Situation Room

“Only they allowed Li into the shower by himself, with two guards standing outside the door. They also removed his manacles at the wrists and ankles. It turned out he had a powerful dose of cyanide embedded in a capsule inside a false tooth in his mouth. He pulled out the tooth and swallowed the contents of the capsule within seconds of when the water started running. He began experiencing seizures within a minute and a half. He was dead inside four minutes.”

“Was he tortured?” Susan said.

“There are no marks on his body, except ones consistent with the small amount of resistance he put up when he was arrested.”

“Is that what I asked you?” Susan said.

Kurt shook his head. “I think you should ask Luke Stone if the subject was tortured.”

A low murmur went through the room.

“What’s next?” Susan said.

Kimball moved to another slide. It showed an image of a low-slung red brick warehouse building along an industrial road. “Li Quiangguo gave Stone and his team information that led them to this warehouse. Inside the warehouse, they found evidence of the import-export business which was Li’s cover story in the United States. They also found evidence that Li was compiling intelligence about a list of potential cyber attack soft targets in the United States. That list is as long as your arm. It contains extensive data about each target, and was kept on three CD-Rom disks in a locked drawer in the locked office of the warehouse. The information was kept nowhere else that we are aware.”