Firewall (The Firewall Spies Book 1)

by Andrew Watts

  “Ed . . .” Colt said.

  “I see it,” Wilcox answered. They were both standing now. Colt’s heart was thumping, his mind spooling after the shock of seeing a man decimated in front of him.

  Colt heard people shouting and running down the hallway outside their hotel door. Wilcox headed that way, opening the door. Colt followed, looking out.

  There were four people. Three men and a woman, handguns drawn.

  “FBI?” Colt asked.

  They were outside the hotel room four doors down, looking like they were about to kick it open.

  Wilcox shouted, “Rinaldi! No.”

  One of the men holding a pistol snapped up, meeting Wilcox’s eyes. He nodded understanding and said to the others, “We need to treat this like an active shooter situation.”

  Colt saw at least two of the FBI agents look at him, which he didn’t like. He would worry about his cover later.

  Wilcox turned to Colt, alarm in his eyes.

  Colt said, “SANDSTONE.”

  Wilcox nodded. “Yes. Tell her to wave off. Bring her in if you think you need to. But go now.”

  Colt nodded and headed to the stairway, bursting through the door. He hustled all the way down to the parking garage and began jogging on the city sidewalk, heading to his hotel. No time for a surveillance detection route; he needed to warn his agent.

  He slowed to a brisk walk as he reached the Westin, his mind still racing through the images of violence he had just witnessed. Colt waded through the busy sidewalk of tech workers and businesspeople headed home from work as he entered the hotel’s sliding doors.

  Colt walked through the lobby, the bar area ahead of him. Here he had a choice to make. He could go left and take the south tower elevator, heading straight to SANDSTONE’s room. That would be the quickest way to warn her. Or he could go right, taking the north tower elevator and going to his own room, contacting her through their encrypted messenger.

  His head was clearing, his survival instincts kicking in. He needed to slow down. Be deliberate. Be disciplined. Quick reactions without thinking through the scenario were a surefire way to get someone killed.

  Colt headed over to the bar, sitting at an empty cushioned chair, scanning the area for possible surveillance. A waiter came over and asked him if he wanted a drink, and Colt ordered an ice water. The thought that Marisha could be in harm’s way was excruciating. But he forced himself to be patient.

  Was it possible for Kozlov to be killed and Marisha to remain clear of suspicion from Russian counterintelligence? Yes. Was it possible she was being watched this moment, to see if anyone came to her after Kozlov was killed? Yes. But if that was the case, would they have known she was communicating with Colt an hour ago? He didn’t know the answer to that.

  Colt took a sip of water, removed his cellphone from his pocket, and accessed the encrypted messenger app. He sent an emergency message to SANDSTONE, a series of letters and digits from the communications procedure they had both memorized. To anyone observing, it would look like gibberish. But to both of them, it was a clear message: Emergency. Contact me ASAP.

  She would take the message seriously when she saw it. But they weren’t due to check in until later tonight, so Colt couldn’t predict when she would see it. He would wait here for a few moments, checking for anything out of the ordinary, and then go to his room to see if he could glimpse Marisha. If she didn’t contact him in the next hour, he would knock on her door.

  On the TVs above the bar, Colt half-watched SportsCenter replays of the day’s games, all the while using his peripheral vision to scan the room and occasionally taking quick, nonchalant glances at areas of interest. Two Asian men sitting alone wearing headphones in the corner, not speaking and not drinking. A white woman with her phone set on the table, angled so that its camera could have captured the bar area. One of the waiters glancing over in Colt’s direction twice in the last thirty seconds. All these people were almost certainly civilians. But that’s exactly what surveillance would want to look like as they monitored him.

  Colt thought about what Wilcox had asked before Kozlov was killed. Did he trust SANDSTONE?

  Was it possible that Marisha had been setting him up? Had the SVR been using her to feed the CIA false information this whole time? Of course, that was possible. But was it likely? Marisha had once tried to sleep with Colt during one of their in-person meetings. It had been a long night of debriefing over wine and gourmet food, alone in a fancy hotel room. Colt had politely declined and chalked up the incident to a combination of genuine attraction, loneliness, and alcohol. But was it possible she had been working him? Was Marisha another Anna Chapman, the Russian sleeper agent who was arrested for seducing Americans as part of a Russian espionage operation? The Russians definitely used honeytraps as a way to ensnare potential assets. But Marisha was an SVR case officer, working an official Russian diplomatic cover. It was doubtful that someone of her status would use sex to recruit him. It was beneath her.

  Besides, if that was the case, why have him meet with her today if they were going to kill Kozlov?

  Maybe the Russians didn’t kill him. Or maybe they didn’t know about Marisha’s work for the Americans. But then how did they know to kill Kozlov today? Too many questions. The answers would have to wait. For now, he needed to stick to his plan to protect his agent and assume she was still loyal.

  Colt’s visual scan froze on a group sitting in the hotel restaurant fifty feet away. He blinked. A brunette woman in a black dress twirled a lock of her hair. Dark features. Full lips.

  Ava Klein.

  A wave of emotions flooded through him and he knew he should look away. Ava was laughing, covering her mouth, her eyes glowing. She tenderly touched the shoulder of the man next to her, and Colt realized he recognized him. It was Jeff Kim.

