“More excessive.” I stepped through under the wall hanging and put a foot on the staircase, and a dim light turned on from overhead. This was what she expected me to find, at the end of these stairs. It.
I started to walk down, still cautious in case there were any traps. Andrea might well expect me to be smart enough to avoid those, so it wouldn’t do to just assume they wouldn’t be there. One step at a time, watching closely for tripwires or motion detectors, I followed the staircase as it spiraled down through the side of the hill.
The trip down took longer than I expected it to, which told me the stairs probably descended below the level of the hill itself. When I finally reached the bottom, a doorway opened into an antechamber. On the other side of the little room, another doorway led into a pitch-black tunnel.
I hadn’t expected that, but I thought I should probably check the antechamber first. It was essentially an armory, with every kind of weapon you could ever need hanging on the walls. There were assault rifles, handguns, submachine guns, grenade launchers, and even a handheld rocket launcher. It was a beautiful sight, so I took a moment to drink it in. Some art can’t be hurried, and neither should the appreciation of that art.
There were other racks for various types of field gear, from surveillance devices to climbing equipment. I paused for a moment to give it some thought and decided this was probably more of an escape route than anything else.
If Andrea’s home was attacked while she was in it, she could slip out the secret door in her bedroom, come down to her antechamber, and collect whatever weapons and field gear she thought she might need. Then she could continue out through the dark tunnel on the other side of the room, which presumably led to the surface at the other end. Not only would she get away, she’d be just as well-equipped as if she’d left from Section 9 headquarters… assuming it still existed, which of course it did not.
Still, I couldn’t assume that whatever she’d hidden for me was on the other end of the tunnel. Considering all the weapons and gear in the room, it took quite a while to get through. A key drive can easily be taped to the barrel of a rifle, for instance, or hidden under the lid of a box.
I took an hour to thoroughly search the antechamber, but just like the house above, it didn’t have anything that wasn’t apparent to the naked eye. The tunnel was my only remaining option.
Unlike the staircase, the tunnel didn’t light up when I put my foot in it, so I grabbed a flashlight from one of the gear racks and turned it on, the beam lancing down an impossible length of darkened passage. Whistling softly, I did some quick math on what it cost to build a tunnel of that length and concluded two things.
Andrea was rich and determined. Scanning the tight construction, I knew she cared about details, too. The tunnel was solid, built to last, and long.
I started walking, with no idea of how far it would go. The tunnel was not only long but completely straight, so the fact that I couldn’t see where it ended was even more amazing.
By the time I finally saw daylight at the other end, I’d walked almost a kilometer underground. Either Andrea owned a much larger piece of property than I had realized, or she had bribed her construction workers to build the tunnel under someone else’s land—maybe several someones.
When I saw the gleam of day, my pace picked up, instinct drawing me eagerly to the light shining from an overhead angle. The tunnel ended at a natural fissure, a narrow gash in the earth. Looking up through the gap, I saw the trunks of trees, smelled clean air, and heard a bird call.
Andrea must have found this fissure while out walking in the nearby woods and then had the tunnel constructed to lead directly to it. It was damn fine spycraft.
There was obviously nowhere else for me to look as the tunnel ended immediately after the fissure, and I felt my shoulders bunch in frustration—until I saw the hook in the wall, and hanging there, a dataspike.
“Simple. Unless you count the secret door, stairs, and everything else,” I murmured. Reaching up to pluck the dataspike from its hanging mount. “This is it.”
Without fanfare, I climbed up the fissure until I got my elbows under the edge of it, and pulled myself out into the forest above, grunting with the effort to emerge from a secret cave in the middle of a city with few hidden places. It was, as with everything in Section 9, hidden in plain sight.
I stood up in the woods, brushed the dirt off my clothes, and looked around to try to figure out which direction to go in. It turned out not to matter, as it was a small park, not some protected wood in the City of Light. I walked out until I found a street without seeing another human being, then I walked down the street until I found the local train station. There, people did see me but once again chose to bathe me in that Gallic disdain that let being anonymous seem easy.
