The Gryphon Heist

by James R. Hannibal

  “I’m fine. An old pain, that’s all. No big deal.”

  “That’s not what I was talking about. You’ve been on edge the whole night. Do you have something to say about the way Conrad and I handled Mr. Plucket at dinner?”

  “No. It’s just . . .” Talia sighed. She didn’t want to talk about her father, but the night was dragging on, and she didn’t have enough brain bytes left to make something up. “My dad. I had Eddie and an Agency friend dig into his death. I always thought he had died in an accident. I blamed God for taking him from me. Turns out God had a little help. Dad was murdered.”

  Tyler froze at the word murdered. He looked up at her as he clicked the weapon’s magazine home again, eyes searching her face. “Murdered?”

  “We found a file. Dad worked for the Agency, and Lukon took him out, made it look like an accident. He almost killed me too.” She winced again, bending into the pain. All this talking was making it worse.

  Tyler watched her for a moment, then returned to his inspection. He held the weapon up and looked through the sights, tracking Finn’s movements. “Did you ever think your chronic pain might be more emotional than physical?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning you’ve been mad at God for a long time.” Tyler lowered the gun as Finn disappeared behind the shed. “Now this new information has given you an additional target for your anger. Is it really a coincidence that your pain is flaring up at the same time?”

  As if to lend support to his argument, the pain stabbed at her, but Talia refused to buy into his psychobabble. “You’re talking about correlation, not causation. The wound flares up when I’m stressed, no doubt. But the reason for that stress is irrelevant.”

  “Mindless denial doesn’t suit you.” Tyler let his weapon fall to his side and nodded at hers. “Check your mag. Go safety off.”

  She glared at him, but went to work.

  As she did, Tyler kept prodding. “Let go, Talia. Let God in and forgive the man who wronged you—even though what he did is unforgivable. You might be surprised at the result.”

  “Forgive him?” Talia shoved her magazine back into place. Her finger slid unconsciously around the trigger. “Not a chance. When we find Lukon, I’m going to make him pay.”

  With one hand, Tyler pressed the machine gun down to her side. He placed the other on her shoulder. There was such sadness in his voice. “I’m sorry to hear that, but it’s your choice. You will find Lukon before this is over. And if you still feel that way, I’ll help you put a bullet in his brain.”

  A light flashed near the shed. Tyler let go of her. “There’s Finn’s signal. Time to go to work.”

  Chapter

  fifty-

  five

  XPC COMPOUND

  LAUTERBRUNNEN VALLEY, SWITZERLAND

  “RED LEADER, I’m up on comms and starting Phase Two.” Talia shoved an earpiece in as she and Tyler ran through the gate. “Send Wheels.”

  “On his way.”

  Mac grumbled at them over the link. “I told ya before. Don’ call me Wheels.”

  In the background of his complaint, Talia could hear the rumbling of the box truck. A few seconds later, her ears picked up the same rumble on the night air. And if she could hear it, the daredevils in the dormitory would hear it too, soon enough, and that would mean trouble.

  Talia placed a hand on Tyler’s back, letting him lead her in the run to the shed while she kept her eyes on the buildings. “Darcy’s solution had better work,” she whispered as they reached the shed’s rear door. “I saw what she had in that duffel. Where did it all come from?”

  “I had a few odds and ends lying around.” Tyler lightly knocked on the door. “You know, leftovers from my day job.” The door opened and Finn stuck his head out. Tyler scrunched up his brow. “What took you so long?”

  “The rig is in pieces. It took some doing, but we got it sorted.”

  Finn and Darcy had been hard at work inside the shed. The balloon, its air system, and the space-capsule-style gondola were neatly piled onto a pair of shipping pallets.

  “It’ll take all four of us,” Finn said. “With two on each pallet, we can make it in one trip.”

  “We’d better.” Tyler killed the interior lights. “Wheels, what’s the holdup?”

  “Ya think you can do better? You try drivin’ a box truck back’ards up a mountain rood!”

  Tyler sighed. “He’ll . . . be here in a minute. Red Leader, you have the count.”

  “Copy,” Eddie said. “I have the count.”

