The quickest way to discover who these men were, and where they had been, was to follow their money. That meant breaking into their credit card accounts. Nico salivated at the thought of it. In the old days, he had favored bringing down financial networks through denial-of-service attacks. He had formed cyber gangs of users from different geolocations to overwhelm networks with the number of simultaneous requests needed to bring them to their knees.
Unfortunately, that type of offensive was no longer an option. He hadn’t maintained his contacts in the hacker community during his exile. And even if he had, involving them would be too much of a risk. The sensitive nature of the operation required extreme discretion. As an alternative, he could enslave a great number of machines, masking the IP of each through a randomized spoofing process. In the past, his favorite targets had been large American state universities like Penn State. Any institution with a hefty on-campus population, where large numbers of students would create and eventually abandon accounts, was perfect. Nico would simply revive those accounts and use them for his own means.
He wasn’t yet privy to the details of the case, but he figured that Carver wouldn’t have come all the way to South Africa if the stakes were small. And that was just fine by him. High stakes suited him.
Now he felt alive in a way that he had not in ages.
He thought of Madge. Poor lonely Madge, who had left her good home and good job in America to hide from the law with him. Who had, even before that, written him dozens of letters in prison because she wanted to reform him.
And then, as quickly as he had felt high on adrenaline, a wave of guilt washed over him. Damn, he thought. I don’t even miss her.
He shrugged and opened the can of Limonata.
Nathan Drucker Residence
Haley Ellis streamlined her body slightly as she sped toward the small patch of blue reflective water below. Less than a second later her three-story jump was broken by 39 inches of bubbling Jacuzzi water. She landed in a crouch, breaking the fall as much with the flexibility of her knees as with the water’s bubbly buoyancy.
A hand gripped her arm and pulled her toward the steps. She looked up, expecting Speers, but was instead eye-to-eye with a frightened spa-goer in soggy swim trunks. She smelled vodka on him, and was immediately aware of three other spooked residents with cocktails in their hands.
Now Speers hobbled toward her. His suit was dripping wet and he was holding the pack.
“Are you guys okay?” someone asked as Ellis found dry land.
A ferocious blast ripped the wall away three stories up. Ellis acted before she thought, shoving the spa-goers out of the way just before the water was deluged with scorched wood, glass and insulation.
Speers was suddenly over her, pulling Ellis up from the cement walkway. Her forearms were scraped up and bleeding, but she barely felt them.
“Get out of here,” Speers shouted at the residents as they scattered. “Call the police!”
The intelligence chief was hobbling now. Ellis grabbed the pack containing Drucker’s work and steadied Speers as they made their way toward the parking lot. Now she knew these bastards wanted Drucker’s book. She was willing to do just about anything to deprive them of it.
Speers opened the doors of his SUV and slid behind the wheel. “You are about to witness some serious psycho driving.”
He pulled into the late-night traffic, then stepped on the gas and powered past several dozen cars. He took an abrupt right turn, then navigated down an alleyway and through to the next street, where he came dangerously close to mowing down some pedestrians while merging into more traffic. It was some pretty fancy driving for a government exec.
“I didn’t expect you to jump out that window,” Ellis said.
“What was I supposed to do, die there?”
He winced as he stepped on the brake. His ankle was badly twisted, if not broken.
“You need a doctor.”
He nodded. “Later. First we need to get you somewhere safe.”
Ellis tensed at the thought of being cooped up. At least she had Drucker’s manuscript and notes to keep her busy. She couldn’t remember the last time she had read a book, but this was different. They’d have to kill her to keep her from reading this one. Lord knew they were trying.
Mayflower Hotel
Washington D.C.
Ellis had often fantasized about staying in the historic Mayflower Hotel, but her fantasies had not been anything like this. Blackout shades had been applied to all the windows, and a security detail outside the 9th-floor room kept them confined. Overnight, Speers had grown increasingly concerned about the possibility that it had been Ellis, not Drucker, who had been the target of the attacks at the hotel bar and the condo. Ellis thought that theory was nonsense. Trouble just had a way of finding her.
At least the four-star accommodations were spacious, and the room came at no extra cost. The vacant suite was booked year-round for visiting dignitaries, and it was equipped with an exceptional workspace. Speers had felt it was best to keep Ellis’ work away from the prying eyes at McLean.
Ellis’ sister, Jenna, was curled up in an armchair, wearing a hotel robe and audio headphones that were as large as tennis balls. For Jenna, Speers’ decision to move the Ellis sisters to a secured location was a bona fide staycation. If she had been spooked by the security in the hallway, or by the fact that her sister wasn’t allowed to disclose the security threat that had forced them to come to the hotel, she wasn’t letting on. After a grueling shift taking complex coffee orders at Starbucks, Jenna had already ordered room service twice and used the suite’s Jacuzzi tub. This was as good as it got.
Ellis was significantly less content. Although she had hours of work ahead of her thanks to their raid on Drucker’s apartment, and her body was sore from their near-death escape, she was no less antsy for freedom. Understanding that Speers had placed her here for her own protection didn’t help. Every part of her body was screaming to get back on the trail.
Unable to relax long enough to concentrate, she surrendered to the hotel mini-bar. She found tiny containers of Jack Daniels and two brands of rum that she had never heard of.
“Whoa,” Jenna said as she watched her sister doing shots with the tiny bottles. She popped the enormous headphones away from her skull just enough to hear the sound of her own voice. “Can we order some room service?”
“Sure, Sis.”
Jenna wasted no time in popping open the menu. “Can we order prime rib?”
The government per diem for employee meals while traveling was $71 per day in D.C. The prime rib was going to take half their food budget in one fell swoop.
“Please?” Jenna pressed.
She was too tired to negotiate. And besides, it wasn’t every day she escaped death twice. “What the hell.”
As Jenna dialed room service, Haley sat cross-legged on one of the beds. She emptied the contents of the backpack they had removed from Drucker’s apartment and spread the manuscript, photographs and handwritten notes out before her.
Now she saw something that she hadn’t seen in Drucker’s condo: the infamous issue of Inside Washington magazine. The page was turned down to the article. A bold headline, ‘The Country Club Cult That Runs Washington,’ appeared across the top. Someone had drawn a red circle around the title and written SENSATIONALIST CRAP!!! The handwriting matched Drucker’s scarcely legible scrawl.
She really hadn’t bought Drucker’s claim that it had been published without his consent, but now she saw he was probably telling the truth. Why else would he have been so critical of his own writing?