“Worse. The copy machine was also the office printer. Every document he copied, scanned, or printed went through the bloody thing. I pulled the drive and took a look-see. Everything Underwood has touched in the last two years was cached on the printer’s hard drive. You can bet your last dollar, whoever broke in got everything they wanted, and they never had to open the safe.”
There was no stopping the throbbing headache behind Cyrus’s eyes. His worst suspicions had become manifest. For all of their work to keep their secrets secure, Meade and Underwood had made one of the more classic mistakes. They’d failed to realize that high-end multi-function copiers often included an onboard computer. That onboard computer utilized a hard drive to store documents, intended to accelerate printing, and even archive files for later reprinting or auditing. Such machines were an espionage goldmine.
Cyrus knew this was very bad for their cause.
“Clone the drive and dump a hardcopy of everything so we can do an assessment. Bring the clone, the original, and the hard copy back with you. Let the service guys earn their keep and replace the drive. It’s like closing the barn door after the horses are gone, but it’s the best we can do now.”
“The clone’s already in progress. Dumping a hard copy will take some time, but I’ll get on it. Anything else?” Hondo’s professionalism shone through. Always ready and willing to take orders, but not unwilling to think for himself and take the initiative. Working with people like Hondo was one of the only things Cyrus missed from his old life.
“Just one,” Cyrus said. “Any signs of an onsite surveillance team when you popped in on Underwood?”
“Negative. If I had to guess, based on his peripheral involvement, the ridiculous number of bugs planted, and the fact that whoever is behind this already raided the printer’s hard drive, I don’t think they found him worthy of an on-site team.”
Cyrus weighed the factors and had to agree. He would have come to the same conclusion if he had been tasked with surveilling Underwood and had access to similar resources.
“Alright. Do me a favor? While you’re printing the hardcopy, can you start going through the cloned drive? There’s one document I need above all else.”
Cyrus went on to explain exactly what he was looking for, and then signed off. He set the phone aside and stared blankly at the screen of his laptop. His mind drifted as he considered the ramifications of Hondo’s discovery. It was several moments before he realized Reese was standing on the opposite side of the counter, waiting to hear what had happened.
He explained how he had sent Hondo to Underwood’s home first thing that morning. They’d been looking for any potential security breaches. Cyrus had phoned Underwood from the car on the way back from Vegas the night before. Underwood had insisted that Meade had devised the security protocols himself, and Underwood claimed that he was meticulous in obeying them.
While Cyrus hadn’t doubted Underwood’s integrity, evidence suggested there’d been a security breach. Something beyond the information Chad gave the Alvares Cartel. A team had ambushed Cyrus at his apartment in Chicago, and another was instantly on him when he made an impromptu trip to Manhattan. Both teams were comprised of experienced operators. They were all eastern European but their nationalities were incongruent. It had lead Cyrus to suspect they didn’t have an affiliation with a specific government. They were likely independent contractors. Mercenaries. Yuri Dargoslav’s presence supported that supposition. And if Yuri was on the job, it was likely his father, Dargo, was also involved.
That was troubling.
Cyrus had a complicated history with Dargo. They’d crossed paths before and things had ended badly. Dargo still harbored resentment toward Cyrus, and he couldn’t blame the man. Cyrus, too, carried bad feelings from that mission. Ghosts that would haunt him until the day he died. It was the operation that had brought an end to his work for the Coalition. The mission left Cyrus unable, or at least unwilling, to ever trust anyone at the Coalition again.
If Dargo were here now, he would want to see Cyrus dead before his job was over. But Cyrus had to put that out of his mind. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that Dargo was leading the opposing team. Right now Cyrus needed to figure out what Dargo was after and how to stop him. It was the only way to keep the Meridian team safe.
Chapter 37
Miami, Florida
Friday, 5:40 pm (3:40 pm Colorado Time)
This time Cyrus parked a block and half up the street. Once again, he fed far more change into the parking meter than was required. He pulled a duffle bag from the trunk of the rented Mercedes and slammed the lid. The car was flashier than he preferred, but it fit in among the other vehicles parked in this section of the upscale shopping district.