A few hours later I was in a Paris hotel room. The dataspike turned out to be password-protected, but I had already expected that. Any random person on a walk in the park might have found that fissure, and even been curious enough to drop in and have a look. It was smart to make sure no adventurous suburban explorer could access the secret message, whatever it might be.
I sipped sparkling water, courtesy of the hotel, and then sat back, staring at nothing.
“Fair enough.” I input the only thing that could work—a password made easy, once I knew what to do. After entering 5693-6R-R2-HUR-28X-69, I watched as the dataspike opened without hesitation and found one small file—audio. Once more, I tapped the file to life and listened in stunned silence.
Tycho, listen carefully. Section 9 has been compromised. From here on out, trust no one.
16
On the flight back to London, I tried to figure out the situation.
The fact that Andrea had sent that message to me could only mean one thing: she didn’t suspect me of being compromised. I wasn’t naïve enough to think this was based on any assessment of my character. She would have based her opinion on something factual, some detail that had led her to rule me out.
Whatever it was, it had not exonerated the others.
Vincenzo Veraldi and Thomas Young, Andrew Jones and Raven Sommer… any one of them could be a mole, secretly loyal to enemies of Section 9. I didn’t know this for sure, but that probably meant the Eleven. Their reach was as long as their cruel lives, and nothing they could do would surprise me.
When I tracked down Ivan Solovyov, he had tried to recruit me by claiming that the Eleven were motivated by altruistic goals. I could see his argument, but it hadn’t appealed to me. Why? Because the only friends I had in the world were in Section 9, and I couldn’t imagine betraying them.
Apparently, one of my friends didn’t feel the same way. The thought made me angry—murderously so—but I had no idea who to direct this anger at. Whoever it was, they had betrayed every experience we’d ever had together.
The news was upsetting enough that I almost considered not going back. In the end, I had nowhere else to go. I turned my dataspike messaging back on and wasn’t surprised to find messages from Veraldi and the others. There was a meeting that night, and I should be able to make it on time. Barely.
When I landed in London, I went straight to a black cab and told the car to take me to the Inspector General’s Office. Traffic was heavy, and I ended up arriving twenty minutes late, in that curious state of disarray that only London traffic can truly bring about.
When I got inside, Veraldi didn’t exactly glare at me. Glaring isn’t dignified, and Vincenzo always likes to be dignified. Instead, he only raised his eyebrows and asked me a one-word question. “Traffic?”
I shrugged. “London.” The word was a city, a feeling, and an apology all in one, or as close as he was going to get.
“As I was telling the others, Andrea is still missing. Now, we know her history. She’s dropped out of sight before when there was a lot on the line, and that’s the setup right now. Same feel, same situation, and a missing agent who isn’t really missing.”
Raven Sommer wasn’t at the meeting
. It was her turn to babysit Edward. She was still in attendance via dataspike, though. “I don’t know, Vincenzo. Katerina?”
“Don’t even say it.” Veraldi shook his head. We all knew what Raven had been suggesting. Andrea’s adopted mother had also disappeared, and no one in Section 9 had heard from her again until she turned up working for the Eleven—a betrayal so punishing they still felt the echoes. “She almost died bringing her mother in. No way she’d do the same thing as her.”
Andrea’s message had left me feeling cynical at best, and fearful at worst. For all I knew, Raven’s comment was meant to divert suspicion away from herself, and suspicion was a damned good trait to have in Section 9. For that matter, Veraldi could be sandbagging us all with a loyalty charade. I let my face stay neutral, watching everyone and giving nothing away.
“Do you have something to add, Tycho?” asked Veraldi. His voice had an edge to it.
I shook my head decisively. “No. I believe in Andrea.”
