Act Of War

“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.”

Pausing in his blowing of a bubble, Tokaido looked pained at the request, but nodded. “We’ll know for sure by noon tomorrow,” he said, and went to work contacting Scotland Yard, routing the request through Brognola’s Justice department e-mail account. The British police regularly did the Farm small favors, assuming the requests came from Justice.

“All right, I hacked the bank and got his credit card,” Delahunt announced smoothly. “The account for his wife was closed last year, and the dates match her supposed demise.”

“What about him?” Price asked.

“He spent a lot of time drinking at the local bars, months actually, then went to Amsterdam for a—” Delahunt coughed delicately. “Shall we say he had a lonely man’s weekend adventure?”

“Everybody grieves in their own way. All I want to know is, where the frag is he now?” Kurtzman asked. “Exploring the forbidden delights of Hong Kong? Going down under in Australia?”

“Australia?”

“Prostitution is legal there.”

“Is it? Well, the card shows he took British Airlines Flight 255 to Nashville, Tennessee, and he is staying at the Tuncisa Casino and Hotel in Memphis. Room 957, the Heartbreak Hotel suite.”

In spite of the situation, Brognola almost smiled at that. “He’s an Elvis fan?”

“And who isn’t?” Kissinger said languidly.

“Has Jack gotten in touch with Able Team yet?” Price asked, standing from her chair. Jack Grimaldi was the chief pilot for Stony Man and often carried the field teams to and from battlegrounds. There wasn’t a machine with wings or rotors that Grimaldi couldn’t fly, including space shuttles.

“Just a few minutes ago,” Kurtzman replied. “They were getting some R and R visiting Toni in Los Angeles, and not answering their cell phones, so I sent some blacksuits after them as you suggested. Thankfully, Ironman heard about New Mexico on the radio and the team is already on the way.”

“Excellent. When they arrive, send the team to Memphis and bring in Professor Gallen,” she ordered. “We need him alive.”

“Consider it done.”

“What about Phoenix Force?” Brognola asked.

“They’re going to Finland, to check the former location of the lab,” Price answered curtly. “Or rather, they will be soon. Unfortunately right now they’re incommunicado on that search-and-rescue mission to Sardinia. No way out of that.”

Although irritated, the man accepted the information. Soldiers couldn’t very well answer a cell phone in the middle of a firefight. One small distraction could cost a hundred lives. There was nothing to do until McCarter called the Farm, either announcing a successful mission or asking for an immediate air strike.

The big Fed took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “How soon until they call in?”

Price checked the clock on the wall above the room’s entrance.

“Just about any time now…” she answered as the hands moved forward with a mechanical click.

CHAPTER THREE

The Isle of Sardinia