He walked to the nearest intersection and turned right. From there it was only two hundred feet before a narrow alley opened on the left. He reflected on the change in scenery. This alley was located in a high-rent part of Miami, and it was nothing like the last one he visited in Manhattan. This area was well maintained, free from trash, and there were commercial dumpsters evenly distributed between the windowless steel doors spread across the back of the block-long building. The presence of bright sunlight and the distinct lack of a urine odor also made the current venue a welcome change.
Moving silently down the alley, Cyrus watched the numbers stenciled on the whitewashed steel doors. Each was the rear entrance of a shop fronting the main boulevard. Locating unit 324 proved no problem at all. An electric meter hung on the wall a few feet from the door. A thick pipe was used as a conduit for the electrical service, running up the wall, before curving into the building above. A small access panel was on the face of the meter. Cyrus had been looking for it.
Laying the duffle at his feet, he pulled back the zipper and removed a Phillips-head screwdriver. A minute later, he’d freed the access panel from the face of the meter. Looking down into the device, he could see the heavy bolts that anchored the thick power leads, which supplied electricity to the store.
He cringed. This wouldn’t be pretty, but it would work.
Pocketing the screwdriver, he pulled a lock-pick gun from the bag. It would have to do. He was out of practice, and time wasn’t on his side. He needed to move fast. With the lock-pick gun at the ready, he returned to the power meter. He pulled one of the removable bits from the screwdriver’s handle and took a deep breath.
Not pretty at all.
Stepping back as far as possible, Cyrus dropped the long screwdriver into the meter horizontally, bridging the gap between the positive and negative terminals. As soon as the metal dropped into place there was a thunderous bang, a blinding flash, and a whizzing sound. Cyrus had already stepped to the left and inserted the lock-pick gun’s pins into the key slot of the door to unit 324. As the lock-pick clicked away at the deadbolt, he glanced at the smoking power meter. The face of the meter had a tear in its sheet metal housing. Glancing over his shoulder, he found the cause of the slash. The screwdriver was embedded in the cinderblock wall behind him. It had winged past, just as he had stepped aside to begin work on the door.
The last click of the lock-pick gun told him he was in. Without waiting a moment, he tossed the lock-pick away, moving through the door and into a dark hallway. Just as he stepped inside, a flashlight came to life in a room to his left. He headed for that room. As he reached the doorway, he came toe to toe with Nathan.
At first, Nathan could only look at Cyrus slack jawed. The man didn’t know what to say. Cyrus knew Nathan could read the determination in his eyes. The man was in a profession where he couldn’t succeed without being good at reading people. Cyrus watched Nathan’s eyes as the man put it all together in the span of two seconds. Nathan’s shocked expression switched to concern after he glanced up at the now extinguished ceiling lights. When his eyes met with Cyrus’s again, he knew there was trouble.
“What?” It seemed all Nathan could manage as he struggled to understand what was happening.
Cyrus pointed back into the room, his expression deathly serious. “Have a seat.”
Nathan knew better than to ague. Friendship only got you so far, and Cyrus could see the man knew he was walking a tenuous line.
Nathan went for his customary seat behind the desk but Cyrus stopped him. “No,” he said and slid a tall stool over from the work counter, placing it on the opposite side of Nathan’s desk. “You sit here.”
After Nathan sat, Cyrus walked around the desk and sat in Nathan’s office chair. The entire time Nathan’s eyes were glued to Cyrus. A large battery-powered camping lantern cast the only light in the room. Cyrus had placed it beside the door, so the rest of the room was cast in murky half shadows. Nathan’s eyes still watched Cyrus with great anxiety.
Cyrus was watching the man’s expression carefully. Based on it, he had a pretty good idea what he would find. Without taking his eyes off Nathan’s, he palmed the underside of the desk and pulled free a .45 caliber Colt 1911. Cyrus’s eyes narrowed as he set the gun gently on the counter between them.
