The Assassin Drone, Part 6
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Lucas watched as Olivia stood there for a long moment, her eyes darting from him to Adam and back again. She had an open, expressive face that showed everything she was thinking, and he could see her fear, her indecision, and the flicker of hope that crossed her face as she caught sight of the door that led out into the back garden. But when it became obvious even to her that her chances of escape were almost nil, she moved stiffly to the couch and sat down, swallowing nervously.
"We just want to talk to you for a few minutes," Lucas told her, using his most comforting tone of voice. Olivia didn't say anything, and he seated himself in the easy chair directly across from her. "You've been worried about Jeremy Owusu, haven't you?"
Bewilderment showed on her face and Olivia asked blankly, "What?"
Whatever she'd been expecting him to ask, it obviously hadn't been that.
"You asked me about him yesterday when I came to talk to you about the Death Star," Lucas reminded her, and Olivia flushed guiltily. "You were worried that something had happened to him even before he didn't show up at work, and when you heard about the bus explosion, you assumed the worst."
"Yes," Olivia agreed slowly. "Jeremy was one of those people who never missed work. He always came, every day. So, when he didn't show up, yes, I was worried about him."
She used the past tense, Lucas noted, and thought, she knows he's dead. Out loud, he asked, "Did you call his home to see if he were ill?"
Olivia shook her head. "No."
Another confirmation, Lucas thought, and went on. "Did anybody from Tarla phone him to see why he hadn't come?"
"George might have," Olivia murmured. "I don't know."
"Do you ever see Jeremy outside of work?"
"Not really." She hesitated, and Lucas urged, "Go on."
"I ran into him in the shops occasionally. And once when my car broke down, he drove us around for three days."
"Us?"
"Me to work, and Owen to school."
Her voice and body language made it seem unlikely that she'd been having an affair with Jeremy, or that they were any closer than she'd indicated. Lucas went on. "Has Jeremy ever seemed to you to have more money than he should have?"
"What?" Olivia asked again.
"You work together, you probably have a fair idea of how much money he makes," Lucas said, careful to keep to the present tense. "Has he ever acted like he's come into a windfall? Buying things you know he can't afford?"
"You mean like a fancy car or a cruise around the world because he'd won the lottery?" Olivia asked. "No, but then, I probably wouldn't have noticed. He didn‘t have a wife or any kids, so naturally, he had more to spend."
Lucas leaned forward just a bit. "When did you find out that Jeremy was dead?"
Surprise flashed across Olivia's face, but Lucas could tell it was the surprise of being found out, not the astonishment people usually showed at being told that someone they knew had died. Olivia's mouth worked silently for a moment, and then, predictably, she asked, "What?"
"When did you find out that Jeremy Owusu was dead?" Lucas repeated. "You've been talking about him in the past tense this whole time."
Olivia froze, looking distinctly guilty, then stood up suddenly. "I have to go."
She headed, not to the door where Adam stood, but to the door that led into the back garden, and Lucas jumped up to intercept her before she could get it open. As she struggled with the handle, he pulled her hand away and held it tightly.
"I have to go," she repeated, trying to twist free. Panic was rising in her voice as she cried, "Let me go!"
"What are you afraid of?" Lucas asked, but Olivia didn't answer. Instead, she kicked him hard in the shin and almost managed to break away. Lucas reacted as he'd been trained, twisting her arm and wrestling her instinctively down to the floor.
"Let go of her!" Adam commanded, at the same time that Lucas realized what he was doing. Releasing her arm, Lucas said, "I'm sorry. I overreacted."
Olivia scrambled away from him until she bumped into the easy chair, then sat there on the carpet, rubbing her wrist and watching him with a mixture of wariness and terror.
"Are you afraid that somebody's going to kill you like they killed Jeremy?" Lucas asked, but Olivia didn't respond. In a flash of intuition, he added, "Or has somebody taken Owen? Is that what you're worried about?"
