“The most unusual stuff first.”
“That’s just it, sir: it’s all unusual.”
Trevor looked over at the man who had nearly busted him out of his SEAL training: Chief Petty Officer Stanislaus Witkowski was nearly fifty, unflappable, and renowned for his extraordinary capacity for understatement. “It’s all unusual?”
“Seems so to me.” He nodded in the direction of the receiving line. “For instance, take what happened to that guy last night.”
“Riordan?”
“Yep. Something funky about that whole deal.”
“Well, sure: someone tried to off him in his room. And then tried to make it look like arson.”
Stosh shook his head. “Not what I mean, boss. First off, do you know that Riordan apparently tagged one of the bad guys with a knife?”
“What?”
“Yeah. Turns out the blood the cops found on the floor wasn’t Riordan’s.”
“How do you know that?”
Stosh grabbed a canape off a passing tray. “From a friend in base security. We’ve bent our elbows on the same bar a few times. He’s Force Recon, so I have to keep telling him how he’s really supposed to do his job.”
“Okay, so how does your leatherneck beer-buddy know anything about the blood on the floor of Riordan’s apartment? How does he even know that anything happened to Riordan?”
“Well, that’s where the serious weirdness kicks in. Seems that when the bad guys broke into Riordan’s apartment, the alert didn’t go to the police first. It went straight to the duty officer in the State Department’s Marine contingent.”
“What? How?”
“My jarhead pal didn’t know. But out he goes on the call. They get to the suite and there’s already one guy he knows-a ‘translator’-on site, checking Riordan’s vitals.”
“Some translator.”
“Yeah, I’d say his spook-cover is pretty much blown. Anyway, they’re mopping the blood up off the floor and the translator grabs a Marine to evac Riordan to the base hospital. But so far as my pal can see, Riordan’s not wounded.”
“They sent him to the base hospital?”
“Yeah. Now, as he’s being ferried off, the police arrive and start arguing procedure and maintaining a pristine forensic site and etcetera etcetera etcetera. Result: jurisdictional tug of war. The locals are grabbing what they can, just as the station chief shows up from the State Department, claiming precedence due to matters of national security. That three-way clusterfuck goes on until your pal Downing shows up. A few words with each of the contenders and all is calm.”
“So the blood-?”
“So some of the blood has already been taken off site by the locals. They type it: A negative. But when I spoke to the orderly who was present when they admitted Riordan to the base hospital, he was O positive.”
“Wait: I don’t get it. If the hospital blood-typed Riordan, he had to be wounded, right?”
“Nope: no sign of a wound. But they already knew Riordan’s blood type at the hospital. Before he ever arrived.”
Trevor frowned. “Is he in an armed-service database?”
“Nope. I told you it was weird. Seems our non-bleeding Mr. Riordan was nonetheless rushed into surgery a few minutes after he arrived. And that’s where my buddy’s story loses sight of Riordan.”
“But that’s not the end of it?”
“Nope. I’ve got another pal in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We argue the merits of bourbon and vodka occasionally.”
“And he figures into this-how?”
“Well, late last night, my pal Sasha comes hang-dogging into the Red Planet Lounge, looking like he’d lost his best buddy.”
“What had happened?”
“Well-he’d lost his best buddy. Turns out his good friend was reportedly knifed near the dives around the passport and quarantine control zones. Or at least, that’s what the bigwigs in the Russian Embassy told Sasha.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Sasha’s deceased buddy was reportedly alone when he was attacked, so there were no witnesses. And when Sasha tried to track down more information about it, he ran into a walclass="underline" his pal’s murder had been called in by ‘an anonymous local tip.’ So Sasha got really curious, and tried to get a look at the forensics report of the crime site: nada. No cooperation: just a lot of locked jaws and unfriendly eyes, both from the intel guys in the Foreign Ministry and the watch sergeant in the local precinct. But because Sasha is the senior NCO in the Ministry’s security contingent, he has access to all the medical records of his team.”
“And?”
“And his pal, the one supposedly knifed in an alley, had a very interesting blood-type.”
“Let me guess: A negative.”
“Bingo: same type as on the floor in Riordan’s suite. Doesn’t prove anything, but-”
“Yeah: ‘but.’” What the hell was going on? Why would the Russians have sent someone after Caine? That made less than no sense-unless these Russians were moonlighting, were being paid to do it by someone other than their superiors.
“Commander, even if the Russians were involved somehow, there’s something I can’t figure.”
“What’s that, Stosh?”
“Well-the outcome. They bust in on Riordan and through some miracle, he takes one out. But that means there must have been at least two intruders. Otherwise, who removed the body of the first guy that Riordan tagged? But if there were two attackers, the second guy should have been able to grease Riordan and then remove his buddy’s body. But our guys find Riordan still alive, just unconscious. It doesn’t add up.”
“No, it doesn’t, Chief. You’ve got more?”
“Yeah-but not on this.”
“What on?”
Witkowski looked down, moved one foot slowly toward the other and away again. “Boss, some of this-well, some of this is about your Dad. Sort of.”
Trevor frowned. “Go ahead, Chief.”
“Yes, sir. Well, one of the ratings who was on liberty last night was new to the team-just got in a few days ago. In fact, he arrived on the ship that your pal Downing came in on.”
“So he’s just in from Earth.”
“No, sir, that’s the weird part. He was stationed out in the asteroids at a secure site. And although Downing came in from Earth, he changed ships along the way. And conducted a little business beforehand.”
“Such as?”
“Well, it gets pretty thirdhand, here. But here’s how it seemed to go down.
“Our newbie from the asteroids pulled special duty as security on board a Navy transport. It was carrying a replacement crew for a patrol boat that was approaching Mars with a government clipper in tow. A day before the rendezvous, our newbie is standing a comm watch when the transport makes contact with the patrol boat. It turns out the guy minding the secure lasercom on the patrol boat is his buddy from Basic. Said buddy shares some interesting scuttlebutt about the clipper’s departure from low Earth orbit. Turns out that rather than heading straight for Mars, the clipper went way up out of the ecliptic and picked up a small package-less than a cubic meter. Downing was the only one who knew the coordinates, and later, he cryoed the whole crew just before docking with the patrol boat.”
“Ooooo. Cloak and dagger. Frozen men tell no tales.”
“It gets better. Before our newbie from the asteroids signs off, his buddy proposes they share a meal during the crew swap. So the next day, the Navy transport makes rendezvous with the patrol boat. But before the crew swap, the transport sends its medical officer and the replacement XO aboard the patrol boat. About an hour goes by. Then comes the green light for the crew swap. Our newbie expects to find his friend waiting for him. What he finds is Downing, the XO, and the medical officer.”
“Just them?”
“They were the only ones he saw-awake, that is. Seems that the crew of the patrol boat-including our newbie’s pal-were all put into cryogenic suspension by the CMO and XO before the swap. Just like the clipper’s crew. Meaning that Downing built a one-hundred-percent info firewall around his activities from the time he left Earth.