by Shamim Sarif
A couple more minutes go by, during which Li switches back to English and throws out three billion dollars as the amount she has ready to place with the bank of her choice. By now, her host is practically salivating. But Li shifts.
“I’d like to use the bathroom,” she says.
The young assistant hurries back to escort her to the guest restroom, which is right off the client lounge that we are in. But Li does not move. She nods to me, and I whip out my tape measure and follow the girl to the room. It’s a marble-clad nook with gold taps and thick cotton hand towels. Thanks to Amber’s floor plan, I already know the dimensions, but I diligently throw a beam of light onto each wall and read the length and width of the room. Shaking my head, I sigh deeply.
“Mrs. Chen is highly claustrophobic,” I say, and my voice just about carries to the manager in the lounge. “This is below the minimum space she requires, and there are also no windows. Is there a staff bathroom we could try?”
“Yes, but the stalls are smaller,” the assistant squeaks, stressed out of her mind by my insane explanation. It’s been my experience since starting work with Athena that people rarely argue if you say something that they don’t quite understand.
“Are there gaps in the base of each cubicle?” I ask.
She nods. I drop my voice.
“Then it should be fine. It is the feeling of being sealed in that is the problem,” I say enigmatically.
“Of course,” she whispers. “I completely understand.”
Honestly, it seems like it doesn’t matter what bizarre needs you have if you’re wealthy enough; everyone will move heaven and earth to accommodate you. The manager is up now, nodding and bowing a lot. The assistant runs around escorting the three of us out of the lounge and into the main bathrooms, which are still really nice but just a series of stalls in a long room with frosted windows at the end. Reassuringly, they are laid out exactly as Amber’s building plans showed. To keep up appearances, I leave Li at the door while I measure the length and pronounce it acceptable. At the same time, I scan around the room. It would be illegal to have any surveillance within toilet stalls and, luckily, there’s no camera outside the stalls either.
Relieved that we’re happy at last, the assistant leaves us to it. Caitlin stands with her back pressed against the inside of the main bathroom door to prevent anyone else coming in. Together, Li and I head into the stall right at the end of the room. Standing on the toilet seat, I whip out a plastic screwdriver and attack the screws on a plate in the ceiling that leads into a vent. When the plate falls away, I hand it down to Li and she cups her hands together to boost me up.
“Hurry up,” she says. I glance down at her and nod. I mean, is she worried I might like it so much up there that I’ll just relax and hang out?
I crawl into the vent, which is made of shiny aluminum and is fabulously clean. The bank’s air system is so new that it has the latest HEPA-type filters to reduce dust and dirt. Combined with the fact that the whole building’s air is filtered, it means very little accumulation of gunk in the cooling system. I scoot my way through, using the light on my phone, take a small bend to the left, and unscrew the next plate I come to. This one is only partly over the server room but there’s a one-inch gap—enough that I can see down into the space, filled with black computing boxes, flashing lights, and the noise of billions of bytes of data being processed. From inside my lapel, I pull out one of the drones and hold it above the gap. All around the server room, wireless signals are cut. But the comms in my ear still works.
“Ready?” I breathe.
Caitlin’s voice comes back in my head. “Yep. Count me down.”
“Ninety-nine, ninety-eight . . .”
“Cut it out, smart-ass.”
I smile. “Okay. Three . . . two . . . one . . . go.”
I drop the drone in through the hatch and it falls then veers upward—just a tiny fly trapped in the room. Caitlin has control of it now, through the app on her phone, and she should be seeing a video stream through the minuscule camera on the drone’s back. Carefully, I balance the second drone on the edge of the gap and leave it sitting there, in case we need it as a backup. Then I turn and find my way back to the bathroom ceiling and lower myself down into the stall. Li pauses the stopwatch on her digital watch.
“Ninety-three seconds,” she says. It feels like a compliment; the closest she will get to saying “well done.” I screw the ceiling plate back in, then slip on the jacket that Li is holding ready for me. Outside the stalls, Caitlin is intent on guiding the drone toward the exact port that Amber needs. I brush down my suit, wash my hands, then go to look over Caitlin’s shoulder at her phone screen.
