Act Of War. Don Pendleton
have,” Tokaido said calmly, tapping a button.
Pulsating into life, the main wall monitor divided into four sections, each slowly scrolling with text and mathematics.
Biting a lip, the big Fed struggled to read all of the screens at the same time, when Price gave a hard grunt. “Wait a second!” she barked. “There on screen three! Go back a bit.”
Stroking a fingerpad, Tokaido did as requested, and everybody perused the text. It was a Pentagon document on foreign-weapons research. The file was ten years old and marked as abandoned.
Reaching for his ceramic mug, Kurtzman took a sip of the black coffee. “Code name Icarus,” he muttered. “That’s it, just the project name? No details?”
“Very little,” Tokaido admitted, accessing the file. “Less than a page. The Pentagon wasn’t interested in obtaining more since the project was a failure. Why, does the name mean something to you?”
Removing his pipe, Wethers answered. “In Greek mythology, Icarus was given wings of feathers and wax. He flew too close to the sun, the wax melted and he plummeted into the sea.”
Tokaido shrugged. It was as good as any place to start.
More data came onto the screen. “Okay, Project Icarus was a top-secret research project by the Finnish government conducted around 1989,” Kurtzman announced. “Believed to be some sort of electromagnetic shield designed to stop a nuclear blast. The project was abandoned a year after it started.”
“During the cold war,” Kissinger said in a low voice. “And Finland is sure as hell part of the Netherlands.”
The people in the room became galvanized at the simple pronouncement.
“So the rumors were correct. Sort of. But a nuclear shield?” Delahunt said. “That’s ridiculous! Scientifically impossible.”
“That could have simply been the cover story,” Brognola explained. “Lord knows I’ve had to spin some whoppers in my career to cover the work that goes on here.”
A dimple appeared on her cheeks. “Fair enough.”
“No way the Finns are behind this,” Price declared resolutely. “They are some of the staunchest supporters of world peace.”
“The Chinese invented gunpowder, but they still got shot by the Japanese in both of the Sino-Japanese wars,” Kurtzman retorted. “Somebody may have just have run across this research and finished the project, or simply stolen it outright. Are any of the Finnish scientists or politicians involved in the project still alive today? Anybody we can question for details?”
“Checking,” Tokaido said, typing on his keyboard.
“Negative,” Wethers announced, hitting a button to slave his monitor to the wall screen. Old photographs of men and women in laboratory coats appeared on the screen, short profiles scrolling alongside each face. “They have all passed away from natural causes.”
“But they only look to be about forty years old,” Price said carefully, as if weighing each word. “If this picture was taken in 1989, that would only put them in their sixties now.”
“All of them are dead?” Brognola demanded suspiciously. “All?”
“I have the death certificates,” Wethers said, checking the screen. Then he frowned. “What in the world…These are fake. Look at those dates! It is statistically impossible for fifty people working on a project to all die on the exact same day.” He tapped the scroll button to flip pages. “Car crashes, heart attacks, fell off a bridge, drowned…this is a wipe-out!”
“Has to be,” Kurtzman growled. “Somebody must have hit the lab and killed everybody there, and the Finnish government disguised the deaths as accidents.”
“The natural choice is the Soviet Union, which means the KGB,” Brognola said. “But the KGB was disbanded when Russia became a democracy.”
“The KGB also sold off a lot of their stockpiles of tanks, planes, submarines and even some nukes,” Delahunt noted. “They might have sold the Icarus blueprints to anybody.”
“Excuse me, this man is not dead,” Tokaido said casually.
“Eh? I have the files right here,” Wethers stated, shifting his pipe to the other side of his mouth. “Fifty people, fifty death certificates.”
“True, but I cross-checked with their families to see who got the estates of the deceased scientists, settled their bills and so on.” He moved a mouse and a single picture appeared on the wall monitor. The man was pudgy with thick wavy hair, horn-rimmed glasses and a small mustache. “Only the family of Dr. Elias Gallen did not apply to his insurance company, and he carried term life.”
“He’s not dead,” Price said with a hard smile. “The son of a bitch survived the attack, and the Finns pretended that he was to try to save his life from further assaults.”
“Got a location?” Brognola demanded urgently. “If he can tell us exactly what we’re dealing with here…”
“Checking…” Tokaido said, frowning slightly. A minute passed, then two. Five minutes.
“Need any help?” Kurtzman growled impatiently, fingers poised over his keyboard.
“Not really,” the young man answered slowly, both hands working furiously. “These records are still on magnetic tape in some Finnish archive, and they load slower than a Bolivian firewall…Yes, got it!” He swung away from the console. “All right, there is no record of them changing their mailing address, driver’s license or anything similar.”
“Be the mistake of a rank amateur if they did,” Kurtzman interjected rudely.
“However,” Tokaido continued unabated, “when the Treasury Bureau of Finland closed the personal accounts of Dr. and Mrs. Gallen, that exact same amount was sent to a numbered Swiss bank account in Geneva.” The man smiled. “Then shifted to a Chase Bank in Mousehole, Wales, United Kingdom.”
“Always follow the money,” Price said with a nod. “Good job, Akira.”
“Got an address?” Brognola asked. In spite of all the years working with these people, he was still amazed at how fast they could unearth information and track down people.
“It’s 14-14 Danvers Road,” Kurtzman answered, studying a small window display. “That’s a house, not an apartment complex, so there should be a name on the land file. Good thing David McCarter got us those MI-5 access codes…The land belongs to a Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Cartwright. I’ll cross-reference that with the Royal Motor Division—she does not have a driver’s license, but he does—give me a sec, downloading the JPEG now.” On the wall monitor was a the slightly blurry photograph of a pudgy man with thick wavy hair, the temples winged with silver streaks, horn-rimmed glasses, a large mustache and an old scar along the right cheek. It was clearly an old bullet scar. Everybody in the room had seen enough of them to know those on sight.
“Any fingerprints?” Brognola asked hopefully.
“No need, that’s him,” Tokaido stated confidently. “Same blood type listed on his organ-donor card, and still on the same medication.”
“What for?”
“Some sort of cancer. Checking…”
“Working with high-voltage electronics for many years often causes leukemia, cancer of the blood,” Wethers said unexpectedly.
Dutifully, Tokaido bent into the screen. “Confirmed, he has leukemia,” he announced after a few moments. “The medical records also show his wife was admitted to St. Frances Hospital in Wales last year, also with leukemia…she died six months ago and was laid to rest in Heather Grove cemetery in Sussex.”
“Exhume the body,” Brognola ordered. “I want to make sure it is her and not him.”