“How did you explain her presence on the plane?”
“They all know Juliet is a colleague. It isn’t unheard of for me to give colleagues rides.”
Xander nearly groaned aloud. Why was it men never thought people knew about their affairs?
“Are we through?” Denon asked. “I need to check in with the office. I’m sure they’re going mad by now.”
Xander wanted to believe him. He liked the man, damn it. But his respect had dropped a few notches, and while the story rang true, Xander wasn’t a fool. Something was up.
“One last thing. Why is she traveling under a fake name?”
Denon’s eyes grew cold. “You’re sure about this? Juliet Bouchard isn’t her real name?”
“Absolutely. It wouldn’t be readily apparent, but Chalk and I are very good at what we do. I’m certain it’s an assumed identity. All the info she’s using is attached to the woman who died in 1942.” He paused for a moment. “I have to ask. Why didn’t you have a background check run on her?”
Denon was troubled. Xander could see the far-off look in his eyes as he tried to rationalize what was happening. “I did, God help me. Apparently, my people missed it. Which is why, as I’m sure you can understand, I am bloody well going to fire everyone who worked on it.” This anger was real, and the flare of it made Xander remember who, exactly, he was dealing with. James Denon was a very powerful man, and he could make or break Xander and Chalk at will. He needed to step carefully.
“We’re looking into your staff right now, trying to see if anyone has a grudge or has been contacted by an outside group. And we’re looking at everyone you met with while you were here in the States. But a mistress using a fake name is a good jumping-off point.” He stood, shook Denon’s hand. “I’m sorry to ruin your day. Hold off getting in touch with Juliet again for the moment. Let us see if we can find out more.”
“I want to know everything you have the moment you have it.”
“We’re working from the kitchen. We won’t be far.”
He turned to leave, but Denon said, “Wait. What about the man who tried to kill me this morning?”
Xander shrugged. “We don’t know much more than we did earlier—he’s a Spanish national, a known assassin, very good at his job. We’re trying to get into his private accounts and see where the money trail originated. That’s the problem, Mr. Denon. We can’t find any records of anyone putting a contract out on you personally. So we’re operating under two theories. One, that someone inside your staff was the target, or two, someone inside your staff arranged for this so far off-book even we can’t find a trace. But now we have another wrinkle.”
“Juliet?”
“You’ve been dating a woman who’s using a false identity. We need to find out who she really is, who she really works for and why she’s targeted you.”
Denon stood suddenly. There were more glances from the dining room table. “You can’t think that. It’s impossible. She loves me, and I love her,” he whispered harshly.
Xander was several inches taller, and Denon had to look up when he spoke.
“Sir, I understand you have feelings for this woman. I will tread carefully. But everything is pointing in her direction. What kind of access has she had?”
“To what?”
“Your personal devices. Your laptop, your phone, your desktop at work.”
He sank back onto the couch, head in his hands. “All of them. She’s had access to all of them. I trusted her with everything. She was the one who suggested I work with you, for Chrissake.”
“She did?”
“Said you were excellent, that you were trustworthy and capable. I was leery of hiring a new firm, untried, but she said you were the best. She was bloody well right, too. I’m still breathing.”
“I wonder how she knew us.”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing.”
“Did she have contact with anyone else on your staff?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Only Lois, my secretary. No one else knows her personally that I’m aware of. Our world is a small one in London. Good Jesus in heaven, what have I done?”
“I may be off base, but I think we’re onto something here. What I need you to do is have the people you absolutely believe in look into your systems. See if they can find any anomalies.”
Denon ran a hand across the schoolboy face. “What sort of anomalies are we looking for?”
“Money moving around to places it shouldn’t, unauthorized accesses, anything that might tell us if someone’s been inside your company’s systems. Do you have a good IT person?”
“One of the best. And he’s sitting at the table over there. Everson’s been with me for several years. I trust him thoroughly.”
“Good. When we’re finished, I’ll get him started looking for code anomalies, fake server proxies, anything that might indicate an outsider has built a back door into your system. What about the rest of your team? Any grievances, poor performance reports, firings? Who might be a problem for you?”
“I’ll contact human resources, see if anyone’s been fired recently. I can’t think of another way to start looking at people outside of hire dates, and working backward.” He glanced down at the coffee table. “I’ve been a fool.”
“I wouldn’t say that, sir. But we’ll keep going at Bouchard from this end. Between the two of us, we may be able to find out what she’s been up to. You should get Everson started on your files. I’m happy to help him.”
“You really think Juliet, whatever her real name is, is up to something?”
“I do. And I’m afraid you may have been compromised along with your company.”
“Bloody hell. Bloody fucking hell.”
That about summed it up, Xander thought.
Chapter 37
Fletcher’s house
MARCOS DANIELS MET them at the door, shivering in excitement. Sam was further reminded of an eager puppy, wanting to please, happy to see them home. She used to play a game with the twins, trying to match people to their canine counterparts. It was a teaching tool, giving them a way to learn different breeds. The moment Matthew and Madeline had figured out what d-o-g actually correlated to, they were obsessed, in the way only little ones could be. They’d both been wildly creative, precocious, able to pull breeds she’d never heard of from their tiny brains, enhanced with a book she’d bought them from the American Kennel Club.
