by Sean Parnell
“This thing works pretty well,” Ralphy said.
“What the hell is it?”
“It’s a multifrequency bug detector.”
“You got roaches?”
“Funny, Steele. If somebody’s planted an audio surveillance device while I’m out doing our dirty work, which is most of my healthy hours, this thing’ll pick it up.”
“How so?”
“Well, a device like that has to transmit my room sound to somewhere else, right? This thing’ll lock onto that signal and intercept the transmission, so when I’m running music from a contained device, like a CD player, if I’m being surveilled the tunes’ll be picked up by the bug and I’ll hear ’em in my cans.” He pointed at the headset now sitting on his chubby neck. “Get it?”
“Yeah, right, got it,” Steele said, though he wasn’t quite sure that he did, and he also felt kind of bad that that’s what Ralphy was doing on his rare day off. “But don’t you have better things to do on your down day?”
“Like chat with you, you mean?”
“Point taken.”
Ralphy put the interceptor and the wand down on a low glass coffee table in front of an IKEA couch, which faced a fifty-inch flat screen across the room. There was a high-tech joystick sitting on the table and, underneath it, a set of pedals that looked like the footrests from a rowing machine.
“You at the super pro level on Call of Duty yet?” Steele asked.
“I don’t play video games. It’s a flight simulator.”
Steele was surprised. Every puter geek he knew was a game freak. “You don’t say. How often do you crash?”
“Never. And I can land a Piper J-3 Cub on an aircraft carrier, not that anybody’d ever need that.” Ralphy plopped down on the couch, picked up an open can of Izze soda, and sipped. “You want one?”
“Negative, thanks.”
“So what brings you here, Seven?”
Steele noted that Ralphy’s demeanor was a little different here than at Cutlass. This was his “cave,” and his usual deferential manner was hued with impatience. Steele felt his respect for Ralphy tick up a notch. He took the challenge coin from his pocket and displayed it to Persko, palm up.
“I found this at Demo’s grave today, over at Arlington.”
Ralphy leaned forward and gingerly plucked the coin from Steele’s hand, as if it were something hot. He didn’t ask why Steele had been visiting his former keeper’s grave.
“You mean, like, on the ground somewhere?”
“I mean on top of his headstone.”
Ralphy pushed his big glasses up onto the bridge of his nose, turned the challenge coin over, and murmured the quote on the back. “‘We do bad things to bad people.’” He looked up at Steele. “Hey, that could be the Program’s motto.”
“It’s actually Third Group’s. Ours would be ‘People Need Killing.’”
Ralphy grinned. “That’s a Vince Vaughn line from Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”
“I know,” Steele said. “Ralphy, somebody left that for me.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
The last thing Persko was going to challenge was Eric Steele’s instincts. He got up, grabbed the can of Izze, walked the coin over to his worktable, set it down onto a square of green velvet cloth, and settled heavily into his office chair. Then he twisted a large magnifier on a corrugated metal neck into place, switched its light on, and hunched. After a moment, he emitted a low whistle.
“What?” Steele said as he moved closer.
“Now that’s friggin’ old school,” Ralphy whispered.
“What is, Ralphy?”
“There’s a period at the end of the quote.”
“So?”
“It’s not original to the coin. It looks like a microdot. Really ancient spy stuff, even from way before computers and shit.”
Steele’s mental cylinders were starting to fire more rapidly and his pulse rate rose.
“You mean like when they used to use film to reduce an encoded message down to nothing, and then glue it to a letter or something?”
“You were paying attention at Camp Peary,” Ralphy said as he reached for a pair of needle-nose tweezers.
“I’m a history buff.”
“Well step back, and don’t breathe. These things were always stuck on upside down.”
Steele stepped back as Ralphy gripped the tweezers and carefully peeled the dot from the coin, slid the coin off the velvet, and replaced it with a sheet of white paper. Then he held his own breath as he turned the dot over, laid it down on the paper, pushed the magnifier out of the way, and replaced it with a digital camera, which was also mounted to another corrugated neck. He clicked the shutter, sat back, cracked his knuckles, then rolled the chair down the table length to a computer with a large monitor. He pecked at the keyboard, maneuvered his mouse, clicked again, and the monitor glowed.
