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Hua checked a small signal display next to the main monitor on his remote control and shook his head. “It’s not giving off a signal. The batteries are probably dead.”
To illustrate what he meant, he used the remote to release the first bug from the drone’s undercarriage. The moment it detached, it showed up as an AV signal on the remote’s display and Hua was able to toggle between the audio-visual feed of the bug and the drone on the main monitor.
“Even if we couldn’t decrypt the signal, at this range we would pick it up,” he said. “Let me see if I can grab it.”
He piloted the drone forward a few inches and there was a click as the bug snapped into place in the vacated bay on the undercarriage.
“Got it.”
He flew the drone through the rest of the ventilation network and deposited our surveillance devices. There were other bugs in every room and Hua collected five more of them before piloting the drone back through the maze of ducts and up to the roof. He powered down the device and picked it up to examine the bugs on its underside.
“Same model as ours,” he observed.
“Guoanbu?” Zhang Daiyu asked, referring to the Chinese Intelligence service.
“Maybe.” He nodded. “Hard to say for sure at this point, but at least we now have eyes and ears on Molly Tan.”
He cycled the remote-control screen through images being broadcast by the six bugs he had placed throughout her penthouse.
I was determined to find out what she really knew. And besides that, I was more than intrigued to learn that someone had been spying on her well before we had placed our bugs. Who could that be?
CHAPTER 29
JUSTINE AND SCI had been parked outside the small house on Howard Avenue, Bridgeport for a couple of hours, waiting for any sign of Francis Johnson, the man who’d used a false Social Security number to get his job at Ryedale Engineering. According to his employee record, Francis was five feet ten, one hundred and seventy pounds, and his photo showed a hawkish man with short brown hair and a crooked nose, the result, he’d claimed in his job interview, of a childhood fall from a bike. Justine had emailed the Ryedale Engineering staff photo to Mo-bot who was running an image search against mugshot databases.
The Private staff vehicle was parked thirty yards south of Francis’s house on the opposite side of the street, giving Justine and Sci an unobstructed view of the property. Howard Avenue was in a blue-collar neighborhood of modest, well-kept one- and two-story homes on small lots. Most of the houses were clad inpainted timber or aluminum and nearly all flew the Stars and Stripes from their porches or beneath the eaves of their roofs. The sight of the red, white, and blue displayed on the street reminded Justine of Jack and the service he’d given his country. She couldn’t wait to see him.
She had thought about calling him, but it was one of those situations where she didn’t want her personal feelings to cloud her professional judgment. She was worried about him, but other than the temporary relief and joy of hearing his voice, didn’t think anything useful would come of a conversation at present. She had no new information and Jack had assured her he’d call as soon as he had something worth sharing.
“He’ll be okay,” Sci remarked. “Jack, I mean.”
Justine nodded. “I wasn’t thinking about him.”
Sci smiled mischievously. “Really?”
“Well, maybe. But you’re right,” she replied. “He will be okay.” She heard the uncertainty in her voice and wanted to change the subject. “Where is this guy?”
They had tried the house a couple of times, ringing the bell and knocking on the front door, but there was no answer. The lime-green 1982 Volkswagen Golf parked in the driveway was registered in the name of Francis Johnson, suggesting wherever he was, he’d left without his usual means of transport.
“You want to take a look around the place?” Sci asked.
“Break in?”
Sci nodded.
“And if he walks in on us and calls the cops?”
“You can keep look out,” Sci replied playfully.
“I don’t think we’re there yet,” Justine said. “I’d rather wait.”
Despite their seniority, Sci and Mo-bot could sometimes behave like a pair of rebellious teens. Perhaps it was their decades of experience that gave them the confidence to do so?
Justine’s phone rang and she pulled it out to see Mo-bot’s name on-screen.
“Mo,” she said. “You’re on speaker with me and Sci.”
“The man posing as Francis Johnson doesn’t have a criminal record,” Mo-bot responded, “but I was able to identify him from an old photograph on Facebook. His real name is Billy Bostic.”
