She learned names and addresses of likely recruits for a new network she was building, a criminal support system to empower her quest for the INL mole and the PALO codes. Just as she had done elsewhere to stage her Annihilax operations, she now constructed a new crime cartel. It was in this manner that she had come across Helen Veitch, the homicidal ex-nurse she had ultimately sent on a mission of murder against Jack Bauer. But that came later.
The most important step in creating her new network was contacting Marta and Torreon Blanco. She targeted Marta first. They had a commonality of interest, both in crime and in uninhibited same-sex partners. They formed their first alliance in bed. Jane Miller had the advantage. Marta Blanco was all passion and fire, grand gestures and romance. Jane Miller was ice-cold, an artist at counterfeiting the lineaments of desire and gratification.
To one of her fine-tuned instincts, the Ironwood kills signaled that the lab mole was not alone, that he had partners on the outside, and that his secret-stealing plan was nearing fruition. The death of scientists in the inner cadre eliminated them as possible suspects for the mole.
Her underworld contacts tipped her that the hidden hand behind the violence was Varrin, the gang leader. Who was behind Varrin she did not know but was determined to learn. The Ironwood situation took a deadly turn when Rhodes Morrow put Peter Rhee and Harvey Kling to work on his secret investigation. Part of that was her fault.
She’d been using a burst transmitter to send coded messages to some of her old contacts in Europe, feeling out the ground to see who was still around and could afford to broker a deal for the PALO codes. She didn’t have them yet but it was only a matter of time, especially once she tracked Varrin’s overlord, identifying him as Max Scourby.
That made sense.
Scourby had been Sayeed’s lawyer and was in a position to know plenty. Either he had contacted the Ironwood mole or the mole had come to him. As a top criminal attorney, Scourby had the connections to create and control a goon squad to protect the mole, which he had done by working through Varrin.
But the burst transmissions had put Morrow on the track of Jane Miller. Not yet, not directly; but the fact that he knew the transmissions had come from her Shady Grove neighborhood and that he’d set up a detector in the Parkhurst house meant that he was getting dangerously close.
Through Marta she’d had Torreon Blanco liquidate Rhodes Morrow. Kling and Rhee had pursued the investigation even after their boss’s death, marking them for demolition. Jack Bauer’s advent on the scene had added urgency to the agenda. The past never really dies. He’d been a dangerous antagonist in Brussels years ago; she would not underestimate him. Helen Veitch had drawn the assignment to kill Bauer but he’d been too quick and clever for her. Rhee had died — she’d seen to that. Blanco guns had purged Kling and the Parkhursts, but Bauer had survived the Blancos’ best attempts to cross him off the board.
Certain that Nordquist was the mole, Jane Miller had directed the Blancos to kidnap his wife and daughter, hostages to give her the whip hand over him. She knew the intimate details of the Nordquist house and had fingered the inside information about its disposition to Torreon, who’d passed it on to Pardee, and through him to the kidnap team. Bauer had foiled that plan.
At the same time, she’d faked her own kidnapping. It removed her from the scene and the surveillance that ensued, buying her freedom of movement. She had some idea in the back of her mind that she’d be able to parlay the “threat” to her safety into a lever with which to pry some atomic secrets from her husband.
Her master plan had come apart due to one fatal flaw: not Nordquist but her husband, Hugh Carlson, was the mole. She’d never seen that coming in a million years. It could have resulted in total disaster except for her ace in the hole: Lassiter.
She didn’t know him except by reputation and had never met him. Marta Blanco was Lassiter’s handler. At virtually the last minute this morning Lassiter had learned about the meeting between Scourby, Carlson, and Adam Zane and passed the information along to Marta. There’d been time to engineer a double cross, allowing the Blanco gang to massacre the Scourby/Varrin coalition and secure Carlson and Zane.
For icing on the cake, Jack Bauer had been killed at the scene. Of course, Lassiter had to die, too. He’d served his purpose, and besides, he knew too much.
So here she was, in possession of the field.
Adam Zane would deal, the PALO codes were priceless; he’d jump at the chance to acquire them. The leopard doesn’t change its spots; he was the same as always and would react according to the predictable tropes of greed and power.
She was the same, too — Annihilax lives again.
And the mole, the master spy of this century, the atomic secret stealer supreme, was the one man she’d never suspected:
Her husband, Hugh Carlson.
23. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 9 A.M. AND 10 A.M. MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME
“This family reunion is all very touching, but what about the demo?” Adam Zane asked.
He was right, of course. The purveyor of stolen secrets had seen clear to the heart of the matter as far as he was concerned; he had to be sure that he had secrets to purvey.
Dr. Hugh Carlson had gotten some of his guts back. “Without me you’ve got no demonstration. You’ve got the PALO codes, sure. What of it? Eventually you can peddle them to some foreign power. But it’ll take a platoon of their best brains hundreds of man-hours to make them work properly. The data is there. The words but not the music. They’re the building blocks, the bricks. But my brain’s the mortar, the cement binding them all together.
“I know all the tricks and shortcuts and shades of interpretation. I can make them work now and later. Another thing, Zane — I know exactly what they’re worth, what they can do. Invaluable for you in a negotiation. I can make sure you’re getting full value and that the other side isn’t trying to drag down the price with double talk.”
“Prove it,” Adam Zane said.
“I will — for the right payday.”
“You’re in no position to make demands,” Jane Miller said.
“No? What are you going to do, kill me? Torture me?”
“Two very attractive options, husband dear.”
“Bull. You’re not going to throw money away. I’m worth it — big money. With or without the codes. Get rough with me, and I might get so nervous as to miss a vital keystroke and glitch out the process.
“That’s not counting what I know about Perseus and Argus, too. A treasure trove of classified secrets. Use your heads. Stop thinking of me as a prisoner and start thinking of me as a partner. Then let’s get the show on the road.”
“There may be something to what you say, Carlson,” Zane said thoughtfully.
“There is. And don’t try any of the old soft soap. Take a good look around you at each other. I’m the only nonexpendable person here. I’m the creator. You others are just hijackers, brokers, and middlemen. I’m the one person you have to keep alive.”
“What’s your pitch?” Jane Miller asked.
“Equal shares,” Carlson said. “I’m not greedy — unlike the rest of you. Equal shares all around. Of course, that number may dwindle if you decide to thin your ranks to up your shares, but that’s your business.”
Zane’s jaws firmed. “Don’t press your luck, Carlson. Live goods are a headache. They’re a lot more difficult to transport than a case full of codes, so — don’t overplay your hand.”