Manus didn’t like her plan. It was risky for Hamilton, and more important, it felt risky for them. But she’d been adamant about not trusting the director. And despite his reluctance to agree, he knew she might be right.
The guy who checked me in had a laptop, he signed. He might let me borrow it. Or more like rent it. How long would you need it?
If I’m lucky, ten minutes. But no more than a few hours.
Manus hesitated, then signed, Double-lock the door behind me. I’ll knock when I come back. One knock, on the window. If someone knocks on the door or more than once, it’s not me.
She nodded. They got up and walked to the door. Manus checked through the window and went out.
The old guy he’d negotiated with earlier was still there, the air still perfumed by bourbon. The guy was looking at his laptop, and closed it when Manus came in.
“Everything all right with the room?”
Manus nodded. “My wife didn’t bring her laptop. Could we borrow yours? Just a little while, a few hours at most. I’d pay you, of course.”
“Well, shoot, you don’t have to pay me, but… how much?”
Manus noted that the bottle of Four Roses was a couple of inches lower than it had been earlier. He shrugged. “Another fifty?”
The man raised his eyebrows, and Manus realized he’d offered too much. “A work thing,” he said quickly. “If she doesn’t take care of it right away, we might as well kiss our little vacation good-bye. We can access the Internet from the room, right?”
“Sure, free Wi-Fi in every room. A few hours, you say?”
Manus nodded.
“Say, you’re not fixing to make off with my laptop, are you? I mean, it’s nothing new, but it’s worth more than fifty bucks.”
“How about a security deposit?”
The man rubbed his chin. “Ah, forget about the deposit. Give me an even hundred and it’s yours for the night.”
Manus pulled two fifties from his pocket and placed them on the counter. The man looked like he might salivate.
“All right, we got ourselves a deal. Give me just a minute, I need to take care of a few things.”
The man opened the laptop and worked the trackpad. Manus assumed he was deleting records of visits to porn sites. Which was actually good. It suggested they kept no central records of anyone’s browsing history.
He took the laptop back to the room and knocked once on the glass. Evie let him in and they went back to the bathroom. It took her only a minute to download the Tor browser. A minute more, and she signed excitedly, You were right. They didn’t revoke my privileges. I’m in.
She hunched forward and worked the keyboard. Manus couldn’t see what she was doing, but he had an idea. Accessing NSA’s full take on worldwide hotel reservation systems. Screening out every hotel that was located outside a 150-mile radius from Lake Tuz. Screening out every transaction that occurred more than eight hours after Manus had seen Hamilton. Screening out every credit card transaction. Screening out everyone who had checked in with a passport. And leaving only…
I think I’ve got him, she signed. The Sunaa Hotel, central Ankara. Registered as Bill Moore. No other hits.
Manus nodded, trying to share her excitement. But what he felt instead was dread. He had never been afraid of a fight. But he preferred to avoid fights he thought were unwinnable. Or worse, unsurvivable. They’d been lucky to get this far. He was afraid she was going to push things until their luck ran out.
He stood. You see if you can reach him, he signed. I’m going to keep watch.
CHAPTER
41
In less than five minutes, Evie had signed up for a secure VoIP account, using one of Manus’s prepaid cards to pay for the access. She called the Sunaa and asked to be connected to Bill Moore. There was a pause, then an intermittent buzz as the call was put through. She waited, her heart pounding, trying not to hope. Would he be there? Would he answer? Did she even have the right person? She might have made a mistake. It could have been a coincidence—
“Hello?” A male voice, American accented, the tone uncertain, almost tremulous. It had to be him. It had to be.
“Ryan,” she said, “I’m a friend. Please, don’t hang up.”
There was a pause. He said, “I… who is this?”
There was a little latency on the line, but nothing too terrible. This was going to work. It was going to be okay.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, suddenly fighting tears. “I didn’t know any of this was going to happen. I was just doing my job. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The fear in his voice had worsened. Get it together, girl, she thought. Don’t freak him out. Help him. Help him help you.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’m just scared. I’ve learned some things I wasn’t supposed to, about your meetings in Turkey, about the thumb drives you mailed. I have one of them. Earlier tonight I was abducted and barely got away. And now my little boy and I are on the run. I don’t know anyone else who can help us.”
There was another pause. Then: “What do you mean, you have one of the thumb drives?”
“You sent two. One by FedEx, I’m guessing to your news organization. The other by ordinary mail, to a mail drop in Rockville. The first one would have been intercepted. But I have the other.”
“Who are you?”
She blew out a deep breath, feeling like what came next had a fifty-fifty chance of blowing up the whole thing. But if it didn’t, if they could get past this point, maybe her plan could work.
“I’m an NSA analyst,” she said. “But I’m not your enemy, I swear. They’re trying to kill me, too.”
“NSA? Oh, my God. You can’t be fucking serious.”
“Look, what can I offer as bona fides?”
“How do you know about any of this? How did you know—”
“—where to find you?”
He didn’t answer. She imagined his terror at confirming his identity. But he must have realized they were already past that.
“That’s a long story,” she said. “The gist of it is, no one else is looking because everyone else thinks you’re dead. In a drone strike.”
Another pause. “They really think that? It’s not just some official bullshit?”
“You know about it?”
“There’s a TV in the room.”
He was reluctant, of course he was, but he was talking. Probably because he was scared and desperate, but why didn’t matter. What mattered was that she keep him going.
“No,” she said, “it’s not some official bullshit. At least as far as I know. They launched that strike because they thought you were there. They want you dead.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“The director of NSA. He knows about your meeting with Perkins.”
“Where’s Perkins now? Can you get a message to him?”
She realized Perkins’s accident hadn’t made the international news. Of course not. His status was covert, and besides, it was just a car accident.
“Perkins is dead. A car accident in Ankara, the same day he met you in Istanbul. Except, not an accident. I’m pretty sure that was the director, too.”
“Oh, Jesus. Oh, fuck.”
“Listen. Whatever’s on that thumb drive, it’s so explosive the director of the National Security Agency has practically lost his mind over it. He kidnapped you, he killed Perkins, now he’s trying to kill me. And that bombing in DC? A false flag. An excuse to bomb the jihadist camp where the director believed you were being held.”
“How—”
“It doesn’t matter how. I don’t know what to do other than publish whatever’s on the drive, right? Take away the director’s ability to cover it up with murder? His reason for wanting you and me dead? Doesn’t that make sense?”