“It could explain a great deal.”
“Think about it, Neely. What if the dolphins are absorbing whatever it is in the water, and the plants are actually incorporating it?”
“It’s entirely possible. The plants wouldn’t just absorb it; their roots would take it in where the compound becomes part of the organism.”
“Wow!” Alison covered her mouth. She was thunderstruck as a major piece of the puzzle connected itself. It wasn’t the plants underwater. They were just the byproduct. She had seen it before, at the top of the Acarai Mountains. That’s the origin of the plants that Neely had been studying. But if the plants on the bottom of the ocean near Trinidad were the same, how in the world did they get that far? How did they show up beneath the surface in an entirely different environment? And how did the plants get moved so far, without impacting anything else along the way?
What it was…was even simpler, and it hit Alison like a ton of bricks. There was no migration of the plants. In fact, just as with the mountain, it wasn’t the plants at all. It was the same compound they found up there, also in the water. The plants didn’t migrate, the compound did.
Across from her, Neely’s expression grew curious as she witnessed a strange look in Alison’s eyes.
What Neely couldn’t tell was that even in Alison’s stunned state, she was already processing this new realization. Trying to connect the two locations, but failing. There was still something missing. How did the compound get there?
She turned absently to one of the tall windows and peered outside past the hospital’s large round entrance. The excitement was nearly overwhelming, and there was one person with whom she desperately wanted to share this discovery.
One person who might be smart enough to figure out the last missing piece: John Clay.
29
At that moment, John Clay was 25,000 feet over the Balintang Channel and less than one hour from Taiwan. Staring into the blackness beyond his small window, he tried to focus despite the early stages of exhaustion which were setting in. He still couldn’t turn his mind off and it was beginning to take its toll.
He had an uneasy feeling of what lay ahead in China. Neither he nor Borger had a firm grasp yet on exactly where he was headed, other than a target of roughly a thousand square miles. The more they learned, the more they became convinced that General Wei hid the case that he received from Guyana. And not just from them, but from everyone. But why?
Clay shook his head and leaned back onto the headrest. He tried again to clear his mind, coming back to an image that always relaxed him: Alison.
He’d managed to talk to her briefly after his plane left the west coast, but now he was too far. Any outside communications were a liability this close to China. And if their own NSA spying program had learned anything, it was how any conversation could eventually be recorded, especially those via commercial cell towers.
Given his location and the implications of what he was after, only Clay’s Navy Inmarsat satellite phone with the strongest possible encryption could be trusted.
That same satellite phone rang ninety-three minutes later just moments after Clay had exited customs in Hong Kong International Airport.
Reaching the expansive concourse of Terminal One, Clay searched for a quiet corner among hundreds of other travelers. He ducked in next to one of the terminal’s giant support pillars and unfolded the phone’s external antennae.
“Hey, Wil.”
“Hi, Clay. How you holding up?”
“Just got through customs. So far so good.”
Borger grinned knowingly on the other end. “I know. Listen, I have more on General Wei.”
Clay rolled his eyes at Borger’s modesty. “Go.”
“Remember that Wei had a wife and a daughter? The wife was a pediatrician and died a few years ago from cancer. His daughter appears to have died last year due to a degenerative heart disease.”
“I remember. It doesn’t seem to leave him a whole lot of motive, does it?”
“Not really. But I’ve been doing some digging. His wife’s funeral was pretty big. I can find a ton of news articles on it. A lot of dignitaries and military personnel. Pretty much what we would expect from the position he was in.”
“Right.”
“But here’s the thing, I can’t find hardly anything on his daughter’s funeral. A few mentions in local newspapers but nothing on the scale of his wife. Not even close.”
“Hmm. That matches the CIA’s write up on Wei. A lot of information on his wife but not much on his daughter. Maybe an oversight?”
“Dunno. I was even able to briefly break into the MIIT, their ministry of information, but it doesn’t have a whole lot on her either. They have pages and pages of background for Wei and his wife when she died, but very little on the daughter’s death.”