For several tenuous moments neither man spoke. This only served to raise the tension in the room. That was fine with Cyrus. Nathan would be wondering how far Cyrus was willing to take this. Truth be told, Cyrus was curious himself.
“I’ve done you a courtesy,” Cyrus said finally, breaking the silence but not the tension.
Nathan took a visible breath. He nodded slightly. “When you took out the power, you took out the bugs,” he said referring to the listening devices they both knew to be planted in the office. “For God’s sake, Cyrus, why not just call and have me meet you somewhere?”
It was a fair question. There were two reasons. First, such a call would tip off the listening party, and the listening party might send a tagalong. Cyrus didn’t need that. The second was that he wasn’t entirely sure of Nathan’s loyalties. Cyrus fished a small object from the pocket of his jacket. When he laid it down on the table beside the Colt, he never took his eyes off Nathan’s.
The object was half the size of a dime. It was all black, and had the room’s lighting been better, they would’ve been able to see the small lens on the device, which was no larger than the tip of a ballpoint pen.
The tension in Nathan’s face flared. His eyes were locked on the tiny camera. After allowing a moment of silence to enhance Nathan’s anxiety, Cyrus opened the palm of his hand and dropped over a half dozen additional tiny cameras onto the table beside the first. Now he could see that Nathan wasn’t breathing. The man’s eyes had stopped blinking. Finally, the man seemed to snap out of his trance. His eyes went to Cyrus, then back to the miniature cameras. His eyes flicked between the gun and the cameras once more.
“It’s not what you think,” Nathan said finally. His voice was hoarse and quiet.
“What should I think?”
Nathan was breathing again, but he didn’t look well.
“I’ve helped you in every way you’ve asked. I’ve done everything I could!” Nathan looked like he was going to be sick. His face was covered in sweat. Granted, the air conditioning had gone down along with the power, but this wasn’t the heat.
“I’m not the only one you helped,” Cyrus said in a flat even tone. Since he’d arrived, he hadn’t yet raised his voice. He found he could get further in situations like this by remaining calm. Sometimes a person acting calmly under extreme circumstance could be more unnerving than someone ranting and yelling. This way he had better control of the discussion. Still, Cyrus’s voice had gone cold. He made no effort to hide that.
Nathan sat silently. He seemed to have a lot to say, but as far as Cyrus could tell, the entire conversation was going on in the man’s head.
“Nathan, we go back a long way. Talk to me. You provided the tech to use against us, but you also gave us the gear we needed to find the bugs. If you hadn’t suggested we take your detection gear, we never would have found this. Why are you working for Dargo?”
At that, Nathan’s attention perked up. “Dargo? No! I sold this gear to Yuri Dargoslav. I sold this tech to him months ago, long before you were ever part of the picture.”
Cyrus still didn’t understand. His expression must have betrayed this, because Nathan took it as a sign that he should continue.
“Yuri came to me four, maybe five months ago. He needed some special tech. I’d just taken possession of these experimental cameras, so it seemed like a good opportunity to do a field test. Whoever Yuri was working for had deep pockets, and he could pay.
“It seemed like a great opportunity at the time. As I started pulling files and putting together reports for you, I started to see there was a chance Yuri’s operation was related to what you were working on. But I didn’t know for sure.
“You have to realize, for all I knew, Yuri’s op was long over. He could be working on a completely different contract now. I didn’t know. But I wanted to be sure. So when you were going to sweep for bugs, I thought you should take my latest hardware. If your op overlapped with his, you’d find those,” he pointed at the cameras on the table beside the gun. “And I’d finally know for sure.”
Cyrus took a deep breath and thought this through. His ongoing confusion was over everything Nathan had provided so far. The man had delivered all of the intelligence he’d requested. As far as he could tell, all of the information was accurate. But Nathan was a free agent. By definition, he was in it for himself. Alliances were largely a matter of convenience in this field. While Nathan was a resource that had proven trustworthy in the past, no resource could be trusted blindly.
