“They already have hurt me!” The words came out before I could stop them, and I saw the anguish on his face. I tucked my head, giving myself a moment to get it together before looking back up at him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The silence buzzed the air.
“This wasn’t how your life was supposed to play out.” His voice was barely above a whisper, and it still seemed too loud. “You didn’t choose any of this.”
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” I said. “This is the life I have. I don’t know if I’ll be doing this forever, but I do know that no part of my future involves running. So for now, I’m a spy with a mission. Once that mission is complete, I’ll figure out what comes next.”
“Jocelyn—”
“No.” He was gearing up for an argument. I could see it all over his face. “I don’t know how to do this,” I said. It was enough to keep him quiet. “I don’t know how to be a daughter after nearly a decade of thinking I was an orphan. But I do know that this is my life. You don’t get to show up and change it.”
He leaned back in his chair, taking me in, his expression completely blank. He opened his mouth to talk, but I cut him off. “I need to go,” I said. “I have work to do.”
He blinked, looking somewhat stunned. “Right.” His voice was hoarse. “Of course.”
I didn’t waste any time finding the door.
• • •
The IDA had a handful of mission prep rooms that were set aside for long-term planning. Simmonds had assigned one to me and Travis so we could keep track of everything related to KATO, their safe houses, and Eliza. Travis and I were focusing on locating the safe houses and trying to detect any movement from the agency.
Since Travis had a special interest in Eliza, Simmonds had tasked him with looking specifically for Eliza’s safe house, which we knew to be in the vicinity of St. Petersburg, Russia. Locating her was the unquestioned priority, but the ultimate goal was still to find all of the safe houses. Travis and I worked together on that. In addition, I had also been asked to focus on KATO’s broader goals. We had invaded their headquarters, which meant they were going to be looking to relocate and rebuild. Simmonds needed someone who could pick up on their more subtle moves. That was where I came in.
I headed straight to the prep room after my talk with my father and wasn’t at all surprised to find Travis already there. The two of us had been spending every minute we could get in that room. Travis was finally closing in on the Russian location, having narrowed it down to four places. And while we didn’t have a lock on any other houses, we had twenty potential host countries we were monitoring.
“Hey,” Travis said, looking up from his computer. “How did things go with your father?”
“Great.” I spit the word out as I flopped down into the chair next to him. “He just cornered me and tried to get me to leave. He has some plan to make us disappear.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
He wheeled even closer—closer than my father had been to me, though with Travis I didn’t mind. “So how’d he take it when you told him no?”
The fact that he never questioned what my answer would be made me smile. “Not well.”
“Given your history, he probably thought he was doing you a favor.” Travis nudged my knee with his. “It’ll take some time, but he’ll get used to you.”
I exhaled heavily. “Can we just focus on KATO?” I asked, powering up the computer in front of me.
Travis rolled away, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off me. “There’s nothing else you want to tell me?” he asked. “You didn’t do anything—unusual in one of your classes?”
My head snapped back in his direction. “How did you find out?”
“Sam stopped by,” Travis said with a laugh. “He was very excited.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know he was.”
“So.” He turned to face me again. “What did Sidney do?”
I shook my head. “It’s not your problem.” His eyes narrowed. “Really,” I said. “I handled it, and we have enough to worry about.” I tapped his monitor. “What have you found?”
Travis looked a little disgruntled that I wasn’t sharing, but his mood lifted when he turned to his screen. “We can officially discount the northern location. We got some field photos from another IDA assignment and it looks like the people that live there are European.” He zoomed in on the map that was on his screen. There were three red dots at various points across the country. These locations were all purchased around the time we believe KATO would have been looking to buy, and we had difficulty locating the purchase information. It was likely that KATO bought one of them.
“Does that mean there are teams on the ground?” I asked. Simmonds had said that once Travis narrowed the possibilities down to three, he would authorize a reconnaissance team to investigate.
“I met with Simmonds a couple hours ago. He said there’s already a team in the area, so he retasked them to Russia,” he said. “I’m going to keep working our intel just in case none of these are what we’re looking for.”
“It has to be one of them,” I said. Travis had been too careful to get this wrong. “And Sam told me that the files are almost decrypted.”
“He mentioned that when he dropped by,” Travis said. “But until we have something definitive to work with, we need to stay focused.”
This had been our approach since we’d learned about the files Sam pulled. We were hoping for something useful, but there was no guarantee it would get us closer to Eliza or KATO. For now, we had a recon team on the ground, and the tech team was doing their best to pick up on KATO’s movement via satellite. There were also observational intelligence agents around the world with their ears to the ground, reporting daily on global developments, so we had plenty of intel to sift through while we waited for word.
The prep room’s walls were mounted with several monitors, but also a corkboard. We had filled it with satellite photos of locations we were investigating, along with all of the other data we had collected.
