Yoshida’s brow furrowed, and he looked to Kruger. “What’s he talking about?”

“I’ll tell you why. You’re all too stupid to figure it out on your own anyway,” Burke continued. “Mobius has too much invested in the current oil and power infrastructures. A battery like this on the open market would cost him a great deal of money. So Mr. Kruger made a back-end deal with him to eliminate the battery technology while still keeping the money you paid him to steal it. Because, you see, no matter how much money someone has, when they have powerful enemies who want them dead, they’ll always be looking over their shoulders. And from what I’ve heard about this Mobius, there would be no hiding from him. Kruger’s plan has been to betray all of you from the start, in order to satisfy his former master.”

“That’s absurd. Why are we allowing this madness to poison our minds? Let’s get on with our business,” Kruger said.

“And how did he intend to betray us, Dr. Burke?” Yoshida asked.

“My guess would be that, as the battery has clearly been removed from its original container, he’s loaded a hidden partition at the bottom of that crate with C-4 explosive. Then, once your business is concluded, he’ll detonate the bomb. He may have even damaged the battery to be safe. Search the crate. Run a diagnostic on the battery. That will prove whether or not I’m right.”

Kruger’s lips curled up in disgust, but he said nothing.

“But don’t judge him too harshly, because he’s not the only one here who plans to betray the others,” Burke said. “I assume, Mr. Loria, that your part of this was to bankroll Kruger and Raskin to steal the device, and then you would make back your money exponentially when you sell the battery technology to someone like the Chinese or an international corporation or whomever wants to pay the most.”

“What’s your point?” Loria said.

“Just that your friend, Mr. Yoshida, doesn’t plan to make a dime from the sale of this technology.”

Yoshida said nothing, but Burke noticed the muscles of his jaw bulging as he ground his teeth.

“Yoshida is a patriot. He would never betray his country. But I would extrapolate that the CIA had plans to shut down the battery program, and so his plan wasn’t to sell it, but to give it away.”

Loria looked to his partner and said, “Anything to say?”

“We checked his personal finances. He’s recently purchased the domains freepowerforall.com and batteryofthefuture.com, and he’s hired a programmer and marketing genius who used to work for WikiLeaks,” Burke continued. “If you check his phone, you’ll find a message to the designer in question stating that Mr. Yoshida would be sending the data tonight and wants the site live by the morning. Now, why would he do that if he planned to sell the tech?”

“Is that true? Say something,” Loria yelled.

“I actually feel sorry for you, Mr. Loria,” Burke said. “You’re the only somewhat honest one out of this group. To my knowledge, you had no intentions of selling out the others. You’re just the one getting screwed.”