LITMIR.BIZ

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helping him track down his niece, who had disappeared in Little Havana. After a week of searching, they’d found her on a ritzy yacht anchored near South Beach. She’d had a heroin buzz and a nasty case of VD. Considering she was only fifteen, the authorities had not looked kindly on the sleazy television producer who’d introduced her to high-dollar whoredom under the guise of making her a star.

      Within minutes, Two-Finger Jimmy’s number flashed on her ringing cell.

      “James!” she said.

      “What have I done now?”

      “It’s what you’re going to do for me.”

      His voice dropped, got husky. “You know what I’d like to do for you.”

      Nikki laughed. Two-Finger Jimmy had a jockey’s physique, was happily married to a woman roughly the size of a wall and was old enough to be her grandfather. “Yeah, I do know. You’d like to look through the port logs for a vessel that might have passed through a waypoint I’m going to give you.”

      Jimmy chuckled. “That’s second on my list. How’ve you been?”

      She shot the breeze with him for a few minutes before cutting to the chase and giving him the lat-longs and date and time information. “Think you can track down the ships that might have passed through those coordinates?”

      “Are you kidding? I have technology on my side. You’re still filling out forms in triplicate, aren’t you? On a Smith-Corona?”

      “Screw you,” Nikki retorted good-naturedly.

      “Why, look here, chica, I’ve got the goods.”

      She grabbed a pen and pulled a legal pad close. “Hit me.”

      “You’ve got two ships going out and one ship coming in that could have hit that waypoint around that time. The one coming in was an oil tanker out of Saudi.”

      “Talk to me about the ones going out.”

      “One’s Maersk-Sealand—their regular shipment. The other’s an outfit called ‘SHA.’ S. H. A.”

      “What were they carrying?”

      “You don’t ask much, do you?” Two-Finger Jimmy huffed but Nikki also heard the speedy clicking of the typing technique that had earned him his nickname.

      “Maersk-Sealand was routing long-haul trucks to Australia.”

      “Sounds reasonable.”

      “SHA was…” He trailed off, then grunted. “It’s hard to tell what these clowns were shipping. Uno momento.” His off-key whistling set in.

      Not a good sign. It meant he was puzzled, and a puzzled Two-Finger Jimmy usually meant trouble.

      “Textiles,” he said finally. “Handwoven.”

      “Textiles?”

      “Ye-a-ah.” He drew the word out nice and slow. “Big bolts of cloth.”

      “I know what textiles are, James. Aren’t they going in the wrong direction?”

      “Most textiles come in, but we do ship out occasionally. Problem is, this is about a half load.”

      “Doesn’t sound very cost-effective.”

      Jimmy grunted. “It’s not. SHA’s losing its ass on that container ship.”

      “Nothing but big bolts of cloth?”

      Keys clicked. “Nothing that shows on the electronic manifest. Hang on. Let me check the hard copy.” Papers fluttered. “Okay, a last-minute load. One container.”

      “Contents?”

      “Not listed.” Jimmy whistled. “Someone at SHA has been a ba-aa-ad boy. All container contents are s’posed to be logged and checked by customs twenty-four hours before loading. Looks like this one got loaded up after the rest of the ship’s containers were inspected.”

      “Could that container have bypassed a customs inspection?”

      “Only if money changed hands somewhere down the line.”

      “Sounds like a snakehead’s involved,” she said.

      “Human smuggling? Stowaways usually try to get in, not out.”

      “True.” She thought for a moment. “What do you know about SHA?” she asked as she used Google to search the company name.

      “They log about six, seven shipments a year. Small scratch. Manifest says they have offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Istanbul.”

      “Where’s this boat headed?”

      “Itinerary says Hong Kong. Should take about four weeks to get there.”

      Four weeks from April 27 meant the container ship would be in port in less than a month, give or take the weather.

      Then a thought occurred to her. “Were any civilian passengers logged for this trip?” Sometimes adventurers would book passage on a commercial shipper as an alternative to flying. The signal Oracle picked up might have originated from a passenger.

      Jimmy rummaged on the keyboard for a moment, then said, “One guy. An Alexander Wryzynski.”

      Nikki scribbled down the name as he spelled it for her. “Thanks for the trouble, Jimmy. I owe you.”

      “Anything for you, chica, anytime.” He clicked off.

      Nikki’s smile faded as the search engine came up with about twenty-eight thousand incomprehensible listings for SHA.

      SHA, she discovered, was a database programming tool used to encrypt data, so the vast majority of the search links led to either propeller-head sites or to database companies. Including shipping, transport and China in the search term brought up more programming links, only in Chinese.

      The manifest had listed the SHA company as based in Hong Kong, with offices in Singapore and Istanbul. She tried a search with those cities and shipping, and dropped SHA. Bingo. A plethora of shipping companies, none of which were SHA. What shipping company these days didn’t have a Web site?

      So a little-known shipping company had sent a light load of handwoven textiles in the least likely direction for such goods to go, and taken on a single container of unknown contents that had bypassed U.S. Customs and Border Control.

      It smelled as rotten as the shrimp she’d raked this morning.

      Nikki blew out a breath. She had her mark. She fired off two words via e-mail to Delphi: Got it. Now she’d just wait to be contacted.

      Delphi’s e-mail warning back in February had been followed up by a face-to-face visit from a former classmate, Dana Velasco. Dana had been two years ahead of Nikki and now test-piloted experimental planes for a major aircraft manufacturer. Oracle, Dana had told her, was an intelligence-digesting system run by someone known only as Delphi.

      “I don’t know who Delphi is,” Dana had said over a crowd of lively teenagers as they walked down Calle Ocho in Little Havana, “but they’ve used Oracle to piece together puzzles intelligence agencies can’t manage on their own.”

      “And Athena figures in how?”

      Dana had only shrugged. “A lot of what gets pieced together has to do with the academy. And students like you.”

      Students like you. Nikki sighed and kicked back in her office chair. Students like her, who’d been manipulated at the genetic level, unbeknownst to their parents.

      Jaime and Teresita Bustillo hadn’t wanted much—just a girl. Seven sons had kept their upscale East Flagstaff construction business going, but they’d wanted one last chance at a daughter. That’s where the fertility clinic in Zuni, New Mexico, came in. The clinic, doctors assured her parents, could guarantee a girl.

      They just hadn’t mentioned that the girl,

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