However, when it came to KATO’s activity, I wasn’t having too much luck, which was extremely concerning. KATO seemed to quiet down only when they were working on something big, like they had been in the year leading up to the attempted missile launch. But they shouldn’t be too quiet now. We had completely blindsided them, invaded their headquarters, and even gone as far as to set off a small explosion. It should have sent them scrambling to rebuild. No matter how hard they worked to stay unnoticed, we should still be able to detect some kind of activity. But we hadn’t.
After another hour of poring over the IDA’s satellite images and field reports that got me nowhere, I found myself staring at the corkboard. We had laid out everything we knew about KATO, the safe houses, and Eliza in chronological order. Behind me, I noticed Travis had stopped working and was watching me instead. “What’s up?” he asked.
“We’re missing something.” I raised my chin, studying the board from the top. “They have an entire network to rebuild thanks to us and we’re not seeing any sign of it. The only reason they would be keeping this low of a profile is if they already have a major operation in motion that they need to protect.” I traced the timeline, hoping to find something we might have overlooked.
Eliza was taken over a year and a half ago. I knew she was briefly brought to headquarters before being relocated to the safe house in India. Then a little over two months ago, she was moved to the Russian house. I had gotten the specifics of her location when I was in KATO, but we had actually received a report months before that. On my first mission with the IDA, Travis had been sent to retrieve KATO intel from the Chinese. When he didn’t make it back, I’d gone in after him. We returned with several KATO files. One of them was a coded message about Eliza’s relocation, though we didn’t realize that at the time. A transla
tion of the message was pinned to our board. My fingers froze on it.
The snake is hidden in the frozen forest. The job is nearly complete.
“What is it?” Travis asked, coming to stand next to me.
“I think we’re looking at this all wrong,” I said. Pieces were starting to fit together in my mind. “We’ve been using my experience to guide us with Eliza, but what if she’s different? What if she isn’t just leverage that KATO turned into a spy?”
Travis’s forehead furrowed. “You think they’re using her for more than that?”
“I’m not sure of anything,” I said with a halfhearted shrug. “But I think we’ve overlooked this.” I ran my finger under the message. “We assumed KATO was keeping track of her because of Dr. Foster’s involvement. But this is KATO, and we know from my history that they had no intentions of ever releasing her. She became a future KATO agent the second she was taken, just like every other girl in their program. But if that’s the case, then why would KATO send a coded message about her relocation?”
The understanding spread across his face. “Once they didn’t need her as leverage, she would have become a normal agent-in-training. So they would have just moved her and been done with it. There shouldn’t have been a reason to follow it up with a memo—especially a coded one.”
“Exactly,” I said nodding. “And think about where we got this intel from. Everything else on that flashdrive is tied in to KATO’s bigger goals to gain more power and global control. Why would this be any different?”
Travis crossed his arms, and I could almost see his mind spinning. “What could the daughter of an English scientist, who was taken purely as leverage, have to offer them?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. I glanced cautiously at Travis. “It was bad enough when she was collateral damage. If she’s special to them—”
A knock on the door cut me off, but it wasn’t a sentence I needed to finish.
“We need to get those files decrypted,” Travis said as I opened the door.
Sam stood on the other side, smiling. “Then you must be really glad to see me.”
Chapter Three
PIECES
Sam went immediately to Travis’s computer and started typing. “I asked Simmonds if I could brief you.” He clicked a file up onto the screen. It was Eliza’s. “Hers is the only one we have right now. For some reason, her encryption was more complex, so we had twice as many people working on it. The others should be finished within the next couple days.” Given what Travis and I had just worked out, I didn’t like knowing Eliza’s file was more secure.
“It’s okay, hers is the most important.” I may have gotten a look at the file in KATO, but I didn’t have time to do more than locate the information I needed. Her picture was on the upper left-hand corner. Next to it was a grid of some facts, followed by blocks of notes below. It ended with a single line, and then the note about her relocation, which was what I saw when I pulled up her file inside KATO headquarters. The text was still in Korean, but aside from the last line, it didn’t make any sense.
“It looks like they’ve only been decrypted,” I said, finally tearing my eyes away. “Not decoded.”
“Right,” Sam said. “We got through the computer encryption, but the translation and coding team said none of the ciphers you gave them worked. They’re still working on cracking it, but they thought you might be able to do it faster.”
I’d need to get a good look at the language. Hopefully my experience with KATO would allow me to pick up on something that would help.
Travis hadn’t said a word. He stood rigid as he studied the screen, and I knew he had to be thinking of every horrible thing KATO could be doing to her. A part of me wished I’d told him less about my experience so he wouldn’t have as much to work with.
I came to stand next to him, if only because it seemed like he needed me to. “We need to know what this means,” he said.
“I’ll get started on figuring that out,” I said. “But no matter what it says, we need a confirmed location before we can act.”
