Laynie Portland, Spy Resurrected

by Vikki Kestell

  Seraphim rubbed her eyes. “Understood.”

  COSSACK AROSE IN THE morning and made his way through the tunnels to the militia’s largest room. It was used as a common area for passing the time and for strategy meetings prior to a sortie. Here, three women prepared meals and the men gathered in squads to eat.

  As Cossack strode into view, his men stood and greeted him.

  Several of them murmured, “Welcome back, General.”

  He nodded to them. One of the women brought him tea. He’d taken two sips when Rasul joined him.

  “We lost a man last night, Arzu.”

  Cossack’s head came up. “Who? What happened?”

  “One of our radio operators fell into the ravine. He must have tripped in the dark and gone over the wall.”

  Cossack cursed. “Stupid fool. We cannot afford such losses! Good men do not grow on trees.”

  Rasul pulled at his beard. “I found it odd that the man had a flashlight with him and still tripped in the dark. It was lying by the wall, still on.”

  “Then he was careless!”

  “I shall scold the men and reprimand the radioman’s supervisor.”

  Cossack drained his tea. “Yes. And afterward? I want that wall built higher. The radioman’s supervisor is to oversee it. Personally.”

  “Yes, General.”

  The boy’s death and the public chastisement would both serve as potent reminders to the men not to take the nearby precipice lightly.

  Chapter 6

  TOBIN HUFFED A LISTLESS sigh. It was midmorning, exactly a week since Wolfe had delivered the devastating news of Laynie’s death. He sat at his workstation in the bullpen and, around him, the task force labored, tasked by Seraphim but driven by their own dogged, hardened determination.

  They had by this time compiled a list of seventeen bulletin boards hosted by Kazakhstani ISPs and frequented by individuals with jihadi ties. With Jaz instructing them, the team learned new tricks, and they actively monitored the seventeen sites and their multiple public and private chat rooms, hacking the private chat rooms and their now not-so-private conversations.

  Jubaila and Soraya were on the hunt. They drilled down into Muslim chat rooms in southern Russia and its neighboring countries, identifying radical chats. The two women spoke the languages used in the messages. They employed keyword searches to set up alarms and logged possibly relevant conversations. They identified individuals with ties to radical Islamist groups and passed them on to Rusty and Brian.

  Rusty and Brian followed the threads, tracing the radicals to their hiding places. Jaz taught them to hack the communications of a suspect and his associates—anyone from whom they caught even the faintest suggestion of suspicion. Rusty and Brian kept drilling down, widening the net, snagging jihadis associated with their Chechen suspects, some of them leading back to the US.

  Jaz showed Gwyneth how to follow the money, how to burrow into electronic funds transfers and track the funds from bank to bank and country to country. Gwyneth took to her new role with a speed and passion that did not bode well for those she pursued.

  Vincent, for his part, kept a running account of their progress, collating data. He also created a database of individual profiles, making it simple for the team to cross-reference their finds with that of their teammates, adding their data to already established profiles, creating relationship graphs between and among the profiles.

  And while Gwyneth traced money and suspicious actors, Jaz monitored communications inside Broadsword. All communications. She hacked cell phone providers and dug into text histories. She read every email in and out of every account at Broadsword and investigated the senders or recipients of every email she found. She learned facts about her coworkers she wished she hadn’t—things such as bad breakups, weird habits, and comments about herself before the team had coalesced. All these she set aside to focus solely on hunting down their mole.

  “Poor little mole,” Tobin overheard her whisper, “You have no idea that Vyper is lurking outside your little hidey hole. You are unaware of my presence as I slither through the tall grass, silent and sure as death, but I am here—oh, yes—waiting patiently for you to give yourself away. And when you do? Your little lizard brain might sense danger, and you might duck back into your hole, but I will slither in after you, hapless little mole. Your last sight on this earth will be my fangs . . .”

  No one on the task force—including Tobin—believed everything the task force was doing at this point was completely legal. With tacit, unspoken agreement, they had crossed that bridge and burned it behind them the evening Wolfe had announced Bella’s death. Warrants required applications, and warrant applications were reviewed. Until the spy high up in Wolfe’s organization was identified and excised, no task force warrants would be placed where the spy might see them.

  Seraphim had picked up the reins of task force leadership and spurred the team on, but she carefully refrained from micromanaging them. Or asking about methods.

  As for Tobin? He took his turn daily on perimeter guard duty, but compared to the other task force members, he had little to do . . . except to think on all he’d lost.

  Lord, what am I still doing here? I have no necessary role with the task force any longer. Why hasn’t Wolfe released me to go back to the Marshals Service? At least there I could bury myself in my work.

  He thought about demanding that Wolfe send him home, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. He didn’t know which was worse—the torture of remaining with the team when he knew she was never coming back, or the finality of leaving Broadsword and the task force to return to his real life.

  His old and empty life.

  Oh God. How I need your comfort and your guidance right now! In the name of Jesus, I am asking that you help me. Please show me what—

  Tobin’s phone vibrated. Jarred out of his sorrow and morbid reflections, he flipped the phone open. Found a text message. A text without a sender’s name or number.

  He eased back in his chair, yawned and stretched. Used the maneuver to nonchalantly scan for inquiring eyes. He dropped his attention back onto his phone and clicked open the message.

  Stables. Five minutes.

  Tobin closed his phone and stared up into the gym’s rafters, arguing with himself.

  I don’t have the energy or the emotional reserves to deal with another crisis.

  Yeah, but maybe we have a line on the mole.

  Huh. About time. We’re past due.

  He grabbed his mug. Sauntered to the coffee maker and filled it. As he gulped a swig of the strong brew, he scanned the bullpen.

  Yup. One team member missing, and he hadn’t noticed the departure.

  He took another gander around the room. No one else seemed to have noticed the departure, either. Nodding to himself, he returned to his desk. He started to lift the mug to his mouth again when his stomach cramped and acid rose in his throat. He’d been drinking far too much coffee lately, using it as one of the few comforts he allowed himself. Even that was failing him.

  He had found no relief from the unrelenting desolation in his heart except when he closed himself in with the Lord and searched his Bible. The occasional “word in due season” granted him a small measure of solace, transitory though it was.

  He set his mug down and pulled on his jacket. “Back in a few,” he said to no one in particular.

  The weather this morning was gusty and downright cold, so he headed directly for the stables. Blustery winds had scoured a recent snowfall and beat it into brittle bits of ice—bits that stung like shards of glass hitting his face. He was glad to reach the warmth of the stable.

  He shut the door behind him and found Jaz waiting for him in the tack room.

  Tobin shoved his hands in his pockets to warm them. “What’s up? Why the secrecy?”

  She stuck out her chin. “I didn’t want to advertise that I’m busting outta here today . . . and that you’re going to help me.”

  “Whoa. Hold on th
ere, missy. I’m not doing that.”

  “Yes, you are. I’ve tapped the landlines and hacked every mobile phone and email account in this place—and I mean all of them, including Seraphim’s. For an entire week, our precious mole hasn’t squeaked, burped, or farted. Nothing. Nada.”

  She growled an afterthought. “Whoever the mole is, they have to know that I’m just waiting for them to stick their traitorous little head out of their hole.”

  “Waiting to pounce,” Tobin supplied. “I get it.”

  “Exactly. Well, even though the mole is playing it safe, I just read an email from Wolfe to Seraphim giving her the details of Bella’s funeral—day, place, and time. It’s the day after tomorrow, Tobin! Bella’s family is going to bury her in less than forty-eight hours. In New Orleans of all places.” Jaz’s expression, the corners of her eyes lined with new creases, was a shifting mosaic of pain, sorrow, frustration, and anger.

  “You want to go—and I understand why you do, Jaz—but Wolfe has already decreed that he won’t allow it. Is that what’s got you riled up?”

  “Me at a funeral? Not on your life. Nasty, loathsome things, funerals. I don’t do funerals.”

