by Dee Davis
Tyler nodded, her mind spinning with her conflicting thoughts and emotions.
“And hey,” Nash smiled, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder, “for what it’s worth, I know you’ll make the right decision. Whatever it turns out to be.”
“Thanks,” she said, as the door slid open, the phone in her pocket vibrating. She pulled it out as Nash swiped the back of Aaron Thomas’s head, the panel in the opposite wall sliding open. Following Nash, she flipped the phone open, reading the text displayed. “It’s from Jason,” she said. “Says he needs to talk to me.”
“Well, it’ll have to wait,” Nash said, nodding toward the war room. “Duty calls.”
“You’re right.” She nodded, closing the phone. “I’ll track him down after the debrief.”
They walked into the war room to find Hannah and Harrison already ensconced at the front of the room, as usual hard at work behind their computers, Harrison looking particularly preoccupied. Avery was talking to Owen, the two of them animated in their discussion.
Tyler’s stomach flipped as Owen lifted his head and smiled. There was just something about the man that called to her, no matter how many times he lied. She shook her head, forcing her thoughts away from Owen. There were more important things to deal with. Like who the hell had attacked them in Ms. Waller’s apartment.
“So what have we got?” she asked, taking a seat next to Nash as Avery and Owen settled into chairs on the other side of the table.
“The dead man is an international mercenary,” Hannah said, her pale blue glasses cat-eyed with decorative crystals. “Vincent Delano. He’s not in the same league as Petrov but he’s definitely in the same game. Gun for hire.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Nash said. “He was involved in the assassination of the vice chancellor in Belgium, right?”
“He’s wanted for questioning. As to his guilt, there’s nothing solid to pin it on him.” Hannah clicked a button and the man’s face filled the screen on the wall. “He seems to have no particular allegiances. He pretty much just follows the money. He’s worked all over the world. And of course, as you’d expect, there’s very little to link him to specific employers.”
“Anyone at Interpol been tracking him?”
“Always. And we’ve got eyes on him as well. But he’s good at staying out of sight. And nothing he’s been seen doing recently would indicate who he might be working for.”
“What about immigration? Any idea when he came into the country?”
“Yes,” Hannah said, flipping to another photograph. “He came in across the Canadian border. Used the passport you see there. Obviously, it’s an alias. The only reason we managed to track it down is that the border crossing he used into New York has been trying out new equipment. They’re photographing documentation. Kind of like running surveillance. Anyway, we know he came in just under two weeks ago, which lines up perfectly with everything that’s been happening around here.”
“What about the scene?” Owen asked. “Did the forensics team find anything?”
“No fingerprints,” Hannah reported. “Which isn’t surprising. Ms. Waller’s neck was broken. She died instantaneously. There was no struggle. And no sign of forced entry. They’re running a tox screen just to be sure there isn’t something we’re missing. But basically, it looks like she knew her killer, let him into the house, and turned her back long enough for him to take her out. Again, the signs point to someone who has a specific set of skills.”
“A professional,” Nash said. “Anything in Delano’s bio that would point to him as the killer?”
“It’s possible,” Harrison nodded, pulling himself away from the computer screen he’d been absorbed in, “but his MO is using guns. Sniper rifles mostly. He doesn’t seem to be that keen on up close and personal.”
“Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t the one,” Avery pointed out.
“I agree,” Hannah said. “Originally he was a commando in Portugal. Which means he had all the requisite training. He’d know how to break someone’s neck. So even if it wasn’t his preferred methodology, he’d have been more than up to the task.”
“Besides, there were at least four other men involved in the attack on Owen and me.” Tyler frowned. “It could have been one of them. Was there anything to give us insight into who they might have been? Ballistics, maybe?”
“Nothing popped when we ran it through the various registries, and the ballistics tests were inconclusive. Ammo was definitely not local. Possibly Russian. They’re doing additional analysis at Langley.”
“Whoever these people are they know what they’re doing,” Tyler said.
“Harrison, have you got anything to add?” Avery asked.
He jerked his head up, blinking owlishly, and shook his head, clearly trying to focus. “No. But I wasn’t expecting we would. These guys knew enough not to use traceable weapons.”
“What about Ms. Waller?” Owen asked. “Anything in her past that might give us a clue as to who she was working with?”
Hannah changed the photo again, this time projecting a picture of Marta Waller. “Ms. Waller had been working in the United States about eighteen months. Before that she worked for the German Foreign Service in the Berlin office. Low-level stuff, secretarial, for the most part. The move to the consulate in Manhattan was a big promotion, but not enough to have subsidized the things that were found in her apartment. According to immigration documentation, only a few of the things came over with her. The rest were acquired while she was here.”
“But you’re saying her salary here doesn’t support those kinds of purchases.” Nash leaned back in his chair, studying the photo on the screen.
“Exactly,” Hannah said. “And her bank accounts both in Germany and here back that up. There’s a combined balance of a couple thousand dollars and nothing to indicate that she’s withdrawn more than the usual amounts needed for daily living.”