Olivia blinked, and her eyes were suddenly full of tears. One ran down her cheek as she continued to watch him, and she made no move to wipe it away.
"You can tell us,” Adam said, then left his place by the door and came over to squat down close to her. In a low, comforting voice, he said, "We know they've bugged your house. That's why we went through this whole charade with the package, to get you out of there so you can talk to us. They can't hear you here; we swept this place for listening devices right before you came. You can talk to us, you can tell us everything."
Olivia burst into sobs, and buried her face in her hands. Adam placed a hand on her shoulder and she jerked with surprise, then shrugged it off with almost violent determination. They waited, and eventually Olivia stopped crying enough to look up. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she asked, "Are you going to arrest me?"
"We're not here to arrest anybody, we just want to find out who's responsible for the attack on the bus," Adam said, but Olivia still hesitated.
"We can help you get Owen back," Lucas added encouragingly, then came and knelt down close to her as well. "Just tell us what you know."
Scooting firmly away, Olivia wiped her eyes with her fingers, but didn't say anything. Lucas glanced over at Adam to see if his superior officer wanted to take over the questioning, but Adam gave him a signal to continue.
"So, somebody's taken Owen," Lucas stated, giving Olivia a place to start. "Did you see them at all, or did they contact you in another way? Telephone, e-mail, letter?"
"I saw them," Olivia said in a low voice, addressing Adam. She rubbed at her cheeks, and Lucas wished he were in the habit of carrying a handkerchief he could offer her. "They came to the house yesterday morning – at least one of them had a gun!"
"Yesterday?" Lucas asked, surprised. But the Death Star drone had obviously been taken from Tarla the day before that, if not earlier, and Jeremy had been getting those payments for the last six months. It was starting to look as though Olivia had had nothing to do with Jeremy before this.
"Yes, yesterday morning," Olivia repeated, still looking at Adam. "There were two of them, two men."
"What did they look like?"
Olivia shrugged. "Just average. European – middle European, I guess. Not too blond, not too dark. Not as tall as you, but not as short as me. I'm not very good with faces. One of them was wearing a Rolex watch, though, with three little circles inside the main face. Mr Blaze wears one just like it."
Typical, Lucas thought, that the eyes of an engineer should be drawn to something mechanical. "That's a good observation. So, then what happened?"
Olivia shut her eyes, perhaps to better visualize the scene. "They rang the bell and said they wanted to talk about Owen. I said I wanted to see some identification, and one of them showed me he was carrying a gun. Then they came in. Owen was showing off his Lego ship, and one of the men went upstairs with him. The other man came into the living room and said that they wanted a spy drone with a laser. He said he knew all about me, that I work for Tarla and build spy drones, not toys. He even knew about the Death Star and said they wanted another one, one that worked."
Lucas felt a jolt of surprise and glanced at Adam. The significance of those two words "another one" hadn't escaped his superior officer, either.
"Another one?" Lucas asked, keeping his voice gentle. "So they already had one?"
Olivia nodded, her eyes open again. "They said it didn't work, but they didn't know why, whether it had been defective before, or whether Jeremy had modified it in some way."
"What do you think?" Adam asked.
"I don't think Jeremy did anything to it, if that's what you mean. All of the prototypes needed some modifications," Olivia said. "Either the camera didn't work one hundred percent, or the laser was a bit off-target, or the thrusters reacted too slowly. They weren't exactly defective, you understand, just not up to our standard. I don't know why those men complained about it, to tell the truth. They blew up the bus, didn't they, so it must have worked well enough. Unless the bus wasn't their target, or they want to blow up another one."
She was quick, Lucas thought, and her initial panic had vanished once she'd started talking about things she was confident with. He almost regretted having to steer the conversation back to where they'd started. "Right, so, back to the Death Star. Did they give you a deadline for getting them another one?"
"They wanted me to get one by to-night," Olivia said. She took a deep breath. "But then I found out I couldn't do it all at once, and I told them last night I needed more time. They said that was cutting it very close, but I could have until Friday at eleven."