  “Good, because Wolfe has put a great deal of care and effort into orchestrating Bella’s funeral so that the Ukrainian mob doesn’t ever connect her and her family to you, little missy—the not-so-brilliant hacker who thought handing the mob’s financial records to the FBI was a good idea!”

  Jaz lifted her upper lip and growled through her teeth at Tobin.

  “Not an attractive look, Vyper. But back to my point, you go down to NOLA, start messing around, and the mob somehow sniffs you out? Sure, you might give them the slip, but how long before they wonder why you were in NOLA? Before they figure it out, make the leap from you to Bella, then Bella to her family? The mob will hunt down Bella’s sister and her sister’s children and torture them—all on the off chance they might know where you live.”

  Tobin leaned into Jaz’s face. “Is that what you want? Is it?”

  “No! I mean, why would you think I’d want that—of course I don’t! But . . .”

  “But what? Your job right now is to find our mole while the task force finds AGFA’s fentanyl lab and figures out how they plan to use fentanyl to attack our nation’s New Year’s celebrations. Besides, if you don’t want to attend Bella’s funeral, why do you need to leave Broadsword?”

  Jaz practically spit at him. “Because I’m not convinced that the remains they’re getting ready to stick in the ground belong to Bella—and this is the last chance we’ll ever have to prove whether they are or aren’t.”

  Tobin’s temper heated. “Now that’s just crazy! Wolfe already told us they were. He said Cossack was on scene right after the firefighters put out the fire.”

  Every word Tobin uttered about the death of the woman he loved was another blade, slicing him to the core. He said them anyway. “Cossack saw the bodies in the car. Are you saying he lied to us?”

  “No, but Cossack went by what the coroner told him, and all the coroner said was that he received four sets of remains—three male and one female. Well, that’s not enough for me.”

  Tobin flushed with indignation. “Stop it. Just stop it, Jaz. Bella is dead. You have to accept it. You need to . . . let go of the fantasies. She’s not . . . she isn’t coming back. Ever.”

  Jaz folded her arms and stepped back. “You. You of all people . . . I expected more from you, Tobin. I really did.”

  She wasn’t prepared for what happened next, how Tobin exploded and lunged for her. He grasped both her upper arms in iron vises, shoved her against the rough boards of the tack room, and roared into her face, “Me, of all people? Me? I loved her, Jaz! I still love her, and I always will! But because I loved her, you think I should latch on to some unlikely, improbable, and utterly stupid scenario where Marta wasn’t in that car?”

  For a long, charged moment, they stared each other down, venting rage and sorrow in equal parts. Then Tobin watched Jaz’s face fall in on itself and fracture . . . into tiny, aching pieces. When she collapsed, sobbing, he caught her and folded her to his chest. He rocked back and forth and wept with her. In that moment, they were two frail, damaged people grappling with and mourning a shared loss.

  “Sh-she . . . she . . . she was the-the only f-f-friend I-I . . . ever . . .”

  “I know, I know.”

  “I-I-I—” Jaz couldn’t catch her breath.

  “Careful now. Hey, Jaz. C’mon. Breathe. C’mon, now.”

  But she’d opened the door, and now she couldn’t subdue the anguish or push it back into the box where she’d stuffed it. Her wails intensified. They stripped away the façade she hid behind—the bold purple-tipped hair, the tats and piercings, the “cool” and unflappable Goth exterior. She was just a hopeless, brokenhearted woman, keening for her friend. Tobin held her, shed his own tears, and waited for her long-repressed suffering to run its course.

  “I can’t . . . I can’t bear it!” she wailed. “It hurts so bad. I should never have . . . let her get inside. I-It hurts too much.”

  “I know,” Tobin soothed. “I feel you, I truly do.”

  He patted Jaz’s back awkwardly, mulling over what she’d said earlier, rejecting it . . . but coming back around to it. He pulled back so he could see her. “Jaz, help me understand what you’re saying, okay? You want to go down to NOLA and prove that it’s not Bella in the coffin?”

  He pulled out a handkerchief—one he’d used to wipe his own eyes—and offered it to Jaz.

