“Get some sleep,” Cabrillo ordered, “you’ve earned it.”
Adams was on his final approach and didn’t bother to answer. Dropping down over Battersea Park, he edged forward to the pad and then lightly touched down. Cabrillo opened the door and grabbed his telephone. Ducking down, he crab-walked away from the Robinson. Once he was clear he stood upright. He was nearing the Range Rover when Adams lifted off and flew across the Thames.
Meadows climbed from the passenger seat and opened the rear door for Cabrillo.
“Where are we at?” Cabrillo said as he slid into the rear and closed the door.
“We forwarded what we have to Mr. Hanley,” Seng said. “He said you’d fill us in.”
Seng steered away from the heliport and out of the park. He stopped at the light and waited to turn onto Queenstown Road to cross the Albert Bridge.
Cabrillo began to explain as Seng drove them toward the Savoy.
THE OREGON WAS racing south. It was almost midnight on December 30 and the ship was scheduled to reach the docks near London at around 9 A.M. local time. The conference room was crowded. Hanley was writing notes on a dry-erase bulletin board. The board was becoming crowded.
“Here’s what we know,” he said. “We now believe that the theft of the meteorite and the missing Ukrainian nuclear bomb are not related. We believe that Al-Khalifa and his group got wind of the meteorite through an officer that was bribed at the Echelon listening post and then decided to combine it with their existing plan, which we believe is a terrorist strike in the heart of London.”
“Who was originally after the meteorite?” Murphy asked.
“The latest information, which was recovered by Mr. Truitt in Las Vegas, seems to point to Halifax Hickman.”
“The billionaire?” Ross asked.
“Correct,” Hanley said, “we just don’t know why yet. Hickman has interests in hotels, resorts, casinos, arms manufacturers, household products. Along with that he has a string of funeral homes, a hardware manufacturer that makes tools—nails and fasteners. He also has railroad and oil interests, and a satellite television operation.”
“An old-fashioned tycoon,” Pete Jones said. “Not like today, when the truly rich make their money from one source, like software or pizza chains.”
“Isn’t he a recluse?” Julia Huxley asked.
“Sort of like Howard Hughes,” Hanley answered.
“I’ll run a psych profile,” Huxley offered, “so we know what we might be dealing with.”
“Halpert’s digging through the computer files as we speak to see if we can determine motive.”
“What’s the status of the meteorite now?” Franklin Lincoln asked.
“As you all know, Juan and Adams witnessed it leaving the Faeroe Islands aboard a Cessna that they followed. Once the helicopter ran out of fuel, Juan chased the Cessna by car to a railroad station near Edinburgh. He was ready to intercept when the president, through Overholt, ordered him off to let the British authorities handle the problem. They were planning to stop the train an hour or so ago, but we’ve yet to hear the outcome.”
“So if they have recovered it,” Hali Kasim said, “our only involvement would be to return it to the United States.”
“Correct,” Hanley said, “and that’s why I want to concentrate on the nuclear device. We believe that it was shipped through the Black Sea to a port named the Isle of Sheppey on a Greek cargo ship. There, we believe operatives of Al-Khalifa’s terrorist organization grabbed the weapon without paying and drove away. Seng and Meadows were on the ground there and found a videotape that gave us leads to the possible current location.”
“It seems odd,” Jones said, “that after Al-Khalifa’s death, the others didn’t scrub the mission. Their leader is killed and they’re still planning to go ahead?”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Hanley said. “We don’t think they know that Al-Khalifa is dead yet.”
“He obviously has not been in contact with them,” Ross noted.
“True,” Hanley said, “but apparently he’s done that before—at least according to the reports we’ve amassed over the years.”
“So one of us is going to become Al-Khalifa?” Murphy said.
Hanley motioned to Nixon, who nodded and reached for a tape recorder. “We recovered Al-Khalifa’s satellite telephone from his pocket. There was a short message on his voice mail. I matched that with an existing surveillance tape we had and printed his voice on the computer.”
Nixon turned the tape player on and Al-Khalifa’s voice floated into the air.
“We think we can call his contact with his telephone and arrange a meeting,” Hanley said, “then recover the bomb.”