Page 125 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest

“It’s located on board the research vesselBaktunin the far eastern Pacific. I’ll send you the coordinates, though they are only speculative.”

“Is it already online?”

“No, sir. According to her message, it launches in approximately forty-eight hours.”

Peng’s heart raced. There was still time to avoid total catastrophe—but just barely.

“Are you confident this information is correct, Colonel? Could it be a ruse? A magician’s diversion to hide something else?”

“She sent the message to a dead drop server address on the dark web. It is highly unlikely this was a trick, since Zhang never would have expected us to acquire her computer, let alone crack into it.”

Peng marched over to a desk phone and yanked up the receiver to make a call, still interrogating Chang. “Who owns this vessel? Who’s behind all of this? The Americans?”

“No, sir. It’s your Colombian contact, Amador Fierro. It’s his project entirely.”

Peng stopped dialing. “Are you sure?”

“According to the message Zhang sent.”

Peng nearly crushed the phone in his hand. It was yet another deception—and betrayal—by someone he thought was an ally.

“I’ll deal with Fierro myself,” Peng hissed. “Tell your tech he is a hero of the state and will be rewarded for it. You as well, Colonel. In fact, your entire team.”

“Thank you, sir. We are privileged to serve under—”

Peng snapped off the transmission, and punched the number for his secretary. His PLA Navy liaison was on emergency standby for just such an event, as were the corresponding officers of the Air Force and Army. The Central Military Commission had already granted Peng and any other ranking department head carte blanche for any operation regarding AGI.

Peng suddenly realized if he could capture the AGI he might well realize his lifelong ambition to achieve the Politburo Standing Committee and—dare he hope?—the chairmanship of the Party itself. China’s future, as well as his own, depended on capturing that ship.

“Get me Admiral Qian—top priority.”

67

Aboard theOregon

It was late, but Murphy couldn’t sleep and, worse, couldn’t game. He was heartsick. It had been four hours since Linlin had left the ship and they were now far from shore. The five-hundred-ninety-footOregonwas well underway, flying at over sixty knots across the water like a cigarette boat, the air blowing across her decks like a windstorm.

Murphy wished he had told Linlin exactly how he felt about her. He also worried for her safety. The Chicoms were superlative spy hunters, and he couldn’t protect her now that she was out of his reach. She might not be safe in Toronto. She might not even make it there.

He asked Linda Ross for permission to call her at the hotel, but his request was denied for operational security reasons, which he completely understood. He thought he might be able to tell her over the phone what he couldn’t in person, but in truth he was kind of relieved when he wasn’t allowed to make the call. He didn’t want to scare her away or take advantage of the fact she trusted him enough to reach out to him for protection.

But he still missed her terribly. He decided to console himself by going back to her cabin. They had created a few great memories there. Maybe those could be a down payment on even better ones in the future.

At least a guy could hope.

Her cabin door was unlocked. Murph stepped inside, flipped the light on, and looked around. He took a deep breath through his nose just to catch a whiff of her familiar scent before the room got nuked with industrial-strength Pine-Sol by the cleaning crew tomorrow. The small bed was still neatly made, and the tiny desk cleared. They’d spent a lot of hours there, catching up on the good times they shared and remembering the hard professors and tough classes they suffered through together at MIT.

Murph turned to leave, but a silvery flash in the corner of the floor caught his eye. He crossed over to the far bulkhead and picked up a curved piece of thin silver-plated metal about two inches long. It looked just like the pocket clip of a ballpoint pen.

Probably fell off some fancy pen she had, Murph told himself. He started to toss it into the empty wastepaper basket by the desk, but something stopped him. He pulled the clip close to his eyes and examined it with closer scrutiny. He saw a tiny circular contact point at the base of the clip. He’d never seen anything like that before. Or had he?

He took it over to the steel desk and set it down, putting the contact point down first.

Click.

The pen clip was now magnetically attached to the desk.

Murph’s confusion turned to worry as the subroutines of his computerlike brain began running emergency scripts. Something told him this was bad.