  Shuffling in the dark, Finn and Darcy positioned themselves on either end of the first pallet with Talia and Tyler taking the other.

  The noise of the truck grew louder. “I see the gate,” Mac said. “Last curve.”

  Talia pictured the Scotsman rounding the final bend. The rumble ramped up to a howl as he pushed the box truck’s reverse gear to the limit on the straightaway.

  “Stand by, team,” Eddie said. “Here we go in three, two, one . . .”

  With a bang and a flash, a section of the shed’s north wall blew out and fell. Talia looked out past the other three and saw the box truck sail backward through the gate, veer off the road, and trundle across the grass, making a beeline for the opening.

  “Go!” Tyler shouted, and the four of them lifted their burdens.

  Finn and Darcy went first. As Talia followed, carrying the front end of her and Tyler’s pallet at her back, she shot a glance at the dormitory. Lights blinked on. Silhouettes appeared at the windows. That was expected, and Darcy was supposed to have set something up to lock them down, but nothing was happening. “Darcy? What’s the holdup?”

  “It is not a holdup,” the chemist called, two steps ahead of her on the rear end of the other pallet. “I gave them time to waken, yes? What is art if no one is there to see it?”

  “We’re here to see it!”

  “And so you shall!”

  Lines of blue fire suddenly lit the doorframes of the dormitory, dripping molten metal and welding the doors shut. Men pounded and shouted from the other side. More silhouettes gathered at the windows. Several sets of hands tried to lift the glass, but charges blew behind the cabin’s open snow shutters, slamming them closed. Blue flames sealed those as well.

  Darcy looked back at Talia while they jogged across the grass with their burdens. “Voilà!”

  The box truck stopped inches from Finn, and he laid his end on the lip of the open cargo bay. He hopped inside to drag the pallet forward. “I wish we had that on video.”

  “Red Leader is taking care of that, yes?” Darcy grunted, shoving from her end.

  Eddie chuckled into the comms. “Oh yes.” But then he started shouting. “Movement! I have movement at the main office. Someone’s coming!”

  Darcy hadn’t sealed the office.

  Talia set her end of the pallet on the back of the truck and looked toward the building, only to see a man stumbling across the lawn.

  “Wer ist das? Was machen Sie?” He sounded German. And drunk.

  “Deal with him.” Tyler shouldered Talia away as she tried to help him push the remainder of the pallet into the truck.

  Talia didn’t want to deal with him. The German was just some guy defending his business. But the criminals were watching, and strangely enough, they were all depending on her.

  “Hör auf! Das ist unser!” The man stopped thirty feet away, tilted his head back to chug down half a beer, crushed the still-dripping can against the side of his head, and let it fall. Apparently that was his method of waking himself up to fight intruders. He raised a mountaineer’s ice axe and charged.

  “Stop!” Talia leveled her machine gun. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

  He kept coming, though not precisely in a straight line.

  Maybe he didn’t speak English. “Halt!” Talia’s German wasn’t that good. What was please? “Bitte?”

  “Ich werde dich töten, Dieb!”

  She knew the word töten—to kill. Now h
e was a serious threat. “Sorry, buddy.” Talia pulled the trigger, capping off the guy’s future hangover with a three-round burst to the chest.

  “Nice!” She could hear Eddie slap the worktable in the van. “That is so going on your greatest hits reel. You dropped him like—”

  “Like a drunk guy hit with three clay rounds traveling at four hundred feet per second?” Tyler caught Talia’s hand and hauled her up into the truck.

  Finn yanked a strap tight, securing the second pallet, and Tyler pounded on the front wall of the bay. “We’re all inside, Wheels. Go!”

  Chapter

  fifty-

  six

  XPC COMPOUND

  LAUTERBRUNNEN VALLEY, SWITZERLAND

  MAC DROVE THE TRUCK to a lakeside intersection in the next valley over to rendezvous with Eddie. The thieves jumped out of the box truck, laughing and joking. But when Tyler shouted at them, “All of you, shut up and get over here!” the team went silent.

  Talia could see the rebuke ready on his lips as they all gathered around. She knew why. Eddie had failed to account for all the personnel in the compound. Thus, Darcy had done nothing to block the office door, allowing a drunken brute with an ice axe to come after them. To cap it off, Talia had hesitated, waiting too long to put the man down.

