Implant Read online

  “Oh, please. That is paranoia.” Markov sounded legitimately disgusted. “We would never do that. And look at him. He’s clearly insane. How else would you explain his unprovoked attack—alleged attack, I mean—on legitimate security forces of the Namibian government? No, you don’t need to answer that. It doesn’t matter, because we promise to get to the bottom of this, just as soon as we’ve had a chance to remove the prisoner to a secure location and interrogate him.”

  “What? Not so long as I am Central Intelligence Service Director. This man will never leave our custody. Never.”

  “A transfer of responsibilities can be arranged,” said a woman’s voice from the doorway.

  Julia looked up in surprise to see Sarah Redd, the American Director of National Intelligence. She strode into the room wearing a smart pantsuit and heels that clacked on the concrete floor. Her makeup was fresh, her appearance rested, confident. A tall, slender Namibian man followed behind her right shoulder.

  Sarah Redd managed thousands of employees and a budget in the tens of billions of dollars. Technically, she was the advisor to the Homeland Security Council and the National Security Council, but in reality, she answered to nobody except for the president. It was during the shakeup after 9/11 that U.S. intelligence had been reorganized to provide a single officer responsible for all of the separate organizations involved in intelligence gathering and analysis. She had come to the position via military intelligence, rather than the CIA, where her career had followed a rocket path to brigadier general by the age of forty-two.

  Markov looked as dumbfounded to see Sarah as Julia felt. Chang merely watched with his typical slacker gaze, either unsurprised or skillfully cultivating an air of disinterest. The Namibian who had followed her into the room gave Ikanbo a glum shake of the head. “I’m afraid we must release the prisoner.”

  Ikanbo sputtered. “Do you know what happened out there? Do you have any idea?”

  “Yes, I am well aware. We have no choice, you see.”

  Markov seemed to have recovered from his initial shock at seeing Sarah enter the room and held out his hand to the newcomer with a pleased look. “I’m Anton Markov, from the embassy. Thank you for your assistance, Mr…?”

  “Ikanbo. William Ikanbo. Minister of Mines and Energy.”

  “William Ikanbo?” Julia asked.

  “Yes. Charles Ikanbo is my younger brother. You will excuse him for not understanding all of the political ramifications of the situation.”

  She looked at the service director, who scowled at his brother with what looked like perfect understanding of the so-called ramifications that were about to snatch his prisoner from his grasp.

  “Now,” William Ikanbo said to his younger brother. “Have your men restrain the prisoner for transport. The sooner we get rid of this one, the better.”

  “The prisoner is too dangerous,” Charles said. “I’ll need time to prepare a team, and we’ll need some way to transport him.”

  “No need,” Sarah said. “We’ve brought our own security detail from the embassy.” She raised her voice, “Come in, please.” A moment later half a dozen U.S. marines filed into the room. They were unarmed.

  Ikanbo conceded at last and the marines rushed into the cell to subdue the prisoner. Ian fought back, knocked two of them to the ground, before they got on top and pinned his face to the floor. They trussed him with hands and feet pulled back in an awkward position.

  “How was your flight?” Sarah asked Julia in a casual voice.

  Julia couldn’t tear her eyes away from the cell. “It was okay. Tiring.”

  “Let go of me, you bastards. Someone help me, they’re going to cut open my head! Someone, please… Julia.”

  Her eyes locked on his, transfixed as she saw recognition spread across his face. Tears smeared around the matted edge of his sideburns. Pleading. Vulnerable. She stared back, feeling her own eyes tearing. A powerful maternal sense grew inside her as they held the gaze. He seemed so desperate, alone.

  One man gagged Ian while another threw a hood over his head. Still, he struggled, looking to Julia until the last minute. She stared back, horrified. “Don’t tell me that Markov made you fly coach.” Sarah chuckled. If she noticed Julia’s distress, she paid it no attention. “Markov, you skinflint. I’ll bet you didn’t fly coach, did you? How about Chang? No, I didn’t think so.”

