“Fatherhood seems to agree with you,” he finally said.
“You should’ve seen me a couple months ago.” Gray rubbed the dark stubble on his chin. He remembered the beard he’d briefly sported. For a while, he’d been too exhausted to shave, his hygiene routine intermittent at best. Even now, he wore a pair of black jeans pulled from the hamper and a hooded gray sweatshirt.
Painter nodded. “Still, thanks for interrupting your leave.”
“What’s going on?”
“Apparently a situation in Greenland has blown up in our faces. A few days ago, we got word of the discovery of a shipwreck buried within the heart of a glacier.”
Painter picked up a remote and swiveled his chair. He pointed to the flat-screen monitor to his left. A poor, pixelated image appeared on the screen, showing a broken-masted ship half trapped in ice.
“A pair of researchers up there—a climatologist and geologist—discovered it by accident. Along with a treasure inside.”
Painter clicked the remote and showed a photo of a gold map in a dark box with a spherical object imbedded in it.
Gray stood up and crossed over to get a better look. “I don’t understand. Why does this discovery concern Sigma?”
“I’ll get to that in a moment. Just know we needed to confirm the discovery’s authenticity and secure it quickly. After a few inquiries, I learned that Maria Crandall knew a colleague, a nautical archaeologist working in Egypt, who we convinced to investigate the ship.”
“Maria? Kowalski’s girlfriend?”
“That’s right. Those two were already in Africa. I had them follow behind the archaeologist, so that if what was discovered was authenticated, they’d be able to secure it and extract it.”
Gray began to suspect why this situation in Greenland had blown up, as Painter described.
If Kowalski was involved . . .
Painter continued, sharing a tale of a deadly ambush, the theft of a map, and the kidnapping of an archaeologist. But the story also told of something unleashed from the hold of the ship, something horrific and impossible.
“Details are still coming in,” Painter admitted. “A brutal storm made communication with Greenland sketchy. Now that the weather’s let up, we have five Poseidons flying a search grid, hunting for that submarine.”
Gray glanced over to the Greenland map with its crimson Vs moving slowly over the Arctic Ocean. He pointed to one veering away from the others. “Did they pick up a trail?”
Painter glanced back. “No. A set of sonobuoys detected the sub as it headed north along the coast. It traveled beyond the buoys’ range, but from the trajectory and speed, we suspect it sought the cover of the Arctic ice cap.”
“From under there, it can travel anywhere without being seen.”
“Exactly.”
“You said the assault team spoke Arabic. Do we have any intel on who they might be?”
“Not as of yet. Kat has every international intelligence agency trying to answer that question. She was able to determine that Conrad Nelson—the murdered geologist—shared the photos I showed you with his employers, Allied Global Mining. After that, anyone there could have shared them far and wide.”
“Where they reached the wrong eyes.”
“And the right ones. Those same photos drew another agency’s attention. They asked for our help and drew Sigma into this mess.” He glanced significantly at Gray. “It’s that group who asked for your assistance.”
“Me? Why?”
“They want—”
Painter was cut off as sharp voices carried from the hall. Gray recognized Kat’s voice, trying to calm someone. The man with her sounded both flabbergasted and angry, his accent distinctly Bostonian: “Who the hell knew all this was down here? Right under our noses.”
Painter stood up and checked his watch. “He’s early.” He sighed to Gray. “The president asked that Sigma personally accommodate his visit, especially considering the circumstance.”
Gray frowned. Only a handful of people outside of DARPA knew of Sigma’s existence, let alone the presence of these covert headquarters at the edge of the National Mall.
Kat arrived first, leaning on a cane. Though mostly recovered from her ordeal last Christmas, she still remained weak on her left side. She was dressed in navy blues with an emerald frog pin in her lapel, a remembrance of teammates lost.
She moved aside to let the visitor enter. “This way, Senator.”
Into the office stepped a tall, broad-shouldered man, outfitted in a trim Armani suit with a blue tie and black leather shoes polished to a sheen. Gray suddenly felt way underdressed in his jeans and hoodie, especially considering who had just arrived.
Painter came around his desk and shook the man’s hand. “Senator Cargill, welcome to Sigma command.”
Gray inwardly kicked himself. Earlier, engrossed in Painter’s story, he had failed to make the connection. It was perhaps a testament to how rusty he’d gotten during his leave. The name of the kidnapped archaeologist—Dr. Elena Cargill—had not clicked with him.
Is this the reason Sigma is all riled up?
Senator Kent Cargill took in the room with a glance. His focus briefly fixed on the map of Greenland, then returned to Painter. The fifty-year-old man stood over six feet tall, all lean muscle, honed by two combat infantry tours in the Middle East, one during Desert Storm. His dark blond hair was slightly curled, disheveled but in a manner that made him seem approachable.
Few in the country didn’t know his face. Some considered him the JFK of the new millennium, especially with his Bostonian accent. Like Kennedy, he was also Roman Catholic, but unlike the former president, he was not polarizing. People on both sides of the political aisle loved him. He was devout in his faith, but open-minded. He was firm in his convictions, but willing to compromise. A rarity on Capitol Hill. There was talk of him running for president, to fill the soon-to-be-empty White House.
Gray shared a look with Painter. It was the director who had recruited Elena to investigate the ship in Greenland, who put her in harm’s way and got her kidnapped as a result.
Senator Cargill’s eyes were cold and hard, and in this matter, uncompromising.
“Where the hell is my daughter?”
9
June 22, 5:32 P.M. TRT
Airborne over the Aegean Sea
Looks like I’ve come nearly full circle.
Elena stared out the private jet’s window at the sun glinting off blue seas, the spread of islands. Having researched this region for her entire career, she had no trouble identifying landmarks, enough to roughly estimate her location.
I’m back in the Mediterranean . . . likely over the Aegean Sea.
She guessed a little over twenty-four hours had passed since she had been taken aboard that infernal submarine. But she couldn’t be certain. Her captors had locked her in a cabin with a lone bunk, where without portholes she could not sense the passage of time. They had fed her and treated her brusquely but not cruelly. Despite the tension, she had napped fitfully—only to be shocked awake when the entire sub shook violently.
Panicked, heart pounding, she had feared they’d been torpedoed or blasted by a depth charge. Then that hulking brute of a bodyguard had come and hauled her out of the cabin and over to the sub’s command center. Bright sunlight flowed down through the open hatch of the conning tower, along with a blast of freezing air. She was forced at gunpoint up the ladder, where she discovered a featureless world of windblown snow and blindingly white ice. She realized the earlier crash had been the sub cracking through the Arctic ice cap.