What breed would Daniels be, if he were a dog? Loyal, smart, eager. Short-haired, clean, quiet unless agitated. Quick and lethal if necessary, she was sure of it; he wouldn’t be assigned to Baldwin’s unit if he wasn’t very capable. A Doberman, then. Yes, looking closer, she could see it, a darkness inside him that would only be unleashed in the most dire of circumstances.
Her rumination was quickly interrupted by the Doberman himself. “I found Robin Souleyret. She has a carriage house out in McLean, lives on the estate of a couple of French diplomats. We have a BOLO out on the Lexus your witness saw this morning. It’s registered to her, at this address in McLean. I’ve sent a car to start surveillance on the house, subtly, of course. From what I’ve been able to uncover, she’d pick up a tail a mile away. She’s got a pretty impressive CV. Been all over the world, and most of it’s redacted.”
“Baldwin told me she was CIA black ops. How much did you actually find?” Sam asked.
Daniels grinned. “More than they’d want me to. Remember, I can work a little magic with the computer.”
Sam grinned back at him, then shook her finger with mock sternness. “Agent Daniels, tell me you didn’t hack the CIA databases.”
“Oh no, ma’am. That would be illegal. I walked in through the front door and asked politely.”
She clapped him on the shoulder. She was liking Daniels more and more. “Good jo
b. What else did you find?”
“Souleyret was badly injured when the Humvee she was traveling in ran over an IED, north of Kirkuk. They were on a secret mission, traveling dark, with satellite guides, and someone screwed up royally, sent them off the road to hide from an oncoming patrol in exactly the wrong place. She pulled three men from the vehicle, saved their lives, got a big commendation for it, too. But she had to retire from field work. She had a pretty severe head injury which DQ’d her from active duty. Once she got out of the hospital, they sent her back to Langley, doing analyst work. She was bored, by all accounts, and difficult to work with. They blamed it on the head injury, but there were rumors—there always are—that she was aggressive and uncontrollable. They booted her, put her on administrative leave.”
Sam looked at Fletcher. “We need to be looking at Robin closer.”
“She could have been helping Amanda off book, for sure,” he replied. “Good job, Daniels.”
Fletcher started toward the kitchen, and Daniels grabbed his arm. “Um, before you go in there, a heads-up. Your friend is here.”
“Jordan? She’s back in town early.” A smile lit his face, one that made Sam warm up inside. He really did dig the FBI agent he’d been dating.
“No, it’s your other friend. The one you called to help. She said her name was Mouse.”
“Ah, Rosie.” Then he eyed Daniels. “What exactly is Freedom Mouse doing in my kitchen, Marcos?”
Daniels had the decency to look abashed. “If it won’t piss you off, she’s been dissecting the SD card. If it will piss you off, she’s been cleaning up the lunch dishes.”
Fletcher looked torn for a minute, and Sam knew he was thinking Mouse was yet another person to keep quiet. There was no way for them to manage a cover-up that had spread through so many people. At this point, she didn’t give a whit what Regina Girabaldi wanted. This story was too big to contain, and doing so was hurting their chances of finding the killer.
“Don’t worry, Daniels,” Sam said. “I think Fletcher’s level of aggravation will be in direct proportion to what, exactly, Mouse has found. Let’s go see, shall we?”
The girl sitting at Fletcher’s table was the furthest thing from a Mouse as Sam had ever seen, but she supposed that was the whole point of having an alias—you chose something to disguise yourself. Mouse’s right arm was a sleeve of colorful tattoos that ended sharply at her wrist. Though she was clearly young, her dark honey-blond hair was streaked with silver. Whether it was natural or purposeful, its effect was stunning. She had a pierced septum, and she wasn’t wearing a bra; her nipples were pierced, as well. Sam could see the outline of small barbells through the girl’s thin shirt.
Mouse saw Fletcher, smiled widely and put up two fingers in a peace sign. “I come bearing good news.”
“You better,” Fletcher growled at her, but Sam could tell he was too interested to see what she’d found to be truly angry at Daniels’s slipup.
“Good to see you, too, Lieutenant.” She glanced at Sam, one eyebrow hiked.
Sam nodded in greeting. “Dr. Samantha Owens. FBI.”
“Fletcher told me you were a professor at Georgetown.”
“Normally I am. I’m an FBI consultant, too.”
“Do you know anything about my world, Doc? What it is that I do?”
“A bit. Not enough to follow if you’re going to talk hacker, though.”
She smiled. The top teeth were perfect, gleaming white, but the bottom were crowded, the canines at an odd angle. More imperfections that looked utterly right on this mercurial girl.
“All right, then. When Marcos decoded the SD card, he only skimmed the top layer. There’s a second level of encryption inside the card. Really advanced stuff, theoretical, even, if you want me to be honest. This card can take down the entire network of a company with a clean keystroke. It’s a weapon, plain and simple. And if the wrong person gets their hands on it, someone’s going to end up having a very bad day.”
