“Or he could be Italian and likes his red wine,” Hiram said.
“Might want to check on Giordino,” Kurt suggested.
“Don’t think we haven’t,” Pitt said. “Turns out, he’s still trying to master Space Invaders on his Commodore 64. So it’s probably not him.”
Kurt smiled, appreciating the moment of levity, but the fog of war had not lifted. “So we have no real answers,” he said, “only more questions.”
“What about the Massif ?” Joe asked hopefully.
“We tracked her on satellite,” Pitt said. “She’s put into Bandar Abbas for repairs. Probably in need of a new propeller shaft. But since she’s in Iranian waters, there’s not much we can do to get a look at her.”
“I’d guess all the big shots on board are long gone by now,” Kurt said.
“Which puts us back to square one,” Pitt added, taking center stage again. “We know there’s some kind of hacker dream team for sale or rent out there, and at least two groups fighting over them. But we don’t know why. And we’re pretty certain neither group are the kind of players we’d like to be at the mercy of.”
“Then we have only one choice,” Kurt said.
“To short-circuit both threats simultaneously.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Pitt asked.
“We go to South Korea and get this ‘American woman’ and the other hackers back. As long as they’re in our hands, no one can use them against us.”
On the top floor of the NUMA building in Washington, Dirk Pitt and Hiram Yaeger sat on one side of the communications console. Kurt and Joe had just signed off.
Pitt decided it was time to get the temperature of the room. “Well,” he said, “what do you think?”
Across from him, out of sight and silent during the call, sat Trent MacDonald of the CIA, a man named Sutton from the NSA, and two others from NUMA: Dr. Elliot Smith, who’d become NUMA’s chief medical officer, and Anna Ericsson.
Pitt didn’t like speaking to Kurt with these observers watching from the shadows like some kind of judging committee, but considering how the stakes were rising, it needed to be done.
Dr. Smith spoke first. “Kurt looks stable. His affect is normal and he’s not reporting any symptoms.”
“That’s good,” Pitt said.
Smith gave a noncommittal shrug. “It is, except that symptoms like Kurt’s shouldn’t just vanish because he got away from Washington.”
“I’ve always found leaving this place cures a few ills,” Yaeger added, clearly hoping Kurt was on the road to recovery. “Maybe,” Smith said, “but not the kind Kurt had.” Pitt jumped in. He wanted concrete statements, not vague assertions. “Meaning what?”
“I’d say we can expect his symptoms to return at some point.
Most likely, under a moment of extreme duress.”
“Ms. Ericsson?” Pitt asked.
“He looks well to me. Better than he did when he was cooped up back here.”
“What about his story?” Sutton asked.
“What about it?” Pitt said.
“Seems a little odd, don’t you think? He got on board the yacht, found something extremely vague, was attacked, and then was rescued by this strange mystery woman. He supposedly got her satellite phone but lost it. Gave us a poor description. All things we have to take on faith.”
“You think he was making that up?”
“That’s just it,” Sutton said. “He was the only one there. So we can’t prove it one way or another.”
“What about the call she made?” Pitt asked.