"You spoke to them last night, too?"
"They said they'd call every day at seven so I can talk to Owen and make sure he's all right." Olivia checked her watch. "I have to get back. It's getting close to seven now."
Lucas risked a quick glance at his own watch; it wasn't quite six thirty.
Sensing, perhaps, that they weren't about to let her go just yet, Olivia pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms protectively around them. "I just hope I can make them a drone that will do what they want. I don't want them to kill me, too. Or Owen."
"They told you that they'd killed Jeremy?"
"They said he was dead, and when I asked how, they said I didn't want to know," Olivia recounted.
Lucas steered the conversation back to a more relevant point. "What do you mean, 'make them a drone'?"
Olivia's face turned red and for the first time in the conversation, she looked directly at him. "Do you have to tell Mr Blaze about this? They'll kill Owen if I get the sack and can't get them what they want!"
"We'll make sure you don't lose your job," Adam said reassuringly, "if you work with us and tell us what you know and what you're doing."
Olivia took a deep breath, then murmured, "I've managed to get a few parts out of Tarla, and when I've got them all, I'm going to put them together at home. The drone will be fully functional, or as functional as I can make it, it just won't look as good as any of the official prototypes."
"So that's what you were doing last night?" Lucas asked. "You walked over to Tarla from the hospital to get parts?"
"You followed me?" Olivia asked, but her indignation disappeared as soon as it had come, and with a sigh of resignation, she nodded. Then, quite defensively, she added, "I have to do this! They've got my son – I have to keep Owen safe!"
"We know," Adam said soothingly. "It's all right."
"I'm scared," Olivia admitted, hugging her legs even more tightly. "I – I know I could get killed, or—or end up in prison for treason, but I have to do this for Owen! He has to know that I did all I could for him!"
"If you work together with us, we'll do our best to keep both you and Owen safe, and keep you out of prison as well," Lucas told her.
Olivia looked from him to Adam, who nodded agreement, then whispered, "What do I need to do?"
"Right now, nothing," Lucas said. "Just go on as before, and we'll contact you again."
Olivia gave him a wary, almost fearful look, then glanced pleadingly towards Adam, and finally said, "All right."
"I won't twist your arm next time," Lucas told her, trying to give her the reassurance that she seemed to need. "And if it's any consolation, my superior officer here is going to tell me off for that, as soon as you're gone."
Olivia's expression brightened somewhat, as though she were going to say, "Good!" and maybe even offer to join in, but she didn't speak.
"Right, then, you really should go now," Adam said, and Olivia shot eagerly to her feet as he continued, "We've had time for a friendly drink and a little chat, but anything longer will look suspicious. I'll see you out."
He picked up his crutches, keeping up the façade, then walked Olivia to the front door. Lucas grabbed his mobile and dialled. "Malcolm? The terrorists are going to call Olivia at about seven. Find a way to listen in on that call."
"I'll do my best," Malcolm replied. Cutting the connection, Lucas waited for Adam to come back. The cat sauntered in from the kitchen, jumping up onto the easy chair and putting out one leg for a wash.
"Get that cat and put it out," Adam said from the doorway. "And don't overreact next time, or I really will have to tell you off – and report it."
"It won't happen again," Lucas said. Relieved that Adam wasn't giving him more of a dressing down, he leaned over to scoop the cat from the chair. Once he had it in his arms, he unlocked the door to the rear garden and shooed the animal out, then went back for the package. Behind the houses on that side of the street, there was a public footpath, and he walked across the grass to the gate that led out to it. The tabby followed, and he had to shoo it away again as he went through. As he couldn't be seen entering or leaving the house, he'd parked a few streets away. Adam, on the other hand, would lock both the gate and the door behind him again before signalling a pre-arranged taxi out front. They'd meet back at Thames House, and with any luck, the McCallums would never know their house had been borrowed for two hours.
