“Closed?” Tappan asked sharply. “Why?”
“It’s not as significant as you might think. About thirty percent of the airspace over New Mexico is closed to civilian overflights, for many reasons. Holloman AFB, White Sands Missile Range, large areas over Los Alamos and the Sandia Mountains, where nuclear weapons are designed and stored. It’s basically a patchwork.”
Tappan eased back. “I see. Thank you, Vitaly. Excellent and efficient work, all of you. If this lidar survey pans out, tomorrow we’ll move our base of operations to the new crash site. Not the entire camp, of course—that’s too complicated—but the excavation team. I’ve already spoken to Nora about this, and she’s on board. We have the heavy equipment necessary to grade a road, so we can essentially commute back and forth from what will become a base camp—here—to the new dig site. It’s all government land, so it’s still covered by our permits.”
Another sweeping gaze over the room. “Any questions?”
There was a general murmur, and Nora could sense the undercurrent of fresh enthusiasm and excitement.
“Do you think it might still be there?” Toth asked. “That maybe the government didn’t find it, after all?”
“It’s a possibility,” Tappan said slowly.
“What about Bitan?” Emilio Vigil asked. “What are we supposed to do about his disappearance?”
“We’ve done all we can and reported it to the relevant authorities. The problem is now in the hands of the professionals. We’ll cooperate with them. But in the meantime, we need to move forward full speed with our own project and leave the search to them.” He paused, and said, his voice lower: “Earlier, I said it wasn’t clear whether or not this development was an accident. But it’s my opinion Bitan may have disappeared as part of a premeditated plan.”
“Why?” Vigil asked.
“Who knows? He was keeping secrets, he suborned a member of our staff—I don’t take kindly to that.” His gaze turned to Skip, who turned red. “Skip, however, is contrite; he’s leveled with us; and up to this point he’s proven a valuable member of the team. So I’ve decided to keep him on the project. But I won’t tolerate any more secrets. I hope that’s understood.” He checked his watch. “Six o’clock! That’s happy hour for me. If there are no further questions, see you all tomorrow.”
As everyone was filing out, he paused to touch Nora on the shoulder. “Nora, could I see you for a moment in my RV? I want to review plans for moving the excavation.”
She tamped down on the acceleration of her heart. “Fine.”
As they walked to his trailer, she said: “About Skip. I just want to thank you for understanding—”
He again placed a hand on her shoulder. “No worries about Skip. I told you my suspicions about a mole, and this abrupt disappearance seems like damning evidence to me. Skip fell under Bitan’s spell, and that’s forgivable. Besides, he’s your brother, and…”
His voice trailed off. He opened the door for her, ushered her in, closed it behind them, then—his breath husky—pressed her against it, raised her thighs with surprisingly strong arms, and wrapped them tightly around his waist.
34
AT THE SAFE house he’d been assigned—a well-furnished condominium in the quiet Quaker Heights neighborhood of Albuquerque—Agent Lime looked out the living room windows, gazing with apparent disinterest at the dark, sleepy street. After a moment he closed the curtains, then lowered an inner set of blinds specially fabricated to give off a false heat signature, as well as to block “Havana syndrome” microwaves or signals from StingRay IMSI-catching devices. He walked over to a spare wood-topped desk, sat down, and unlocked the bottom drawer via a hidden thumbprint analyzer. The drawer—lined with a nitrocellulose accelerant that would destroy the contents if any tampering was detected—popped open. Among other things, it revealed five identical phones—arranged in a careful row—and a small lead-lined box. Taking out the box, Lime opened it and removed a onetime SIM card. He slid the card into the flank of the leftmost phone, put the box back in the drawer, and closed it.
The phone was small and without any identifying features. In many ways it was “dumb,” lacking onboard GPS and other features common in recent years. This was by design. In one way, however, it was highly specialized: it used classified technology to bounce an encrypted signal off a network of spy satellites rather than relying on cell towers.