Colonel Walker’s face was on the workstation’s live video feed, his eyes roving the peripheries of the monitor as if he were trapped in the box. The old man spared no expense when it came to the Triple Seven Chase’s technology, but he never fully adapted to any of it. He looked out of place using anything that wasn’t built before or during the Cold War.
“Go ahead, sir,” said Nick, dropping into a desk chair that was bolted to the aircraft floor.
Walker’s scowl abruptly centered on the screen. “Baron?”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Yes. It’s me, sir. What did you want to tell me?”
“CJ got herself a warrant to tap into the chess application’s servers.”
“And?”
“And they pulled the IP addresses for the Emissary’s moves. He made one a couple of hours ago—”
“From a train in Budapest,” said Nick, finishing the colonel’s statement.
Walker squinted at him. “No. He made that move from the same place as all the others, from a wireless hot spot at a coffee shop on C Street, two blocks west of the DC bombing site.”
Nick’s eyes widened a touch. “That’s impossible. I saw the driver who ran down Grendel. The same guy was at ground zero right after the bombing, posing as a responder. He has to be the Emissary.”
“Not necessarily. Someone was at that coffee shop, and that someone is sending out the chess moves. He may be running the operative you saw in DC and Budapest, or he may be working for him.” Walker took a swig from a foam cup of coffee, savoring the bitter liquid for a moment before continuing. “We need more data. Keep playing the game. Keep the Emissary on the hook. CJ is setting up a surveillance van to see if her team can’t pinpoint which of the café’s patrons is sending the moves. You have anything else?”
“Only the tattoo on the driver’s arm,” said Nick, sitting back in his chair. “I sent a drawing to Molly.”
“Dead end. I saw your drawing. It looked common enough. I expected Molly to get a dozen matches, if not a hundred.” Walker shook his head. “She got nothing. There’s not a single person in the joint databases — good guy, bad guy, or otherwise — that bears that mark.”
He polished off his coffee and then frowned at the empty cup. “So far, this investigation has netted us little more than a dead hacker and some useless computer files. We’re no closer to figuring out who these people are than we were yesterday morning.”
Nick’s eyes drifted to the clock at the bottom of his screen. “And no closer to stopping their next attack.”
Luke Baron had never flown before. His little ears had never experienced the alarming compression that occurs when an airliner’s cabin pressure descends from eight thousand feet to five hundred in the space of twenty minutes. In Katy’s admittedly biased estimation, her toddler had endured the bumps and boredom of the grueling eight-hour flight with admirable calm, but the descent into Frankfurt was too much. Luke started to cry. Katy could feel the weighty glances of the passengers around her, all of whom surely regarded her as the worst mother on the face of the Earth.
Nick’s dad offered to take his grandson, but Katy shook her head and hugged Luke to her chest. She needed to hold him close right now. She was on the verge of tears herself.
Katy was used to Nick’s travels. She was used to worrying when he disappeared for days or even weeks without contact, but she never left home during his trips. Somehow that made this one different. The house in Chapel Point — their home, their life together — sat empty and frozen in time while the two of them ventured off in different directions.
Between baggage claim and customs, it took Kurt and Katy a miserable hour and a half to get from the gate to the curb. Luke squirmed in his stroller the whole time, hungry and tired. Katy knew exactly how he felt. As they waited for the hotel van, she breathed in the crisp air and tried to put a better face on the situation. She was in Europe after all. That was fun. And in two days she would be in the Holy Land. Hadn’t she always wanted to see it? She glanced around at the other passengers. None of them looked happy either. Most hunched down into their coats and stared anxiously down the pickup lane.
As her eyes roved the faces, Katy caught one individual looking her way, a short stocky man with a dark complexion and graying black stubble covering the lower half of his face. When she saw him, he cast his eyes down at the curb.
Katy quickly realized that she was now the one staring. She turned and joined the rest in watching for the next van, trying to let the moment pass, but the back of her head burned. Was that man watching her? She had told her husband that he was paranoid, overreacting to this whole thing, but now she wondered. Had she become a target?
After thirty seconds of pretending to look for the van, Katy couldn’t take it anymore. She knelt down on the pretext of tucking Luke’s blanket around him, and stole a glance behind her.
The short man had disappeared.
CHAPTER 17
The spray of blood from the guard’s throat sent a chill through Nick’s body. Six hours after leaving Budapest, the three Triple Seven field operatives stood in the main security office of Istanbul University’s biochemical research facility, watching videos of the robbery over the shoulder of the university’s head of security. As far as the Turks were concerned, they were Interpol agents, thanks to a set of identities created by the techs at Romeo Seven. They watched the playback until the mysterious thief in the flowing hooded cloak disappeared from the frame.
“Holy cow,” said Drake. “You guys were hit by Darth Maul.”
Nick smacked his teammate’s arm with the back of his hand. The security officer looked up from his bank of monitors and glared at him.
“What? Too soon?”
The next video showed the same figure in a cold storage locker, sweeping vials of chemicals into a bag. Nick straightened up and let out a short, frustrated breath. “There’s not much of use here. He keeps his face well hidden, and despite the drama and the brutality, the whole thing looks like a run-of-the-mill robbery.”
The security man nodded, this time keeping his glare fixed on the cloaked figure on the screen in front of him. “It was. The thief took the lives of three guards and a highly respected department head, but to him, the murders were well worth it. Those chemicals will fetch a high price on the black market — tens of thousands of euros, maybe a hundred thousand.”
Nick watched as the cloaked figure lifted a box through the broken door of a glass cabinet, careful to avoid the remaining shards. Surprisingly, he wasn’t wearing gloves. “Did he leave fingerprints?”
“Yes, plenty. But they did us no good. We could not find a match in any database.” The security officer raised an eyebrow. “Even Interpol’s.”
“We need to know exactly what he took.”
“For that, you must talk to Dr. Osman, the new chairman of the facility.”
Dr. Osman dismissed the security officer as soon as he introduced his guests. “My heart is heavy with this tragedy,” he said, standing and shaking Nick’s hand over his desk, “and I am reticent to go over it all again.” He took his seat again. “I told the police everything I know. Can’t you get what you need from their records?”
“I’m sorry,” said Nick, “but we have our own interview procedures. It may be painful, but if you want your colleague’s murderer to come to justice, the best thing that you can do is help us.”
The doctor stared at Nick for a moment and then spread his hands. “Of course. What do you want to know?”