept that we have a traitor on the Oregon, and going down that path will start making everyone paranoid. We work and live together too closely to be suspicious of each other. It would destroy us as a unit. I want another explanation.”
“But how could they have known where we’d be unless they were in the room when we were talking about it?”
Juan was grasping for any explanation that didn’t involve a witch hunt, and it couldn’t hurt to take precautions. “We might get more answers about how it was done if we knew who’d done it.”
The two of them shrugged and Juan left. His next stop was the op center, where he found MacD and Hali Kasim listening to headphones with both hands on their ears.
Juan leaned against the console. “Is this the recording Eddie made?”
Hali nodded. “MacD thinks he can translate what the guy was saying.”
“Anything useful?”
MacD shrugged, which seemed to be his crew’s favorite new gesture. “It sounds like the guy was delirious. Eddie said he hit the ground pretty hard with his head before he died.”
“What’s he saying?”
“Just one sentence over and over. ‘The doctor’—whoever he is—‘promised the world would be different in four days.’ He says it like he’s sorry he wouldn’t live to see it. Does that phrase mean anything to you?”
Juan joined in the shrugfest. “It sounds ominous.”
“Maybe he was being treated for some condition,” Hali said.
“Then why does he say ‘the world would be different’?”
“Maybe he means his world.”
“Nope,” MacD said, “he’s definitely saying the world.”
“That still doesn’t answer why he and his friends would want us out of the way,” Juan said.
“Could be they think we know something about this doctor.”
“Or about what happens in four days,” Hali said.
“If anyone has any theories,” Juan said, “I’m all ears.”
Linda came up and handed Juan several sheets of paper. “We just got this from the CIA. It’s a preliminary list of everything newsworthy that happened on the dates found on the phone you took from that Venezuelan Navy lieutenant. They’re doing more in-depth analysis on it right now.”
Juan saw the four Greek letters and codes, each paired with a date, but they seemed as inscrutable now as they were the day Murph and Eric hacked into the phone. Alpha 17, Beta 19, Gamma 22. Delta 23, the fourth in the series, corresponded to today’s date.
“Did they find any correlation?”
“The CIA checked for every series progression they could think of. Nothing fit. And there doesn’t seem to be anything that ties the dates together.”
Juan scanned the list of events. It included a wide variety of possibilities and spanned the entire world: murders, traffic fatalities, political speeches and rallies, weather phenomena, terrorist bombings, sports events. None of them fit a pattern that Juan could see.
One item caught his eye: a ship sinking. Most of the general public doesn’t realize how regularly ships on the high seas go down. During an average year, more than a hundred ships sink, sending two thousand sailors to a watery grave. Even in the age of GPS tracking, weather forecasting, and satellite communications, many of the ships disappear without a trace, falling prey to mechanical failures, fire, storms, and rogue waves.
The listed ship fit into the Gamma 22 spot. She was a cargo vessel named Santa Cruz that went down with all hands.
