“So he was working for the SVR and Kasperov?” asked Briggs.
“Yeah, sure, it’s like the SVR is a client. What’s more interesting, though, is that after he created their spambot army, he was tagged by the SVR as being a member of a hacktivist group known as Redtalk. They’ve been leaking secrets about corruption within the Russian government and military.”
“Like another WikiLeaks,” Fisher concluded.
“Yeah, but smaller and more specific. They probably didn’t touch Kannonball because he was so close to Kasperov.”
“I guess this is the long explanation of how you intend to get into their computers,” said Briggs through a yawn.
Charlie grew more animated, waving his peanut butter fork at Briggs. “Kannonball’s already hacked in, and he’s left his signature on some of the code for the social media spambots. In fact, I have to study it some more, but he may have left more clues there.”
“You mean like passwords to get in?” Fisher asked.
“Exactly. That’s Redtalk’s MO. That’s our front door into the SVR.”
“Or we could just call Kestrel,” Fisher said with a smile. “Old-school wins again. Grim? Find me Kestrel.”
“Will do.”
Charlie snickered. “You’re a real thread killer, Sam. I was on a roll!”
“I know. And still, there’s no guarantee the SVR or Voron are doing any better than we are right now, but we need to keep tabs on them.”
Grim raised her voice. “Charlie, I want to see everything you’re doing to get in there. Don’t make a move until we’re both sure they can’t track us.”
Charlie nodded, then lowered his voice and turned to Fisher. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Fisher nodded and Charlie rose, leading him out of the command center, down a narrow hall, and toward the living quarters. He opened a small hatch and invited Fisher into his tiny room, replete with narrow bed, notebook computers, and a few posters for alternative rock bands that Fisher had never heard of. Charlie shut the hatch and quickly said, “If you want to find this guy, you gotta cut me loose. I can’t work with her breathing down my neck.”
“She’s not breathing down your neck.”
“Are you deaf?”
“Look, you know where she’s coming from.”
He rolled his eyes. “It was hard enough taking the job in the first place, knowing she’d be here.”
“I thought you guys were getting along.”
“It’s nothing that interferes with the job, but—”
“But you have a problem with authority figures. I get that. So do I.”
At twenty-five, young Charlie Cole was still grappling with remaining calm under fire—especially when the incoming came from Grim. During the time he and Fisher worked together at Vic’s old agency, Fisher had learned a lot about the kid, learned why he had the attitude and why he’d become a hacker. Charlie had lost his father when he was just eleven, and his mother remarried a man who ruled with an iron fist and had ridiculous expectations for him. He buried himself in his room and retreated into computers. While his mother supported his interest, by the time he was fourteen, his stepfather had shipped him off to Choate Rosemary Hall, the prestigious boarding school in Connecticut, where he’d terrorized administrators with his hacking exploits. They forced him through the program because it was easier than kicking him out. He was a classic genius underachiever. He went on to the Rochester Institute of Technology because his grades wouldn’t get him into MIT like the rest of his friends, and after that, some of his online exploits had caught the attention of the NSA and he was quickly rolled into Grim’s R&D group at Third Echelon.
He didn’t last long. He was immature, had an uncompromising vision for what the SMI should be, and Grim summarily fired him. That he’d flipped her a double bird on the way out didn’t help. He’d tried a few scrub jobs, even moonlighted for two weeks as an IT temp under false credentials, until some of the people he’d hacked in the past came looking for him, including members of a Mexican drug cartel he’d once helped expose, or “dox,” by revealing all of their personal information online.
Vic’s private security firm had rescued him from all that, literally saving him when the Mexicans had sent two hit men to teach him a final lesson. Vic took him under his wing, and Charlie helped support some deftly executed operations for private clients. Despite his youth, his defiance of authority, and his often brash and animated demeanor, Charlie possessed a rare combination of go-with-your-gut instincts coupled with a cunning and always up-to-date knowledge of complex computer systems and code.
And if you wanted to get deeply psychological about it, you could say that he’d become all of these things because he was searching for his lost father, wanting answers for why the man had left him so long ago.
Charlie rubbed the corners of his eyes and nodded. “Grim’s intense. I get that. But sometimes she’s gotta back off. I’m afraid to say anything—because I know you’ll take the heat for it.”
“You just do your job. She’ll keep you honest.”
“I got the feeling that when you first came on board, you didn’t want her around.”
“This was her initiative, nonnegotiable with the president.”
“So why didn’t you walk away?”
Fisher steeled his voice. “Because they need us. The country needs us. Remember that.”
“Hey, Sam?” came Briggs’s voice from the hallway. “Got something else here. Apparently, the Russian government just pulled Kasperov’s license. His company is officially shut down. At least for now.”
Fisher met up with Briggs and followed him back to the command center with Charlie in tow.
“Sam, we’re still analyzing all the flights out of every airport around Moscow at the time Kasperov might’ve bolted,” said Grim. “The radar distortion has made that tough.”
“So did any of Kasperov’s jets take off?”
“Well, not according to the flight plans, but I’m sure he didn’t file one. And he probably didn’t take his own plane. Maybe a friend’s with falsified docs.”
An alert screen flashed in the upper right corner of the SMI’s main screen. Grim dragged and dropped a new data window into the center of the display then opened it. “Well, it can’t be this easy, can it? We’ve just confirmed that one of Kasperov’s private jets did take off from Vnukovo Airport, actually just after the radar interruption. Flight plan indicates that the jet’s bound for Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. Says there’s three passengers on board, along with two crew members.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Charlie. “Again, he wouldn’t use his own plane and wouldn’t file a flight plan.”
“I agree,” Grim answered.
“Decoy?” asked Fisher.
“Hard to say. Maybe a decoy to buy him time? Divert forces away from him?”
“Yeah, he’s a smart bastard, because he knows that jet’s a decoy we can’t ignore. No matter what, we have to check it out.”
“I’ll see what assets we have in Georgia, get some people to Tbilisi before that plane arrives.”
“I’ve got the rest of the flight plans for that bird,” said Charlie. “Looks like his daughter, Nadia, was on board, flew back home from school in Zurich a few days ago.”
“Maybe that’s not his escape route but hers?” asked Fisher.
“Why wouldn’t he cover her exit as well as he covered his own?” asked Grim.
“I don’t know.”
“We’ll have to follow that plane.”
Fisher nodded, then crossed over to Briggs. “You dig up anything else?”
“His girlfriend was born and raised in Orlando. She attended the University of Central Florida. She’s got parents and a brother still living near there in a place called Winter Springs. We’ve got eyes on the house, and the NSA’s got the comms covered.”
“Any other possibilities?”
“In one of his gazillion magazine interviews, he spoke very highly of one of his old teachers from encryption school, a Professor Halitov. He retired in a little town called Peski, southeast of Moscow.”