When he finally answered he didn’t try to hide his displeasure at being questioned. ‘NVGs have a cut-off mechanism for bright light.’
‘Okay,’ she said eventually.
‘If I hadn’t killed them, we couldn’t have escaped.’
‘But they were just cops, right? Good guys.’
‘It was either them or us,’ Victor said. ‘And they knew the risks when they signed up.’ He gave her a minute before speaking again. ‘What do we do now?’
She snapped out of whatever temporary anxiety or guilt had gripped her and straightened up. ‘Elliot Seif,’ the broker stated with surprising venom. ‘He’s the first port of call.’
She withdrew a computer printout from her shoulder bag. It was low res, black and white, a head-and-shoulders shot of a thin, suited man in his fifties or older. His forehead was a mass of deep lines, lips thin, eyes dark under bushy eyebrows. He looked like an accountant.
‘Who is he?’ Victor asked.
‘An accountant.’
Victor raised an eyebrow.
The broker looked at him closely. ‘Did I miss something?’
He shook his head. ‘Continue.’
‘Seif is a senior partner at a large financial firm in London, Hartman and Royce Equity Investments. He handled the account that paid me the money, which I in turn used to pay you.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘You’re good at what you do. So am I.’
She was good — Victor knew enough about her to know that. He trusted she knew exactly what she was talking about. Victor reached into his coat for his cigarettes and matches.
‘Could you not do that?’ the broker asked.
He looked up. ‘Sorry?’
‘Can you not smoke, please?’
He hesitated for a moment, then put the packet back. ‘I’m trying to quit, anyway.’
‘You’ll feel better for it.’
‘I don’t so far.’
She smiled briefly before getting back to business. ‘But Seif is just a stepping stone,’ she said. ‘He’s a middleman, nothing more. A conduit for the money to provide an extra layer of protection for whoever’s behind this. We have to know who owns the account that paid me, or we’ve failed before we’ve really begun.’ She paused to get her breath back, continuing after a moment. ‘And to do that I need access to his files.’
‘Can you outside line it?’
‘An agency cryptography team and a supercomputer would help.’
‘Point taken.’
‘The transfer was done electronically. I’m guessing from a front company or dummy corporation somewhere. Seif will have it on record. On a hard drive there’ll be a name. That’s all I need.’
‘Why not just speak to Seif?’
‘I would be amazed if he knew where the money really came from and even more amazed if he knew where it went after it left his hands. And if he did, he wouldn’t tell us.’
‘I can be very persuasive.’
She stared into his dark eyes. ‘We don’t need to go there.’
‘You mean you don’t want to go there.’
‘That’s right, I don’t. It would be too difficult anyway. We’d have to snatch him, which can’t be easy. And he could lie, send us in the wrong direction. We don’t have time for that. Getting his files would be easier surely.’
Victor nodded after a few seconds thought. ‘Then we’ll break into his firm.’
‘If it’s viable, but we’re against the clock, so hopefully we won’t need to. He’s bound to have a laptop or PDA with client information. I don’t need much to get us a lead.’
‘How long have we got to get this done?’
‘They could be targeting Seif as part of the clean-up, so we have to get to him before they do. My control was dead within days of this op going wrong. I don’t know how many other people are involved, but we’ve got to assume not many. So if we can’t get Seif’s files by tomorrow, then it has to be the next day at the latest.’
‘That isn’t long.’
‘I can’t do anything about that.’
Victor’s jaw flexed. It had been a statement, not a critique. It wasn’t in his nature to complain. ‘With this short a time frame, there is no way I can take the computer from him without his knowledge.’
The broker nodded, grudgingly accepting the implication.
‘We’ll need an appointment at Seif’s firm for tomorrow,’ Victor said. ‘Plus his home address and every piece of pertinent information we can find on him.’
‘I’m seeing one of his associates at two thirty tomorrow afternoon.’
‘That was fast.’
He caught the trace of a proud smile before she said, ‘Can’t say I’m looking forward to it, though. I’ve got a thing about bad teeth.’
‘That’s just a stereotype Americans like to perpetuate. Teeth are no worse in Britain than anywhere else.’
She shook her head. ‘Dammit.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I thought you might have said “we” at some point in there.’
‘Why would I say that?’
‘You wouldn’t necessarily, but if you had it would have told me where you’re from.’
‘You think I’m British?’
She shook her head. ‘Or you could have said it instead of “Americans”.’
‘So I’m American?’
‘You speak like you’re from the United States sometimes, like a Brit at other times, transatlantic sometimes, too. Your accent switches all the time, though, so I really don’t have a clue.’
‘I move around a lot.’
‘I figured. But when we spoke on the phone, I’m sure I detected an Eastern European accent in your English. But when we met, I thought I could hear a trace of French. I’m guessing your accent reflects whichever country you’re in at the time.’
‘Very observant.’
She smiled, shyly but proudly at the same time. ‘So I thought I’d test you, see if you’d slip and give it away.’
He liked her guile. ‘Better luck next time.’
‘Thanks, I’ll make sure I’m more subtle.’
‘You’ll have to be.’
She was still smiling, as though they were just normal people talking, a man and a woman getting to know each other, chatting easily. He reminded himself that was a dangerous course of action. There were good reasons he had no one in his life. Now was not the time to start letting his guard down.
He noticed her expression was different. She stared at him.
‘What?’ he asked eventually.
‘I didn’t thank you for earlier. At my apartment.’
‘You don’t have to thank me.’
‘You saved me. If not my life, my-’
His voice was hard. ‘We don’t need to discuss it.’
The broker’s face changed. It looked like he’d hurt her feelings. Victor told himself he didn’t care why.
No one spoke for a minute. The broker reached into the shoulder bag again and took out a file. She handed it to Victor without looking at him.
‘Seif’s dossier,’ she explained. ‘I’m sorry; it’s all I could get in the time frame.’
The file was a quarter inch thick. She had done a lot in just two days. He flicked through, surprised. Impressed.
‘It’ll do.’
CHAPTER 52
Falls Church, Virginia, USA
Monday
16:54 EST
Sykes climbed out of his Lincoln and gave the door a good, satisfying slam. He squinted against the low afternoon sun, pointed the key fob at the car, and watched as the indicator lights flashed twice. It was hardly necessary. Crime in this government and CIA-heavy part of the state was virtually nonexistent, even though over the river it was rampant, but Sykes was a cautious man. He just wished he had been more cautious when Ferguson had said those immortal words to him: How would you like to be rich?
Yes had been the answer, hell yes. Sykes was on the last few zeros of his trust fund and didn’t much like the idea of having to downgrade his lifestyle. But that had been then; now Sykes would be happy if he managed to stay out of jail. It was supposed to be simple. A retired Russian navy officer was selling the whereabouts of some extremely valuable missiles to the CIA. Kill him and steal the information. Have the killer killed to prevent the rest of the CIA from finding out who hired him. Recover missiles and sell them on the black market. On paper it had sounded easy, but everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong.