“You still don’t have the coordinates,” said Kira defiantly.
“Don’t I?” said her brother, smirking. “The homing device wasn’t the only thing the surgeon in Iraq implanted when he was operating on Desh. He also gave him cochlear implants—one for each ear. It’s a standard procedure for people deaf or very hard of hearing. Only the implants he received were silicon-chip based recording units. They record digitally and can be downloaded to a computer for playback.” He sipped his drink and smiled. “They have a finite battery life and only record from ten to eighteen hours, depending on the amount of input, so I had these set to be activated by my signal as well.”
“And you activated them within the past ten hours, I presume,” said Desh.
“Right you are,” said Alan happily. “Using the homing device I had implanted, I easily tracked you to Putnam’s house. After all my painstaking planning, at long last I had created the perfect storm.” He gazed at his sister smugly. “A man you trusted and were falling in love with. A credible threat to species survival. And you convinced that you had but minutes to live.”
Much of the fire had left Kira Miller as the realization hit her with full force that this monster had won. And she had dutifully played her role as the perfect little pawn. She glanced at her bonds and the razor wire at her throat. Escape was impossible. And even if she could escape, what would she do? Would she kill her own brother?
She clenched her fists. This wasn’t her brother, she told herself forcefully. This was a twisted imposter. Believing this was the only way her psyche could survive a betrayal this vast. Her brother had died in a fire in their childhood home. The monster in front of her was a complete stranger.
“The finishing touch to my masterpiece,” continued Alan, “was for you to think your arch-enemy was dead.”
“Why?” said Desh.
“If Kira suspected a powerful enemy with access to her treatment was still at large, she would have been far less comfortable disclosing the GPS coordinates.” He raised his eyebrows. “Putnam had no idea what my real plan was. Certainly not that his extermination was a key ingredient. With the arch-enemy who had killed your brother dead, you were free to whisper your secret right into Desh’s cochlea.”
Alan paused to let his prisoners ponder just how utterly they had been manipulated; just how complete his victory.
“What if Kira hadn’t killed Putnam?”
“I suspected she would. I made sure he boasted about killing me just to rub salt in her wound. And my sister is so fucking predictable. So fucking noble. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that we sprang from the same womb.”
“Believe me,” said Kira Miller, scowling, “your disappointment pales in comparison to mine.”
“But to answer your question, Desh,” said Alan, as if his sister had not spoken, “I was the one who sent Putnam into his house to talk with you in the first place. I had a sniper targeting him while the rest of my men came up through his tunnel. If Kira had failed to shoot him, my sniper would have done so the moment he opened the door.” He paused. “You wouldn’t know who had killed him or why, but that wouldn’t matter. With the only man capable of resetting the supposed explosive charge in Kira’s skull dead, she would once again tell you her secret, believing she had but minutes to live and having no guarantee that the sterilization plot could be stopped.”
Desh nodded miserably. “It appears you thought of everything,” he said, looking defeated for the first time.
“You’re damn straight,” said Alan smugly.
49
The helicopter had landed almost five minutes before but Alan Miller was clearly enjoying himself too much to put a temporary halt to the proceedings, and the pilots knew better than to interrupt their boss. Finally, Alan decided a change in venue was in order.
Six soldiers, once again dressed in commando gear, had surrounded the helicopter and were waiting patiently for Alan Miller to open the helicopter door. “Bring them inside,” he barked. He then nodded toward Desh at the back of the chopper. “And make sure this one is completely immobilized on the gurney. He’s ex-Special Forces.”