Sophie was crestfallen. “You’re leaving again?”
“It’s just for a couple of hours,” he said, rubbing his eyes from jet lag. “I had an odd encounter on my trip and I have to let the security folks know. It’s a clearance thing. We have to disclose contacts with foreign governments.”
“Sounds secret-agenty,” Sophie said.
“It was, a little,” Li said, his mind elsewhere. “It’s odd for a man of my age to be approached by an attractive woman…”
Sophie gave him a wary side-eye.
“Present company excepted.”
“Sounds like you have some disclosing to do right here at home, mister.”
Li kissed her on the nose, gave her boob a gentle squeeze, and then turned for the door, completely exhausted from a day and a half of flying, but driven to put this encounter aboard Torea behind him.
Dexter & Reed occupied sixty-two acres on three separate tracts, thirty miles north of Chicago. Each was parked out with jogging trails winding through greenbelts and wildlife sanctuaries between the massive brick-and-glass buildings. The Security and Human Resources departments were on the same campus as Li’s shop, but two buildings over. Isaac Santos met Li at the front doors to the main building, where Li’s office suite was located. The chief of D&R security wore a white hard hat, reflective safety vest, and lineman’s belt with assorted pole-climbing equipment. He was rolling down the sleeves of his denim shirt when Li walked up.
“Peter,” Santos said, shaking Li’s hand, eyeing him with the benign mistrust law enforcement held for everyone who wasn’t one of them.
“Isaac,” Li said. “Thanks for seeing me on short notice.” The security chief was a good enough guy. Approachable, always telling stories, less taciturn than what Li would have expected from a former FBI supervisory special agent with the counterintelligence squad in the New York Field Office.
“No worries,” Santos said. He nodded toward the budding hardwood trees that lined the main road to the employee parking lot. “I was out here anyway. Setting the trap for this bastard we’ve been watching for.”
It seemed a woman in Human Resources had gone through a bad breakup and her ex-boyfriend was threating to kill her — calls, texts, the whole nine yards. She’d moved to a secret location, but he knew where she worked. The courts had issued a restraining order, and then a warrant for his arrest, but pieces of paper offered little solace if he started blasting away in the employee parking lot. Little did the hapless guy know, the security division of D&R consisted primarily of retired FBI agents, Chicago PD detectives, and other former Feds. Every one of these men and women was prewired to swoop in and save people like the lady from HR.
“Honestly, Peter,” Santos said, hitching up his tool belt. “If I wasn’t such a law-and-order guy, I’d just take this guy out and shoot him. We can help her out here at work, but if he finds where she lives again… The coppers will only be minutes away when he comes to cave her skull in.”
“I hear you,” Li said.
“Anyhoo…” Santos leaned back against the wall of the elevator as he rode up with Li. “We’re ready for the bastard. Your average guy has no idea what kind of signals he’s trailing with his phone and vehicle. He comes anywhere near the parking lot and everyone on my team will get a text. Local law enforcement is already on alert.”
The elevator door opened on Li’s floor, revealing a flurry of activity in the computer labs. Good for the boss to see when he just popped by the office.
“So,” Santos said, following Li into his office. “On the phone, you said you had possible contact with a hostile foreign national. I’m going to have to get the Chicago Field Office involved. You okay with that?”
“I called you,” Li said, motioning toward the couch beside his desk so Santos could sit down.
“What do you think she wanted to know, this Kiwi reporter?”
“She was interested in my work,” Li said. “But she wasn’t specific.”
“What did she say in general, then?”
“She was probing. It seemed as though she knew quite a bit about what we do here.”
“How so?” Santos asked. “I mean, you don’t even have a Facebook page.”
Li raised an eyebrow.
“My job to know these things,” Santos said, answering the unspoken question. “Tell me why you think she knew so much about you?”
Li had spent most of the thirteen-hour flight from Auckland to L.A. pondering this very thing.
“She called me Doctor Li. I prefer no title at all, but virtually everyone who knows me calls me Admiral.”
Santos gave a contemplative nod. “A hell of a lot more difficult to earn that title.”
“I suppose,” Li said. “But everyone calls me Admiral — or Mr. Li — except here. This office is the only place anyone calls me Dr. Li. I’ve got a gut feeling she’s talked to someone else who works here.”
Santos gave a low whistle. “You work on some shit-hot projects. That said, we’re not exactly in a shooting war with New Zealand. You see her talking to anyone else?”
“I didn’t see her again after the contact,” Li said.
“Well,” Santos said. “I say we need to trust your gut. Do you trust your team?”
“They’re vetted,” Li said. “And I know them all by name. But it’s a big team, thirty-eight computer engineers working on six different projects. Most of them former military, but not all. We do our best to safeguard everything.”
“I’m sure you do,” Santos said. “But the enemy only has to find one little weakness to weasel their way in.” He groaned. “And there are a hell of a lot of enemies. Does everyone know about everyone else’s projects?”
“Much of what we do here overlaps,” Li said. “So yes, in general, everyone is up to speed on all the projects. We’re more productive that way. There are a few specifics of our Missile Defense Agency projects that are cordoned off for security reasons.”
Legs crossed on the couch, Santos tapped a pencil on the side of his leather boot as he thought.
“Did this lady ask about any of the projects specifically?”
“She mentioned communications and the Internet of Things.”
“Do you remember if she used the terms first, or did you?”
“She did,” Li said, knowing he was going to have to answer all these same questions again when the Bureau agents arrived.
Santos stopped tapping his pencil. “Does that narrow down which team might have leaked?”
“All our projects are communication projects.”
“Like encrypted data-links between devices,” Santos said. “For civilian companies and the military.”
“That’s correct,” Li said, not surprised Santos knew the details. The company executives trusted the man with their lives in some of the most dangerous parts of the world. They might as well trust him with information about their most lucrative contracts.
Santos leaned back in his seat, sighing. “Buddies in my old shop tell me the PRC is actively trying to get their hands on just the sort of thing you’re working on.”
“You think I’m a target because my parents were born in Taiwan?”
“Maybe.” Santos shrugged. “Or it could be a coincidence. Listen, it’s a shitty deal, but they’re going to have to look at any ties you may or may not have.”
“I know,” Li groaned, the jet lag catching up with him. He’d been through enough background checks on his way to admiral that he knew the drill. “That’s why I called you right away, Isaac.”
“The Bureau guys are going to ask you this, so you might as well be thinking about it. Is there anyone on your team you don’t trust?”
“They’ve all got top-secret clearances.”