No Man's Land

61

PULLER BLINKED AWAKE the next morning. He had slept in his clothes. As he sat up he looked out the window of the motel room on the outskirts of Williamsburg, Virginia.

The sun was starting to rise. The angle of light hit him in the eyes and he turned away.

He heard water running. He sat up and looked around.

Knox was in the bathroom. They had decided to only take one room. There was safety in numbers.

Knox padded out of the bathroom. She had taken her jeans off and the T-shirt was too short to conceal her pale thighs.

“How’s your arm?” asked Puller.

“Fine,” she said curtly.

“You feeling sore? We hit pretty hard.”

She didn’t respond.

They had not talked last night. Knox clearly was too angry to do so and Puller couldn’t come up with the words to initiate a productive discussion. He decided to try again, with a universally appealing opening.

“I’m sorry,” said Puller. He paused and added, “I thought if I told you what I was planning you might freak out and not do it. Then we’d be dead.”

She sat down on the corner of the bed and glared at him. “Have more faith in me next time,” she said, though her tone was more conciliatory.

“I will.”

She scooted up next to him and laid her head against the pillow. She closed her eyes and scrunched up her brow as she rubbed her injured arm.

“So they tried to kill Shepard and then tried to kill us. Led us right into a trap.”

“Which tells me they’re worried we’re getting close to the truth.”

“Who do you think those guys were?”

“My guess is mercenaries. They’re a dime a dozen now. Probably brought in from another country. Even if we managed to track them down they could tell us nothing. Money wired to an offshore account from an untraceable source. I’ve seen that enough times.”

“I get that when they’re operating in the Middle East, but here? Hiring killers to come to this country and kill a DoD contractor?”

He glanced at her. “Well, some assholes came to this country and knocked down buildings using planes, right? So in my book anything is possible.”

She sighed. “Right.”

“We need to find Paul. And we need to get to Jericho.”

“We have no idea where he is, and we have nothing on Jericho.”

Before he could answer his phone rang. It was his brother. He put it on speaker and laid the phone between them so Knox could hear.

Puller took a minute to fill his brother in on what had just happened. Robert listened in silence that he let linger for a few moments after Puller was finished speaking.

“Things are coming to a head, John.”

“Yeah, that I get. I just don’t know whose head is going to be left on their shoulders.”

“The guy you saw with Helen Myers is Anton Charpentier.”

“Is he a spy?”

“No, he’s a businessman. He’s not the big force behind all this. That’s my best estimate, anyway. But he is wired into some fairly substantial global business interests, and not all of them are allies of this country.”

“Shepard told us that some of the things Atalanta Group was working on have enormous commercial applications. Billions, maybe trillions.”

“They do. And which Atalanta Group is barred from exploiting. They don’t have the rights to do so.”

“She says it comes down to who holds the patents.”

“Shepard was exactly right. And the person who holds all those particular patents is Chris Ballard.”

“Ballard!” exclaimed Puller. “But he’s retired now.”

“But he locked up all the patents for years. In fact, they were issued personally to him as the inventor. Now, I doubt he was, at least for all of them, but the lawyers probably papered it that way. And any employee he had would be contractually bound to assign any IP rights over. Just the way it works.”

“How do you know Ballard has the rights?” asked Knox.

“After I deciphered what was on the screen shots you took, I checked at the Patent Office.”

“But why would you have thought to do that?” asked Knox.

“Because there has to be a motive behind all this. And nine times out of ten the motive is financial gain. And as you already pointed out, the patents issued to Ballard are potentially worth enormous sums in the commercial field.”

“So could he exploit them commercially?” asked Puller.

“Yes. Atalanta Group is solely engaged as a defense contractor to build the technology they were working on in support of the Army. They’re licensing technology from Ballard to do that work.”

“Okay, but is he exploiting it commercially?” persisted Puller.

“Not that we know of. As you pointed out, he’s officially retired.”

Knox said, “But he has a corporation. Just because he’s retired doesn’t mean he can’t build this stuff, right? And if it’s so valuable, why wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t know. But I could find nothing that shows the Ballard organization is working on any of this. There may be a sub out there I’m missing, but I don’t think so.”

