Bravo

by Greg Rucka

  Then he sets to work. There’s a backlog of reports and messages from other operatives around the globe, and he barely gives them the time they deserve. Right now, his primary concern is twofold. The day’s business and the exfiltration. The exfiltration is easier, and he spins out his programs in search of flights. When Zoya was placed all those years ago, he set two caches for her should everything go wrong, one at a CubeSmart on Upshur Street in D.C., the other out in District Heights, in Maryland. Each exists only for emergencies, and, since stocking them, the Architect has made certain that their contents are maintained and all their paperwork remains current. Zoya, who has been Jordan Webber-Hayden, can become Evelyn Bridger or Claudia Voss, depending on the route they decide to take.

  The day’s business is an entirely different challenge, and while he has operatives he could reach out to for assistance, he is resolved to do this alone. Already he and Zoya are horribly naked; he has no wish to compromise any other operations.

  He goes back into his own archives, in particular the reports from Tohir about his contacts and meetings with Lee Jamieson. Jamieson had communicated via Tohir, the relationship put in motion by Zoya through Brock. Once the request had come, the Architect had vetted Jamieson himself, acting with what he viewed as expected caution; after all, Jamieson wanted a very dangerous, very expensive service provided. The Architect needed to be certain he would be both safe and paid upon its execution at the very least.

  Now the Architect views the Jamieson bio again, not to learn more about the man himself but rather to learn about his associates. Tohir had concluded early on that Jamieson was acting with others beyond Brock, and the Architect had agreed. Thus the question had become, who are Lee Jamieson’s friends? More precisely, who among those friends are both wealthy enough to afford the Architect’s services and sufficiently ideologically aligned with Jamieson to contribute to his cause? Who is in it with him?

  The initial list was longer than the Architect liked, though he’d finally been able to winnow it down to eleven names. One has since died from apparent natural causes, and upon reflection the Architect determines that another would never associate himself with Brock and Jamieson in such an endeavor.

  The remaining nine get his full attention now. He reacquaints himself with their biographies and photographs, committing everything to memory. He doubts all nine are involved; the difficulty in maintaining any conspiracy increases exponentially with the number of the participants. Nine, he thinks, is untenable, but with no further data he has no means of revising his estimate.

  The Architect thinks that it would be so much simpler to just kill them, but of course that points back to the problem of who “them” is. That is the real reason he needed Brock to set this meeting, a meeting that the Architect has no plans to actually attend.

  He wants to identify the cabal.

  Once he’s done that, he’ll have the luxury of controlling or destroying them as he sees fit.

  Just after noon, the Architect leaves the hotel in his rental car. He spends the next twenty-seven minutes driving a random route, crossing the Potomac twice, turning at random intervals, cutting back on his trail. He is as certain as he can be that he’s clean, and this makes sense to him. The only person who could have put surveillance on him is Brock, and Brock, he knows, is too obsessed with the idea of losing Jordan Webber-Hayden to risk compromising them all in such a fashion.

  It’s eleven minutes to one before he finds a place to park in front of a brownstone in Capitol Hill numbered 432. His view of number 442, a block away, is unobstructed and, as seen through the Canon’s telephoto lens, clear. He positions the camera on the dashboard carefully, checks the view again. He takes out his smartphone and opens the EOS remote application, sees the view through the lens duplicated in real time on the screen in his palm. He takes a half dozen test shots like this, reviews them, and, satisfied, leaves the car, locking it after him.

  He takes a walk, testing the range of the application, and is pleased to discover that he maintains control of the EOS from almost two blocks away. He posts at a bus stop, focused on his phone, and every person he sees entering 442 he photographs, some of them arriving on foot, others pulling up in luxury cars that are almost instantly met by fleet-footed valets rushing from the building. The Architect stands for fifteen minutes or so and takes four pictures, and a bus comes and he waves it off. Ten minutes or so later he’s taken another two pictures, and a new bus pulls up, and he waves that one off, too, then heads back up the street, walking along the redbrick sidewalk. He passes his car, passes 442, and in the process snaps three more people entering the building. The clock at the top of the smartphone’s screen tells him it’s nine minutes to two. He crosses the street, doubling back, takes one more photograph, and returns to his car, where he sits, still focused more on his phone than on his surroundings. One more photograph, this at three minutes past the hour.

  He shuts down the application, takes his laptop out, and opens it on the seat beside him, connects it to the camera. He’s working quickly now. Of the eleven pictures he’s taken, his hope is that at least one will match to the men associated with Jamieson. But he needs to make the match quickly. He didn’t see Brock entering the building, and that means that Zoya has done what was necessary. Brock will not be coming.

  But that will make the cabal anxious, turn their suspicion into fear, and it won’t be long before they leave, before they separate.

  The photographs transfer, and the Architect quickly begins flicking through them, comparing them to the ones in his files. If his angle had been better for the photographs, he’d leave the search to one of the facial recognition programs he possesses, but even the best software currently fails when presented with only profiles, and most of it only works if the subject is facing the camera directly. This requires an eyeball search.