  She sniffled and blew snot into Tobin’s handkerchief.

  Note to self. Toss handkerchief. Get a clean one. “I mean how . . . how would you even go about proving it’s Bella—or not Bella? Did you hack her dental records or something?”

  “No, don’t be ridiculous—well, I did poke around a bit, of course, but she lived in Europe and Russia for a long time, and I couldn’t even find any dentists where she’d been a patient, let alone any records. Besides, dental x-rays aren’t digital. Yet.”

  “Then what would you expect to find if—hypothetically—you could reach NOLA before the funeral?”

  “I-I . . . it’s just that I-I did some research on how human bodies burn.”

  Tobin cringed and shuddered.

  “Sorry. I’m sorry. I know how morbid I sound, but I found out that it’s not that easy to burn a body . . . completely. And, well, if Bella was in the car, her back against the seat, that part of her, against the seat . . . might not have sustained as much damage as the front of her.”

  Tobin wanted to throw up. Instead, he shook his head and gaped at Jaz like she was crazy. “And?”

  “And I . . . I bandaged Bella’s back after the car bomb, remember? The one where you nearly died?”

  “Oh, that car bomb. And here I thought you meant a different one,” Tobin sneered. “Get to your point, Vyper.”

  Jaz sneered back. “My point is, Bella had cuts on her back—remember that? Cuts that the hospital stitched up, Tobin—remember? When she’d mostly healed, you took the stitches out of them—all except that one really deep cut under her left shoulder blade. I pulled those stitches a few days later. Myself.”

  Something clicked inside Tobin. “You’re saying even if she’s burned, we’d be able to find—or not find—those cuts?”

  “Not us. We’d need a doctor, a specialist. A pathologist who knows how to look for them. Who could tell us . . . if he finds them. Or not.”

  Tobin’s expression softened and fresh tears appeared in his eyes. “Dunno, Jaz. I don’t think I can make a place in my heart for false hope. If I were to start to hope and things didn’t pan out, I . . . I don’t know if I would survive it.”

  Jaz touched his cheek—the only time Tobin had seen Jaz exhibit anything even approaching an intimate gesture. “Quincy, Wolfe’s people haven’t been able to find the truck that hit Bella’s car. It was a hit-and-run. And of all the cars in Tbilisi, it was her car that got hit? Do you think for a min
ute it wasn’t intentional? A setup? That our mole—right here at Broadsword—didn’t burn Bella? Figuratively and literally?”

  She dropped her hand, but not her argument. “Please. Stop thinking about false hope and feeling sorry for yourself. Look at this rationally, and ask yourself this question: Do you want to live the rest of your life not knowing—for certain—that it was her they put in the ground? Do you?”

  When Tobin didn’t answer, Jaz whispered, “I need to know, definitively, one way or the other. I can’t . . . I can’t stay here, stay on the task force, not knowing the truth. Can you?”

  When Tobin still didn’t respond, Jaz added, “Plus, I can’t fall asleep because I keep thinking . . . that if Bella isn’t dead, then she’s somewhere. Because, if that’s not her body down there in NOLA, then that not only means she’s still alive—it also means AGFA took her.”

  Jaz shivered. “And if they have her? Then they’ve had her for a week already. And what do you think they are doing to her? No! I can’t! I can’t live with the possibility—as unlikely, improbable, and utterly stupid as you say it is—running around in my head like a never-ending, never-stopping hamster on a wheel, never leaving me alone, never letting me sleep.”

  Tobin stirred and looked at Jaz, saw the hollows hanging under her black eyeliner and the sharp, jutting points of her cheekbones. They spoke of pain and many wakeful nights.

  She whispered, “I can’t live like this, Tobin, not knowing. I’d rather die. Don’t you understand?”

  Tobin stepped back from her and studied his feet. Finally, he shook his head. “I get it. No, I can’t live that way either. It is better to know for certain—one way or another.”

  “Well, good,” a voice called from a nearby stall. “If I had to stand here much longer listening to you two cry, moan, and wring your hands without coming to a decision, I think I would have puked.”