“We need to hurry. Three minutes is the average time a woman takes in a restroom,” Li murmurs.
Feeling the pressure, Caitlin’s holding her breath, trying to dock the drone into a port deep behind a massive wall of servers. I’m itching to take over, but she’s had a minute to get a feel for the sensitivities of it, so she’ll do all right . . . I hope.
“It’s been three and a half minutes . . . ,” whispers Li.
Caitlin doesn’t acknowledge. It’s just so hard to get a lock on the right spot. She tries and the drone hits the wrong point and drops like a stone.
“Shit,” she breathes. Pressing two keys together, like you would in a video game, Caitlin gets it back off the ground and this time, she nails it. She nods to Li and we all wait there like statues for a few more, agonizingly slow seconds, waiting for confirmation—
“You did it. Very impressive.” Amber’s voice comes into our earpieces.
We nod to Li that all is well, and we’re out of there, following the echoing rap of Li’s heels down the marble corridor. The assistant comes rushing out to escort us back to the lounge. After a few more minutes of Li’s interrogation of the manager about how the bank can help her, the meeting is wrapped up. Li shakes hands and, lying smoothly, promises to be in touch.
14
WHILE WE WAIT FOR AMBER to dig into the bank’s servers, we arrive back at the locker room at Athena, where I’m totally thrilled to get rid of the hairpiece and colored contacts and change back into my regular clothes. I’ve nearly finished dressing when my Indian phone pings. It’s a text from Riya.
Info on ADS
As usual, her message hardly overflows with information, but it still makes me smile to hear from her. I doubt it would matter much if she knew, but I haven’t bothered to tell her that I’m back in London for such a tiny spell of time. Instead, Amber’s set me up a network just for this phone that makes it appear that I’m still in Mumbai. I glance over to the doors that lead to the showers and steam room. The sound of running water tells me that Caitlin is still washing up. On an impulse, I give Riya a quick call back. She picks up on the first ring.
“Jessie!”
It suddenly dawns on me how great my name sounds in an Indian accent.
“Hey, Riya. I thought I’d call you to catch up, since your texts are so light on detail.”
“I think of them as short and meaningful,” she replies.
“Try ‘cryptic,’” I say.
She laughs, a sound like wind chimes, a sound that makes me smile. And now Caitlin comes out of the shower, drying off and casting me a quick, curious glance. Immediately, I wipe the smile off my face and, diplomatically, Caitlin turns away and starts getting dressed.
“So, what do you have on the ADS?” I ask briskly.
“We tracked it to a military base north of the city,” Riya says. “It was stolen about a month ago.”
“And never found?”
“Correct. It is state of the art, and very mobile. And someone signed it out of the weapons inventory,” Riya explains. “That’s the kind of thing that needs to be checked by a senior officer. Only four people on the base have the authority to check off the removal of weapons.”
“Anyone interesting?”
“Potentially. The officer who okayed that particular movement order—a
nd allowed the ADS to be taken off the base—is a protégé of Jingo Jain’s. Jingo was the commander of that base at one time and this guy, Vikram Singh, was his second in command.”
“Could all that just be coincidence?” I frown.
“Possibly,” Riya replies. “But we’ve brought Singh in for questioning, in case.”
“Well, great work,” I say.
“Thanks.”
There’s a pause that’s just long enough to be awkward. I break the silence.
“And thanks for letting me know. I really appreciate it.”
“It’s been nice to work with you, Jessie.” She hesitates. “Maybe we can meet up in the next few days? With or without work . . .”
I feel my cheeks flush and I clear my throat, flustered. More than anything, I’m aware of Caitlin looking my way, listening while pretending not to.
“I’d like that,” I murmur.
We say goodbye to each other and hang up. I move about purposefully, stashing things away in my locker, managing to avoid Caitlin’s gaze, even as I bring her up to speed on the theft of the ADS that Riya just reported. Caitlin absorbs the updates and sits down to tie the laces on her running shoes. I take a seat next to her and pull on my boots.
“You’re liking working with this policewoman?” she asks, a little too casually.
