Naomi stirred on the other bunk, and Kealey looked over, his thoughts switching to the previous night. The car from the embassy had arrived less than ten minutes after he made the call. The driver had brought clothes for Kharmai, and once she had changed, they’d driven straight back to the embassy. The chief of station, a florid, portly Texan by the name of Fichtner, had met them at the gates. He had screamed at Kealey for twenty minutes while a doctor removed the shrapnel from Naomi’s arm. Fichtner then made the call to Harper in Washington. Kealey had no idea how Harper had reacted — he had only heard one side of the conversation — but he knew that the DDO would not be pleased with what had transpired. A man he had personally recruited was dead, Rühmann was gone, and they were no closer to finding William Vanderveen. The whole thing was a complete disaster. For the first time since his dismissal from the Agency, Kealey was starting to feel that he’d earned his walking papers.
Naomi stirred again and sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She pulled back the covers and swung her feet to the floor, revealing a white T-shirt that hung like a dress on her slender frame.
Kealey could see the bandage beneath the fabric near her left shoulder, but his attention was quickly drawn elsewhere, as the bottom edge of the shirt barely reached the top of her bare thighs. He looked away, embarrassed, but then he felt her eyes on him, and he turned back. She was wearing a slight smile, obviously amused.
“You didn’t seem so shy when you were pulling my clothes off last night,” she said, pulling her hair back from her face.
The comment caught him off-guard. “You were soaking wet, Naomi, and it was freezing out there. I was just trying to—”
“I know, I know. Relax. I was only joking.” She stood and looked around for her jeans. Once she had pulled them on, she sat back down on the edge of the bed. Kealey saw that her smile had disappeared. As if reading his mind, she studied him with a serious expression. “This isn’t good, is it?”
He shook his head, then seemed to hesitate. “I’m sorry I brought you into this. If I’d known it would turn out this way—”
“Don’t, Ryan.” She fixed him with a steady gaze, hoping to convey her sincerity. “Don’t apologize. You didn’t make me get on that plane, just like you didn’t make me help you in Washington. I wanted to do those things. I wanted to be part of it, and I don’t regret it.”
“What about your career? And don’t tell me it doesn’t matter, because I know it does.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, it matters. I didn’t want to lose my job… I mean, who does, right? But it’s done, and that’s that. Besides, some things are more important.”
“Like what?”
“Like helping the people you care about.”
They looked at each other for a long moment, each trying to figure out what to say next. The moment was shattered by a knock at the door. A woman with feline features and short auburn hair poked her head in, her gaze instantly moving to Kealey’s bare chest. Naomi recognized her as Fichtner’s aide. She spoke between loud smacks of the gum she was chewing. “Ryan, Mr.
Fichtner would like to see you in his office.”
“Okay,” Kealey said. He reached for his shirt, which was still slightly damp. “Thanks, Becky.”
“No problem.” The woman beamed at him for a few seconds, then turned to Naomi, the smile fading. “You’re Kharmai, right? You have a telephone call. You can take it in the next room.”
Naomi was bewildered. “Did they say who they were?”
“Her last name is Peterson,” the aide said, sliding her gaze back to Kealey. “Apparently, she called Langley looking for you, and Mr. Harper had it routed through to our switchboard.”
“Okay,” Naomi said. “I’ll be out in a minute.” The woman didn’t move, and Naomi repeated herself loudly. Finally, the aide left reluctantly, the door closing behind her.
“You have a fan there,” she said wryly.
“What are you talking about?”
“Yeah, right.” Naomi shook her head as she stood and walked to the door. “Like you didn’t notice.”
She followed the aide down a narrow hall. They came to the secure phone, which was housed in a small, windowless office. The aide gestured in a bored, dismissive kind of way, then went back the way she had come. Naomi glared at the retreating woman as she reached for the phone and punched the HOLD button. “Kharmai.”
“Naomi, it’s Liz. How are you?”
At the sound of the other woman’s voice, she couldn’t help but smile, her spirits lifting. At the same time, she felt a tinge of self-pity. She didn’t miss much about London, but Peterson definitely qualified.
“Could be better,” she replied honestly. They exchanged pleasantries for a minute; then Naomi related the events of the previous night, leaving out the fact that she was no longer officially with the Agency. Peterson was slightly stunned when she finished, and Naomi had to prompt her to get back to why she’d called in the first place.
“Well, it has to do with the name we pulled off the tape. Jason March, aka William Vanderveen.”
Naomi instantly perked up. “What do you have?”
Peterson explained quickly about Samir al-Askari, the Jordanian banker, and his untimely end on the Strand. “Two of our best watchers were tracking this guy, Naomi. One was taking photographs from across the street. When we went back and digitally enhanced the shots, two faces kept popping up in the background, a man and a woman. We ran a check through our facial recognition software, looking for nodes. Vanderveen came up; the match was ninety-five percent.”
Kharmai interpreted quickly. Nodal points were visual markers on the human face. The markers could be nearly anything distinctive: the width of the mouth, the distance between the eyes, the spacing of the cheekbones. The human face contained eighty nodal points, but for the software to make a match, only fourteen to twenty-two points were needed, with twenty-two rated at 100
percent. Ninety-five percent was encouraging; it meant that twenty-one nodal points had linked the file photograph of Will Vanderveen to the shots taken in London. “And this was when? Two days ago?”
“Al-Askari died two days ago, but we didn’t get the match until yesterday.”
“Huh.” Naomi thought about it, unsure of how this information could help. They didn’t have any hard evidence, but Ryan was certain that Vanderveen had set the trap for them in Rühmann’s apartment, and Naomi agreed. London was old news.
Then something hit her. “Wait, you said there were two faces?”
“That’s right,” Peterson replied. “The second is a woman, but she didn’t come up on the database. We have no idea who she is, but she was definitely moving with Vanderveen. They’re close together in all the shots, and in one, you can see that she’s holding his arm. According to the report, al-Askari entered the Savoy and stayed inside for approximately thirty minutes. We don’t have shots of Vanderveen entering the hotel, but we managed to get hold of some footage from the Savoy’s CCTV cameras. He was there, and the woman was with him inside the hotel as well.”