The Kill Order

by Robin Burcell

  “You’re pretty picky for someone who’s desperate,” Donovan said. “Why can’t we just get Pete from IT? He could tap into the computer system for us, and handle everything.”

  “We contact him, we might as well hang out a red flag and alert them of our impending arrival. And he’s a civilian.”

  “There’s Izzy,” Sydney said.

  Izzy was a college-age kid with a knack for hacking beyond anything Griffin had ever seen. He’d assisted on the last case ATLAS had worked and was now running his own computer security company, and, thanks to a few recommendations from Tex and Carillo, was doing a fairly brisk business. “Another civilian. Too dangerous.”

  “Too bad,” Donovan said. “He’d be a good choice. They’re watching our IT guys. He’s not even on their radar.”

  “Do we have a choice?” Sydney asked. “Who else can do what he does?”

  “Exactly,” Donovan said. “We need him.”

  They were right. They didn’t have a choice, and Izzy at least was familiar with how they worked. “Call,” Griffin said.

  Twenty minutes later, Izzy met them at the grill. Griffin told him their mission.

  “That’s it?” Izzy asked. “I thought this was going to be something complicated. What is it you need? Video feed? Something that makes them think no one’s in there when someone is?”

  “You sure you can do all that?”

  Izzy made a scoffing noise. “We’re wasting valuable time, because I’ve got some firewalls to get through, and last time I was at your office, helping secure it from guys like me, we were installing some pretty mean security systems.”

  “I have remote access to my own computer, if that helps,” Griffin said.

  “See? I told your boss not to allow that. No one listens to me!”

  “How fast can you get us in?”

  “Anytime you’re ready.”

  27

  Marco Polo Airport

  Venice, Italy

  Lisette still felt nauseous over the news about Piper after Giustino had called them during their stopover and significant delay at Heathrow. And now, as they stood in line at customs, she began what-if scenarios. What if she had insisted on giving Piper money and noticed her wallet missing sooner? What if she’d asked the alleged U.S. marshals who had taken Piper for alternate forms of ID? What if their plane hadn’t been delayed due to weather? What if she’d been able to answer Piper’s voice mail? Piper had called Lisette’s cell phone and left a message while they were on the flight over, just to say she was safe and she was sorry. And even though Lisette knew there was no way she could have done anything, even if she had been there to answer it, the guilt refused to go away.

  Lisette leaned her head on Marc’s shoulder. “She was supposed to be safe . . . If our flight had not been delayed, maybe—”

  “It does us no good to second-guess.”

  “I know. It just helps to talk.”

  When they finally cleared customs, she was grateful to see Father Dumas waiting for them, and she searched his face, hoping for good news. “Have they found her?”

  “Not yet,” he said. He offered to take her bag for her, but she declined, thinking that it somehow seemed sacrilegious to have a priest playing bellhop, even if he was a spy.

  “And Giustino?” Marc asked Dumas. “What has he said?”

  “That the more time that passes without a lead . . .” He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I fear this is my fault. We have used this convent before. It should have been safe.”

  Marc reached out, put his hand on Dumas’s shoulder as they walked toward the exit. “You are not to blame. None of us could have foreseen that she would fly to this country, or end up in Venice of all places.”

  “Agreed. But it concerns me how easily they found her. How quickly. As if they already had men in the country in anticipation.”

  “They probably did,” Marc replied. “It is possible they have been monitoring our electronic traffic. They may have discovered our inquiry at Homeland Security under her name, then discovered Lisette’s itinerary and, knowing Lisette was still in the U.S., made the proper deduction.”

  “Or,” Lisette said, “they ran it before we did and were able to get a head start.”

  “Perhaps,” Dumas said. “But how could they have made the connection to the convent?”

  A question none of them could answer. They stepped outside, the cold brisk air temporarily reviving Lisette, but instead of walking toward the car park, Dumas directed them the opposite way.

  “We’re not driving?” she asked.

  “No,” Dumas said. “They may be watching the roads. Giustino is also worried about their seemingly prescient knowledge of all we are doing. Easier to slip into Venezia this way.”

  The walk to the pier took about ten minutes, and then he guided them onto a sleek watercraft, its wood gleaming beneath the lamplight.

  “Extravagant,” she said. “Surely not the pope’s dime?”

  “Giustino’s cousin’s fleet. The pope would have insisted on the car.”

  She climbed into the boat, sat next to Marc, and as it took off, the long day seemed to hit her. Yawning, she turned to Marc. “Wake me when La Serenissima comes into view. I love Venice at night.”

  He smiled, and in what seemed no time at all, she felt him gently shaking her awake as the boat slowed through the Arsenale Canal, then turned into the black waters of the lagoon. To her right were the bright lights of the bustling Piazza San Marco. Ahead to her left, a full moon, veiled by a thin mist, shone down onto two gleaming domes of the great white church of Santa Maria della Salute. On the opposite bank of the Grand Canal, the arched windows of great palaces lit the night in a golden blaze, their reflections shattering into myriad lights that danced across the dark water. “Where’s a camera when you need one?” was all she could think to say.

  “Photographs are wondrous things,” Dumas said. “But they cannot replace the actual experience of seeing Venezia.”