I shrug, brushing off her look like it’s lint on my clothes.
“She’s a detective, actually,” I say. “And yeah, she’s cool.”
Caitlin looks like she’s about to say something, but she bites it off and turns away from me.
“What?” I ask.
Her eyes come back to mine, thoughtful, serious. “Just—be careful, Jessie. It might not be good to develop feelings for someone related to the mission, again.”
I feel my face burn. She’s right, of course, but her perceptiveness embarrasses me.
“I know,” I say at last. “But it’s not like we meet a ton of people outside our day jobs. . . .”
She gives a mirthless laugh of agreement. “Tell me about it,” she says, with a sigh.
We let a short pause drag into a silence that feels like it should be filled but neither of us seems ready to fill it. We are sitting side by side, both of us staring at the floor, which should help—not having to look at each other directly.
“Do you get lonely sometimes?” I venture at last.
“Hell, yeah,” Caitlin says. “Just . . . someone to have dinner with. Someone to be with at night.”
She shifts slightly, her eyes downcast, shoulders slumped. As an only child, I’ve never known how it feels to have a sibling, but even though Caitlin and I have known each other only a couple of years, it’s easy to imagine that she’s my older sister. I feel bad for her.
“You’ll meet the right guy, Caitlin. You’re so great. Just, like, the nicest person. Pretty smart too,” I tease as she rolls her eyes at me. “I mean, you are getting on a bit . . .”
“I’m twenty-seven,” she says defensively. “Just because you’re an immature sub-millennial . . .”
“Hey! I’m trying to be understanding. Doesn’t come naturally, you know.”
“Trust me, I know.”
At least I’ve made her smile, though her eyes are still sorrowful when they meet mine. But then an idea pops into my mind.
“What about a dating app?” I suggest.
Caitlin shrugs. “I guess. Have you ever tried one?”
“No, but it’s still a great idea.”
“If you do say so yourself,” she says dryly.
“Why don’t you just pick one and sign up!” I go on, trying to encourage her. “I’ll tell you what. When you like someone’s profile, I can hack in and Amber could run research just to make sure he’s not actually a serial killer or running a porn empire. . . .”
Caitlin stares at me.
“That’s what friends are for, right?” I ask, trying to be supportive.
Caitlin groans and puts her head in her hands for a long moment.
“We’re just not normal people anymore, are we?” Her voice is small and muffled through her fingers.
Well, I can’t really argue with that, so I stay quiet for a bit, thinking, till something comes to me.
“Listen,” I say. “I know we’re not ‘normal.’ And sure, every day we put ourselves out there so far that we could lose everything. But at least I know why I get up in the morning. Don’t you?”
Caitlin sighs, turning to give me a hug. I can’t tell whether I’ve made her feel worse or better, so I just hang on until she’s ready to let go.
Out in the tech cave, Amber’s record player is still turning but it only lets out a soft squeak because the album on it has finished playing. Amber hasn’t even noticed, because she can barely drag herself away from the treasure trove of disturbing data that she’s managing to excavate from the Cypriot Private Bank servers. But she has to give me some attention, if only to get me organized for my next mini-mission. Once that’s done, she races back to her desk, and only when I hit the button for the elevator does she bother throwing me a quick smile and a cheery “good luck.”
My first stop is the parking garage under Chen Technologies. I emerge at the private floor. Li’s car is still there, as is Amber’s scooter, a dinky blue Vespa with a shopping basket on the front. But there’s also a van emblazoned with the logo of one of the main domestic power supply companies in London. The keys are in the ignition. It looks realistically unwashed. How it got here and who brought it, I don’t know. I am sure it must be someone else who forms part of Li’s network, but she chooses to keep us all separate and unaware of each other, which makes sense when I think about it, given the risks of getting caught. Just from the sheer volume of work that Amber gets through, I know she must have a whole team of helpers, but she is always our only contact on the tech side of things.
Getting into the van, I take a moment to get familiar with the stick-shift gearbox and the general layout of the dashboard. Then I tap an address into my GPS and rev my way up the twisting exit ramps of the garage and out into the London traffic that slowly trails its way down the Embankment.
