by Tim Tigner
“So why are we talking in here?”
“Since this doesn’t seem to be my lucky day, I decided to proceed with extra caution.”
Max zipped up. “Satisfied? Can we flush and move on? Debrief somewhere more private? Somewhere I can get a drink and a steak?” Max gestured with his arm, inviting Wang to go first.
Wang didn’t move.
Max kept his arm extended in gesture. “Please.”
Wang shook his head in reluctant consent. “Buy yourself some fresh clothes, then meet me at BJ’s Brewhouse.” With that, Wang turned and walked away.
By moonlighting for Max, Wang had climbed way out on a limb. He couldn’t afford to inject impatience or incompetence or hubris into the delicate balancing act. One rash move might break the branch. There was no sense trying to explain his precarious position to Max either. Foreigners couldn’t relate to his predicament.
The Government of China had 1.4 billion people at its disposal. Against those odds, it was virtually impossible for anyone to become indispensable. Wang’s boss would replace him without a second thought at the first whiff of scandal. Westerners weren’t nearly so vulnerable.
As his wife Qi constantly and relentlessly reminded him, the only security Wang could ever hope to achieve was the kind that came with a big bank balance. With that dream in mind, he decided to stick with it. For now.
When Max slid into the booth across from him wearing a new black Abercrombie hoodie, Wang had a pitcher of pale ale and a plate of loaded nachos waiting.
Max ignored the food and drink. He skipped the history discussion as well, and went straight to future actions. “How are we going to get around the gait monitors?”
Wang snorted. He’d enjoyed a beer while waiting, and now couldn’t help it. “You have an invisibility cloak?”
Max remained rigid. “What I have is a call to make. My boss expects a detailed progress report tonight. If that report looks anything like the current draft, you can kiss your million-dollar payday goodbye.”
“Million-five.”
“The gait monitors. Can we fool them? Dodge them? Hack them?”
Wang fought back his building frustration. “If I knew how to do that, don’t you think I would have suggested it earlier? I’ve given you everything but the east wind.”
“You’re always spouting proverbs.”
“I’m eternally hopeful.”
“Well I have one for you: when men work with one mind, mountains can be moved. Let’s think about the monitors.”
“The monitors aren’t commercial yet, so we haven’t been able to study them. As for dodging, you saw the arrangement. The only way around is to enter through the exit lane. That might be possible in conjunction with a distraction, but it would be risky, and it would only work once.”
“What about the roof? Instead of going around could we go over?”
Wang grabbed a nacho for himself before responding. “The roof hatches are monitored and alarmed.”
“How about hacking?”
“They’re a top-shelf U.S. defense contractor. I’ve got a guy who can penetrate just about any organization on the planet, but these guys are using custom systems on top of the best federal standards. With billions on the line, they’re smart enough to hire top talent and buy or invent cutting-edge equipment.”
“There must be a weak link.”
“It takes more than one cold night for a river to freeze deep.”
“What?”
“I’m sure there is a weak link, but finding it will take time. Lots of trial and error. You’ve already used up our allocation of error.”
Wang could see that his last jab wounded Max. He could see him reliving the ordeal in his mind. Then Max’s pained expression brightened as if a wind had parted clouds. His chin lifted and his misty eyes began to twinkle with hope.
“Were you shooting straight about your guy? Can he really hack any organization on the planet?”
Chapter 47
Ties That Bind
Hawaii
ACHILLES DOUSED a rag with ammonia and cupped it under Zoya’s nose. Her eyes flew open as she gasped and whipped her head to the side. She coughed twice in rapid succession, and then a third time. “What happened?”
Before Achilles could answer, she discovered that her ankles and wrists were bound. “What’s going on?” Her question sounded sweet and sincere, but she hadn’t yet gotten her game face on. Her eyes indicated that she knew.
“A colleague of mine shot you with a tranquilizer dart. Then your friends showed up and killed him. Then I showed up and killed them.” He nodded, but kept his gaze on her eyes. “That about sums it up.”
