Garin spotted ten-year-old Emilio Val Buena in the window of his family’s unit two floors above Garin’s. Emilio seemed to nearly jump out of his skin upon spying Lofton through the SUV’s driver’s-side window and waved ecstatically. Emilio occupied an elevated status in the complex due to the fact that he was the only kid to have had an actual conversation with the legend. Emilio had massaged the conversation into tales of Lofton’s epic adventures, which seemingly improbable tales gained instant legitimacy after the two bodies were removed from Lofton’s apartment.
Garin waved back, and although it was one of the rare occasions when he felt the onset of a smile, he suppressed it—for Emilio’s benefit: The enigma understood that a taciturn Lofton was far more mysterious, and therefore useful, to Emilio’s continuing narrative for his friends.
Garin wasn’t there to move back into the apartment. Not because he eschewed its Spartan appointments: Although he had earned a considerable sum several years ago cashing out of DGT, he preferred to live frugally and efficiently, and the apartment had satisfied both criteria. No, he was there to drop another bread crumb. Bor’s people would eventually check the apartment, if they hadn’t done so already.
Before Garin opened the door, his mobile vibrated. He put the device to his ear without checking the screen.
“Yes.”
“Matt here. Dan told me to get this to you: The tech guys did the analysis you asked for. Do you want me to tell you what we found over the phone or do you want to come here?”
Garin appreciated Matt’s caution. They had to assume Garin’s conversation could be intercepted and monitored. Given Bor’s likely presence in the area, this wasn’t a bread crumb he wanted to drop.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
CHAPTER 41
BETHANY BEACH, DELAWARE,
AUGUST 16, 8:12 A.M. EDT
The soft breeze off the ocean was largely ineffective against the stifling August heat. Nonetheless, the patrician found the balcony comfortable enough to work from.
Garin was an irritant. No, that wasn’t quite right, thought the patrician. Garin clearly was much more than that. He was, after all, responsible for thwarting the EMP attack. He needed to be eliminated quickly.
The patrician was very pleased with the progression of all phases of the operation, but Garin persisted in complicating matters, getting uncomfortably close to the functional levers of the plan. The man was more than a soldier taking orders. Indeed, he was taking no orders now. He was initiating action, independent of the US government, which remained oblivious to what was about to happen.
It remained highly unlikely that Garin could disrupt the plan. There were too many layers and contingencies. As significant as the EMP plot had been, it was but the opening stage of a series of feints, decoys, and misdirections, each of which had the capacity to accomplish the ultimate aim.
As expected, having halted a black swan—an unprecedented event—had lulled the West into a sense of security, of disaster averted. Not Garin. He behaved as if black swans were an everyday occurrence.
He had to go.
The patrician lit a Winston and drew long and deep from it before expelling its blue smoke in a long trail. With his other hand he pressed a key on his phone and waited.
“Yes.” Bor answered flatly.
“Your friend has been waving his arms frantically, trying to get us to notice him. He’s been on the Beltway, at Reagan National, and in several places in between. It’s rude that we haven’t responded.”
“We just need a location.”
“We’re monitoring in real time. We have eyes on. I’m forwarding the information now.”
The patrician terminated the call and pressed a series of keys. The irritant, the danger, would soon be no more.
CHAPTER 42
QUANTICO, VIRGINIA,
AUGUST 16, 8:29 A.M. EDT
Garin steered the Explorer off Jefferson Davis Highway, down a long, blacktopped driveway, and descended the ramp to the underground parking garage of DGT’s Quantico facility—a futuristic-looking two-story glass, steel, and granite building surrounded by fifteen acres of forest not far from the Marine base.
The two black-uniformed guards with MP5s slung across their chests standing at a kiosk next to the entrance recognized the SUV but, according to protocol, raised their weapons and tracked the vehicle as it approached the lift gate. Garin lowered the window to identify himself.
Garin parked the Explorer in the spot reserved for Dan Dwyer and took a garage elevator to the cybersecurity division, located in a space the size of a basketball court just outside Dwyer’s office. He spotted Matt sitting on a desk at the far end of the room talking with one of the tech assistants. Matt saw Garin approach and waved him toward a room enclosed from floor to ceiling in glass. A rolling murmur trailed Garin as he walked down the aisle, the techies regarding one of the firm’s founding operators with something between curiosity and awe.
Matt pointed Garin toward a chair in front of a fifty-seven-inch monitor and pushed a swivel chair next to him.
“Every so often we get lucky.” Matt smiled.
“No such thing. There’s only life’s intersection with favorable events and unfavorable events.”
“Then consider this an intersection with a favorable event,” Matt said. His Aussie accent made it seem as if he took nothing seriously. “We began the arduous process of pulling any possible clues we could find from the impenetrably encrypted phone you took off your would-be assassin in Cleveland. We devoted our best minds and tons of computing power to the task; the cybersleuth equivalent of the Manhattan Project; the Apollo space program of decryption. Vats of caffeine were consumed, incense was burned, virgins were sacrificed…”
“Matt.” The gravedigger’s voice.
“Well, mate, it’s like this: The phone’s not encrypted.”
“How is that possible?”
“We think what you took off the guy wasn’t his service device. That device, most likely, was in another pocket or somewhere else in the vehicle when you pulled this one from him,” Matt said, holding the phone. “No doubt, the device issued to him was super-duper encrypted, and he made all duty-related communications with that phone. But they were also strictly monitored. SVR, Zaslon, never had a record, however, of any communication he made or received on this phone. They didn’t even know it existed.”
“So he kept this one for personal matters that he didn’t want his superiors to know about.”
“Even badass operators like their personal privacy. Bad breach of security, but even Zaslon’s human.”
“These guys don’t make mistakes.” Garin paused. “So anything that might possibly interest us, anything useful, would be on the encrypted device,” Garin said. “Not this one.”
“Probably.”
“So how does that make us lucky?”
Matt shrugged amiably. “Maybe it does; maybe it doesn’t. That’s for you to determine.”
“Show me.”