  Tyler scowled at the group. “After Milan, I wasn’t sure this group could work as a team. After tonight, I know”—his frown cracked into a smile and he pulled a cooler out of the bay—“you are a team.” Tyler tossed them each a bottle of Socata, the same citrus drink he kept on his Gulfstream. He raised one in toast. “To small victories, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s hope the final heist goes as smooth.”

  It took a moment for Talia and the others to catch on, and then Finn popped the cap of his bottle and held it high. “Hear, hear!”

  Soda bottles clinked. “Hear, hear!”

  Finn and Darcy chuckled over the fireworks on the dormitory exits. Mac commended Eddie for his work watching over them.

  “I did good, right?” The geek balanced his fidget spinner on his index finger.

  “Yeah, you did.” Mac clapped him on the back hard enough to knock the spinner into the grass. “That’ll do, Wee Man. That’ll do.”

  Talia stood apart from the thieves, quiet. Tyler came over to join her. “Something wrong?”

  “No. That’s just it. I had . . . fun.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  She shrugged, lowering her voice so the others wouldn’t hear. “Maybe. It should be bad if I’m having fun while committing a crime.” She bit her lip. “The man I shot. He’ll be okay, right?”

  “He’ll be fine.” Tyler finished his drink, set the bottle down in the grass, and popped open another. “So will his buddies. And you can bet Brennan will approve an anonymous donation that covers their loss. With interest.” He paused to watch Mac entertaining the others with a reenactment of his backward driving. “Sometimes the moral ambiguities of covert work are hard. We do the job with the legal blessing of one government, acting against the laws of another.”

  Talia pursed her lips. “Yeah. I took those classes at the Farm. We serve the greater good. That’s fine, but the instructors were never too clear on a full definition of the term.”

  “In that case, you should feel bad, or perhaps concerned. Never serve something you can’t define, Talia. Personally, I don’t bother with the greater good.”

  I don’t bother with the greater good. The statement sounded positively villainous. Talia tried to laugh it off, bumping his shoulder. “Look, if you’re about to tell me to embrace the dark side, I—” Her voice fell away. Tyler was looking at her without one hint of sarcasm in his eyes. “Um . . . Okay. Why would I not serve the greater good?”

  “The greater good is malleable.” He turned his eyes to the thieves again, tipping his bottle toward the Scotsman. “Mac’s greater good is money. Our chemist’s greater good is art and political self-righteousness. Finn’s is the thrill of the heist.” Tyler shrugged. “To the Supreme Leader of Iran, the greater good involves wiping Israel off the map. If you don’t believe me, check his Twitter account. The greater good is shifting sand. You can’t trust it.”

  “So how is a spy supposed to know what’s right or wrong?”

  “I told you when we first met.” Tyler returned to his drink, giving her nothing else.

  Talia searched her memory and read the words of their first conversation as if they were text. Tyler had quoted Jefferson. I know but one code of morality for men. “God,” she said slowly. “To Jefferson, morals were not malleable. They were absolute, and they came from one source.”

  Tyler affirmed her answer with a single nod. “Don’t focus on the greater good. Focus on a higher power—the higher power. That’s how we put what we do to a moral test.”

  Over by the truck, the celebration was winding down. Finn and Mac climbed into the bay and began securing the equipment for the long drive home.

  “What’s left?” Talia asked.

  “Only one thing.” Tyler picked up his empty bottle and dropped it into a plastic bag. He collected hers as well, raising his voice so the others could hear. “We’re down to the final step. Val has to get Gryphon’s voiceprint ID from Ivanov. She says she’s close.”

  Finn poked his head out from the cargo bay. “How long?”

  “Less than twenty-four hours. Tomorrow, Ivanov presents the Mark Seven and the Gryphon concept to the expo. That’s when we make our play.”

  Talia rode home in GROND, with Mac at the wheel and Eddie at his station, while Tyler and Finn hung back to refuel the truck. She didn’t wait up for them at the chateau. The team still had preparations to make, but her body would not let her stay awake another minute. She would nap for a few hours, and then get back to work.