  The marines carried Ian between them and disappeared from the room. The two Ikanbo brothers followed, caught in a heated argument.

  Sarah led the others from the building. Four of the marines lifted Ian into the back of a plain silver van and sped away. Sarah had her own car, which waited at the curb just behind Markov’s.

  “What now?” Markov asked Sarah. “Are you flying Westhelle to Teklando?”

  “I’m sorry, but what is it you always say? Need to know.” A slight smile played at her lips.

  Markov’s face turned red. “If I don’t need to know, who does?”

  “Oh, don’t worry. Anton, you’re so uptight. I’ll debrief you when I get back to Washington in a couple of days. And I hope you don’t mind if I fly Julia back in style. None of this coach nonsense.” She took Julia by the arm. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  “But where are we going?” Julia asked.

  “To debrief the prisoner, of course.” Sarah turned to Markov and Chang. “As for the two of you, I think there’s a couple of seats in the truck.”

  She hustled Julia into her car and they pulled away. Julia glanced over her shoulder to see Markov and Chang climb into a beat-up truck with the remaining two marines.

  Chapter Ten:

  The black Lincoln Town Car navigated the dirt roads on the outskirts of Windhoek like a hovercraft. Julia wasn’t sure how the driver managed to stay upright on roads that looked to her like swiss cheese, but it couldn’t have differed more from her ride in from the airport, including the scenery.

  The road wound through lean-tos and crude shelters that looked one gust from toppling. Wiry children waved and abandoned soccer games and cook fires as the car passed, running after and waving their arms at the black fortress, shouting “Angelina! Brad Pitt!” An elderly woman without teeth and clothed only in a shawl acknowledged their passage with an imperceptible nod.

  Then suddenly the neighborhood changed from shantytown to middle class homes with walls topped by broken glass bottles. Once, the car drove by a small cluster of trees marking the entrance to manicured gardens with a palatial estate set back off the road, complete with porte cochere where a uniformed coachman stood at attention.

  Sarah was everything Markov was not. Engaging, charismatic, disarming. Julia felt comfortable just being around her. Sarah asked about Julia’s career, wanted to hear about her experiences as a junior neurosurgeon at George Washington. She asked about work with the CIA, and seemed sincerely taken aback when Julia described the difficulties she had staying informed about the implant project.

  Sarah shook her head. “Markov has control issues. You are way too valuable to be marginalized by red tape.” Her smile faded. “I swear ninety percent of my job is trying to change the intelligence culture. Why does everyone act like the guy in the next cubicle over is trying to rub him out or steal his wife? CIA has needed more women for way too long.”

  Julia nodded. “That has to be a part of it.”

  “Absolutely. You put that much testosterone in four walls and it spawns mistrust…. mistrust and sports metaphors.”

  The car coasted to a stop outside a small adobe building. The van Julia had seen earlier was parked outside. A dark-suited officer with a conspicuous firearm came around from the front to open Sarah’s door.

  Julia followed her out. “What’s here?”

  “Don’t let the little house fool you. AFRICOM may have only been operational since 2008, but we’ve been building a network of safe houses and intelligence bases all through Africa for over twenty years.”

  Sarah pushed open the door to the house as two uniformed guard
s with earphones snapped to attention. She strode past to a small door that led down a staircase into a brightly lit room. Out the back window, Julia saw two large satellite dishes and three generators. Four more cars were parked out back.

  As Julia descended, conversation drowned the hum of the generators. Three desks with computers stood on a carpeted floor. At each desk sat a casually-dressed operator with headset. BNC cables followed a taped line from the computers through the wall into a glass-windowed server room at their back. Two office doors flanked the underground room to either side, and a third door exited the back.

  “You can free up the red queen on the left side,” Sarah said to one of the operators, who sat with her monitor turned away from prying eyes.