“Right.” Travis inhaled sharply and pulled his eyes away from the screens, snapping back to reality. “You work on the code, I’ll work on the safe house.”
I nodded to him.
“I’m going to get back to the other files,” Sam said. “We should have more for you soon.” He headed out, leaving Travis and me to get to work.
• • •
The decryption team was right; the wording was bizarre even by KATO’s standards. Traditionally, their codes look like random characters thrown next to each other, but in this case, parts of the sentences and phrases seemed to make sense. It looked like the document was only partially coded, which was probably because it was an in-house document. It shouldn’t be too hard to work out, but I was sure the IDA’s coding team hadn’t come across this before. I had cracked one of KATO’s upper-level ciphers in the past, and this didn’t seem as complex.
I wrote the phrase out on a piece of paper so I could work with it more easily. I tried rearranging the words, first of the whole sentence, then only the words that didn’t make sense. I started with the more obscure codes—the ones most KATO agents at my level weren’t supposed to know—but after I played with that for an hour, I decided to give the more traditional ones a try. I was surprised when the first decoded word made sense in the sentence. A spark of excitement shot through me. I tried the next word.
It didn’t fit.
I rubbed my forehead in frustration. I still felt close, but I was missing something.
Then it hit me. I hurried to put my theory to the test and before long I had cracked the other word. “I figured it out,” I said to Travis. He wheeled over to my area, which was scattered with paper. “The last time I had to crack one of KATO’s higher-level ciphers I had to move the entire message through a series of cipher keys. For this one, each coded word has a different key.”
“So you have to try a different cipher for each word until the sentence is decoded,” Travis said.
“If you’re someone who is supposed to read the message, you’ll know what ciphers to use—it would take less than a minute,” I said. “But for us, I think we’ll know we’ve cracked it once the phrase makes some kind of sense.”
I had three more words to work out. Travis watched me scribble. It should have been annoying but it wasn’t.
When I finally got the last word cracked, I met Travis’s eyes. “This is it,” I said. “This is what we needed.” I looked at what I had just decoded and dread spread through me.
“What does it say?”
I glanced at him uneasily. “A rough translation is that she is the future of KATO training and control.”
Travis’s face contorted in horror. “How could they control their agents any more than they already do?”
“I don’t know.” I let my mind slip briefly to my time at KATO and my stomach turned at the thought that it could be worse. “But if she’s the key, we need to get her away from them. Now.”
“We’re still waiting on a location,” Travis said.
I bit my lip to keep from showing too much frustration. So we waited—there wasn’t anything else we could do. It was just over half an hour later that Travis’s pager went off.
He read the message and looked to me with a fire in his eyes. “We’ve got it,” he said. “Let’s go to Simmonds.”
• • •
Travis leaned against the wall in the hallway, waiting to get into Simmonds’s office, while I paced. His arms were crossed and his jaw clenched. I knew he’d been waiting for this moment for over a year and a half.
Travis and I both straightened abruptly when the door opened, and Simmonds’s eyebrows rose slightly when we entered. “What can I do for you two?”
“We have something we need to move on,” I said. I told Simmonds I’d
cracked the code on Eliza’s file and gave him the key so the coding team could decipher the rest of them for us. Then Travis and I launched into everything we’d uncovered.
“You’re saying Eliza Foster is essential to KATO’s training future, and we have a lock on her location?” Simmonds said when we had finished.
“Yes, sir,” Travis said, rocking forward on the balls of his feet. “We can get her.” He was fierce and determined, and clearly ready to walk out of that office and on to a plane.
Simmonds hesitated, and judging by the look on his face, we weren’t going to like what we were about to hear. “I’ll authorize it.” A surge of adrenaline rushed through me.
“Thank you, sir.” Travis was already headed toward the door.
“We’re not finished yet,” Simmonds said. Travis pivoted back and glanced at me. When I shrugged, he looked to Simmonds. “Elton, you will not be going on this assignment.”
And there it was.
Travis stared ahead at Simmonds, the wave of emotion washing over his face. “What?”
Travis had been suspended for accidentally spilling details about my relationship with KATO to other IDA agents. I hadn’t thought that would apply here. And judging from Travis’s reaction, he hadn’t either.
“Sir.” I took a step forward. “Travis has been working on this. He knows the situation better than anyone.”
Simmonds flicked his eyes to me. “This is an operational matter that does not concern you.” His icy tone was enough for me to keep my mouth shut. Simmonds turned back to Travis. “I allowed you to go to North Korea because you were essential in that operation,” he said. “But you’re still on field suspension. While you would be helpful on this assignment, other agents can do the job.”
“I’ve been working on this for over a year,” Travis said. His voice was quiet. He was beyond anger—he was devastated.
“Your goal was to get her back. That will still happen.”
“Sir, please—”
Enemy Exposure Page 3