  It takes him less than five minutes to match four faces to the photographs in Jamieson’s file. Two of them he is willing to rate 100 percent positive. The remaining two he is less certain of, but it doesn’t matter. He has four names now, and two choices.

  He stows the laptop, the camera, returns to his watch on the brownstone. At seventeen minutes past two, the first one leaves, the man the Architect has positively identified as Donald Lenhart. A black Mercedes-Benz pulls up for him as he exits the building, and he’s in the back almost without pause. The Architect watches him go.

  Three minutes later two cars pull up, the first a blue BMW delivered by a valet, the second a yellow-and-black D.C. taxi. The two men the Architect could not be certain of emerge from the brownstone. One of them, he believes, is Emanuel Frohm, which would make the other Victor Anderson. Frohm takes the BMW; Anderson leaves in the taxi.

  This leaves Robert Larkin, president and CEO of Larkin Industries. Fifty-seven years old, son of Frederick J. Larkin, company founder. Educated Princeton, MBA Harvard, married to Marguerite Pierson, since divorced, father of three, Robert junior, Frederick, and Lenore. Larkin Industries began as a machine manufacturing company but in its fifty years has diversified, becoming what is referred to in government circles as a general service provider. Larkin Industries now supplies vehicles and civilian services to government agencies, everything from the National Science Foundation operations in Antarctica to military bases around the world.

  The Architect starts the car, checks his watch, feels a surge of confidence that makes him realize just how much worry he’d been carrying. It’s gone now. Brock is dead, and Larkin is coming out and taking the keys for his Porsche from the valet, and Zoya is on her way back to her condo in the West End, and tonight they will fly to either Rio or Berlin, whichever she prefers.

  Everything, the Architect feels, is going exactly as planned.

  For a moment, crossing the Potomac, the Architect wonders if Larkin is heading for the Pentagon in search of Brock, an act of almost impossible folly. Certainly the cabal is now spooked, but the Architect worries if Brock’s absence was too much, if he should have waited b
efore Zoya took him out of play.

  It’s an ill-founded fear; Larkin turns off almost immediately upon crossing the river. He pulls up at Le Méridien, is out of his car and into the lobby with barely a pause for the valet, and his haste forces the Architect to abandon his own vehicle illegally across the street, and he has to run through the doors, hating the attention it draws. Larkin is already at the elevators. The Architect takes out his phone once more and busies himself with its screen, glances up to see that Larkin and two others are entering a waiting car. He hurries, extends an arm, catching the doors before they close.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry.”

  Larkin glares at him, and one of the others hits the DOOR OPEN button, and the Architect steps inside, turns.

  “Floor?”

  Three lights are already lit.

  “Ah, you’ve already got it,” the Architect says, and then goes back to checking his phone. The elevator stops twice on the ride, until it’s only Larkin and the Architect, and when it comes to a stop the third time, the Architect cuts in front of him to step out first, then pauses again with his phone. Larkin steps around him, heading down the hall, and he’s taking out his own phone in one hand, digging for his key card with the other. There’s no one else in the hall, a housekeeping cart at the far end, but that’s all. The Architect hangs back, waits until the key fits the slot, until Larkin is pushing the door open.

  “Sorry,” the Architect says. “Robert Larkin?”

  Larkin turns, suspicion, and it’s flaring into alarm, but by then it’s too late. The Architect hits him in the face with the base of his palm, connecting with the man’s chin, forcing his teeth together with a definitive clack. Larkin’s arms go out and he steps back, into the room, and the Architect punches him once in the stomach, closed fist and knuckles this time, kicks him in the knee. Larkin drops, and the Architect pivots, shoves the already closing door shut, throws the lock. When he turns back, Larkin is trying to get up on one leg, and the Architect slaps him across the jaw with full force, knocks the older man into the bureau against the wall.

  “Brock is dead,” the Architect says.

  The Architect steps forward, Larkin straightening up, dazed. He’s leaking blood from the corner of his mouth. The Architect grabs him by his necktie, slaps him twice more, releases him. Larkin blinks, unsteady, tries to raise his hands again. His phone and the key card are now both on the floor.

  “Jesus Christ,” Larkin says. “Stop it.”

  “Brock is dead,” the Architect says again. “Do you know who I am?”

  Larkin shakes his head, but the Architect reads it as an attempt to clear it, not as a confession of ignorance. He takes a step forward, and Larkin immediately takes another step back, waving him off.

  “Stop hitting me.”

  “You know who I am,” the Architect says. “And I know who you are. I know who Emanuel Frohm is, and Donald Lenhart, and Victor Anderson, and I can tie each of you to Emmet Brock and the late Lee Jamieson. I can tie you to California. Do you understand?”

  Larkin wipes two fingers at the corner of his mouth. He looks at the blood he’s removed. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to understand.” The Architect takes another step forward, and, despite himself, Larkin takes another step back.

  “Stop hitting me.”

  “Do I have your attention?”

  “Jesus Christ, we were willing to meet with you. Why do it like this?”

  “I can find you,” the Architect says. “I can find your children. I can find your friends, and your partners, and their children. You have wealth. I have wealth and power. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand. Jesus Christ, I understand.”

  “Then tell me why I’m here.”

  Larkin clears his throat, a wet sound.

