“You have video capability, of course. You can—”
“Yes, but that isn’t foolproof. I’ve already accessed photographs of you and your daughter. I need much more,” Lana said.
“Fingerprint and iris recognition? Would that help?”
“Yes,” Lana answered. “That would certainly be much better, but I want to see you, too. When you talk, videoconference with me.”
“Okay, but I will also send you instructions on how to access secret files about me so you’ll have all of that at your disposal.” Though Bortnik hadn’t specified, she had to be referring to FSB records, which Lana was glad she was volunteering. “But I want something in return,” Bortnik said.
Lana had a good idea what that would be, but asked anyway.
“I want the same from you,” the Russian replied.
“That will make my bosses uneasy.”
“And what I’m doing could get me killed. My daughter, too.”
“But you want to come here, don’t you?”
“Possibly.”
“Don’t play games with me. Do you or don’t you?”
“Yes, I want to come.”
“You know what we could guarantee you and your little girl, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“And, I repeat, you came to us.”
“Not ‘us,’” Bortnik corrected. “To you. I will give you what you want.”
Lana thought she sounded nervous. Who could blame her? Who knows who’s listening? “And your daughter. I want to see you both in our videoconference. Have her on your lap.”
A pause now greeted Lana, even longer than the one that came during their first call.
Bortnik broke the silence: “Yes, my daughter, too. But there are critical time restraints. You have to get us out of here. I have traveled close to a coastline. That is all I will say for now, except that I can’t cross a border checkpoint. People are looking for me. You must come for us very fast. Not just for us. It’s in your interest, too.”
“And what will you do for us, if we get you out?”’
“I can give you many pieces of the puzzle,” Galina said, speaking rapidly, as if she feared she’d be silenced — by her own timidity or the harshness of others — if she didn’t say everything at once. “But I am dead, and so is my daughter, if you don’t come right away. I mean you, Lana.”
Using her name for the first time. Not her surname, but still a gamble. “Why me?” Lana asked.
“Because I want to know the person I’m betting my little girl’s life on is betting hers as well. Simple quid pro quo. But there’s something else you must bring — all your expertise and computers. We will have to go to work immediately to stop this madness. These men are crazy. They think they are playing games. They won’t stop with one missile.”
“Why are they waiting now?”
“To make everyone cower. They think they’re in total control.”
They are, thought Lana reluctantly.
“Every minute is precious, Lana. Do you understand?”
“All too well. Let me see what I can do. I’ll look for that information you mentioned. We must start with that, and the means of verification must be foolproof.”
“Then let’s begin.” Bortnik hung up.
Lana imagined the woman’s fear, fleeing Moscow with her only child. Near a coastline, either in the north or south of her country. Which wasn’t giving away much, either to her or those searching for Bortnik.
But Lana also imagined a setup. How could she not? Bortnik, or whoever was posing as her, had put tremendous pressure on Lana to take personal action to exfiltrate her and her daughter from Russia. No mean gamble, especially at a time like this.
Plus, Emma had been right: Lana had almost been killed the last time she got involved in kinetic action against hackers. Physical derring-do wasn’t her strong suit. And she’d promised her daughter that she wasn’t going anywhere.
But at each stage of Emma’s development, Lana had tried to protect her from the bleakest, most age-inappropriate truths. She’d edited fairy tales, for instance, when she’d felt her daughter wasn’t ready for the unexpurgated Brothers Grimm. Now Lana felt that Emma, even at fifteen, hadn’t grown beyond the simple comforts of her mother’s deceptions. So she wouldn’t tell her if she were deployed overseas. Lana would just go, if it came to that, and trust that she’d return in one piece — and quickly.
There were always myths a famous mother couldn’t control, though. After last year’s violent cybersiege, Lana wished Emma had not accepted that her mother could overcome the grimmest possibilities and most excruciating penalties.
Lana had tried to tell Emma that what actually had happened in Yemen was much more complicated than the torrent of news stories would have had the world — and her own daughter — believe. Truth be told, Lana felt she’d been more lucky than brave during that climactic struggle — and that whatever had passed for her courage then was about to be cruelly tested again.
Fearing that she’d fail herself, her daughter, and her country, she glanced at the phone and shut off the light.
Sleep did not come easily.
CHAPTER 18
Galina awoke just before noon, her sense of displacement so great that she did not recognize the monastery room for several seconds. It looked so small it could have been a prison cell — but for the sleeping beauty in the bed across from her.
Alexandra lay with her eyes closed and mouth slack, looking blissfully happy, but five hours was all the sleep Galina would get. Even so, it represented the longest uninterrupted rest since she’d first spoken to the woman whom she now knew was Lana Elkins, owner of a cybersecurity firm and a former NSA star. Elkins, Galina had learned, was a troubleshooter for that agency and had survived a brutal firefight that ended the cyberattack on the U.S. grid. All of which told Galina that Lana Elkins had the clout to provide her with what she most wanted: safety for her daughter and herself from men who would kill them on sight. That had certainly been Tattoo’s goal, and she doubted Oleg would stop simply because the first thug he’d sent after her had failed.
She hoped Alexandra’s slumber would continue a while longer. With a belly stuffed with bread and cheese — and a body fully exhausted from all the stress they’d endured since thug number one had shown up — Galina thought it likely her daughter would sleep right through her mother’s next contact with Elkins, this time directly via satellite; the monastery did not have Wi-Fi but a satellite dish nested on a nearby building, so she would poach its digital video broadcast signals to get to the Internet posthaste.
She started hacking her way back into FSB’s cybercenter, following the invisible trails she had blazed long before to Russia’s darkest secrets. Next, she created a file to provide virtual paths for Lana Elkins that would lead the U.S. spy to everything FSB had on her and on Galina herself. She had read the Elkins files as soon as she’d managed to identify her. That was why she had been so comfortable moving forward with her: Elkins was formidable enough to have warranted lots of FSB interest. A credit to her, in Galina’s book.
But before executing the final keystroke to her own files, she froze at the sight of a surprise video greeting from Oleg. It was as if he were standing in the room staring at her, his eyes boring holes into her own.
It can’t be in real time, Galina thought. He must have placed it here, setting it up to be triggered by me. And she might have been right, but his message was much more menacing than even his shocking appearance could herald: