Burned (Vanessa Pierson series Book 2)

by Plame, Valerie

  “Yes.”

  They had reached a new section of the garden, the terrace that was arranged in geometric shapes marking both a kitchen garden and a patch reserved for medicinal herbs. Vanessa liked the soothing quality of the garden’s symmetry.

  “Echinacea,” Peyton said quietly, pausing to gently touch the leaves of a tall shrub.

  “He sounded truthful when . . .” Vanessa’s voice trailed off, and for several moments she felt light-headed. But after a few slow breaths, her equilibrium returned. Pulling Bhoot’s words from memory, she spoke softly: “‘. . . if I tell you I’ve been betrayed and what is mine has been stolen, think what might be set loose in the world.’”

  Again there was silence among them before Peyton finally spoke. “CPD is not questioning the existence of a miniaturized nuclear prototype, am I correct about that?”

  “Unfortunately we can’t yet unequivocally confirm its existence,” Chris said. “We have corroborating intel from other sources, but it isn’t absolute proof. Instead, we are treating the prototypes’ existence as highly likely, but not absolute fact.”

  “In addition to being an extremely terrifying new device,” Peyton said softly, “it would fetch a lot of money on the black market if it’s indeed out there.”

  Chris kicked at a rough stone on the path, the action of a boy—perhaps an unconscious effort to push away his unease. “That kind of weapon—if it is truly viable—would also afford whoever had it great power to terrify, negotiate, you name it.” He let out a long whistle. Vanessa thought this really was a moment when the tension was palpable.

  She pulled out her cigarettes. “Sorry,” she murmured, flicking one from the pack.

  With a scowl, Chris held out his hand and said, “Me, too.”

  To Vanessa’s surprise, Peyton eyed the red pack hungrily.

  “Help yourself,” Vanessa offered.

  But after a second’s hesitation, the psychologist shook her head. “I managed to quit and I’m not putting myself through that torture ever again.” She sighed—a sound of longing that Vanessa could definitely relate to; she also loved to note a tiny chink in Peyton’s formidable armor. The women exchanged quick smiles.

  Vanessa clicked her father’s Zippo, holding it out as Chris lit his Dunhill; she brought the flame to her own cigarette, quickly sucking in smoke.

  “None of this rules out True Jihad as Bhoot’s own diversion,” Peyton said. “He could be the master of his own game of manipulation . . .”

  “To what end?” Chris asked.

  “Ramping up the stakes? Creating chaos, confusion, and intimidation? Pick your prize,” Peyton said.

  Vanessa shook her head. “He’s achieved dominance over the black-market proliferation of nukes and WMDs, but terrorism? It doesn’t make sense. Why shift from his primary business, which is proliferation, to actual terrorist acts?”

  “I agree there are psychological incongruities . . . anomalies . . . It’s tempting to rule that shift out.” Peyton nodded. “But it’s not impossible to find justifications—for example, rage because his Iranian business venture was destroyed and he felt humiliated on the world’s stage.”

  “Maybe,” Vanessa said, but she didn’t believe it. “He operates on the long view. He had the Chechen eliminating his opponents all over the world and he did it like a chess game.” She ticked the victims off on her fingers: a judge, intelligence targets, officials, anyone who might stand in his way. She took a deep breath because it was hard to talk about his other victims—but she moved forward. “He could even justify killing my assets for pragmatic reasons . . .”

  “He was willing to set his Chechen loose on the director-general of MI5,” Peyton said. “From this vantage point, that seems an act of retribution for her effectiveness against funding terrorists and proliferators.”

  “I think that was different,” Vanessa said, not able to articulate her thoughts any further at the moment. She admired Peyton’s expertise—and she was still absorbing her psychoanalytical view of Bhoot.

  Chris tossed his half-smoked cigarette on the wet stones and ground it to dust with his foot. “Here’s something that bothers me,” he said, blowing the last drag out through his nostrils, like the smoking pro he once was. “If Bhoot is behind the True Jihad attacks, if he was humiliated by our bombing of the facility, if he must dominate—then why send a kid with a pipe bomb and why leave a dud RDD next to a park bench?”

  “I admit that doesn’t make sense to me,” Peyton said slowly. “In Freudian terms, that’s a failure to ejaculate, it’s erectile dysfunction.”

  Vanessa’s eyes widened and Chris bit back a snort. “Interesting comparison,” he said.

  “So where does that leave us?” Vanessa asked, drawing deeply on the Dunhill.

  “Again,” Peyton said. “I keep leaning in his favor that he’s telling a partial truth: He wants to recover something that belongs to him. His goal is transactional, but you, Vanessa, are the icing on the cake. You are linked together—hunter and hunted—and I believe that at this moment you are part of his obsession. He won’t hesitate to kill you if he decides you’ve outlived your usefulness to him. Ultimately, you are expendable.”

  During the silence that followed the psychologist’s words, Vanessa tried to process the conversation and its implications at the same time she tried to keep some level of detachment. But her hands were trembling when she dabbed her cigarette in a puddle on a public trash receptacle and dropped it into the container; she felt oddly separate from her body.

  “Vanessa, you’ve spoken of your father’s death.” Peyton was now speaking very softly, almost a verbal tiptoe. “The possibility that his cancer might have been caused by exposure to Agent Orange when he served in Vietnam, or later, when his work with military intelligence exposed him to toxins.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Vanessa asked, unable to keep the tension out of her voice. She still hadn’t told Chris or anyone else the whole truth—that Bhoot had brought up her father and his patriotism. “Where are you going with this?”

  “Nowhere mysterious,” Peyton said. “His death was connected to service to country, to his duty, and, ultimately, to his belief that he could save some—not all, but at least some—innocent lives . . . even if that ultimately was not enough for him.”

  Vanessa felt confused and almost feverish. “I still don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “I think you carry that part of your father with you, Vanessa. Some psychologists call it a ‘complex’ . . .”

  “You think I have a superhero complex or something.” Vanessa scoffed, relieved she’d regained a bit of her usual certainty and confidence.

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Peyton said slowly.

  Vanessa hated that she saw sympathy—or was it pity?—in the psychologist’s eyes. “I’m just doing my job,” she said, ready to turn around and hightail it back to the safe house.

  “Peyton?” It was Chris asking in shorthand for an explanation.

  “Bhoot expects Vanessa to play his game all the way to the end. He will use the fact that she is driven—to go to extreme lengths to do what she believes is right, to do what she believes will protect innocents and keep evil at bay. He understands that her drive to protect is her Achilles’ heel, and he will use it to bring her down.” Peyton shook her head, a gesture of frustration that conveyed the complexity of what she was trying to communicate.

  “Just say it plain without the psychological bullshit,” Vanessa said.

  “Bhoot will exploit everything he learns about you.” Peyton gripped Vanessa’s arm with surprising strength. “You are playing with fire. You killed his agent. Not only did you take something from Bhoot, you won that round. He won’t forget. He will seek his revenge. For the moment, you amuse him, give him company in his world, and he needs you to track down True Jihad and maybe the prototype nuke—but in the end he will need to kill you.” Peyton’s voice had darkened to a timbre Vanessa hadn’t heard her u
se before.

  She felt suddenly cold—gone abruptly from fever to chill—and she recognized that what she felt was fear.

  27

  The man in the plain gray raincoat and the olive-green porkpie waited inside his beige Peugeot. He had parked on the street a good distance from the driveway of the Hôtel Cayré—but in a spot where he still had a clear view of those coming and going.

  His assignment was the young blonde his employer called Vanessa. Two days ago, near the Louvre, in the confusion that followed the bombing, he had managed to pay a teen to hand her a phone. But he couldn’t risk that kind of exposure again.

  Vanessa wasn’t staying at the hotel, but her boss with the wire-rimmed glasses was registered under a pseudonym.