Thomas spoke up. “Believing in people is often misguided. We cannot know where Andrea is, and we cannot know what she is doing there. We can’t know anything about her motivations. All we can do is wait and see.”
Now Andrew was the one shaking his head. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you admit so much uncertainty. Especially about one of us.”
“That’s just the reality of the situation.” Thomas shrugged, helpless in the face of our lack of information. “We can’t fast-forward, and we don’t have anything to go on. Not now.”
“For the time being,” said Veraldi, “I’m the acting field commander. I’ll continue coordinating the investigation. And we do have some updates.”
“Yes?” asked Raven, her voice tensing up. Whatever he was about to deliver, Raven knew, and she didn’t like it.
“Given the timing of Andrea’s disappearance, we need to consider the idea that some of the NAS Ministers and possibly the Prime Minister are involved. This is more likely to be enemy action than anything else, especially considering that she didn’t reach out to us before she disappeared.”
I knew better, of course, but I couldn’t say so. I decided to bring up a different point instead. “If this is enemy action, wouldn’t that mean we’ve all been burned? If they knew Andrea was really a Sol Federation agent, why wouldn’t they suspect the rest of us too?”
He shook his head. “Not necessarily. Shortly before she disappeared, Andrea had to meet with a contact from Section 9. She brought Raven along as backup, but they thought they spotted a tail and aborted the mission. If their contact was burned, they were probably burned when they tried to meet the contact. They would suspect the rest of us, yes. But they wouldn’t be sure about anyone but Andrea and Raven.”
“What are you saying?” asked Raven, voice tight with worry.
“They may be targeting you as well. As soon as we can get someone to the safehouse to relieve you, I’m suspending you from field duties until we know whether you’ve been burned or not. The last thing we need is to have someone tail you straight to the safehouse, or decide to start tailing Andrew or Tycho because they saw them with you.”
Raven was unhappy, and she made it clear. “Vincenzo, no. With Andrea missing, we’re already short. One of us always has to watch Edward, so in effect we’ve only got four people. Fewer people actively working on the case means less human intelligence. Benching me isn’t the answer, and you know it.”
Veraldi sighed. “So how do you propose to keep them from tailing you?”
“By keeping my eyes open? I mean, sure… I probably shouldn’t work another safehouse shift. We don’t want to risk it there. But they must know we’re all part of the same team of Inspectors General, so they really have no way of knowing whether I’m a mole for the Sol Federation or not. I don’t think they have any more reason to suspect me than anyone else at this meeting.”
“You’re just being resistant to downtime,” Vincenzo countered.
“It isn’t that, Vincenzo. We’re running out of time here. They’ll make their attempt on the Secretary-General soon. We don’t have enough people to just drop me out of the investigation, and if the SecGen gets popped, then our problems go well beyond Andrea.”
Veraldi looked a little harried, like he hadn’t expected to have to deal with a debate. He looked around the room, but no one came to his assistance. “Okay,” he said at last. “You’re still in the field… for now. If anything happens to make me change my mind, I expect you to follow my orders. Immediately. You feel heat out there, you come in. No discussion.”
“Of course,” she replied, her voice birdsong light.
“Thomas, I’m going to have you work from the safehouse starting immediately after this meeting,” Veraldi continued. “Bring any equipment you need over there and sleep in the living room so you can hear anyone trying to enter the building.”
“Sleep?” asked Thomas, like he hadn’t heard that word before.
Veraldi ignored him. “Okay, what’s next? Anyone have any bright ideas?”
I did. Despite my sudden suspicion of all my work colleagues, we still had to resolve this case—and I could see a way to do it. “We should talk about what Edward and Thomas found out.”
“Yes.” Thomas snapped his fingers, head nodding in agreement. “Let’s. With Andrea’s disappearance we’ve all been distracted, but it can’t be a coincidence that Jovani Pang is the son of Ivan Solovyov. This is huge, and not in a way that we can ignore.”