Puller said, “But Helen Myers is slipping the technology to this Charpentier guy. And Myers is getting it from Quentin, who works at Atalanta Group. The same place Jericho works. And she told us he’s essentially her boss.”

“Don’t believe that for a minute,” said Robert. “I think the only true boss Jericho has ever had is herself.”

“So how is Quentin getting this information and why is he passing it to Charpentier?” asked Knox.

“I don’t know,” said Robert. “But we need to find out. This is a national security issue now, John.”

“Can you get your folks to dive into this?”

“Doubtful. Even with what you showed me it’s just not enough to bring out the cavalry yet. There are lots of issues to consider, not the least of which is the French are pretty strong allies of ours.”

“But it’s probably not the French government behind this, Bobby. It’s the corporate side. And just because Charpentier is French doesn’t mean he’s not selling this stuff to the Russians or the Chinese. Like you said, it’s a national security problem. And he’s mixed up with people who are not allies of ours.”

“Doesn’t matter. We still have to tread very carefully.”

“I don’t see why,” said Puller.

“Because we don’t know how far this goes. Or how high the corruption is. These things don’t tend to exist in a vacuum. There was a corruption case involving a Malaysian businessman and the Seventh Fleet. I think all told about two dozen officers, including ten or so admirals, were implicated. People had suspected before, but with so much firepower behind the corruption all attempts at intervention got whacked until it got so bad that the water boiled over and that brought everybody down. We might have a similar situation here. And if so, we can’t run around screaming about it or everyone will cover their tracks.”

“But what about Shepard and us nearly getting blown away? That doesn’t make the water boil?”

“Proof of a connection, John. Do you have it?”

Puller let out an exasperated sigh. “So what now?”

“Any lead on this Paul guy?”

“No. But he wants Jericho badly. So maybe we reverse engineer it. We look for her and he might turn up.”

“She spends time at the Ballard estate in North Carolina, that I know. They’re still apparently very close.”

Knox said, “I can track down property that Quentin might own.”

“And do the same with Helen Myers,” said Puller. “She’s up to her neck in this too. And let’s see if we can get a handle on where they are right now.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said his brother.

The line went dead. Puller glanced over at Knox. She was working away on her phone.

“Got any databases that will help us?”

“I’m doing my best,” said Knox.

“Well, let’s try an obvious place first.”

He tossed her the ripped jeans. She sat up and started to pull them on. Puller watched as her legs slipped into them. She stopped with the pants halfway up her thighs and looked at him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He quickly turned around and fumbled with his knapsack.

They drove to the Grunt.

“No one’s going to be there this early,” pointed out Knox as they walked down the alley toward the bar.

“I don’t care. I’ll break inside and look around.”

However, as they approached the front of the bar they saw a light on inside. Puller knocked and the door was answered a few moments later by a young man.

“Can I help you?”

Puller flashed his creds. “I was here the night of the shooting. You were working behind the bar, I think.”

“That’s right. I remember you.”

“What are you doing here this early?”

“Ms. Myers asked me to come in when the police released the bar. I’m just checking on stuff, cleaning up.”

“Thinking about reopening?” asked Knox.

“That will be up to Ms. Myers.”

“Speaking of, any idea where she is?”

The man shook his head. “She has a house in town, but I know she’s not there. It’s on the way here. When I passed it the place was dark and her car was gone.”

“She have another place?” asked Puller.

“Yeah, a beach house in North Carolina. She might be there. It’s only a couple hours away.”

“You have the address?”

“I do, but I don’t think I should give it out.”

Puller held up his creds again. “It says United States Army. We’re the good guys. And she might be in danger. We think she might have been the target for the shooters.”

“Omigod, really?”

“Really. The address?”

They left the Grunt a minute later with a piece of paper with the beach house address. They got into the car and Puller drove off.

Knox was looking at her phone. She hit some keys, plugging in the address.

“The guy was right, it’s only about two hours from here. And there’s something else.”

“What?”

“This address is only about thirty minutes from Ballard’s estate.”

“Interesting and probably not a coincidence.”

“You think Myers is working with Ballard?” said Knox.

“Why would Ballard steal his own secrets and hand them off to this Charpentier guy?”

“Crap. This case is a real mess.”

“And getting messier all the time.”