Part 7
Lucas watched as Olivia stood there for a long moment, her eyes darting from him to Adam and back again. She had an open, expressive face that showed everything she was thinking, and he could see her fear, her indecision, and the flicker of hope that crossed her face as she caught sight of the door that led out into the back garden. But when it became obvious even to her that her chances of escape were almost nil, she moved stiffly to the couch and sat down, swallowing nervously.
"We just want to talk to you for a few minutes," Lucas told her, using his most comforting tone of voice. Olivia didn't say anything, and he seated himself in the easy chair directly across from her. "You've been worried about Jeremy Owusu, haven't you?"
Bewilderment showed on her face and Olivia asked blankly, "What?"
Whatever she'd been expecting him to ask, it obviously hadn't been that.
"You asked me about him yesterday when I came to talk to you about the Death Star," Lucas reminded her, and Olivia flushed guiltily. "You were worried that something had happened to him even before he didn't show up at work, and when you heard about the bus explosion, you assumed the worst."
"Yes," Olivia agreed slowly. "Jeremy was one of those people who never missed work. He always came, every day. So, when he didn't show up, yes, I was worried about him."
She used the past tense, Lucas noted, and thought, she knows he's dead. Out loud, he asked, "Did you call his home to see if he were ill?"
Olivia shook her head. "No."
Another confirmation, Lucas thought, and went on. "Did anybody from Tarla phone him to see why he hadn't come?"
"George might have," Olivia murmured. "I don't know."
"Do you ever see Jeremy outside of work?"
"Not really." She hesitated, and Lucas urged, "Go on."
"I ran into him in the shops occasionally. And once when my car broke down, he drove us around for three days."
"Us?"
"Me to work, and Owen to school."
Her voice and body language made it seem unlikely that she'd been having an affair with Jeremy, or that they were any closer than she'd indicated. Lucas went on. "Has Jeremy ever seemed to you to have more money than he should have?"
"What?" Olivia asked again.
"You work together, you probably have a fair idea of how much money he makes," Lucas said, careful to keep to the present tense. "Has he ever acted like he's come into a windfall? Buying things you know he can't afford?"
"You mean like a fancy car or a cruise around the world because he'd won the lottery?" Olivia asked. "No, but then, I probably wouldn't have noticed. He didn‘t have a wife or any kids, so naturally, he had more to spend."
Lucas leaned forward just a bit. "When did you find out that Jeremy was dead?"
Surprise flashed across Olivia's face, but Lucas could tell it was the surprise of being found out, not the astonishment people usually showed at being told that someone they knew had died. Olivia's mouth worked silently for a moment, and then, predictably, she asked, "What?"
"When did you find out that Jeremy Owusu was dead?" Lucas repeated. "You've been talking about him in the past tense this whole time."
Olivia froze, looking distinctly guilty, then stood up suddenly. "I have to go."
She headed, not to the door where Adam stood, but to the door that led into the back garden, and Lucas jumped up to intercept her before she could get it open. As she struggled with the handle, he pulled her hand away and held it tightly.
"I have to go," she repeated, trying to twist free. Panic was rising in her voice as she cried, "Let me go!"
"What are you afraid of?" Lucas asked, but Olivia didn't answer. Instead, she kicked him hard in the shin and almost managed to break away. Lucas reacted as he'd been trained, twisting her arm and wrestling her instinctively down to the floor.
"Let go of her!" Adam commanded, at the same time that Lucas realized what he was doing. Releasing her arm, Lucas said, "I'm sorry. I overreacted."
Olivia scrambled away from him until she bumped into the easy chair, then sat there on the carpet, rubbing her wrist and watching him with a mixture of wariness and terror.
"Are you afraid that somebody's going to kill you like they killed Jeremy?" Lucas asked, but Olivia didn't respond. In a flash of intuition, he added, "Or has somebody taken Owen? Is that what you're worried about?"