Jake Graham’s home is located in Wimbledon, a leafy area of London best known for its Grand Slam tennis tournament. It takes me about fifty minutes to get there, weaving through the traffic over the Albert Bridge and through Battersea. Jake lives with his wife and two teenage boys in a small, detached house on a quiet backstreet. I pull up across the road and scan over the building. Both he and his wife are at work, and the kids are not due back from school till after four. But there is a cleaning lady who apparently comes over twice a week.
I jump down from the van. I’m wearing dark green overalls and a baseball cap supplied to me by Amber. Both are embroidered with the energy company’s logo. In my right hand, I hold an iPad in a thick cover. In my left, I hold my company ID, complete with a phone number that a suspicious homeowner can call, so that Amber can use her cut-glass accent to assure them that I really am an employee of South West Power.
The outside of Jake’s house is free of CCTV cameras, with only an alarm box on the brickwork outside the upstairs window. I keep my head down, anyway, so that my cap covers my face in case of any bored or nosy neighbors. I ring the front doorbell twice, and it repeats a tinkling chime that feels completely suburban. I watch through the frosted glass panel in the door as a shape approaches from inside the house.
A small, muscular woman opens up. Pale eyes, pale hair pulled back from her face. She’s in jeans and a sweater, covered with an apron. She’s also holding a microfiber duster cloth and a can of furniture polish, so it doesn’t tax my powers of deduction to feel sure that this is, indeed, the cleaner.
“I’ve come to read the meters,” I say. “Gas and electric.”
I hold out my ID and her eyes flicker onto it briefly, but she’s not terribly bothered and just holds open the door. I suppose that this is one of the safer parts of town and I am a nonthreatening young woman. The cleaner bustle
s across the hall and throws open the door to a small utility room. Inside, a tumble dryer spins a load of laundry in relentless circles and there, on the wall opposite, are the power meters. She doesn’t stop to watch me do my fake read of the numbers, but carries on back to the kitchen, where I hear the tap go on. The laundry room has a small window but it’s locked. Casting about, I find the key neatly placed on a shelf beneath it. Quickly, I unlock it and put the key back. Just in case I don’t get what I need right now, I’ll be able to come back in later.
I pad out of the room and call out. “Sorry, would you mind if I use your loo?”
The cleaner comes out of the kitchen, but leaves the tap running in there. A yellow washing-up glove on her hand drips water.
“Upstairs, first door on the right.” She seems a tad annoyed. Maybe she just cleaned it.
“Thanks. Won’t be long.”
I hurry up the stairs and open and close the bathroom door—but I’m still outside it. I take a hasty glance around. There are obvious bedrooms running off the long hallway, but right at the end is a closed door that feels right. I stride down toward it, my steps mercifully silent on the thick carpet. The door’s unlocked, thank goodness, and as soon as I step inside the room, I can see I’ve hit pay dirt. Jake’s office is compact and filled with books and magazines, not to mention towering stacks of old newspapers piled on the edge of a wide, wooden desk. Digital subscriptions don’t appear to be his thing. To my left, a small window looks onto the road. To my right, a university degree hangs on the wall, along with a couple of framed newspaper clippings and pictures of Jake meeting political bigwigs. But my attention is drawn wholly to the long wall behind his desk.
It’s a chart, but on steroids. The first thing I notice is a head shot of Kit, positioned top and middle. A clipping about Peggy, with a quote of hers highlighted in pink marker, is next to it. From there, hand-drawn arrows radiate out—to other story clippings and a picture of Ahmed, the warlord I killed in Cameroon.
Still more arrows lead to city names written out in capital letters—BELGRADE, CAMEROON, LONDON, TOKYO, MOSCOW, BEIRUT. Some I know all too well, some I’ve never even been to. There’s a bunch of stuff that means nothing to me and a lot that does, but I can’t process it because I’m under extreme time pressure here. Lifting my phone, I snap photos of the chart from all angles. There’ll be time to analyze it later. Turning my attention to the desk, I stick a tiny microphone under the foot, just in case Jake takes calls in here.
