Sam started the car and turned on the heater. The cold, damp Sardinian breeze had left her chilled, and the fading light had cast the sparse forest in gray gloom. Hayward climbed into the passenger seat beside her. The clunky cast on his arm made the act of buckling up considerably more time-consuming than normal.
“How’d you hurt your arm?” she asked.
There was no answer that wouldn’t lead to more questions, and Hayward demurred. But Sam sensed that something important was lurking somewhere in the story. It was way beyond coincidence that two separate investigations led to the same safe house on the same little almost-European island, so she persisted. “I suspect we’re barking up different sides of the same tree,” she said. “So don’t mushroom me. I need to know specifics about what you’re involved in.”
Hayward relented. He told her about Singapore. He told her about the ChemEspaña building, mostly deserted, and the safe that was supposed to contain Katrin’s redemption but instead contained nothing at all, and the panicked escape from beneath the noses of his minders, his harrowing tumble into the deafening darkness, the near-drowning, the way the water twisted and tossed and broke him. He told her about waking up to a worse nightmare than the ones that haunted his sleep.
“Damn,” Sam said. “I thought I was having a bad week.”
She guided the car smoothly around a sharp bend in the road, accelerating through the corner. She pondered Hayward’s predicament and wondered how it tied into her own.
“So I’m going to ask you the obvious question,” she said.
“You want to know what was supposed to be in that safe.”
“I do.”
Hayward pondered.
Sam nudged. “They already had a wet man waiting for you at the safe house,” she said. “It seems you’ve already crossed a line or two.”
He smiled weakly. “That I have.”
Sam looked at his face. “Maybe I can help,” she offered.
“I’m certain you can’t,” he finally said, “but I don’t have much to lose.”
He told her about ChemEspaña’s breakthrough, about the neutron-absorbing paint Joao Ferdinand-Xavier and his team had invented.
Sam was incredulous. “This is all about . . . paint?”
He nodded. “And the process to make it.”
“You’re kidding, right? Paint?”
“Think about it,” Hayward said. “A paint that traps neutrons.”
Sam shook her head. “Maybe I should know why that’s important, but I don’t.”
“Radioactive substances emit neutrons.”
The implications suddenly became clear to Sam. “Oh shit,” she said.
“Right,” Hayward said. “All of those neutron detectors at borders and ports and airports are suddenly obsolete.”
“And transporting nuclear weapons is suddenly very easy.”
Hayward nodded. “That about sums it up.”
“So the Agency wanted to shut down ChemEspaña,” Sam surmised.
“You would think,” Hayward said, “but that’s not what we were doing.”
Sam frowned. “You’re saying your handlers didn’t want to shut this thing down?”
Hayward nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Sam arched an eyebrow, confused. Why would a US security apparatus not be interested in squashing such an obvious nuclear proliferation risk?
Then she thought more about it. The CIA was a big bureaucracy, but its field operatives were atomized and very loosely supervised. Self-interested agents had famously wide latitude to pursue their own agendas. In fact, it was almost a tradition. As a rule, everyone kept two sets of books. The Agency’s budget was big, but not nearly big enough, and the unspoken rule was that entrepreneurship went with the territory. The poorly kept secret was that the CIA was the biggest gunrunner on the planet.
But nukes? Nuclear freaking weapons? The idea that anyone remotely affiliated with the US government might be involved struck Sam as absurd.
Absurdly lucrative, more like. States, quasi-states, failing states, revolutionary groups, oil-rich anti-American Middle Eastern organizations… they all seemed like enthusiastic participants. The world was full of deep-pocketed potential customers.
But damn, what a risk! The downside of upsetting the world’s nuclear apple cart was unthinkable. It would come with the kind of blowback that leveled cities. Millions of lives were at stake.
“Why was ChemEspaña allowed to develop this stuff in the first place?” Sam asked. “Didn’t the Spanish government have any clue what was happening?”
Hayward smiled. “Of course they did.”