“So where did the money come from?” Tyler asked.
“Well,” Hannah smiled, red highlights gleaming, “thanks to Owen’s quick thinking, I think I might just have the answer.”
Tyler shot a questioning look at Owen.
“I stuffed the pile of mail in my pocket,” he said. “Figured it might come in useful.”
“And it did,” Hannah said. “Most of it was local. But one envelope made reference to an offshore account. Of course, that sort of thing is highly protected. But they weren’t counting on Harrison and his magic fingers.” She smiled across the table at Harrison, who was still totally engrossed in what he was doing. Silence stretched for a minute and then he looked up.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, with a shake of his head. “I’m afraid I missed out on what was said.”
“Must be something really interesting on that screen,” Nash observed.
“You have no idea,” he said, “but I didn’t mean to lose track of the conversation.” He looked askance at Hannah, who smiled and repeated what she’d said. “Right, the offshore accounts. There are certain numbers that are used to identify international accounts for U.S. tax purposes. So I could tell from Ms. Waller’s correspondence that the account was somewhere in the Cayman Islands. From there it just took a bit of digging.”
“And calling in a couple of favors,” Hannah added. “Anyway, the bottom line is that we managed to gain access to the account. The money situation was similar to Jefferson Smithwick’s. Large cash deposits, in Ms. Waller’s case going back for the past three or four years.”
“So she was getting the money while she was still working in Germany?” Owen asked.
“Correct.” Hannah nodded. “The payments were slightly less at that point. Right at twenty-five thousand. When she arrived here, the deposits jumped to just over forty thousand.”
“That’s a hell of a lot of money,” Nash said.
“It is. But the really interesting thing is that the payments stopped last month.”
“So maybe Ms. Waller had been paid in full.”
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p; “Or maybe her usefulness had simply come to an end,” Owen suggested. “It certainly fits with her being killed.”
“They definitely seem to be trying to tie up loose ends,” Avery said.
“Or destroying them,” Tyler said. “The question is why now?”
“Maybe because they know we’re on to them?” Nash offered.
“But we’re not.” Tyler shook her head. “So it must be more than that. Maybe they’re nearing endgame. Whatever the hell that might be. Any way to tell where the money came from?”
“Not specifically. No,” Harrison said. “As we mentioned earlier, the deposits were all made in cash. So the paper trail isn’t as transparent. But it does look like the deposits were made from somewhere in Europe.”
“We’re working now to try to narrow it down,” Hannah added.
“Did we get anything from Ms. Waller’s employers at the German consulate?” Owen asked.
“Just that she was a good worker. Apparently quiet and kept to herself. They professed surprise when I explained that she was dead. And although they made all the right noises about helping, I got the general sense that they weren’t actually planning to step up to the plate. They weren’t even willing to accept the idea that this was something beyond a robbery.” Harrison shrugged and returned his focus to his computer.
“Plausible deniability,” Avery said. “I can’t really say that I’m surprised. What have we got on Ms. Waller’s background? Anything that might point to where the mystery money came from?”
“Nothing that jumps out at me,” Hannah said. “She has no record. And no indication that she has strong political leanings one way or another. She’s voted across the board in German elections. Mostly middle of the road with an occasional foray into supporting a conservative candidate.”
“The perfect person to co-opt for this kind of thing. Run-of-the-mill, ordinary. The kind who floats under the radar. Any reason she’d need money?” Owen asked.
“Beyond her taste for the finer things, there’s nothing.” Hannah shook her head. “She had a brief flirtation in her university days with a group with neo-Nazi leanings, but it’s also possible she was just friendly with members. There’s no record of her attending rallies or meetings. And the group broke up over eleven years ago. So it’s not really anything that rings alarm bells.”
“Well, see if you can track down someone who was a member,” Avery said. “Then find out what they remember about Ms. Waller.”
“Already on it.” Hannah smiled, the light making her glasses sparkle.
“And let’s also keep digging into Delano and Petrov. Maybe we’ll stumble on something from that end of things. These people, whoever they are, have got to have made a mistake. We just have to find it and then turn it to our advantage.”
“I assume we found nothing on my father’s or Smitty’s computer?”
“Nothing,” Harrison said without looking up from his monitor. “It was a professional job in both cases, the computers wiped clean.”
“What about chatter?” Nash asked. “Anyone claiming responsibility for any of this?”
“Not anything viable,” Hannah said. “And I’ve been monitoring 24/7. I’ve even started to pull together a list of suspicious activities. Anything that might hint at obtaining the various parts needed to make the nuclear device in Mr. Smithwick’s files. Particularly the sale or theft of weapons-grade plutonium. Getting information from the West is fairly straightforward. But it gets trickier when it comes to Russia and China. They’re not as forthcoming. But sooner or later I’ll get what I need.”
“Let’s hope it’s sooner,” Nash said. “If Tyler’s right and they’re nearing endgame, then that means the nuke will be ready for detonation. They’ve got to know that the more we dig, the narrower their window of opportunity becomes.”
“Which means the clock’s ticking,” Tyler sighed.