  Bzz. Bzz. Colt’s phone pulled him back to the present. He looked down.

  A message notification.

  He could find out what Ava was doing here later. That was a personal interest. He needed to focus on the problem at hand. He . . .

  When he looked up, Ava was staring at him.

  Colt turned away. A reflexive action. As interested as he was, he didn’t have time for this. He needed to walk out of this room right now without drawing any further attention to himself. He stood and began to walk, sneaking a sideways glance back at her table.

  She was gone.

  No. Not gone.

  Walking through the hotel lobby, toward the bar area.

  Toward him.

  They were looking at each other now. An elated smile on her face. Colt’s feet cemented to the floor. Heads at the bar turned as she walked by, eyes both coveting and envious, following the stunning brunette.

  Bzz. Bzz. Colt’s phone notified him he’d just received another message.

  It was SANDSTONE, texting him back. Or Wilcox, alerting him to some new bit of information. Either one of them could be communicating any number of crucially important things Colt needed to know right now.

  “Colt?” Ava’s face was a mix of disbelief and pleasure. “Oh my God. It is you. I can’t believe it.”

  As they embraced, he felt her bosom press against his chest and the warmth of her body beneath her dress. An intoxicating whiff of her perfume filled his nostrils.

  He smiled. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, looking incredulous.

  “I’m attending the tech conference. You?”

  “Me too. Who are you with?”

  “I work in finance. Phillips and Jefferies Investment Bank, out of New York.”

  “Oh, you’re kidding. You guys are working with my company. I’m with Pax AI.” She was slowly shaking her head. “Colt, it’s really good to see you.” They both stood there, not knowing what to say. Memories of young love flashed through his mind. Long walks on Israeli beaches and sweaty nights in Tel Aviv hotels. And the abrupt, painful end that he hadn’t thought about in nearly a decade.

&
nbsp; Colt felt his phone vibrate again. He said, “Hey, I’m really sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. I actually need to go take a call for work. But we should catch up.”

  Ava’s face flashed disappointment, her lips parting slightly, but then she recovered. “Of course.”

  His phone buzzed in his hand.

  Colt said, “I’m really sorry. It’s pretty important . . .”

  “No problem at all. My email is easy. Ava@pax.ai. Definitely get in touch.” Her eyes sparkled.

  “I will.” Colt held her gaze for a moment and then turned away, cursing himself as he headed toward the north tower elevators. He took the elevator up to his floor.

  When the doors opened, Marisha Stepanova was waiting for him.

  5

  “What are you doing here?” Colt tried not to curse at her. If they were spotted together, both of them were screwed.

  “You told me it was an emergency,” she said.

  They walked quickly to his room, and he ushered her inside, deadbolting the door behind them. They stood near the door while they spoke.

  Marisha looked frightened. “I checked in with one of my contacts. There are police and ambulances everywhere at Kozlov’s hotel. What happened?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Her eyes were full of fear, but not surprise. “How?”

  “I think it was a sniper. He was shot through the hotel window. I saw it happen.”

  She shut her eyes for a moment, turning away. When she looked back, she whispered, “If it was from my side, then they are watching us right now.”

  “Marisha, we can stop now. We can get you somewhere safe.”

  “Defect.”

  Colt nodded. “What do you want to do?”

  She shook her head. “If the SVR knew, I would already be dead. They wouldn’t risk letting me get away.” She gritted her teeth. “The next few minutes will tell us, I think.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I will go back. But I don’t know if I will continue with you.” A new expression now. A hint of anger. “Someone told the person who fired the shot where to find Kozlov. We need to think about who it was.” She put her hand on the door.

  “Marisha, wait. When will we meet again?”

  “Don’t contact me. If I decide to continue, I will reach out.”

  She walked out the door, and it closed behind her with a metallic clack.

  Colt’s phone vibrated, displaying an incoming call from Wilcox. He connected his CIA-issued wireless earpiece and swiped to answer.

  “Hello?”

  Wilcox said, “You in your room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Stay there for now.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Nobody knows. This thing is an effing mess. You talk to your friend?”

  “Yeah. My friend’s going dark.”

  Wilcox said, “Okay. Probably for the best.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen, it’s probably smart for you to get back home soon. Like, tonight. We’ll reach out in a day or two for a debrief.” Colt would need to come up with an excuse to give to his company about why he had to return to New York, but that wouldn’t be difficult.

  “Understood.”

  “Hey, one more thing. Some weird shit is being reported on the news. No idea if it’s true, but you should check it out.”

  The call ended and Colt turned on the TV, switching the station to the local news. Outside the hotel, he could now hear numerous police sirens in the distance.

  A few minutes later he saw the news story Wilcox had been referring to. By that time, Colt had finished scheduling his red-eye flight back to New York City.

  The chyron of BREAKING NEWS in big red and white letters at the bottom of the screen was subtitled with:

  CONSPIRACY GROUP TRINITY CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR SHOOTING OF AI SCIENTIST IN SEATTLE

  6

  New York

  One week later

  Colt sat at his desk combing through spreadsheets and financial reports, trying to get work done before his much-anticipated morning meeting. Phillips and Jefferies Investment Bank’s office space took up two full floors, high up in the clouds of One World Trade Center. The work he did for the privately owned investment bank could be grueling. Eighty-hour weeks. Cutthroat competition, both inside and outside the firm.