Now the dot appeared on-screen, but it was the size of a black dinner plate. It was covered with a full matrix of hundreds of white characters, all vertical lines and zeros.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Steele whispered.
“You were that when you volunteered for this gig,” Ralphy murmured, but he was fully enthralled now by what he was seeing. “It’s a binary code.”
“Can you crack it, Ralphy?”
“Maybe. First I’ll have to translate this into readable characters, which could turn out to form any language, maybe even some crazy dialect, or even Latin or something. Then I’ll have to break that code, which’ll be simple if it’s a single primary, but if it needs a key I’ll have to run a fuck ton of algorithms. . . .”
“How long, Ralphy?”
But Persko was already moving into a realm of obsessive curiosity and didn’t answer. His day off had turned into something else. He now had three decrypt programs opening up on his system and was cutting and pasting sections of the microdot message.
“Okay, I’ll stay out of your hair,” Steele said. “Just give me a quick brief on that other subject.”
“What subject’s that?” Ralphy said without turning around as he slurped his Izze and hammered away at his keyboard.
“The intel on the girl.”
“Oh, that ping you got from Paris?”
“Yeah, that one.”
Ralphy waved a hand over his shoulder, as if the hunt for Stalker Six’s killer wasn’t really important right now.
“We’ve got that narrowed, but not enough to do anything with yet. Got thirty-two matches.”
“You’ve got thirty-two matches on a girl who looks like a mean Eva Green?”
“You don’t know how this facial recognition stuff works, Seven,” Ralphy scoffed as he focused on the dot. “When a face is classically beautiful, you get lots of false positives, ’cause beauty’s symmetrical. Most people don’t realize they’re subconsciously attracted to uniform features, which are common in, let’s say, fashion models, which is also why those people often look so much alike. On the other hand, if a dude’s ugly, the features are off-kilter, like a lazy eye or a busted nose. Much easier for FR to spot, right? But this chick ain’t ugly. That’s why so many hits. We’ve had thousands of feeds from Europol cameras, KBR and Honeywell units at airports and train stations, MI6 and Mossad street surveillance, even Jordanian intel. Gotta work it some more.”
“Where are the hits, Ralphy?”
“Europe mostly.”
“Where in Europe, Ralphy?”
“All over. Germany, France, Italy.”
Suddenly Steele’s skin was starting to crawl. He realized that when he’d shown up at the new HQ for his AAR, he hadn’t seen Collins Austin, or, for that matter, Shane Wylie.
“Ralphy.”
“What?”
“Where’s Stalker Eight?”
“Austin? She’s out of pocket. Just finished a flash in Trieste, while you were in Paris. . . .” Then he stopped working on the dot, pulled his chubby fingers from the keyboard, and sat back in his Naugahyde throne.
“Come to think of it, we had one hit in Venice, but—”
“How fucking far is Venice from Trieste, Ralphy?”
“About two hours by car.” Ralphy suddenly jerked upright. “Jesus, Seven.”
He spun around in his chair, but Eric Steele was already gone.
Chapter 17
Trieste, Italy
Collins Austin noticed the couple at the bar, because their eyes were burning her skin. It was that strange sensation she felt whenever anyone in close proximity was regarding her as a sexual object—which was often—sort of a seventh sense attuned to lustful transmissions. Yes, in between whispers, these two were definitely staring.
And why wouldn’t they? She was sitting alone in one corner, on a plush red leather banquette with a small round table that couldn’t conceal her long, tanned legs. Her red hair was twisted half up and pinned, with the curled ends teasing her bare shoulders. She was wearing a fringed, deep purple halter top revealing her cleavage and her muscled belly, above a short black leather skirt and high-heeled sandals that matched the top. She had dressed as a sensual lure this evening. But not for business; only for play. And the game was on.
