The file elaborated quite extensively on everything that Connelly had told him, laying out her communications with terror groups, how these communications had been found, the airtight evidence gathered against her for the murders of Lusetti and her brother, and the Ebola gene therapy plot.
After the murders, the police investigation had revealed she had spent an inordinate amount of time in NeuroCure's animal labs late at night, but had managed to hide this activity. The employee badge she'd been issued to unlock the door after hours was designed to record the holder's identity and time of entry in the main computer, but she had ingeniously altered the software to prevent this from happening.
Investigators had also found that Kira had ordered far more rodents from suppliers than the company had needed for experiments. Since she was responsible for inventory, this hadn't been caught earlier.
It was clear she had been performing secret animal experiments almost every night. In retrospect, this made sense—chilling sense. She must have brought the Jihadists some evidence that she could execute on the strategy she was proposing to get them to pay her the substantial sums of money she was known to have in banks around the world. An animal proof of concept, as it were.
Connelly and USASOC had vast resources at their disposal, both human and otherwise, and yet they hadn’t come close to finding this girl. Only someone extremely careful and extremely clever could possibly elude a government-sponsored manhunt for this long. And that was really the rub on this one. The prey was far smarter than the hunter. Desh didn’t feel any macho need to downplay his own intelligence, which was considerable, but it was undeniable that hers was in another league. So how to catch someone smarter than yourself?
It was all in your attitude. You didn’t plot a strategy designed to catch her making a mistake. This is what the others probably focused on. Instead, you counted on her not making a mistake. You counted on her doing everything exactly right. This was the answer.
As much as he had come to hate the endless violence with which he had long been associated, puzzling out the location of a dangerous adversary intent on eluding capture was a task he found completely absorbing. It was the ultimate challenge. His task was to locate a single human being among the more than six billion inhabitants of the planet, one who could be hiding almost anywhere on the incomprehensibly large surface of the Earth. So how to narrow this down?
He shot by an eighteen-wheeler as if it were standing still, completely lost in thought. His foot was heavy on the gas pedal by nature, and when he didn’t actively control himself, his default speed was usually twenty miles per hour over the posted limit. Despite conscious efforts to contain this impulse, he was beginning to feel he was beyond hope and desperately in need of a twelve-step speedaholics program.
Where are you Kira Miller? he said to himself as he changed lanes once again, blowing past two cars and returning to the left lane where he rapidly began pulling away from everyone behind him.
Was she living in a cave somewhere? Maybe. But not likely. He would start by assuming she was still in the States, hiding in plain sight. She was attempting a breathtakingly complex feat of genetic engineering. The report he had read was clear that, at minimum, she would require specialized equipment, cloned genes, ultra-fast DNA sequencers, biological reagents, and genetically identical experimental animals. A terrorist camp in Iran or Afghanistan, or even the best equipped labs in these countries, for that matter, wouldn’t be able to readily fulfill her evolving needs in this regard.
Desh decided that regardless of where she was hiding, he would begin by focusing on her computer. No matter how much she may have given up of her past life to elude pursuit, he couldn't believe she'd swear off the Internet, especially given her need to tap into an ocean of biotechnology literature as her research progressed. But there were ways to use computers and the Internet without leaving a trail, and she had already shown an alarming degree of facility with computers when she had modified NeuroCure’s security software. Finding a single laptop among untold millions, and then having it happen to be in the lap of Kira Miller when it was found, was like finding a needle in a haystack the size of Texas.
Desh frowned as he realized this analogy fell short. The reality was that the particular needle he was after was not only lost in an enormous haystack, but was also mobile, and would be sure to dive even deeper into the haystack if it sensed someone coming.
5
Desh was thirty minutes from his apartment when his cell phone vibrated inside his shirt pocket. He lifted it out and stole a quick glance at the screen. Wade Fleming appeared on the display.
He flipped open the phone. “Hi Wade.”
“Hi David,” came the reply. His boss wasted no time on small talk. “Do you happen to know a girl named Patricia Swanson?”