  Julia looked to see the woman’s solitaire game reflected off the window into the server room behind her. The operator closed the game in a hurry and pulled up something that looked like a spreadsheet. The other two operators—monitors mercifully turned at angles that did not reflect off the glass—started clicking rapidly with their mice. Julia snickered. Nothing more universal than desk jobs and solitaire. Sarah gave Julia a conspiratorial smile and then proceeded to the back door.

  On the other side was a smaller room with another desk and computer and window Julia guessed was a one-way mirror. Two marines stood as Sarah entered. Four more were seated in the room beyond, looking bored. On a single table in the room lay Ian, loose restraints on his arms and legs tied to the table. He was not moving.

  “The entire underground facility,” Sarah explained to Julia, “is completely shielded, metal walls, to prevent eavesdropping. The area we’re in serves as a bunker to all but the heaviest air to ground missiles. Half a dozen field operatives stationed here keep us in constant communication with everything going on in this part of Africa.”

  Julia doubted Markov would have been so forthcoming.

  “And when you’re operating so remotely, you have to be prepared for contingencies. We have rations to survive for a month, if needed. The medical supplies include basic stockpiles of antibiotics, painkillers, and a few trays of sterile surgical equipment. I know it’s not ideal, but I’d really like to see if we can get that data out of Ian’s implant.”

  Julia arched her eyebrows at Sarah. “If that implant gets infected he’s done for. This is hardly the environment to…”

  “It’s really important,” Sarah said. Her voice had a harder edge to it. Not pleading. Commanding. “I was sent by the President to handle an international incident involving US intelligence. I’m not going back without understanding what happened.”

  Julia frowned. She walked through the door and looked at a stack of trays on the ground. “What did you give him?” she asked the nearest marine.

  “Versed and fentanyl,” the marine answered quickly.

  Julia glanced to the small monitor at the head of the table showing heart rate and blood pressure. Vitals were normal, but that meant little in a closed head injury like Ian may have suffered.

  She read the labels on the trays. “This should help, but the first thing Ian needs is a CT scan. His brain could be herniating right now from a big epidural hematoma and I have no way of knowing.” She threw her arms up. “I can’t even do a decent exam.” She felt a twinge of guilt as she thought, What he really needs is an MRI, but he’ll never be able to have one of those in his life, thanks to me.

  Sarah said nothing, but walked to the doorway and looked intently at Julia. Markov and Chang entered at last and immediately crowded to her side.

  Julia turned with a scowl. “Do you guys mind? I’m trying to work here.”

  Markov took Chang’s sleeve and pulled the two of them back a step. Not far enough, but it would do.

  Julia opened Ian’s eyelids to look at his pupils. She moved to his feet and pulled off his boots and socks, stroked the bottom of each foot in turn and watched his big toes. She picked up each hand, felt for a pulse and flexed the arms at the elbows to feel muscle tone. She leaned her head and pressed her ear against his chest, one side at a time. She picked up his right hand again and pressed on the nailbed of his index finger. He sluggishly withdrew his hand.

  Then she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it open in front. She tried to lift up his shoulders to get his shirt off but couldn’t manage and nodded to one of the marines who hefted Ian’s upper body with one hand. Julia finished removing his shirt, and the marine lowered his body back down. As she saw again the single black tattoo on his chest, she remembered his bravado in surgery and began to flush in anger. Who had done this to him?

  There was fresh blood in half a dozen places over his right chest, and probably twice that many along his right neck. Shards of glass protruded from his skin. At least two wounds in his neck and a deeper one in his chest. She found a box of gloves, ripped open the top, and put on a pair.

  Julia probed his injuries one by one. She pulled out a small piece of metal from his neck and held it up for examination. Being a neurosurgery resident at George Washington had been the next best thing to forensic pathology. D.C. was one of the worst knife and gun neurosurgery shops in the world. Half the patients she treated at night were gunshot victims, and she’d had no shortage of opportunities to observe shells she’d fished out of brains. This was different, certainly no 9 mm fragment. The color was different, too. Maybe depleted uranium?