  The boat pulled up past the La Salute, bobbing as the driver moored it to the dock. Dumas exited, then spoke to the driver, his Italian almost too fast for Lisette to keep up with. Marc helped Lisette disembark, and a moment later, the boat sped off, leaving them alone. Dumas led them down a dark rio terra. Their footsteps echoed down the filled-in canal as they approached a covered alley that opened up on to a very old building with arched windows on the edge of a small canal. A lantern with a bottled-glass shade shone on plaster that was peeling away from the ancient brick. “One of our convents that is now a bed-and-breakfast,” Dumas said. “This one is from the thirteenth century, but you will find that we have modernized it in respect to the plumbing.”

  Marc smiled, since he well knew Lisette’s preference for the modern amenities in life. “What more can a girl want?” he asked.

  And Lisette replied, “A good cup of coffee come morning for when we begin our search?”

  Father Dumas rang the bell on the front door, painted green, and it was opened shortly thereafter by a nun in a traditional black habit. She smiled. “Don Emilio, you have brought our guests.”

  “Honored ones, to be sure.” He turned to Lisette and Marc. “I leave you in Suor Rosanna’s very capable hands. I shall call for you both in the morning when Giustino arrives. Like you, he will be getting some much-needed rest tonight. It has been a long day for all of us.”

  He left. The sister held the door open for them, and they stepped into a small lobby, with a bare checkerboard floor of brown and white tiles. The nun led them down a long carpeted hall and unlocked an old-fashioned wooden door on the right, holding it open, indicating that the room was for Lisette, and that Marc’s was down the hall. Lisette bid him good night, then entered the charming but sparely furnished room with two narrow beds, separated by a small table and a lamp. A crucifix on the wall above was intended to protect both
occupants, had there been two. The only other furniture was a desk, a chair, and an old dresser topped by an even older mirror. As Lisette placed her bag on the chair, Sister Rosanna said, “The bathroom and doccia are through this door,” and Lisette could see a gleaming tiled bathroom, very modern as promised by Father Dumas.

  “Will you need anything else before I leave?”

  “No, thank you.”

  She handed Lisette a key, saying, “La piccola colazione—the breakfast—is served between seven and nine-thirty.”

  “Grazie,” said Lisette.

  “Prego, signorina. Buona notte!”

  “Good night, Sister.”

  Dead tired, Lisette dug out her toothbrush and toothpaste, nightshirt, and hit the bed in short order. Lulled by the lapping water that filtered in from behind the two curved arch windows, she slept soundly until the bedside phone rang.

  She opened her eyes, disoriented by the unfamiliar surroundings, then reached for the phone, saying, “Perrault,” belatedly realizing she wasn’t at home, and it probably wasn’t ATLAS calling.

  A man’s voice answered: “Pronto, signorina.” It took her a second more to place her surroundings as he continued. “Father Dumas, he asks us to inform you that he will be here within the hour.”

  “Grazie.”

  She looked at the clock and saw it wasn’t even five in the morning. Clearly something had happened for him to be waking them this early. Good news, she hoped. Forty minutes later she had showered, dressed, and was about to wander downstairs in search of Marc, when the clerk rang to inform her that Dumas had arrived. “I hope your room was sufficient?” Dumas asked, when she met him in the lobby.

  “It was,” she answered. “Who would guess that such a charming bed-and-breakfast is hidden behind the convent walls?”

  “It helps pay the bills,” he said, as Marc came down the stairs. And then one of the sisters came out, carrying a paper sack, followed by another with three paper cups of coffee with plastic lids. They handed them each a coffee, and Dumas the paper sack. “Grazie,” he said to the sisters. Then, to Marc and Lisette, “The good sisters have made us a few sandwiches. I hope you don’t mind if we eat on the way, as we are in somewhat of a hurry.”

  “What happened?” Lisette asked, noting the tension in his face.

  “Giustino has informed me that they have located the body of a young girl. She was found in the canal not too far from the convent where she was staying.”

  “The hair— They would know from that.”

  “Ah, but it is brown now. The sisters, they— I’m afraid you must make the identification.”

  28

  Washington, D.C.

  Sydney listened while Griffin went over the plan one last time. Once Izzy disabled the jamming device covering the ATLAS floors, they could communicate via cell phone conference call and their Bluetooth earpieces. He would also disable the landlines so if they were caught, the guards couldn’t use the landlines and call for help. It would at least buy them some extra time.

  Unfortunately, the enhanced security alarm to the ATLAS floors was not connected to the same system. “It’s a two-step process,” Izzy had said. “Someone needs to give me the codes as they come up. If someone tries to bypass it and gets a code wrong, that system’s shutting down, the alarm’s going off, and I’m guessing they’ll send the cavalry in. Or at the very least, the goons they have guarding your building.”

  “How many codes are there?” Sydney asked.

  “One for each floor,” Griffin said. “I’ll have to give them to Izzy as they come up.”

  “Perfect,” Izzy said. “That’ll allow us to get someone into the building via the tunnel entrance, once I override the video feed so they can’t see.”