  “You’re warning us. You’ll take us down if we betray you. If we ever talk about you. You don’t have to worry about that. No one is going to talk. No one is going to touch us.”

  “Brock is dead.”

  “Brock lived in a different world. His world made him touchable. We’re not touchable.”

  “Look in a mirror.”

  Larkin loses some of the color he’s regained. “That’s not what I meant. We have friends. Anything Brock could’ve said, he’d have fallen, not us.”

  “For your sake, I hope you’re right.”

  The Architect turns to go.

  Larkin says, “The contingency. It’s still on?”

  The Architect stops with his hand on the lock.

  “You’re going to go through with it, yes?” Larkin asks. “We’ll get what we paid for?”

  “Mr. Larkin,” the Architect says. “I couldn’t stop it now even if I wanted to.”

  The rental is where he abandoned it, and the Architect is pulling away as the tow truck is arriving. He grins at the vehicle receding in the rearview mirror, feeling pleased with himself. It has been a long time since he’s gotten his own hands dirty, since he has inflicted violence instead of inciting it, and the adrenaline is still singing to him. He feels good.

  Larkin understood, he knows. His arrogance had been broken enough by the beating to listen, and the Architect thinks that the warning will take, that it will be shared among the entire cabal. Once Larkin knows for certain that Brock is dead, he will have no choice but to tell the others about what’s just happened, and not one of them will believe the Architect’s threat is an empty one.

  He drives, early rush-hour traffic now beginning on this Friday afternoon, and it’s almost five o’clock before he’s back in the West End. He leaves his car around the corner from the condo, starts along the sidewalk up to the home of Jordan Webber-Hayden. There’s light foot traffic, heavier on the street, and something in the movement of people, in the pattern, catches his mind, sends him a warning. It registers as instinct first, and he heeds it, continues past the front doors without breaking stride, trying to find what it was he saw without seeing. Is it the man down the block and across the street, leaning against a parked car? The woman he passed who wasn’t actually going anywhere but was arguing on her phone?

  He stops, looks up, looks around. From this angle he can just see the facade of the condo, can count the floors to what should be Jordan Webber-Hayden’s home. The curtains are open.

  She does not leave her curtains open.

  He keeps going, and the victory he’s been feeling is gone, replaced by a whole new dread. This is a town filled to cracking with security and spies and surveillance; it is a dangerous town to operate in, and he knows this. If he’s walking through an operation, it needn’t be one targeting Zoya, targeting him.

  Wishful thinking.

  A man dressed as a jogger is at the end of the block, stretching his calves against the side of the building. Everything about him looks right, the shoes, the shorts, the shirt, but he’s got a fanny pack resting at his stomach. There’s a discoloration at his ear, so faint the Architect could believe it’s nothing but a shadow rather than an earpiece.

  There is no doubt.

  He rounds the corner and continues walking, rounds the next, and makes the full circuit until he’s back to his car. His hands are shaking as he drives back to his hotel.

  They have her residence. If they have the residence, they have her. If she is alive.

  The thought that she might not be is too much to bear. It nearly brings him to panic, and the Architect has to pull over and catch his breath. His grip on the wheel tightens, tightens, until he forces his fingers to unclench. He has to think. He has to plan. It’s what he does.

  They found her through Brock, he concludes. That’s the only way they could have, which means they found her after Brock died, or Brock is still alive, or he doesn’t know, but Brock didn’t go to the meeting. If they found her through Brock, then they found Brock, and they found Brock through the death of Tohir.

  He thinks about Zoya, and he again asks himself whether he is a monster, or someone forced to do monstrous thin
gs, but he already knows the answer. He’s answered it years ago, and seeing her again only proved he was correct.

  The Architect fumbles for his laptop, snaps it open, hurriedly passes through each plane of his security. He brings up the files Brock passed to him via Zoya, the files that had given him the home of Master Sergeant Tom O’Day and his wife, Stephanie, and his daughter, Callie. The files on Freddie Cooper and Isaiah Rincon and Jorge Velez and Jonathan Bell, who has a wife and daughter living in Burlington, Vermont.

  If he moves quickly, he can be there in four hours.

  He moves quickly.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THERE ARE A lot of things Athena has come to like about living in Vermont—Burlington in particular. It’s a total college town, so there’s always something to do, somewhere to go, something to see. It’s easy to get around without Mom needing to drive her everywhere, at least when they’re not all up to their ears in snow. The winters are spectacular, even if they’re cold as hell, and last autumn was blazing in its beauty. Then there’s the school, Hollyoakes, which is why Mom moved them there in the first place, and as a veteran of more than a few schools in her sixteen years, she can say that it is hands-down the best.

  But she can’t go to the movies.

  Or, more to the point, she could totally go to the movies if she wanted to sit there and try to figure out what it is she isn’t hearing. Because not one fucking theater in Burlington, in a goddamn college town, has a theater with audio assistive technology. Not one of them. They’ve got a fucking school for the deaf not more than two miles south of the University of Vermont, but not one place where she and her friends and anybody else who attends Hollyoakes can go to catch the latest thriller or blockbuster or romance or comedy or any of it.