She didn’t say anything. Twice she started to speak, but both times she stopped. Achilles could empathize. What could she say? Obviously, her gig was up, and her life was in the hands of a man who’d just confessed to killing two of her colleagues. Lies might provoke him, but so might the truth.
Finally she twisted and rocked her way onto her knees so that she could see over the side of the speedboat. “Where are we?”
“Off the western coast of Kauai. You’re looking at a wilderness preserve.”
“What are we doing here?”
“That’s my question, Zoya. I suggest you think carefully about how you answer it.”
His captive cringed at the use of her real name.
Achilles had been busy since commandeering the stolen Coast Guard vessel. He began the rest of his life by circling Nuikaohao in search of Foxley’s boat. All part of his confound and confuse strategy. He discovered a battleship-gray speedboat tied up on the western edge of the island in a spot where the jungle extended to the water’s edge. Achilles considered switching to the more anonymous craft, but decided to stick with the Coast Guard vessel so that he could search it thoroughly during the ride. There was no time for a search at that moment. Remaining on the island was like sitting in an acid bath. Every second was doing damage.
He transferred Foxley back to his own boat, sans anchor chain. Then he found Oahu on the navigation system some seventy miles to the southeast, engaged the autopilot, and dove off the back while Foxley sped away. Confuse and confound.
Back aboard the Coast Guard vessel, Achilles programmed its autopilot and then went to work. While the twin Mercury outboards rocketed him and the spy named Zoya toward Kauai, he searched the boat. There wasn’t much to it, so he found the Russian team’s Murphy bag even before Nuikaohao had dropped out of sight.
The stash of emergency essentials included about a hundred-thousand dollars in cash, a comprehensive disguise kit, and four Florida drivers’ licenses. Two with pictures of the dead Russian goons. One with Zoya’s image. And the fourth with his own photograph. All ironically issued with the last name Murphy, and hailing from the same address on Poinsettia Road.
Zoya spoke at last. “You seem to know who I am, but do you really know who I am?”
Actually, he did. He’d used Foxley’s phone — unlocked with his thumbprint — to take Zoya’s picture. Then he’d run a search using her image and first name typed in Cyrillic. Rather than a few low-probability potential matches, he’d gotten thousands of hits from Russian websites. Zoya, the woman who’d slipped beneath his radar and his sheets, actually was an actress. A celebrated movie star no less. She’d been nominated by the Russian Motion Picture Academy for a Best Supporting Actress award. The find made Achilles feel slightly less incompetent about falling for her act.
“I do know. And I agree with your fans. You should have won the Golden Eagle.”
Zoya’s face reddened. Some actors could force a fake blush, but none could prevent a real one. “When did you figure it out?”
“What are we doing here?”
“I’m an actress.”
“What are we doing here?”
Her features hardened. “My president asked me to help prevent his assassination.”
“By pretending to be my wife?”
“Would you have preferred thumb scre
ws? I was doing you a favor.”
She had him there. “Why didn’t Korovin go with thumb screws?”
Achilles saw Zoya flinch at the mention of Korovin’s name. He wondered whether that was because it made the situation real, or because of the way Korovin made her feel.
“They said plans for future covert actions weren’t verifiable information — and that you’d know as much. Therefore you’d never reveal the true plan to kill him. He said a con was the only surefire way to know.”
As the cold logic of Korovin’s plan sunk in, Achilles found himself acutely aware of his surroundings. The rocking of the boat on the waves, and the warm, fragrant maritime breeze. This was an odd place for an interrogation. He decided to use it to his advantage.
He plunked down onto the deck across from Zoya, mirroring her pose minus the zip ties. Locking his eyes on hers, he let his mind race ahead. He was about to get crushed between two battling giants. Korovin from the east, and Silver from the west. The Russian president was correct in coming after him. The American president was mistaken. But how could Achilles convince Silver of his innocence?