  “Colt, you catch the Knicks game last night?”

  Colt looked up from his computer. One of his coworkers was walking by, carrying a laptop from one meeting to another. “Yeah, nice game.”

  The coworker shook his head. “You didn’t watch it. They lost, man.”

  Colt winced. “You got me. I was up late working. Going through Pax AI’s quarterly report.”

  “You’re a machine, buddy. A machine. But that’s why they put you on the Pax AI job.”

  Colt noticed just a hint of resentment in his coworker’s demeanor. Everyone wanted to be on the Pax AI assignment. Colt nodded and his coworker walked into the meeting room, the door closing behind him. If the guy only knew. Colt’s reassignment had nothing to do with his work ethic.

  The only person at the firm who knew of Colt’s attachment to the US government was the company’s founder and CEO. After the CIA decided to place Colt on the non-official cover track, he had been sent to business school where he graduated near the top of his class. He then spent six months in a corporate internship, meeting with his handler on weekends to finish his training as an intelligence officer. Only then was he sent to his current job, where he began operational work for the CIA.

  The CEO’s arrangement with the agency wasn’t unique. Throughout the world, there were others like him. People of power who shielded their nation’s intelligence operatives, seeing it as their patriotic contribution, or a stroke to their ego. The arrangement allowed the CIA to guide Colt’s work portfolio. His work travel often included corporate visits in foreign nations where he would perform financial analyses.

  Colt was good at his job. The investment bank regularly used Colt’s financial analyses to make major investment decisions. Pension funds and college endowment portfolio managers often hired Colt’s firm to evaluate companies they wanted to invest in. Colt would tour business headquarters and meet CFOs by day, and then recruit potential agents over drinks at night. His occupation gave the CIA wide access to a variety of foreign corporations and investors.

  A calendar notification slid onto Colt’s computer screen, reminding him it was time to leave. As if he hadn’t been thinking about this meeting every minute since he left Seattle one week ago.

  He snapped his laptop shut and walked down the hall, waving goodbye to the smiling secretary and taking the elevator six floors down. Same building, lower cloud layer. The elevator waiting area was empty other than a clean-shaven Wilcox, waiting with his hands in his pockets.

  “You lost the beard?”

  “It was time for a change.” Wilcox turned and began walking. “Come on, this way.”

  Colt followed his handler as they headed toward a conference room on the left. From the hallway, Colt could see the room’s spectacular view of the river, fifty-two floors up.

  “How’d you get this meeting space?”

  Wilcox shot him a look as they entered the room. “FBI, man.”

  “Ah, yes, the FBI and their New York field office connections,” said a man in a blue suit standing at the far end of the table. He had a sly grin. FBI. Colt recognized him as the man he’d seen in Kozlov’s hotel hallway, holding a pistol and telling the others not to enter the room. The FBI agent said, “The floor is empty for another week. Then Goldman or somebody is moving in. I was told not to leave any scratches.”

  Wilcox said, “Colt, this is Special Agent Ron Rinaldi, FBI.”

  Rinaldi walked over and they shook hands.

  Wilcox said, “We’ve been working together to stand up the National Technology Counterintelligence Unit. That’s the interagency task force that was working the Kozlov case. I�
�ve been asked to serve as the supervisor for the NTCU.”

  “You’re leaving Vancouver?” Colt asked.

  “I’ll still be in Vancouver, for now. That’s the federal government for you. Why give someone one job when they can have two for the same salary?”

  Rinaldi smirked.

  They each sat down, and Wilcox began speaking. “The FBI is investigating Kozlov’s murder.”

  Colt looked at Rinaldi, feeling uncomfortable. It was extremely rare for Wilcox and Colt to meet while anyone else was present. “How much can I say here?”

  Wilcox said, “You can say anything. The room has been swept and I’ve read Agent Rinaldi in on your program. Please speak freely.”

  “Is he read in on SANDSTONE?” Colt asked.

  Wilcox nodded. “Yes. Has she made contact since the incident?”

  Colt shook his head. “Not a peep. Do you have surveillance on her?”

  Agent Rinaldi said, “Ed asked us not to.”

  Wilcox said, “I didn’t want any possible Russian countersurveillance to detect us. That would put her at risk.”

  “Well, I’d say we’re past that point,” said Colt, feeling guilty and angry that his agent had been put in this spot. “The news says this group Trinity has claimed responsibility. I’ve been reading up on them and it seems . . . far-fetched. Maybe a lone-wolf inspiration, but the group seems nuts. What do you know?”

  Agent Rinaldi said, “The local TV news station got a call shortly after the crime scene went active. Our analysts have been over the recording. The voice is computerized, the phone call untraceable. Simple message: Trinity claims responsibility for killing the Pax AI scientist Nicholai Kozlov. They will continue to fight for humanity’s AI future, or something to that effect. I’ll show you the exact quote if you want.”