Nathan had provided surveillance hardware to Ian Dargoslav, by way of Yuri. He didn’t deny that. And Cyrus was inclined to believe him when it came to the timing of the transaction. From what Cyrus was been able to put together, Dargo had been working his operation for several months.
With this in mind, the circumstances of his visit had now changed. In a way, intentionally or not, Nathan was playing both sides of the fence. Cyrus could bleed him for any information that might help get a leg up against Dargo, and more importantly, whoever hired Dargo. Tactically speaking, interrogating Nathan would be the smart play.
“Okay,” Cyrus finally conceded. “I can see how that might happen in your profession. The fact is, you don’t owe me anything more than you would owe Yuri or Dargo. In the end, we are just clients, and you’re a business man.”
Cyrus let the statement hang in the air. The confusion on Nathan’s face appeared genuine. He still looked terrified.
With a nod of understanding, Cyrus realized the problem. He leaned forward and carefully lifted the Colt from the table between them. Rolling forward in the chair, he placed the gun on the edge of the table nearest Nathan. After taking a long look at Nathan, he rolled his chair back to where it had been and sat back comfortably.
“No trick,” Cyrus said. “I believe you’re being straight with me. You’ve provided me with everything I’ve asked. You’ve been professional and reliable. You’re afraid I’m going to go all Gitmo on you. It’s not gonna happen.” He took a moment and considered what he wanted to say. “You’ve explained everything to my satisfaction. I appreciate that.”
An awkward smile crossed Nathan’s face. “Did I really have a choice?”
Cyrus shrugged. “We all have choices.”
Nathan looked down at the pistol for a moment, finally exhaling. He was looking more himself by the minute. “I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you what I suspected… I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t speaking out of turn. Giving Hondo the detection gear seemed like the best way to test the waters. Only you dropped in on me before I knew what he found. For what its worth, if he found any of my bugs, I was going to tell you all of this straight off.”
Cyrus had to smile. He would like to believe that. But Nathan was a professional. He couldn’t afford allegiances like that. “You don’t have to say that,” he said quietly. “I know the business you’re in. Telling me about your deal with the Dargoslavs would’ve been bad for b
usiness.”
Nathan considered Cyrus’s words. His head bobbed back and forth as he thought. “Bad for business? Sure. One of the very few major ‘No-Nos’ in my profession, I suppose. I’ve known a lot of operators in my time, kid. I mean it—a lot! And not one of them has what you do. You’ve got integrity and a soul. And you were smart enough to get out of the game before those qualities were torn from you.”
Cyrus didn’t know what to say. He was good at reading people in times of high stress. It was part of the reason he’d gone for the high drama and blindsided Nathan. Even the best liars make mistakes when under extreme pressure. Nathan seemed truly sincere in his words.
“I mean it, kid. You’ve worked with pros over the years. Knowing what you did and given the circumstances, every one of them would’ve come down on me like a ton of bricks, and they would’ve cut on me until I said whatever they wanted. You could’ve gone that way. But you asked me… Scared the ever loving shit out of me, but you didn’t start cutting. That’s what makes you one of the good guys.”
That was the problem. He didn’t feel like one of the good guys. And, more importantly, he really had believed all of this was in his past. The last week had brought some painful feelings back to the surface. He gave Nathan a nod. It was the best thanks he could offer given the circumstances.
“Cyrus?” Nathan looked uncomfortable, as if he had something important left to say.
Almost afraid to ask what it might be, Cyrus just looked at Nathan and waited for him to continue.
“You look like you were in a car wreck. What happened?” Nathan finally asked.
Cyrus smiled. He kept forgetting he looked worse than he felt. Telling Nathan that he’d run into Yuri Dargoslav would explain his banged up appearance, but he knew that given the circumstances, Nathan would just feel more guilty. “Would you believe someone tried to mug me?” he asked finally. It was close enough to the truth.
The look on Nathan’s face made it clear he didn’t know whether Cyrus was joking. “Ah…if you look like this, do I want to ask about the other guy?”
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