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next month and you
remain in good standing with them.” An amused look crossed Connelly’s face. “And
rest assured, we’ll do it in such a way that won’t hurt your career, or your ah
. . . reputation.” He smiled slightly at this and then added, “Do we have an
agreement?”
    Desh
nodded. “We do.”
    “Good.
I’m sorry to have to pull you back in for one last mission, David, but I know
you’re the right man for the job.”
    Desh
rose from the chair and prepared to leave. “I hope you’re right, Colonel. As
always, I’ll try not to let you down.” He eyed Connelly suspiciously as
something he had said earlier finally registered. “You said the wire transfer
of the two hundred-K is ready to go?”
    “I
just need to give the word and it’s done.”
    “So
how is it exactly,” said Desh, his eyes narrowing, “that you happen to have the
wire transfer information for my account, without me having given it to you?”
    Connelly
raised his eyebrows. “I don’t suppose you’d believe it was a lucky guess?” he
said with an innocent shrug.
    Desh
allowed a bemused smile to flash across his face. He opened his briefcase,
placed the accordion file inside, and stood.
    Connelly
also rose from his chair. He reached out and gave Desh a warm handshake. “Good
luck, David,” he said earnestly. “And be careful.”
    “I
won’t be eating any pork products anytime soon, if that’s what you mean,” said
Desh wryly, trying to hide his anxiety.
    With
that, David Desh picked up his briefcase and walked purposefully out the door.

4

 
 
    David
Desh exited the grounds of Fort Bragg and drove to a nearby shopping center. He
parked the Suburban at the outer edge of the sprawling lot, becoming a lone
island of privacy cut off from the dense mainland of all other parked vehicles.
He pulled out the dossier on Kira Miller and began a careful review. The
five-hour drive back to D.C. ahead of him would be the perfect time to digest
what he was now reading and plot out his initial strategy.
    After
a little more than an hour he returned the dossier to his briefcase and began
his trek home. Her file hadn’t given him much to go on, nor had he expected it
to. If the girl’s background would have led to an obvious approach, others
would have found it by now.
    Kira
Miller had been able to hide her true nature quite well. From a very young age
she had been extremely talented, ambitious, and competitive. When she set her
mind to something she had accomplished it. This didn’t always win her a lot of
friends growing up, and being jumped ahead in school several years did nothing
to help her social life.
    Even
as an adult she tended to make few friends, always keeping her eye on the ball;
be it setting the record for youngest ever molecular neurobiology Ph.D. at
Stanford or power-climbing up the corporate ladder. In college she had dated
some, but she never managed to sustain a relationship for more than eight or
nine months. Desh knew that most men would find her brilliance intimidating.
    The
file elaborated quite extensively on everything that Connelly had told him,
laying out her communications with terror groups, how these communications had
been found, the airtight evidence gathered against her for the murders of
Lusetti and her brother, and the Ebola gene therapy plot.
    After
the murders, the police investigation had revealed she had spent an inordinate
amount of time in NeuroCure's animal labs late at night, but had managed to
hide this activity. The employee badge she'd been issued to unlock the door after
hours was designed to record the holder's identity and time of entry in the
main computer, but she had ingeniously altered the software to prevent this
from happening.
    Investigators
had also found that Kira had ordered far more rodents from suppliers than the
company had needed for experiments. Since she was responsible for inventory,
this hadn't been caught earlier.
    It
was clear she had been performing secret animal