  After a yawning good night to Eddie, she kicked off her shoes and climbed into bed. Sleep came on quickly, perhaps thanks to Franklin’s information. Her dad’s murder and history with the Agency were a shock, but they were answers—real answers. She found solace there. Tyler would help her through the rest. She had misjudged him.

  WHEN TALIA NEXT AWOKE, she found the late morning sun pouring through the break in her curtains. How long had she slept? She had no idea. The room had no clock, and she hadn’t checked the time on her phone before passing out. After a quick shower, she walked down the hall to knock on Eddie’s door.

  No answer.

  She pushed in, one hand covering her eyes. “Eddie, if you’re in the shower, say something. Quick.” But she heard no running water from the bathroom. She dropped her hand. “He’s probably in Mission Control.”

  In no particular hurry, Talia tromped down the stairs to the next floor and rounded the corner into the big media room. “Eddie, you should have—”

  Empty.

  Downstairs, the great room was empty as well. The fireplace was cold. “Where is everybody?” Looking past the fireplace, she saw the double doors to Tyler’s master suite hanging open and walked in. “Hey! Tyler! Are you in here?”

  A shaft of light shone in from the balcony, spilling across the carpet. The bed was made. The bathroom door was open. She turned in a slow circle until her gaze fell on the largest of Tyler’s Orthodox oil paintings, hanging on the wall above his desk. The scene depicted a wolf and lamb lying peacefully in a deep green valley underneath a quote in gold Cyrillic lettering.

  A blinking green light beneath the painting caught Talia’s eye. Tyler had left his laptop open on the desk, with a thumb drive active. Talia walked over. Maybe the last thing Tyler had been working on would tell her where everyone had gone, assuming she could guess his password.

  “Oh, Tyler. Really?” There was no password. She frowned at his poor security as the screen came to life. There was only one file in the thumb drive folder, one with a file extension Talia didn’t recognize. She tried clicking on it. A document full of garbled symbols opened.

  A fraction of a second later, the computer ran an automatic decryption program. Line
by line the symbols resolved into names and numbers. The column headings were BIDDER, RESERVE, and ACCOUNT NUMBER, and the center column of every line read $250,000. This was an auctioneer’s list of buyers, with their earnest money stored in separate escrow accounts.

  Scrolling down, Talia found the auction notes.

  ITEM FOR SALE: DETAILED DESIGN FOR AIR-BREATHING HYPERSONIC MISSILE

  BROKER: THE ENGLISHMAN, STANDARD FEE

  BIDDING TO COMMENCE FOLLOWING PROOF-OF-CONCEPT DEMONSTRATION

  It looked like Tyler had found a list of Lukon’s buyers, compiled by the Englishman, the third-party broker referenced in the Dark Web post he had shown her back in Tiraspol. It was a serious lead. Why hadn’t he shared it with her?

  Talia lifted her eyes from the laptop to the wolf and lamb painting. She focused on the Cyrillic, a scripture reference in archaic Russian—something about a wolf dwelling with a lamb. The word for “wolf” gave her trouble. In her language studies, Talia had learned that older Russian and Cyrillic often borrowed words and letters from Greek. She sounded out the phonetics in her head. What she came up with made her world tilt on edge.

  LUKON.

  Chapter

  fifty-

  seven

  CHATEAU TICINO

  CAMPIONE D’ITALIA, SWITZERLAND

  LUKON.

  The name filled Talia’s mind, slamming piece after piece of the puzzle into place until she let out a scream. She swept the laptop off the desk, stumbling across the floor until she grabbed the high back of an upholstered armchair to keep from collapsing to the carpet.

  Lukon. Tyler. The Wolf.

  They were one and the same. Tyler had played her. After all his talk of God and forgiveness, Tyler had turned out to be the sociopath she had always thought him to be. But Franklin and Eddie had traced Lukon’s messages. Tyler could not have sent them. Talia herself was his alibi.

  “An accomplice,” she said to the empty room. “He must have used an accomplice.” With Tyler’s connections, that could mean almost anyone. She let the accomplice’s identity rest for the time being and let her conclusions roll onward.