“In English, Mouse, for the old folks. Please,” Fletcher said.
She nodded patiently. Genius she might be, but she was used to having to make herself clear. “You’ve heard of server proxies? It’s what keeps a website secure, allows them to move and store people’s private information. Some hackers sell proxies to the highest bidder. I’m talking millions of dollars changing hands. There’s code on this card that will take down a website’s secure proxy, and allow the hacker access to all the financial data stored in the servers.”
“What would Amanda Souleyret be doing with this? Or what did she want it for? Is there any indication?” Fletcher asked.
Mouse took a gulp of her soda, her eyes never leaving Fletcher’s. “To be honest, I’d assume she needed to get into a really secure database and steal something.”
Sam nodded. “That makes sense. That’s what her job was. Getting secrets out of databases. And the program worked, right? She was able to get the vaccination schedules, and the proof of the superbug...” She stopped. Mouse wasn’t at all cleared to know anything more.
But the girl rolled her eyes. “I saw it all. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything. I assume your people will know what to do with this information more than me. It’s wild, though, to think that they’ve managed to come up with a medication that might work. That’s some cool shit, dude.”
“What do you mean, work?” Sam asked. “The parts I read showed a ninety percent mortality rate.”
“Au contraire, mon frère. Inside the second layer of information, there’s a list of survivors, actual names and such. The data on the first layer was a year old—this is current, real time, like last week. There are a bunch more people who did survive. But here’s the kicker. The ones who survived are being killed by the soldiers and families. They think they’re zombies. There are a lot of superstitions in that part of the world. They know no one gets better once they contract the blood diseases. There’s a patient in here who was in isolation for over a month, but got better, and when they released her and sent her home to her family, they stoned her to death, thinking she was a monster.”
“Zombies?” Fletcher said. Skeptical had nothing on him.
Mouse shrugged. “That’s what the files say.”
“How many patients are we talking about who survived?” Sam asked.
“Of the people who were given the fake vaccine with the superbug in it, at least a hundred. The mortality rate is still tremendous, but some people are surviving. They’re all identified by code letters. That’s the important part of this, what was deeply encrypted. They are using antibodies in the blood of the ones who survived to create a real vaccine that will help fight the spread of the superbug. Which means there are samples somewhere—blood, tissue, all that icky stuff. I can’t find where, but they exist. There’s a log of them in the files.”
Sam felt a spark of hope. “Who is they?”
“Some virologist here in D.C.”
Bromley. It had to be. She exchanged a look with Fletcher. “So you’re saying that they’re using the samples from the survivors to work on a new vaccine that protects against the superbug?”
Mouse nodded. “They just have no idea how or why it works. And it still only works on about seventy percent. So the numbers are moving in the right direction, but it’s still fatal for a lot of people.”
“Tell me more,” Sam said. “The physical samples taken from the survivors...what are they doing with them?”
“I’m not sure. The labeling system is a bit wonky, but it’s consistent from area to area. That’s the trick with codes—you find the similarities, and everything falls into place.” She pointed to a line of code on the computer. “See, this one is from ground zero. It’s a small village in Sierra Leone—Anchurra. AN. So all the samples from this area are labeled with a GR—for ground zero—and AN for Anchurra. The next letters are which st
rain they’ve been given, and lastly the patient number or letter. But I can’t find where the samples got off to. Who knows where they are.”
Sam felt a zing of recognition, looked at Fletcher. “I think I know where at least one is. God, I can’t believe I didn’t realize it before. I’m slipping.”
“Where?”
“Remember the vials we pulled out of Cattafi’s refrigerator? The one no one could identify? Gransef. GR—ground zero. AN—Anchurra province. SE—the strain. F—the patient. We have one of the samples in evidence right now. It was rather elegantly hidden, wasn’t it?”
Fletcher’s smile grew wide, and he bumped Mouse on the shoulder. “Damn good work, kiddo.” He nodded at Daniels. “You’re forgiven.”
“Wait. It’s not all good news.”
“What is it, Mouse?” Sam asked.
“It’s the ultimate biological weapon, right? Even at its best, it still has a seventy to ninety percent mortality rate. You manage to slip this superbug into a shipment of flu vaccines heading to your local doctor’s office or drugstore, and you can infect the populace. And even with our great sanitation and medical care, there would be a massive mortality rate, because the vaccine against the superbug still kills so many of the people who get it.”
“What are you saying? That it’s possible a terrorist organization might have their hands on some of this and is planning to put it into our vaccines?”
“Ma’am, I may be paranoid, but I think we can’t rule it out. That would explain why the SD chip has the software proxies. So someone can load them into the firm’s servers and download all their financial data. To condemn, or to prosecute or to cover all this up. If they’re being funded by a terror group, or selling this superbug to them? We could have a much bigger problem on our hands.”
The kitchen went silent. This was what Girabaldi had been worried about. Now they had proof, in one way.
Sam took a deep breath. “We need to get our hands on those vials from Cattafi’s right now.”
“And figure out who is actually behind this,” Fletcher added. “What company has created this killer bug, and who was moving it in and out of Africa. All we know right now is there’s a man with a British accent involved.”
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