Secrecy was the rub.
Given Achilles’ mission, it was imperative that nobody ever learn that he and Silver had a relationship. Nobody. Ever. Achilles couldn’t call or visit or write. He couldn’t pass a note or wait in a favored bar. To reach Silver, one had to circumvent gatekeepers and security protocols and official records. Plus the Secret Service.
He was screwed.
It hit him out of the blue. There was one thing he could do without either violating Silver’s trust or jeopardizing national security. He could reach out through the one living intermediary who already knew the plan.
And there was the second rub.
It was his only move. Korovin would come to the same conclusion.
The race was on.
His strategy set, Achilles turned to tactics, and his captive’s role. “I appreciate the situation Korovin put you in. Do you understand your new situation?”
Zoya held up her bound wrists and feet in a modified yoga pose. An accurate and eloquent summary of her predicament.
“If you come with me to California to visit an old friend, and if you tell her everything you told me as convincingly as you just did, there’s a chance you’ll return to the movies. But if you do anything other than help me make that happen, I’ll—”
“You don’t need to say it,” Zoya interjected. “I understand. Let’s go.”
Chapter 48
Technicalities
Seattle, Washington
MAX FELT LIKE a man who had just been told his cancer was in remission. He was at once thrilled and afraid. Thrilled to be breathing deep breaths of hope again, and afraid that with Wang’s next words his euphoria would slip away.
He wanted to enjoy the feeling for a few minutes, but there was no time for that. He had to press on. He couldn’t relax until he knew Zoya was safe. Setting down his beer, he asked Wang the big question. “Can your guy hack into shipping companies?”
“Shipping companies . . . Shipping companies. Huh.” Wang spun his umbrella on the restaurant’s floor. “You’re thinking of doing the install en route. Clever. How’d you come up with that?”
Max reached out and stopped the umbrella. “I rode out of Vulcan Fisher on top of a truck. Can you do it? Can your guy hack a shipper?”
Wang ignored the aggression and grabbed a nacho. “Shipping companies are easy.”
“Really?”
“Small ones are unsophisticated, low-budget operations. Big ones have nodes in every strip mall, literally thousands of access points. And the information, while occasionally sensitive, is hardly secret.”
Max felt a surge of hot blood bringing warmth to weary muscles. He’d finally caught a break.
Wang inched closer, catching Max’s enthusiasm. “Which shipper will they be using?”
Max pictured the assortment of trucks he’d seen a few hours before. “I don’t know. They don’t appear to be exclusive to anyone.”
“Who’s the shipment going to?”
Max didn’t want to tell Wang that, lest he guess the goal of the operation. “It’s a ground shipment.”
“Long-haul, or short?”
“What’s it matter?”
“Companies specialize. Helps narrow down the list.”
“Short-haul.”
“How short?”
“What’s it matter?”
“Just thinking ahead. If it’s same-day pickup and delivery, that doesn’t leave us a lot of time to work with.”
Max saw the point. He was coming to appreciate Wang and his area of expertise more and more.
As a special operative, Max had subconsciously looked down on Wang the way surgeons did on general practitioners. Industrial spies were good guys, nothing wrong with them, but they didn’t control life and death with a scalpel. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. First thing we have to do is figure out which company they’ll be using.”
“And how do you plan to do that? We can’t hack them until we know who they are, and we can’t hack Vulcan Fisher to find out. Feels like a chicken-and-egg scenario.”
Good question. “The shipment we need isn’t a one-off. It’s part of a regular order. If I get you a list of the shippers VF uses, can your guy get me a list of all the shipments each made for Vulcan Fisher during the past year?”
Wang popped the last of the nachos into his mouth while he pondered that one. Max could see that he was growing ever more excited. “That would take a lot of work, not to mention a lot of skill. Where will you get the list of shippers?”
Max had no idea, but figured it had to be easier than getting around the gait monitor. “Let me worry about that. Just answer the question. Can you do it?”