  The man in the gray coat had three employees of his own; he trusted them to be discreet, and he had taught them to carry out surveillance. Two of them were available and on call today. One rode a motorbike, the other drove a late-model Renault.

  But even with three vehicles and three drivers, surveillance on this job was tough. Vanessa and her boss were both sharp-eyed and trained to be vigilant for surveillance. It came with their kind of work.

  So his orders were to wait, to be the invisible man, and to update his employer when he could. Fine, he could wait. He had already had his morning café, and waiting had become his profitable specialty.

  As he bit into his croissant, he was rewarded. A BMW pulled up the short driveway to the hotel’s entrance. The doorman stepped forward, sharp salute, to open the rear door. The man in the gray raincoat started his car at the same time he assessed the new arrival: female, fit, attractive, dark blond hair, well dressed.

  But she was not Vanessa. This woman was too old, in her forties. She leaned down to speak briefly with someone in the front seat of the BMW while the doorman retrieved a garment bag and a briefcase from the trunk.

  He finished the last bite of his croissant as the older woman gave a small wave and the BMW inched forward, coasting onto the one-way street. Now with a different view, he recognized the driver by his distinctive military haircut and his glasses. Vanessa’s boss.

  Eureka. The passenger was young and blond and very pretty.

  As the man in the gray coat pulled out a discreet distance behind the BMW, he speed-dialed his employee, quickly telling him to be ready to take over surveillance. Then, following orders, he dialed his employer to let him know they were moving and he would continue to report in.

  28

  A call had summoned Team Viper back to the warehouse manned by French service: Analysts would present preliminary results on security footage retrieved from La Défense.

  Still shaken by Peyton Wright’s warning, Vanessa arrived with Chris. He’d said barely a word since the Cluny.

  As they walked through the huge industrial door, Vanessa resolved to push away all thoughts other than what was in front of her.

  The first thing she noted was the absence of Khoury, Fournier, and Aisha from the group standing in front of the monitors. Then she heard Zoe Liang’s voice. For an instant she imagined that Zoe had hopped a plane to Paris with Peyton. But CPD’s crack analyst rarely left Headquarters; she oversaw too many operations and could juggle most of them virtually. In short, she was too valuable to be sent into the field.

  Hays had once described Zoe as having all the tonal range of a flatline. Vanessa, usually the focus of Zoe’s wrath, knew the analyst was capable of quite a few tonal variations, but she got Hays’s drift—Zoe didn’t excite easily—and she actually appreciated Zoe’s sangfroid, especially when all hell was breaking loose.

  And now, the typically unflappable Zoe said: “. . . the process entailed image segmentation, restoration, enhancement—the triple whammy, so it’s a good sign to get early results like these.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Hays said, at the moment carrying all the jittery energy Zoe lacked. “And you’re doing it with all your balls in the air at once because you’ve got the reflective issues and the hacking issues on the SARIT security itself.”

  “Looks like you guys have all the fun toys,” Zoe said, “but we have our own gadgets and CART lent a hand.”

  Vanessa, still out of view of the monitor, called, “I can’t believe you needed help from the Bureau!” The FBI’s CART—Computer Analysis Response Team—had half a dozen mobile labs they could send into the field, in addition to the vast resources at their stationary facilities. It was also a matter of pride and rivalry between the Agency and the FBI—help was only requested as a final resort.

  “I know that voice that’s giving me shit,” Zoe said. “And FYI, we’ve done all the heavy digital lifting, they just shared equipment.”

  Vanessa took a step into range and flashed Zoe a lopsided smile. “Hey, stranger.”

  Zoe kept her poker face but said, “Glad you’re here. I want you to see what we’ve managed to pull from your less-than-stellar originals, especially your reflections. Hays, can you—?”

  The second empty screen went from white to gray-white.

