Chapter 25
Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
Saturday
8:30 a.m. Eastern Time
“Mac, I’m not sure I’m following this.” RDML Tonya Denise Thompson was going to have to update the J2 and the Chiefs soon and she needed to fully understand the status of the investigation. Why was there a dead man in Reston, and why was there no sign of the nuclear warheads as of yet? Simply put, it was a shit show and she hated starring in it.
“Yes, Admiral, pretty much all of our sentiments exactly,” CW4 McKagan agreed. “Let me try again.”
“Feel free,” Admiral Thompson told him. “This time maybe I’ll get it.”
“Okay, starting from the top. We had zero leads from anywhere. This in itself is a lead, I think. It means whoever did this are so connected that they could avoid law enforcement, intelligence organizations, and private and public cameras and sensors. Damned smart. Well funded. Highly connected. So, with no real leads, we started with asking CIA to make us a list of scientists and/or nuke specialists that could reverse engineer the Russian warheads into a viable weapon,” Mac started, again.
“Logical.”
“The list took longer to get than we expected to start with. I found that curious.” Mac waited for that to sink in. “Then once we got it, there were over a thousand names on it. We split it up into pieces and started in on it. What we found was a very unusual list showing a very strong bias toward, and I quote, ‘right-wing extremists,’ unquote.”
“And?”
“Well, we soon noticed there was never anything listed about ‘left leaning’ or other types of politics. It was odd that politics would be a data trend in such an analysis, so we double-checked that and looked for omissions,” McKagan explained. “But there still wasn’t enough data to base any conclusions on. And people are free to have whatever political beliefs they want. However, at first, we were concerned there was some sort of politically motivated connection. But—”
“Is this going to take long, Mac?” RDML Thompson tapped her foot against the floor impatiently. Mac realized he’d better cut to the chase.
“Well, ma’am, Lieutenant Colonel Alvarez had a contact at the FBI that he trusted to get us a similar list. When the FBI contact got back to us, there was a clear discrepancy in the known data.”
“How so?”
“Firstly, the political bias stuff seemed to be a personal thing from this particular analyst’s background. He was quite the political activist in undergraduate school, which carried forward in his online activities. Secondly, there were serious detail omissions in only one scientist on the list—the same scientist that had stood out to me from my analysis: Xi Singang, a naturalized American citizen who changed his name to Thomas Sing. The data from CIA had him with no known relatives. Multiple PhDs from MIT, Top Secret/Q clearance with DOE. And, he was a team lead on the Warhead Life Extension Program—LEP—at Oak Ridge National Laboratories. The file said he was believed to be connected with Chinese Confucious Institute and his whereabouts were unknown.”
“Okay, and the discrepancy?”
“The file from the FBI was far different.” Mac handed her the file and flipped it open to a specific page. “He has a sister still actively in the CCP nuclear programs. Here’s her picture here. This is him. They are twins. There was also a file from his clearance investigation showing known acquaintances of the time. One of the acquaintances interviewed was a Phillip Joeseph Watkins with a master’s degree from MIT in aerospace engineering and another from the University of the CIA in Intel Analysis. The man was roommates with Sing for two years in Boston while they were at MIT. They actually had a third roommate who is currently on the FBI and Interpol Most Wanted lists. Keenan James Ingersol. A hacker that stole something like six hundred million in cryptocurrency from one of the big banking networks.”
“Jesus, sounds like a den of thieves.”
“Maybe. Certainly more than serendipity enough for a closer look. So, we looked closer.”
“Watkins is our dead man, right?” she asked, not looking up from the file.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What about this Ingersol person? Any leads on him?”
“Sorry, ma’am. The last he was seen was over two years ago. Nobody knows where he is now. And according to what I can find on him, the FBI, Interpol, the CIA, and many of the banking private security networks have huge rewards out for him. Whereabouts are unknown, no leads.”
“Any leads from the raid?”
“Well, Dr. Banks and Lieutenant Colonel Alvarez have been with the FBI questioning the two assumed assailants and their driver all night. Not sure what they have gotten yet.” Mac handed her another folder. “But these were found as files on Watkins’s computer and hardcopies on his desk.”
He waited for Admiral Thompson to flip through the pages.
“What is all this?”
“Not sure, ma’am. But there are clearly detailed schematics of the Russian glide body from the Satan-2, and these other pages are ICBM trajectories, rocket mathematics of some sort, and what might be fuel burn rates for low-Earth-orbiting rockets. Outside of my expertise.”
“Have you found somebody to look at these yet?”
“Dr. Banks is passing it along to CIA analysts, but…” He paused to see if she would come to the same conclusion.
“…but you don’t trust the CIA now.” Thompson nodded in agreement.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, then, we’re in a pickle, huh?” Thompson continued to flip through the drawings and calculations. “Anyone in the J2, DTRA, or maybe over at ONI?”
“I’m sure there are, ma’am, but I haven’t identified them yet. It being a Saturday and all, nobody is in the office.”
“What about the rest of the Task Force?”
“The Army Ranger, Major Dugan, he thinks he might have a contact in Huntsville, Alabama, at the Missiles and Space Intelligence Center that might can help. He’s headed there now. Hopefully, he’ll come through with something there. Or Colonel Alvarez will get something out of our assassins.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that.”
“Me either.”
“Any ID on the assassins or this driver yet?”
“Up until I came in the secure area, no, ma’am. Alvarez said they won’t talk. I’ll check my cell as soon as I’m back out by the phone lockers and will send you an email when I can. But they appear to be very tight-lipped.”
“Okay, then. We have a dead body, three live bodies, some data, and the name of a potential Chinese spy whereabouts unknown. No Russian colonel tie-ins as of yet?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Keep digging, Mac. Keep digging! And find those goddamned nukes!”