“Can I get you boys some more nachos? Or maybe some sliders?” Their waitress spoke with a Southern accent that Max would have found charming under other conditions. He brushed her away without looking up.
Wang spent another second savoring Max’s suffering while he pretended to ponder. The obvious ploy made Max want to slap him. “Technically, it’s well within our capabilities.”
“Why do you say technically?”
“Well, because financially this is beyond the scope of our agreement. Well beyond.”
So that was the source of his partner’s jubilation. Wang had him by the short hairs. Ignaty wasn’t going to like that. “How much?”
“Another $1.5 million.”
PART 3: SURPRISES
Chapter 49
Bad News
San Francisco, California
DESPITE CHAIRING the committee that oversaw CIA operations, Senator Colleen Collins was not a technophile. She had aides to manage the requisite social media postings, and she navigated her calendar with a gold Cross pencil rather than her index finger and thumbs. But there was one modern feature of her custom Blackberry phone that Collins leveraged with relish — the ability to assign custom ringtones.
This evening it wasn’t Norah Jones’ soothing voice that beckoned from the tub’s ledge, indicating a family call. Rather, the William Tell Overture disturbed her habitual soak, and sent her heart galloping. She pulled herself out of the steamy water, grabbed her bathrobe, and hit the speaker button. “Good evening, Mr. President.”
“Good evening, Senator. Your message said it was urgent?”
“My message?” Collins’ mind raced even as she spoke. At seventy-two, fears of mental deterioration were never far from her mind, but a staff error seemed far more likely. “I’m sorry, Mr. President, I fear there’s been a miscommunication.”
“No worries. As it happens, I wanted to speak with you anyway. Sylvester is now missing.”
Collins paused with just one slipper on and her bathrobe unbelted. Foxley had gone after Achilles, and now he was missing too. “Oh, no.”
“Yes. I’m afraid this reinforces the obvious initial conclusion. First Ibex goes quiet, his assignment incomple
te. Then Lukin is assassinated, indicating a related information leak. Then Sylvester tracks Ibex to a private paradise only to disappear without a trace. As sad as it makes me to say it, we have to go with the evidence and conclude that Ibex sold out.”
Collins cinched her bathrobe belt with a bit too much verve. “Sir, while I respect the logic, I don’t believe that for a moment. Ibex's patriotism is beyond question. You know that from personal experience.”
“I do, Colleen. And your assessment of his past actions mirrors my own. But people change. They reappraise. Reconsider.” Silver was speaking with his stumping voice, a sonorous blend of sympathy and certainty that played to both the heart and mind. “Stress changes people, and Lord knows he’s had plenty of that. Plus we screwed him financially after that last incident. And let’s not forget that he walked away from the CIA.”
Collins would have walked away too, if staying meant working for Wylie Rider. But of course she couldn’t say as much to the man who’d put him there. Instead she said, “His reasons for leaving were understandable.”
“Perhaps. But it was a radical move, an abandonment of government service. I fear we’ve just seen the pattern repeat. He wouldn’t be the first man coaxed off course by a beautiful woman.”
Collins couldn’t believe she was having this conversation — for so many reasons. Even after thirty-six years of life behind the big curtain as a member of the United States Congress, she found it hard to fathom that she was discussing international espionage and assassination with the president of the United States — much less in a fuzzy white robe and slippers. As she walked into her bedroom, aiming for her writing desk, Colleen found herself in a scene even more surreal.
“Are you still there?” Silver asked.
She was there. She was also staring into the business end of a large semi-automatic handgun. Ironically, not one of the weapons she’d introduced legislation to ban. Three feet beyond it, a leather-gloved hand held a fat index finger to a thin pair of lips. After allowing a second for the scene to register, the hand dipped down to a pocket. It pulled out a sign which it held like a limo driver at the airport. The top line of text stated the gunman’s demand. It said: READ THIS ALOUD.