Silent Assassin(84)

“We took advantage of the mess you created,” he said. “And we wanted to send a message to any upstarts thinking they can screw us. This was your failure. Now watch.”

Watch they did as Valter took punches and kicks and pinches that left large purple welts on his skin. It wasn’t long until Valter was singing. Morgan couldn’t understand what he was saying, but Conley translated for him.

“The cocaine’s on a ship,” Conley said. “Called the Argos. Left port one day ago for Miami.”

“Just the ship?” asked Morgan. “Can’t he tell us what container it was on?”

Siqueira translated the question for the interrogator, who in turn asked Valter. Valter responded.

“He says he doesn’t know,” said Conley.

“And what are you going to do about it?” Morgan asked Siqueira.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s not our problem anymore. We have other things to deal with here. Why don’t I show you two the door?”





“So we have no word on Novokoff?” said Bloch, speaking on a video call on Conley’s computer.

“No,” said Conley. “He was in the city, but after Valter double-crossed us, he was definitely tipped off. He’s probably out of the country by now.”

“So our main priority right now is the cocaine with the spores,” said Bloch. “We know the ship that it’s on. Can we find out which container it is?”

“We wouldn’t know where to begin,” said Conley. “Valter, the man Siqueira interrogated, couldn’t tell us. The ship is slated to arrive in Miami in less than a week. We can’t mount an investigation in that time frame.”

“Shepard,” said Bloch. “How about computer records? Is there any way to narrow down the ship’s contents electronically?”

“I’ve been looking into this,” he said. “It doesn’t look like detailed records of the containers are online. Customs declarations apparently take some time to be processed.”

“We can get those papers,” said Conley. “I have contacts here, and I could easily have access to them.”

“Wouldn’t help much, I think,” said Shepard. “That might work in a long investigation, but there’s not much I could do with those in just a few days.”

There were a few seconds of silence as each of them thought about more possible solutions.

“Well, we might as well consider the obvious,” said Bloch grimly. “With this fungus threatening to hit Miami and spreading beyond, it’s not too much to sacrifice some lives to prevent that. We can sink the ship. What do you say, Pope? Is it viable?”

“That’s not a good idea,” said Pope, the scientist, from off-screen. “You sink the ship, and the fungus is in the wild. It could be that everything would sink to the bottom of the ocean and we’d never see it again, but there’s no way to tell for sure. Spores can be extremely resilient. The results of that would simply be unpredictable. Who knows how long it might survive, and where it might wash up eventually? We could start an epidemic this way. It’s not a risk we should take, under any circumstances.”

“It’s better than an outbreak in a major American city,” said Bloch. “But we’ll take your opinion into consideration. It remains a measure of last resort, but only that. What else can we do?”

“Quarantine the ship,” said Conley. “Until we have further information. We can search the containers thoroughly, and be sure to get the right ones.”

“Sketchy plan at best,” said Bloch. “There are hundreds of millions of dollars in goods on any given cargo ship. That’s a lot of reasons not to want to keep it in port. Whatever clout our people have is going to be tested. And it’s a battle we’re likely to lose in a few days, without actually telling the government what’s in the cocaine.”

“Well, what if we do that?” asked Conley. “I meant, at this point, how much worse could we do?”

“It doesn’t seem like the worst option,” said Shepard. “We cut our losses and wash our hands of this. It might cause a panic, but that might be the least bad option here.”

“No,” said Bloch. “Absolutely not. The existence of this fungus needs to be kept a secret.”

“Are a few people’s sensitive secrets really worth endangering a major American city?” Morgan asked impatiently.

“Listen, Cobra,” said Bloch, “as secret as it has been kept thus far, we still had its existence leaked to Novokoff, and he managed to infiltrate a top-secret base to steal it. If this gets out, every major terrorist is going to want a piece of the action. And maybe one of them is going to get it. And that’s not even taking into consideration that people in our own government might just as easily want to have it and use it as a weapon. That is the choice that we need to make. I think it’s clear that we cannot allow this under any circumstance. The existence of this organism needs to be kept a secret, even if it means that some people have to die. Understood?”