  Sydney picked up the sheet they’d mapped everything on. “One problem, guys,” she said. “If Griffin’s busy in the surveillance van helping Izzy with all the access codes, and Donovan’s out front creating a distraction, who is going into the building?”

  “You are,” Griffin said.

  “What happens if I get caught?”

  “Assuming they don’t shoot you?” Donovan replied. “You’ll probably end up in a jail cell next to McNiel.”

  “Oh good. No worries then.” She slid the map across the table. “Your plan sucks. Think of a new one.”

  “We don’t have time,” Griffin said. “We need to get that info if we want to get to the bottom of this investigation. It reaches far too high to just let matters be, and I, for one, do not want to work for Parker Kane.”

  Donovan laughed. “You really think he’s going to let any of us live much less work for him once he gets ahold of those files? We’re all a liability, and slowly but surely we’ll either find ourselves in prison or dead. Just like every other person who’s tried to investigate W2 and the theft of the Devil’s Key. And that,” he said, looking right at Sydney, “includes you. Because like it or not, your name is high on the list of people having been caught looking into it.”

  “This is why I don’t like working with your group. Once again, I’m on a government hit list.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Donovan said, “it was a national security threat list. There’s a big difference.”

  “I’m sorry. How many bullet holes were in the hull of that boat I was driving?”

  Griffin cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with the topic. “Can we move on before they get a chance to act on that list?”

  She picked up her coffee cup, raised it in a mock toast. “Carry on.”

  Griffin and Donovan finalized what it was they’d be doing, and what she needed to do. They coordinated their watches and their phones. Everything hinged on them making their moves at the precise moment when Izzy gave the word. Sydney would have approximately three minutes to get up on McNiel’s floor. Then she’d have that long to recover the files, then the hard drive from the copy machine.

  Izzy accessed a blow-up of the copy machine from his laptop to show Sydney what it was she needed to do. “Fairly straightforward,” he said, showing her where the panel was, and then the hard drive beneath that.

  It looked easy enough, she thought as Griffin handed her a folding knife with a tool to loosen the screws on the plate securing the hard drive to the copy machine. She glanced at the schematic again. “One question,” she said, slipping the knife into her pocket. “If we remove the hard drive, and you don’t want anyone to know we were up there, won’t it cause suspicion if they go looking for it and can’t find it?”

  “Yesterday, that would have been true. Today, I think it’s a bit late to keep them from being suspicious. What we don’t want is for them to have it. Or to know how much we know.”

  “And exactly how much do we know?” Donovan asked.

  “Not enough. Otherwise it wouldn’t have taken twenty years to find out Parker Kane was involved.”

  They waited until precisely twenty minutes after the hour, which was when Donovan said he would be making his approach. Griffin was in the surveillance van with Izzy and she had entered via the tunnels and was waiting by the elevator. “Now,” Izzy called out.

  She pressed the elevator button, then used the access code to get up to the second floor, which was as far as the elevator would go when the building was in lockdown mode. From there she was supposed to take the stairs. Each door would have to be accessed separately with a different code, which Griffin called to Izzy as Sydney announced her location.

  “I’m at the stairs. Code?”

  Griffin recited it. She heard a beep, pushed the door open.

  “You have four minutes,” Griffin told her.

  That was one more than she’d been expecting. “Copy.”

  About one minute into it, she heard Izzy saying, “I’ve got access to the surveillance video inside on the first floor. You might want to go faster. I see them looki
ng at the elevator . . . The inside guard’s walking that way . . . He’s in . . . looking inside . . . down the hall.”

  “Thanks, Izzy. I get it.”

  “Yeah, well now he’s going to his room, and I really need you to hurry, because . . . ah crap.”

  “Ah crap, what?”

  “In about a minute, I’m going to have to cut the power, because he’s checking the feed to get up on that floor, and I really don’t want him to see you.”

  “I’m there.”

  Sydney raced up the stairs to McNiel’s floor, waited for Griffin to give the code, Izzy to unlock it, then pushed the door open. The copy machine was at the end of the hall, and she hurried toward it, removing the knife from her pocket as she approached. She rolled the machine away from the wall, found the accordion folder, then set it on top. The hard drive was all that was left, and she pushed the door, and had just started to loosen the first screw when the power went out.

  “You have two minutes.”

  “Lights would have helped,” she muttered, reaching up, feeling with her finger for the other screw. That one she got out. The third and fourth, not so easy, and she used the light of her cell phone to find the screw head.

  “We’re out of time. The power’s going on. We’re going out of lockdown mode and I’m sending the elevator up.”

  “I don’t have the hard drive yet.”

  “You need to get out. If we run out of time, I’m not going to be able to get you down to the tunnels.”

  “What’s more important. Recovering it or making sure they don’t get it?”

  She heard Griffin say, “The latter.”

  She got up, drew her weapon, and fired two shots at it. “No more hard drive.”

  “What the hell?” someone said. She couldn’t tell who, her ears were ringing.

  Then Izzy saying, “Get out of there.”

  She grabbed the files, ran down the hall, got onto the elevator, and then relaxed when it started down.

  The elevator, however, stopped on the first floor. “Why isn’t it going to the tunnel?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”