“Why wasn’t it kept locked up somewhere? How was Joao Ferdinand-Whatever able to keep a copy for himself?”
“I asked the same question,” Hayward said. “It turns out the Spanish government isn’t united in its nuclear aspirations. Some factions are violently opposed.”
“All the more reason not to store the magic recipe in his hope chest,” Sam said.
Hayward smiled. “Maybe. Or maybe that was precisely why Joao wanted a copy for himself.”
“Leverage?”
“Exactly. Spain has a very violent history. Joao wanted insurance that his friends in the government would stay friendly.”
Sam pursed her lips and shook her head. “Was he on the take?”
Hayward chuckled. “Of course. He was taking on a great deal of personal risk. He felt it should translate into an appropriate level of reward. It’s business as usual. All the way down to the librarians and traffic cops.”
Sam shook her head and frowned. “Seems way too . . . reckless. Maybe keeping the formula was leverage with one group, but it must have made him a target for everyone else.”
Hayward nodded. “Maybe Joao thought he could have it both ways.”
“You certainly proved him wrong,” Sam said.
Hayward fell silent. A pained expression came over his face. Sam was reminded that Hayward already had blood on his hands, and in all likelihood, neither the ChemEspaña man nor his daughter would survive their encounter with Uncle Sam’s hit men.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “That probably wasn’t called for.”
Hayward took a long time to respond. “I did what I had to do,” he finally said.
Miles went by in silence. The gray sky grew darker as the hidden sun descended toward the sea. Sam guided the car around the steep curves leading up the hill to Cagliari.
She was still having trouble wrapping her mind around a couple of things. “How the hell can your people justify playing money games with nuclear proliferation?” she asked. “The risks are outrageous.”
Hayward bristled. “They’re not my people,” he said. “And I would never vouch for their reasoning.”
Sam shook her head. “Those arrogant sons of bitches. They must think they can control it—keep tabs on the buyers, use the technology as a door opener to infiltrate networks.”
He nodded. “They want the bad guys to fund their own demise.”
She shook her head. “They want it both ways,” she said.
Hayward looked at her. “Just like Joao.”
Sam switched on the headlights. The gloomy darkness swallowed their meager light. The winding road was poorly lit and poorly marked, and she slowed down. Minutes passed.
They talked again about the safe house debacle. “I was dead certain I had the right spot,” Hayward said. “I checked everything a half-dozen times.”
“Is it possible they manipulated you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. There were plenty of stops along the way, but the software doesn’t lie. The originating IP address was right in that damned safe house.”
“You sure the software’s legit?”
“The best around,” Hayward said. “It’s NSA spyware, and it’s deployed all over the world. There’s not an Internet server farm anywhere on the globe that’s not infected.”
Sam frowned, pursed her lips. “I was just thinking,” she said. “Sure, the video got to you via the web, but what makes us so sure it started there?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, these guys are sneaky. They work for the world’s best-funded intelligence agency. Don’t you think they’re aware of the same Internet tricks you are?”
Hayward shook his head. “I don’t know how,” he said. “It’s NSA software. CIA and NSA would never be caught dead collaborating.”
Sam looked at him. “But you figured it out, right?”
Hayward shook his head. “I met a guy.”
“And you don’t think they could find the same guy? Or maybe just watch you meet him? Or hack your password?”
A grim look crossed his face. He balled his fists. “How could they have fooled the damned NSA sniffer?”
“Think about it,” Sam said. “They’d just need a computer and some sort of non-Internet relay. The hostages could be anywhere in a twenty-mile radius if they used a radio signal. And if they used a satellite—”
“They could be anywhere,” Hayward said, defeat in his voice.
Sam powered on a fresh burner and called Dan. No answer. She left a message: “Your dry cleaning is ready, and please call the following number if you have any questions.” She recited the new number for him to call and hung up.
“Dan has a geeky trick up his sleeve for just about every occasion,” she said to Hayward, hoping to be reassuring, but the look on his face was more morose than ever.