Much had happened since then. Kobin had been unwittingly caught up in the Blacklist attacks via an arms deal gone very bad, and he wound up turning himself in to the CIA for protection. When his safe house got hit, Fisher had gone in to rescue the man — more for the intel he carried than any particular love for the scumbag. Kobin did, however, return the favor when Paladin’s flight controls were hacked, helping to get the plane restarted. His piloting skills and knowledge of the underworld were admittedly useful.
From that point on, Kobin took up residence inside Paladin’s cell, sleeping in the shimmering glow of the nearby server lights. Given the number of enemies he’d made over the years and the fact that he’d sold arms to the Blacklist Engineers, he’d probably spend the rest of his life in prison. Thus, he’d begged Fisher and Grim to let him stay on board so he could offer up what intel he could. He was actually working on Charlie, trying to convince him that he should be a new member of their team, even trying to teach the kid about weapons and the jet’s flight control systems.
“Hey, asshole,” Fisher said as he approached the holding cell.
Kobin was lying on his bunk, hands folded behind his head, staring off into space. Charlie had loaned him some clean clothes, so the ostentatious outfit was gone, replaced by a slightly grunge look that Kobin had whined about but accepted until they could find him more silly silk duds.
He finally glanced up from his trance. “You know, Fisher, back in the glory days they used to call me King of Assholes!”
“I’m sure they did.” Fisher unlocked the cell and stepped inside.
Kobin shook his head. “I told you, you don’t have to lock the door. I wanna be here.”
“Grim thinks it’s a good idea. Sometimes I sleepwalk and kill scumbags.”
“Like a PTSD thing?” asked Kobin.
“Yeah.”
“So it’s for my own protection.”
Fisher grinned crookedly. “Yeah.”
“So I take it you’ve come to the master seeking knowledge?” Kobin sat up, gazing emphatically at Fisher. “It’s gonna cost you.”
“The fact that you’re not dead means we can run a tab for as long as we want.”
“Dude, I’m just kidding. Why do you have to be so intense?”
“Because we’ve still got a hundred pounds of stolen uranium out there, along with a Russian software geek who’s just gone missing.”
“You talking about Kasperov?”
“You know him?”
“I went to one of his parties — and that bastard knows how to throw a party!”
“Any idea where he might’ve gone?”
Kobin snorted. “The fuck do I know? Why the hell did he run in the first place?”
“We’re not sure yet. We need to get into the SVR’s comm network — and even deeper, right into Voron.”
“Well, good luck with that shit.”
“You know, I’m so glad we’re keeping you here, free room and board, so you can tell us, good luck with that shit …”
“What do you want from me? If I knew something, I’d tell you.”
Fisher’s smartphone beeped, and he answered.
“Sam, I just activated the beacon to find Kestrel, but it’s dead,” Grim said. “No signal. He must’ve found it.”
“Shit, all right, thanks.”
“Did I hear her say Kestrel?”
“That’s right.”
“Why is that fucker not dead? I thought your people hauled away the body.”
“They weren’t my people…”
“So where is he now?” asked Kobin.
Fisher bit back a curse. “Last I heard he was in Moscow, settling some scores.”
“You let me make a few calls, and I’ll find him. If he’s on the hunt, then he’s asking a lot of questions, and that’s how we get him. I know the network in Moscow better than anybody.”
“Tell you what. If you find him, you’ll move up the espionage ladder from worthless piece of shit to unreliable scumbag who can sometimes help.”
“I’ll take it. And with a nickel pay raise, too. You motherfuckers are too generous. I’m crying with tears of joy over here.”
Fisher held open the door. “Shut up and get to the control room. Start making your calls.”
As Kobin walked past the cell door, he paused to sniff Fisher’s neck. “You just take a shower? You smell nice — like a three-dollar whore.”
11
SVR agent number one, the gray-haired operator Fisher had nicknamed “Uncle Harry,” sat in his idling Volkswagen rental, crushing the seat with his considerable girth. A rather mundane surveillance op like this was led by a more seasoned — see “ready to retire”—agent while his two more youthful colleagues braved the early-morning temperatures on foot patrol. Grim had initially spotted only two agents at Nadia’s apartment, along with the two requisite private security guards posted at the front desk and at the gate near the parking garage. Fisher dubbed these rent-a-cops the “puppy patrol.” Meanwhile, Briggs, operating from a rooftop opposite the five-story building, had picked up a third SVR agent street side and looking oh-so-clandestine with a Bluetooth receiver jutting from one of his ears.
While Harry and his associates were here to apprehend and question Kasperov, his daughter, or anyone else who returned to the apartment, they had obviously grown bored with their duties. For his part, Harry spoke only once on his radio while repeatedly adjusting himself in his seat as though his legs were falling asleep or he had a fiery case of hemorrhoids. He never saw Fisher, who was under his car inserting the gas tube into the vehicle’s heating system to inject the halothane gas.
Fisher made the connection, threw the valve, then slipped out from beneath the car, crawling to the parked sedan behind the Volkswagen.
“He’s adjusting the heat,” reported Briggs. “He knows something’s up. In five, four, three, two… oh, there he goes. He’s out, Sam. Lying back on the seat.”
“Roger that. Need to move fast now.”
“Sam, Cousin Ivan is on the east side of the building, smoking a cigarette near the parking garage across the street,” reported Grim. “Cousin Drago is still on the roof.”
Rather than sitting in some not-so-discreet van, Grim and Charlie were operating from a crowded Internet café called Altro just one block down the street. They had a window table, a couple of laptops, and access to some of the most powerful software and best-tasting lattes on the planet, according to Charlie.
They were surrounded by undergrads wired into their own computers, yet Charlie and Grim still had privacy, their screens out of view, their voices out of earshot. They were fully patched into the surrounding security cameras as well as a video stream recorded by Briggs. Just before they’d arrived, Charlie had noted how several of the camera systems had been depressingly easy to bypass. He’d explained that inherent vulnerabilities existed in many of the top manufacturers’ stand-alone CCTV systems as well as a substantial number of rebranded versions. Remote access capability via the web was a convenient feature that allowed guards and other administrators to view a location from off-site. Likewise it made the systems vulnerable to hackers if they weren’t set up securely. If the remote access feature was enabled by default upon purchase — which many of them were — some customers didn’t realize they should take steps to secure those systems.
However, even the systems that were security enabled came with laughably unsecure user names like “user” and “admin,” along with passwords like “1234.” They also failed to lock out a user after a certain number of incorrect password guesses. This meant that even if a customer changed the password, hackers like Charlie could crack them through a brute-force attack. Finally, because many customers who employed the systems didn’t restrict access to computers from trusted networks, nor did they log who was accessing them, Charlie said that even the guards couldn’t tell if a remote attacker was in their system viewing video footage from outside the network.