The place was called Grotto, an upscale saloon and club where even the bouncers guarding the gilded glass doors looked like male Italian fashion models rather than thugs, and it was just half a block north of the Greif Maria Theresia hotel, where Austin was still staying. After vaporizing the Iranian vessel, she had run through her After Action Review with Shane Wylie, then taken the standard ten-day R&R that was granted after every kinetic Alpha mission. But she hadn’t actually gone anywhere.
In almost all cases after a hit, an agent would exfil the Area of Operations as rapidly as possible. Yet Austin believed in the adage “hide in plain sight.” If the authorities were searching for whoever had sunk the Chiroo, they’d be combing the airports, train stations, bus lines, and rental car agencies. Austin hadn’t budged an inch. Her cover as Sabrina Quinley was solid, and there was nothing in her hotel suite or on her person to incriminate her, not even a weapon—except for her four-inch stiletto, which any wise, comely young lady traveling alone might carry.
Wylie didn’t like it. He’d told Austin that sometimes she behaved like a goddamn rebellious teenager. She’d laughed, kissed him on his weathered old cheek, and told him she didn’t much care. So he’d reluctantly headed off for Berlin to prep an upcoming mission while she’d shut down her Program cell phone and decided to party.
It was close to midnight, the music was pulsating early-1990s techno, and the Grotto was crowded with people of money undulating across a polished onyx dance floor through clouds of fruit-laced vape. The bar itself was a long glass affair, behind which rows of liquor bottles on frosted shelves were bathed in multicolored pin lights like dancers at Radio City. The couple was perched at the far-right corner, and they kept glancing her way and smiling; or at least the man did. Austin looked at them unabashedly as she sipped a pomegranate martini through a fancy glass straw, until they finally dismounted, politely shouldered through the bouncing crowd, and came her way.
Bingo.
The man was nothing special. Tall and slim, exceptionally thin wrists, frosted dark hair, a half-open black silk shirt, tight black trousers, and Gucci loafers—Eurotrash. The girl was more interesting. Short black bobbed hair with bangs, large-framed glasses, very full features. She was wearing a black cashmere roll-neck sweater, about a size too large, over a short, crimson velvet skirt and matching high heels. She was carrying a mismatched brown leather clutch, which told Austin she didn’t get out much; maybe a librarian with a vivid fantasy life.
Austin was always cautious about blind approaches in the field, and “honey traps” were her own specialty, so she could spot one a mile away. But these two looked about as dangerous as Keurig salesmen.
They were carrying their drinks, and they pulled out the two chairs at Austin’s small table and sat down. Introductions were made, followed by a few white lies and vapid small talk. The two were Slovaks and had good English. The girl kept looking down at her drink and glancing at Austin over the top of her glasses, then chewing her bottom lip and blushing. Austin noticed that her hands were trembling as she played with her highball glass.
“Leena is a bit shy,” the man said as he stroked the woman’s tense spine, then cupped her shoulder in what was supposed to be a comforting hug, and pecked her on her temple.
“I can see that.” Austin smiled and cocked her head. “Are you shy too, George?”
“Not so much. But I am here mostly to please my wife.”
“What a good husband. And how’re you going to do that?”
“Well, she is . . . How do you say? Curious.”
Austin nodded, stretched out one leg, and let her high heel drag along Leena’s bare ankle. The girl jolted a little and blushed again.
“Curious about what, Leena?” Austin said to the girl, who took a long sip of her drink and didn’t answer.
“About you,” George said with a grin.
“Ah,” Austin said. “About the other side of the equation.”
“Yes.”
“Well, maybe I could cure her curiosity,” Austin said as she reached out, took the girl’s pale hand, and gently stroked her palm with one finger. Seducing her was going to be fun. If George was her only lover, she’d probably been faking orgasms for years. “Would you like that, Leena?”
The girl nodded, looked down, and whispered, “Yes.”
Austin looked at the man.
“We’ll come back later, George. It might be . . . much later.”
“I shall be fine right here,” he said, “just imagining.”
“I’m sure you will,” said Austin, and she slipped out of the banquette, took Leena’s damp hand, and led her out of the Grotto. . . .