Olivia blinked, and her eyes were suddenly full of tears. One ran down her cheek as she continued to watch him, and she made no move to wipe it away.
"You can tell us,” Adam said, then left his place by the door and came over to squat down close to her. In a low, comforting voice, he said, "We know they've bugged your house. That's why we went through this whole charade with the package, to get you out of there so you can talk to us. They can't hear you here; we swept this place for listening devices right before you came. You can talk to us, you can tell us everything."
Olivia burst into sobs, and buried her face in her hands. Adam placed a hand on her shoulder and she jerked with surprise, then shrugged it off with almost violent determination. They waited, and eventually Olivia stopped crying enough to look up. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she asked, "Are you going to arrest me?"
"We're not here to arrest anybody, we just want to find out who's responsible for the attack on the bus," Adam said, but Olivia still hesitated.
"We can help you get Owen back," Lucas added encouragingly, then came and knelt down close to her as well. "Just tell us what you know."
Scooting firmly away, Olivia wiped her eyes with her fingers, but didn't say anything. Lucas glanced over at Adam to see if his superior officer wanted to take over the questioning, but Adam gave him a signal to continue.
"So, somebody's taken Owen," Lucas stated, giving Olivia a place to start. "Did you see them at all, or did they contact you in another way? Telephone, e-mail, letter?"
"I saw them," Olivia said in a low voice, addressing Adam. She rubbed at her cheeks, and Lucas wished he were in the habit of carrying a handkerchief he could offer her. "They came to the house yesterday morning – at least one of them had a gun!"
"Yesterday?" Lucas asked, surprised. But the Death Star drone had obviously been taken from Tarla the day before that, if not earlier, and Jeremy had been getting those payments for the last six months. It was starting to look as though Olivia had had nothing to do with Jeremy before this.
"Yes, yesterday morning," Olivia repeated, still looking at Adam. "There were two of them, two men."
"What did they look like?"
Olivia shrugged. "Just average. European – middle European, I guess. Not too blond, not too dark. Not as tall as you, but not as short as me. I'm not very good with faces. One of them was wearing a Rolex watch, though, with three little circles inside the main face. Mr Blaze wears one just like it."
Typical, Lucas thought, that the eyes of an engineer should be drawn to something mechanical. "That's a good observation. So, then what happened?"
Olivia shut her eyes, perhaps to better visualize the scene. "They rang the bell and said they wanted to talk about Owen. I said I wanted to see some identification, and one of them showed me he was carrying a gun. Then they came in. Owen was showing off his Lego ship, and one of the men went upstairs with him. The other man came into the living room and said that they wanted a spy drone with a laser. He said he knew all about me, that I work for Tarla and build spy drones, not toys. He even knew about the Death Star and said they wanted another one, one that worked."
Lucas felt a jolt of surprise and glanced at Adam. The significance of those two words "another one" hadn't escaped his superior officer, either.
"Another one?" Lucas asked, keeping his voice gentle. "So they already had one?"
Olivia nodded, her eyes open again. "They said it didn't work, but they didn't know why, whether it had been defective before, or whether Jeremy had modified it in some way."
"What do you think?" Adam asked.
"I don't think Jeremy did anything to it, if that's what you mean. All of the prototypes needed some modifications," Olivia said. "Either the camera didn't work one hundred percent, or the laser was a bit off-target, or the thrusters reacted too slowly. They weren't exactly defective, you understand, just not up to our standard. I don't know why those men complained about it, to tell the truth. They blew up the bus, didn't they, so it must have worked well enough. Unless the bus wasn't their target, or they want to blow up another one."
She was quick, Lucas thought, and her initial panic had vanished once she'd started talking about things she was confident with. He almost regretted having to steer the conversation back to where they'd started. "Right, so, back to the Death Star. Did they give you a deadline for getting them another one?"
"They wanted me to get one by to-night," Olivia said. She took a deep breath. "But then I found out I couldn't do it all at once, and I told them last night I needed more time. They said that was cutting it very close, but I could have until Friday at eleven."
