Orlando saved a copy of the suspect’s personnel file on her computer before logging out of Eli/Kreck’s system. She then fed the engineer’s picture into her facial recognition program. While that ran in the background, she did a background check on the man.
Williams’s online presence was a bit too typical for her tastes. A few minutes of digging proved there was no substance to it. Though there were likely hundreds of Charles Williamses in the country, this particular one never existed.
A small point of light began pulsing at the top of her screen, letting her know of a possible hit. She took a look. The man the recognition software had picked out had many of the same features as Williams, but unless the impostor had had extensive plastic surgery — always a possibility — he was not the man she was searching for. She saved the result, but let the program continue while she went downstairs to get a cup of coffee.
Her shotgun house was over a hundred years old, and despite the fact she’d undertaken many renovations, the floor still creaked when she walked into the kitchen. So she wasn’t particularly surprised when she heard a door down the hall open a few moments later.
“What you still doing up?” Mrs. Vo asked as she entered the kitchen.
“Working. Just need some coffee. Go back to sleep.”
Mrs. Vo frowned and waved a hand in the air as she walked over. “Coffee not good for you. You need take care yourself.”
Mrs. Vo and her husband had worked for Orlando since when Orlando and her son, Garrett, had lived in the Vos’ native Viet Nam. They took care of things around the house, including helping with Garrett. Orlando didn’t think of them as employees. They were family.
“I just need some caffeine,” she said.
“You drink tea. Better. I get for you.”
Mrs. Vo turned on the burner under the kettle and opened the cupboard where the cups were.
Orlando knew better than to argue. Beside, Mrs. Vo was right — tea would be better.
“You want food, too?” Mrs. Vo asked as she set a cup on the counter. “Can make something for you?”
“No. The tea’s fine.”
With fluttering fingers, Mrs. Vo brushed Orlando toward the door. “You need to work, go work. I bring up to you.”
“No, it’s okay. I can—”
“Go. Go.”
Orlando smiled. “All right. Thank you.”
When she reentered her office, the light was pulsing at the top of her screen again. In the time she’d been gone, the search had kicked out three more results. The first was definitely not the guy. The second was close but still not right. The last was an exact match.
His name was listed as Maurice Larchmont, though given the long list of other aliases, it was likely Larchmont was not his birth name, either. Larchmont had started his criminal life at the age of seventeen, when he combined his innate computer skills with his lust for money to bring in over five million euros via Internet phishing. Though convicted, he fled his native France before he could be put in prison.
More scams followed, and it was only natural that he would eventually come to the attention of organized crime. Specifically, the group run by one Nicholas Loban.
Bingo.
Though the info wasn’t in the file, it would be obvious to even the most lay person that Loban — or his friends in the Russian government — had arranged somehow for Larchmont to be hired by Eli/Kreck, with his real job being to assist in obtaining this SPYDER chip that seemed to be the nucleus of all the trouble.
Orlando was just about to close the program when the indicator light pulsed again. She switched back to the results page and was surprised to find another match. The information, however, was not from any of the intelligence agency databases but from the Boston PD — a report entered into their system only a day before.
The picture was definitely Larchmont. He was laid out on a narrow spit of sand between a rock wall and the bay. He had no apparent wounds but was unquestionably dead. His body had been spotted in the river a few hours before the report was filed. The preliminary time of death was anywhere from twelve to sixteen hours prior to that. So, after the failed burglary attempt at Eli/Kreck.
Again, it wasn’t hard for her to connect the dots. After the attempt to steal the SPYDER, Larchmont had likely logged in to Eli/Kreck’s system — probably using someone else’s ID — and learned of the plan to transport the second chip across the country. Once he reported this to Loban, he became a loose end and was dealt with accordingly.
A quiet knock on the door.
“Come in,” Orlando said.
Mrs. Vo entered and set a cup of tea and a steaming bowl of pho on the desk.
“Make healthy,” the woman said. “Good for you.”
“Thank you,” Orlando said. The smell of the soup did make her stomach rumble, but what she was really craving was muffins. Moist, chocolate chip muffins. Maybe with a nice dollop of peanut butter on top.
“You need something else, you tell me,” Mrs. Vo said as she walked to the door.
“I’ll be fine. You can go back to sleep.”
“You need something, tell me.”
“Okay, okay. If I need anything, I’ll wake you up, okay?”
Mrs. Vo studied her for several seconds before saying, “I will know if you do not.” She walked out and pulled the door closed behind her.
Nibbling a carrot, Orlando focused back on her computer. She was willing to bet that whoever had killed Larchmont was the same person who had killed the courier. If the assassin was someone within Loban’s organization, she would have difficulty IDing him. But if Loban had contracted a freelancer, she might have hope.
It took nearly twenty minutes of hunting through darknet message boards before she found the request for an acquisition job with associated termination, location specified as eastern North America. The date range corresponded with the estimated time of Larchmont’s death.
The broker, Jergen Berke, was someone Orlando had worked with in the past. She called him, and when she mentioned the termination job he’d listed, his initial pleasant demeanor evaporated.
“I’d love to talk but I have other things I need to get to,” he told her.
“All I need is the name of who got the job,” she said.
“You know I can’t give you that.”
“Because you’re afraid of Loban?”
“Who said anything about Loban? I never mentioned him.”
“Really, Jergen? Even if I hadn’t been sure that he was involved, I would be now. You should practice your lying. You’re losing your touch.”
“I’m not lying. He has nothing to—”
“Loban enlisted you to find someone to obtain an item from Eli/Kreck Systems in Newton, Massachusetts. The job also included the termination of a man going by the name Charles Williams or possibly Maurice Larchmont. When that failed, you sent a second person, didn’t you? To finish the job.”
His voice tight, Berke said, “If you expect me to confirm that, you’re going to be disappointed.”
“You just did.” A pause, then, “Look, I have no interest at all in Loban, if that’s what you’re worried about. I am not going to touch him. His man in the field, though, has crossed paths with my team. If he becomes a problem for us then I promise you, it will become a problem for you. But if you’re having a hard time deciding what’s the right thing to do, I’d be happy to get Quinn on the phone for you.”
“No, no,” he said quickly. “You don’t need to do that.”
The last time Quinn and Berke had worked together, things had not gone well. Because of a screwup by Berke, Quinn had come within seconds of being thrown into a Nigerian prison. Quinn had made sure Berke knew how unhappy that made him.
“So?” she said. “You’ll give me the name?”
He hesitated for a moment. “Names,” he corrected her. “There are two of them.”