CHAPTER 66

WHEN HE TURNED SOME PAGES, he came to a section where there was a hole in the middle of the book, made by cutting the pages, which contained another device.

Gregory Evans picked up the device and began to examine it. It was tiny, just a few centimeters long, and had an opening with a small card. When he pulled out the card, he could see that it was a telephone chip.

What he had in his hands was a GSM transmitter, which used the cellular telephone network to listen in! Such ingenuity was surprising.

"What does this mean, Agent Evans? — Tyson asked.

— It means that our suspect is smarter than us...

— I don't understand what you're getting at... — Tyson asked, clearly offended.

— He put a shortwave transmitter in the room with a signal weak enough to be undetectable by your system, but that would require extreme proximity to the device, so he used this GSM receiver and transmitter in my hands. Basically, the radio transmitter sent the information to this receiver, which in turn, passed everything on to him via cellular signal.

— So, with that, he could be anywhere and would be undetectable... — Tyson concluded, astonished.

— Exactly!

AFTER THE CONCLUSION, THE DUO returned to the interrogation room, carrying the equipment in hand. Allison Bates was still there, attached to the polygraph, recovering from her tears, while Floyd Kenagan analyzed the interrogation data with the machine operator.

The young investigator entered the room and walked towards the table where she was, slamming his hand hard on the furniture and saying loudly:

— Enough lies! You're a good actress, but you can't deny the facts!

— Oh God... — she sighed, crying again. — Please, I don't know anything, I swear!

— We found everything! It's over! The bug you went to get from the meeting room, the transmitter, we have all the evidence. The question is who you did it to.

— What did I do? I told you, I don't know anything! — she said desperately.

— Can't you remember that? — he shouted, throwing the devices on the table and staring at her, without even blinking to see her reaction.

She turned her wide eyes to those objects, as if she were looking at a wound that had just opened. When she saw them, her expression of pity began to change and became serious. Her hands began to tremble and the galvanometers detected a large amount of sweat on her skin, her blood pressure rose rapidly and her breathing became labored. She seemed to be on the verge of an epileptic attack, if it weren't for her focused gaze on the things on the table.

Gregory Evans moved forward to hold her, but she twisted so much that she tipped the chair over and fell to the floor, knocking over almost all the polygraph paraphernalia. In a morbid scene, she crept clumsily to the corner of the room, pulling at the wires and things attached to her body and leaned against the wall, in a fetal position, looking at the table with a dark look, which seemed to bring out the great battle that her mind was facing. None of them understood that reaction, they all watched in amazement the change in the woman's behavior and wondered what it meant.

— My God, what is this? — Gregory Evans asked, frightened.

She just stared, without blinking, at the objects on the table, in an apparently psychotic way.

— What did I do? Please tell me... — she asked slowly, with a broken and trembling voice.

Greg realized that this time she spoke differently, she no longer claimed to be innocent, but wanted to know the situation, and her question about what she had done seemed sincere. Greg decided to speak:

— We have security footage that shows you leaving the venue after the summit last morning and we found these bugs in your belongings a few minutes ago.

She was brushing her sweaty hair from her face, confused by so many strands and other things stuck to her, her gestures were different and she said, with her hand over her face, looking through her fingers:

— I, I... I don't remember anything... just... some images in my mind...

— Like what? — Gregory asked.

— Confusing things. I don't know... I just... kept something in my pocket. A vase... a potted plant... My son, he stayed late at school... he... My locker... a book... a book that wasn't mine...

— War and Peace?

When Greg said the name of the book, her eyes widened even more, staring at him in a frightening way. Her gaze was indecipherable and the muscles in her face contracted, sometimes showing anger, sometimes showing fear, she didn't seem like herself. She began to move her lips, mumbling nonsense, grinding her teeth, and suddenly jumped onto the table, grabbing the wiretaps and shouting:

— Take it out! — she screamed. — I have to take it out!!!

— Take what out? — Gregory Evans asked, as did the others in the room.

She walked back to the corner of the room, walking in an apelike manner and not letting go of the gadgets, repeating, between grunts, only the same word: retreat! It continued for a few seconds, until she lost her breath and her eyes rolled back...

She fainted, falling to the ground.