"You spoke to them last night, too?"
"They said they'd call every day at seven so I can talk to Owen and make sure he's all right." Olivia checked her watch. "I have to get back. It's getting close to seven now."
Lucas risked a quick glance at his own watch; it wasn't quite six thirty.
Sensing, perhaps, that they weren't about to let her go just yet, Olivia pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms protectively around them. "I just hope I can make them a drone that will do what they want. I don't want them to kill me, too. Or Owen."
"They told you that they'd killed Jeremy?"
"They said he was dead, and when I asked how, they said I didn't want to know," Olivia recounted.
Lucas steered the conversation back to a more relevant point. "What do you mean, 'make them a drone'?"
Olivia's face turned red and for the first time in the conversation, she looked directly at him. "Do you have to tell Mr Blaze about this? They'll kill Owen if I get the sack and can't get them what they want!"
"We'll make sure you don't lose your job," Adam said reassuringly, "if you work with us and tell us what you know and what you're doing."
Olivia took a deep breath, then murmured, "I've managed to get a few parts out of Tarla, and when I've got them all, I'm going to put them together at home. The drone will be fully functional, or as functional as I can make it, it just won't look as good as any of the official prototypes."
"So that's what you were doing last night?" Lucas asked. "You walked over to Tarla from the hospital to get parts?"
"You followed me?" Olivia asked, but her indignation disappeared as soon as it had come, and with a sigh of resignation, she nodded. Then, quite defensively, she added, "I have to do this! They've got my son – I have to keep Owen safe!"
"We know," Adam said soothingly. "It's all right."
"I'm scared," Olivia admitted, hugging her legs even more tightly. "I – I know I could get killed, or—or end up in prison for treason, but I have to do this for Owen! He has to know that I did all I could for him!"
"If you work together with us, we'll do our best to keep both you and Owen safe, and keep you out of prison as well," Lucas told her.
Olivia looked from him to Adam, who nodded agreement, then whispered, "What do I need to do?"
"Right now, nothing," Lucas said. "Just go on as before, and we'll contact you again."
Olivia gave him a wary, almost fearful look, then glanced pleadingly towards Adam, and finally said, "All right."
"I won't twist your arm next time," Lucas told her, trying to give her the reassurance that she seemed to need. "And if it's any consolation, my superior officer here is going to tell me off for that, as soon as you're gone."
Olivia's expression brightened somewhat, as though she were going to say, "Good!" and maybe even offer to join in, but she didn't speak.
"Right, then, you really should go now," Adam said, and Olivia shot eagerly to her feet as he continued, "We've had time for a friendly drink and a little chat, but anything longer will look suspicious. I'll see you out."
He picked up his crutches, keeping up the façade, then walked Olivia to the front door. Lucas grabbed his mobile and dialled. "Malcolm? The terrorists are going to call Olivia at about seven. Find a way to listen in on that call."
"I'll do my best," Malcolm replied. Cutting the connection, Lucas waited for Adam to come back. The cat sauntered in from the kitchen, jumping up onto the easy chair and putting out one leg for a wash.
"Get that cat and put it out," Adam said from the doorway. "And don't overreact next time, or I really will have to tell you off – and report it."
"It won't happen again," Lucas said. Relieved that Adam wasn't giving him more of a dressing down, he leaned over to scoop the cat from the chair. Once he had it in his arms, he unlocked the door to the rear garden and shooed the animal out, then went back for the package. Behind the houses on that side of the street, there was a public footpath, and he walked across the grass to the gate that led out to it. The tabby followed, and he had to shoo it away again as he went through. As he couldn't be seen entering or leaving the house, he'd parked a few streets away. Adam, on the other hand, would lock both the gate and the door behind him again before signalling a pre-arranged taxi out front. They'd meet back at Thames House, and with any luck, the McCallums would never know their house had been borrowed for two hours.
Part 7