“Agreed.” Veraldi nodded, then waved toward the wider world, his eyes harried and nervous. “And it probably means the Eleven are ultimately behind this. But as to how we use that? I don’t know. I’m open to ideas.”
I broke in. “If Jovani is Solovyov’s son, then he’ll have some interest in what happens to him, right?”
“I don’t know if we can assume that,” Thomas replied. “The evidence Edward uncovered suggests that Jovani was mostly a parasite on Solovyov’s fortune. He might be only too happy to see him gone. If the kid’s not valued and we overplay our hand?” He blew on his fingers, and the meaning was clear. We would lose our shot at Solovyov.
“Parasitic relationships are one-sided,” I pointed out, “and this one wasn’t. Unless we want to believe that Jovani came up with this assassination plan all on his own?”
“No.” Veraldi shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. He didn’t want to talk to us, but I also got the sense that he couldn’t have told us what the plot was really all about because he just didn’t know. Solovyov was pulling his strings, I’m sure of that. He couldn’t reveal what he didn’t know.”
“So if Solovyov—and possibly other members of the Eleven—are behind the plot against the Secretary-General, then they won’t want to take the risk that Jovani will talk. If they can find him, they’ll try to spring him out,” I said.
“What are you suggesting, exactly?” Veraldi asked.
“We should orchestrate a prisoner transfer from the Section 3 safehouse to Woodhill. That should draw the enemy out of hiding. It’s too tempting for them. Make the bait bigger than the hunter’s appetite, capitalize on their greed. And their needs.”
Woodhill was a maximum security prison northwest of London, but it also had facilities to hold prisoners who were considered a security risk while they awaited trial.
“How do you figure?” asked Andrew. “They don’t know where the Section 3 safehouse is in the first place, or they would have already attacked it. So they won’t know when we move someone out of there either.”
“They will if we tell them.” I grinned.
Andrew blinked. “Come again?”
“If we pass last-minute information to different sources, we can follow the trail back from whoever acts on it and identify the compromised parties.”
The others were silent for a long moment, pondering my suggestion. Raven spoke up before anyone else. “Canary trap. I like it, Tycho. Let’s do it.”
“We’re taking a huge risk with the pri
soners,” Veraldi pointed out. “What do we do if they just decide to silence them all?”
“Do you really think Solovyov is quite that ruthless?” asked Andrew. “I mean, Jovani is his son. That’s got to count for something.”
“Tycho’s the only one who’s met the man.” Veraldi gestured in my direction. “What do you think? Would he have his son killed to keep him quiet?”
I thought about all the centuries Solovyov had been alive, and the countless children he must have fathered during all that time. The man had seen more than thirty generations come and go while he continued. What value did one son have in such a vast expanse of time?
“He would try to save Jovani if he could. But if he couldn’t save him, yes. He would kill him without hesitation. Sons and daughters are expendable.”
“That’s cold,” Andrew commented.
Thomas shook his head. “From the perspective of someone who has lived for eight centuries, a normal human life has hardly any meaning. On the other hand, Jovani’s personal history shows wealth that cannot be explained by his place within the Russian underworld, nor can it be explained by his business activities. He’s getting money from somewhere, and not just from those payments Edward Yeun found evidence of.”
“What are you suggesting?” asked Raven.
“I’m suggesting that he has been supported by his father throughout his life, which may mean that Solovyov has some interest in him. He may mean something to his father, but whether that’s enough for the old man to save him, I don’t know.” He shrugged.
“Speculation won’t get us anywhere,” Veraldi announced. “Tycho, your idea depends entirely on Jovani’s value to the enemy, which may not be much. We’re trying to guess what kind of family sentiments Solovyov has, and for all we know he doesn’t have any. He could just as easily have kept this relationship alive solely to use Jovani as his own pet gangster. If the two of them were truly close, would Jovani Pang have ever joined the Bratva in the first place?”
Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5 Page 107