“Well, one thing we know for sure,” Avery said, his expression grim. “The only way they could possibly have set up an ambush at Ms. Waller’s is if someone tipped them off that we were coming.”
“So we’ve been right all along about someone working from the inside,” Tyler said.
“Someone from A-Tac.” Owen’s words hung in the room, as everyone considered the full ramifications. They’d been talking about it for weeks. Had suspected it for even longer. But no one had really wanted to believe it. Now the idea was hard to deny.
“What about Logan Palmer?” Nash asked, his eyes probing as he turned to Owen. “Maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong place for the mole.”
“I understand that you have issues with Logan,” Owen said. “But he’s not a traitor. And besides, he didn’t know we were going. Unless you told him, Harrison.”
“Not me,” Harrison said, holding up his hands. “I barely know the guy. And to be honest, I’ve heard some things that would make me think twice about spilling my guts to him. But despite all that, I have to agree with Owen, he’s not the turncoat type.”
“Logan Palmer is all about Logan Palmer,” Avery said. “And he’d sell out his mother if he thought it would get him ahead in the game. But the game, for him anyway, is rising to the top of U.S. Intelligence. Which, I agree, precludes turning traitor. Anyway, if he didn’t know you were going to New York, he can’t be the leak. And none of you told anyone else, right?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“Then I’m afraid it’s got to be one of us.”
“And for better or worse,” Harrison said, looking up from the computer, his expression a curious mixture of triumph and regret, “I think I know who it is.”
CHAPTER 20
All right,” Avery said, perching on the side of the table next to Harrison and his computer, “I’ve cleared the room. What have you got?”
Harrison had wanted only Owen present when he shared his discovery, but Avery had insisted on his and Tyler’s staying as well, complying at least partially by ordering Nash and Hannah from the room. He’d made it clear, however, that once he had Harrison’s information, he’d be the one to decide which team members would be privy to the news.
Owen was beyond worrying about who knew what. The A-Tac team was tight, and from what he’d observed, it wouldn’t be long before this latest piece of the puzzle was common knowledge.
“So basically the whole thing started when I was helping Hannah with a glitch in her laptop,” Harrison began. “Programs were bugging out. So I started digging around in her operating system, and I stumbled across something I wasn’t meant to find. A key logger.”
“I’m not sure what that is,” Tyler said, shaking her head as she and Avery exchanged glances. Whatever Harrison had found, it wasn’t going to be easy for either of them—Tyler because she was intensely loyal and Avery because he’d hate the idea that someone had played him. Someone they all believed they could trust.
“It’s a way to follow the keystrokes on a remote computer. It allows access to information, passwords, documents, everything. Anything the person enters into the computer, there’s a record of it. With a key logger, you can control email, add files, manipulate data—you name it.”
“All without the other person being any the wiser,” Owen said.
“Exactly. And this one was pretty sophisticated. Kernel-based. Part of the rootkit. I’d have never found it if she hadn’t had the problem.”
“Did the key logger cause the glitch?” Avery asked.
“No. It was totally unrelated. A lucky break, really.”
“So are you saying that Hannah is the mole?” Tyler asked, her expression mutinous.
“Absolutely not,” Harrison said, shaking his head vehemently. “In fact she has no idea. I wanted to be doubly certain before I went public. So first I searched her terminal here. And sure enough, I found the same program. But I figured I still needed more information, so I just left the key loggers in place and fixed the problem with her laptop.”
“So you haven’t told her,” Avery said.
&
nbsp; “No. It just seemed wiser to wait until I knew for certain what we were dealing with. Plus, I didn’t want to alert whoever was behind the key logger that I was on to them.”
“How long have you known?”
“Just since this morning. I’d have come clean sooner if I thought it would help. But I figured it was better for me to make sure it was tied in to all of this. There are valid reasons for using key loggers. So first off I had to eliminate those.”
“And I assume that’s what you were doing while we were discussing the attack at Ms. Waller’s,” Avery prompted, his expression thoughtful.
“Yes,” Harrison nodded, looking chagrined. “I’m sorry to have been so distracted. But I had to concentrate and be careful what I was doing so that there was no way I’d be noticed.”
“I’m not following,” Tyler said.
“I was hacking into a computer. The person I thought might be responsible for installing the key logger. When Hannah told me Jason had set up her system—both her laptop and her terminal here—I figured he was the most likely candidate to have inserted the program.”
“He had the knowledge and the means,” Owen agreed.
“And unfortunately for him, the proof was on his computer. I found hard evidence that he’d been accessing the information from the key logger. Apparently for quite some time.”
“That would explain how the arms dealer in Colombia knew our every move. If Jason was tracking Hannah’s work, he’d have known everything we were going to do. And there’d have been plenty of time to funnel that information to Ortiz.”
“I don’t know.” Tyler shook her head. “I find it hard to believe that the mole is Jason. He’s been with the team almost as long as I have. And we’ve been through some pretty serious shit together. The idea that he’d turn on us is really hard to swallow.”