  She moved to his chest and explored the wound more closely. It was definitely shrapnel, and within millimeters of her incision site. She had been right. She looked around the room. “Someone get me a table.” Two of the marines strode to the other room and moved the computer off the desk, then carried in the desk and set it next to Ian’s table. Julia brushed off the dust with her hand and set one of the trays on it. She unfolded the wrapping and tossed it on the floor, together with her old gloves, then opened the sterile blue package inside gingerly, peeling back one corner at a time. She lifted a pair of sterile gloves with two fingers off the top and opened the wrapper, putting the gloves on in two swift movements.

  Julia opened the package of betadine, took out a swab, and cleaned the wound. She repeated the procedure with two additional swabs, then tossed them all on the ground. Nobody moved to pick up her mess.

  She pulled a syringe from the tray, twisted an 18 gauge needle on it, and buried it in a small vial of lidocaine. She took the needle off and laid it on the tray, then found a smaller needle and injected the skin she had cleaned. Finally she rested a small blue towel with a hole in the middle carefully over Ian’s chest, the hole framing the wound.

  She slid the cap off an 11 blade scalpel and made a one-centimeter incision over the wound, dabbed at the wound with some gauze, then held pressure until the bleeding had stopped. Without looking, Julia reached back on the tray for a hemostat. Third from the left. Her hands closed around an oblong metal retractor and she almost dropped it. This was not her setup. What was she doing operating in these conditions? She closed her eyes and took two long, slow breaths.

  She looked at the tray and found a hemostat and a pair of forceps and probed the wound for the shrapnel. There. She carefully picked out a small metal fragment and laid it on the table beside Ian. A few minutes of probing later, satisfied nothing else was in the wound, she took the syringe with lidocaine and infiltrated the exposed pectoral muscle. A swift movement with the scalpel and she held the pectoral incision open with a small retractor.

  There it was. She could see the bloody outline of the implant. She traced its contour with the forceps. It looked intact.

  There has to be something there. She glanced back at Sarah, who watched her from a distance.

  Julia traced the contour of the implant with a probe to search for fractures in the shielded housing, weak spots. She found nothing. There were so many components on the chip. A small integrated circuit? It could be anything.

  She remembered what Chang had said about needing to take it out. She looked back to her patient. Ian’s expression was blank. She had to find a way to repair it for Ian�
��s sake - they were going to take it out one way or another.

  She traced the delicate wires emerging from the tip, then felt something give under the slight pressure of her probe. She doubled back, felt it again.

  Of course. She should have thought of that first. The most basic principle of electronics. Components almost always fail at switches or connectors. The wires fed into a microarray of pins that snapped into a housing along the edge of the chip. It was loose. The impact must have severed the connection, and the wire array probably gradually worked itself out of the housing.

  Julia rummaged through the tray. She needed a microscope, at least a magnifier. There were thousands of channels in each array. The components had to fit together perfectly. Ian was lucky. If he had walked by something with enough alternating current it could have triggered seizures.

  Perfect wasn’t likely to happen. Not here. Especially if the component was bent. Julia meticulously cleaned the contacts with tiny droplets of sterile saline. She blinked her eyes to clear them of sweat. Her hands performed over and over the tedious small movements. She hooked the probe under the implant to stabilize it, then turned to the tray.

  She found a small glass tuberculin syringe and using the scalpel as a wedge, she tapped the back of it with a retractor. The syringe severed cleanly.

  Julia held a piece of the syringe to the light. Perfect. Then she held the makeshift lens over the incision and secured it in place with a hemostat. She found the tiny black line on the housing, a fraction of a millimeter wide, and lined it up with the matching line on the wire assembly. Meticulously, with movements so small she could only see them through the lens, she slid the assembly back into the housing until it was fully seated. She glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes had passed.

  Her fingers ached. She stretched them out and clenched her fists. Then she removed the probe from under the implant and let it slide back under the muscle. She clasped her bloodied hands together as a reminder to keep them sterile, and walked back to Sarah.