  “That’s all you got?” Khoury asked, joining the group. Vanessa assessed him quickly while he was focused on Zoe. His dark-honey skin glowed from the cold, hair damp and tousled, and his leather bomber jacket shone with beads of water. Raining again. He looks good. But luckily, he was spared from being too pretty by a small scar and a few other physical imperfections.

  “Hey, David, good to see you, too,” Zoe said from the monitor.

  “That’s the before,” Hays said. “The raw material we were working with from the cameras on the building adjacent to SARIT.”

  “Give us a minute,” Zoe said, “and we can show you how we subdivided the image, and once we began working with constituent parts, we can isolate whatever we want, like this—”

  A few seconds and the image morphed into a smaller, closer image with discrete pixels visible. Vanessa thought she could just begin to make out a human form on foot—maybe male, maybe hiding his face under the brim of a hat . . . maybe . . .

  She stared so intently her eyes began to burn, and she asked the question mutely, Who are you?

  Khoury was studying the image, too. “Can you pull out enough detail so we can run this guy through facial recognition and get him on a watch list—or have the guys at the Fort take a look at this?”

  Zoe’s eyes narrowed into dark slivers. “Just for you, David.”

  “Zoe or Hays, what’s the time stamp on this?” Vanessa asked.

  “This was caught ninety seconds after the internal security went down on SARIT,” Zoe said. “So it would have been an approach. We’ve got a lot more to work on, other images, but this is the start.”

  Vanessa inhaled sharply. “He’s carrying something—a briefcase?”

  “Makes sense,” Khoury said. “They’d bring in their own high-tech case so they could carry out their booty . . .”

  A second image filled a screen: gray-white again, then coalescing in front of their eyes to a tighter pixelated image, this time revealing the ghosts of three human forms wearing what appeared to be identical jackets and hats.

  “They obviously dressed to pass for security,” Khoury said. “Do you have any motion footage?”

  “Not yet,” Zoe said, frowning from the first monitor. “But we will.”

  “I need it the moment you get it,” Khoury said, his jaw taut.

  “What do you see, David?” a new voice asked.

  All heads turned to see Aisha and Fournier entering. It was Aisha who’d spoken, while Fournier raised a hand in the air, a terse greeting.

  Khoury shook his head. “Just a hunch—until I see more in the motion footage.”

  “Share the hunch,” Fournier said, eyeing the monitors intently. “No time to be cautious.”

  “The trio, their bearing, they strike me as military, or could be paramilitary. But I told you, a hunch.”

  “Just a matter of hours and geek power ’til we get motion,” Hays said. He waved his coffee mug in the air a little wildly, and
Vanessa wondered exactly how many cups of espresso he’d consumed during the past twenty-four hours.

  She took a step toward the monitor and Hays. “I need clarification on this: The two images, the single man and the trio, that lets us know there were at least four men on the team that breached SARIT, is that correct?”

  “That’s what we’ve got so far,” Zoe said.

  “Right,” Vanessa said, glancing around at the group. “So for what it’s worth, I am noting that the second video released by True Jihad featured four hooded men.”

  The hum of machines seemed to amp up in the silence that followed. Hays looked to Zoe, who said, “The True Jihad videos are undergoing intense forensic analysis as we speak, and we will cross-check the imagery, and I guarantee you, we will find any links there to be found.”

  Vanessa nodded. “That’s what I needed to know.”

  “Good call,” Chris said, stepping up. “Now what about the security footage that actually came from SARIT?” His sleeves were rolled up, a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. The warehouse was hot, and they were all on edge.

  Zoe nodded. “We’re getting to that. We were able to track some code that shows us these guys hacked in weeks ahead of the physical breach. They were monitoring the company’s internal security system, getting to know it, and inserting their own virtual time bomb to disrupt the signals and cams for the eighteen minutes of the actual break-in.”

  “So you would classify this as a sophisticated operation?” Vanessa asked, absorbing Zoe’s information, explicit and implicit.

  “Extremely sophisticated,” Zoe said. Hays nodded.

  He said, “This was well planned, successfully executed, and timed with precision.”