Austin’s suite next door on the second floor of the Greif Maria Theresia was perfect for an explorative tryst. The decor was in deep crimsons, creams, and browns, with a huge, king-size four-poster in the bedroom and a well-stocked bar including always chilled prosecco. The bathroom was something that would have made Emperor Nero proud, and the large plush salon opened up onto a balcony through wide French doors hung with Egyptian silk curtains that billowed in the ocean breeze.
On the way over, Leena had shyly confessed her fantasy about luxuriating in steaming foam with a woman like “Sabrina,” so Austin had started running a lavender bubble bath in the enormous tub. But then they’d moved to the wide white leather sofa in the salon and kissed, tentatively at first, and then with their tongues twining and their heart rates rising, until Austin slipped her fingers up inside Leena’s velvet skirt and felt her wetness and the girl moaned and jerked her hips and thrust back against Austin’s persistent strokes.
Then, panting and with her eyes gleaming, Leena pulled away and whispered hoarsely, “God, you are going to make me finish.”
“Yes, I am.” Austin grinned.
“First, I want to see you,” Leena said as she staggered upright and sat down in a large leather armchair, facing Austin across from the sofa. “Please.”
Austin smiled and slowly removed her halter. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Leena gasped and stared at Austin’s breasts, and then she quickly pulled off her sweater, and Austin almost gasped as well because the girl’s body was stunning. She was wearing a black lace bra and her breasts heaved up from the cups.
“I want to show you something,” Leena panted.
“Show me,” Austin said as she started unzipping her miniskirt.
Then Leena, who was in fact Lila Kalidi, reached for her clutch purse, pulled out a small plastic pouch, and from that removed Jonathan Raines’s severed ear and dangled it in the air like a greasy slice of salami.
“I believe this belonged to a friend of yours.” She grinned like a panther.
It took only a millisecond for the horror to smash through Austin’s brain. She growled, “Motherfucker,” and sprang up from the couch. But Lila had already pulled a mini-Tas
er from her bag, and she shot Austin point-blank, full bore in the chest.
The shock sent Austin sprawling backward on the couch, her teeth grinding and her limbs flung wide and utterly paralyzed. Lila moved like a lightning bolt. She grabbed Austin’s evening purse, leaped forward, whipped its chain around Austin’s neck, twisted it twice, and hauled her half-naked, twitching body off the couch and dragged her across the salon’s Persian carpet and into the bathroom.
Even with the Taser prongs still embedded in her flesh and the purse chain crushing her windpipe, Austin’s survival reflex kicked into gear and her body tried to fight. With a gush of adrenaline and a banshee cry from her mouth she flung her arms up over her head and grabbed Lila’s hair, but the bob haircut was nothing but a wig and it went flying across the marble tiles. Then Austin spun herself onto her stomach and almost got to her knees, but Lila snatched a large ceramic soap dish off of the sink counter and smashed it into Austin’s skull—once, twice, three times. Then she hauled her over the edge of the nearly overflowing bathtub, kneed her in the spine with the force of a pile driver, gripped her red hair, and shoved her facedown under the roiling water, until at last Austin’s fingers stopped clawing for air, her bare feet stopped kicking, and her beautiful body went limp.
Lila turned off the faucets, took a break for a moment, and waited to make sure Austin was dead. Then she dragged her corpse with her dangling bloody head from the tub and dropped her faceup on the puddled marble floor. She walked out to the salon, came back with her clutch purse, took out her favorite dirk, and sliced off Austin’s right ear. She rinsed it thoroughly in the tub, dried it off with a hand towel, and added it to the bag with Stalker Six’s. Then she collected her wig and spent some time in front of the bathroom mirror, fixing it back into place.
It took her a full five minutes to find Austin’s cell phone. That Program bitch was clever; it was in a magnetic case stuck to the back of the minibar. Lila walked the phone into the bathroom, pressed Austin’s lifeless thumb onto the reader to open the phone, and changed the access code to “007,” which amused her. Then she stuffed it into her purse as well, and got dressed.