Sixty-Three

  McLean, Virginia

  The tendons in Andrew’s hands are locking up. Carpal tunnel, mixed with arthritis, and whatever else happens when a person punches a keyboard thousands of times a day. He’s in his home office, which is really a spare bedroom. All of his old computer equipment is in a closet. It was too risky to use the new tech Martinez supplied when infected computers could be in the room. Even with it unplugged, the agency could have installed bugs. Listening devices. Microscopic tools that would allow them to spy on his work.

  He’s attempting to hack into Jen’s hard drive. Without Anne, it’s becoming a nightmare task. Typically, he would download all the encrypted data. The quantum computer would establish which encryption method the manufacturer used. Plug it in. Work backwards until all the data made sense. With no guidance, Anne would complete the task within twelve hours.

  Instead, he’s hacking the hard drive the old-fashioned way: brute force. It means he is attempting to guess Jen’s password. Hackers of old would understand, offer their sympathies, along with a stiff drink. So far, he and his new computer have made hundreds of attempts, starting with key phrases associated with Jen.

  A yellow legal pad rests beside Andrew’s mouse. It’s full of names. Gus, the horse she grew up riding in Texas. Rocky and Bullwinkle, two of her ranch’s newest residents. Harrison Lowe, Marcus Keen—names that belonged to former teammates. They lost their lives, and he included those dates in his matrix. Former targets, assets, callsigns—he’s got them all on the list. They’ve failed, one by one.

  Each failed password entry counts as one attempt. He has ten attempts before Jen’s hard drive automatically deletes its data. When that happens, he has to re-upload the encrypted data back to the hard drive and try again.

  Another slow process. Jen’s hard drive contains two terabytes of data. The upload takes thirty minutes, but he’s cheating … just a little. His new supercomputer has half-a-dozen USB ports. When he was at the store, he purchased five identical copies of Jen’s drive. He’s using them as if they were Jen’s.

  Which makes one hundred twenty attempts an hour, most of which are randomized guesses from his computer.

  He is completing another round of attempts. Sixty. The second round in an hour, which makes it seem like one-twenty failures. But he’s also been at this for almost twenty hours, so it’s more like several thousand. And his hands … the kitchen is calling his name, but it’s got nothing to do with food. He only wants to douse his hands in hot water. Loosen the tension in his joints.

  Red lights flash on the hard drives, a sign they’re bricking themselves. This round is finished, just like Andrew’s patience. He grabs his legal pad and steps out of his office. Sloane is sitting on his couch. She reminds him of a corpse. A doll whipped ragged during the last several days. Jen’s death followed by her resurrection. Langley’s heavy-handed tactics. Finally, a mundane task to complete while the adrenaline burns off.

  “I’ve never been in an actual fistfight before.” Andrew tosses his legal pad onto the kitchen island. Turns on the faucet and shoves the handle to the hottest setting. He waits for Sloane to process.

  “Jen’s tough.” Sloane sits up on the couch, thinking more about Andrew’s comment. “You’d have to take a few jiu-jitsu classes. Pump some iron too.”

  “I’d still lose.” Andrew shoves his hands under the stream of water. “Damn, that feels amazing.”

  Sloane heaves off the couch and sits at the bar. “Our accounts on Void aren’t getting any action.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  Sloane arches a brow, leans back in the chair, and crosses her arms. “Lay it on me—and don’t you dare say you’re mad about having to scribble passwords on a pad.”

  “Why? It’s enough to drive anyone insane.”

  Sloane laughs. “How do you think I feel about babysitting Void accounts? Reminds me of being a teenager, waiting for my damn boyfriend to text me.”

  “Are you sure you’ve grown out of that phase?”

  “Remember that fight you were worried about?” She grabs the legal pad and threatens to backhand him with it. After her threat takes effect, she lifts the first sheet, then the second. Reads over the entries. “Besides, we’ve got all night. Take your time.”

  Andrew chuckles and tries to focus on the water jetting over his hands. Sloane is right. He’s hurting, and it has nothing to do with Jen’s ability to defy mortality. Beyond that, he wishes he could be honest, but he doesn’t know how.

  He grew up in a traditional Chinese household. He never saw his parents argue or express high levels of emotion. Their example stuck, and it makes discussing his problems a challenge. But this issue is a different type of grating, and he refuses to keep it bottled up.

  “Jen doesn’t trust us.” Andrew tightens his fists under the water, using it as another outlet for his anger. “After all these years—after everything Jen’s done for us. She left us in the dark.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why do you think she didn’t ask me for help?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “What the hell?” Andrew says. “You get me to spill my guts, and you won’t even look up from that godforsaken pad.”

  “Your first instinct was right, Andrew.”

  “So, she doesn’t trust us.”

  “No, the first instinct,” Sloane replies. “You wanted to fight Jen because she’s a dick—sometimes.” She grins. “More of a ballbuster. And she does trust you.”

  Andrew realizes Sloane is onto something, and his worries vanish. He turns off the faucet and dries his hands. “She assumed that I’d end up with this drive.”

  “Yes, she did,” Sloane says. “How long have you been breaking into computers?”

  “No comment,” Andrew says. “I wasn’t truthful on my entrance poly.”

  “They made you take one of those?”

  Andrew gives her a wry grin.

  “Whatever.” Sloane returns the legal pad. “Go back to the old days. When you were a kid, hacking for fun. When you make the new list, remember: Jen’s a total dick.”

  Andrew takes the pad and writes his first entry. “Password. This one worked wonders back in the day.” He laughs, full of memories of scouring the internet for hacking digests. Password was the top choice of computer users who couldn’t even fathom that a person from hundreds of miles away could break into their systems. He remembers another. “One, two, three, four—that was the minimum character requirement to create a password.”

  “Worth a shot.” Sloane heaves off the stool and lumbers back to the couch. “I’m going back to being miserable. Don’t talk to me until tomorrow morning.”

  “Grumpy,” Andrew says.

  “I’m still down to fight you.”

  Andrew returns to the office and prepares a fresh wave of attempts. Sixty tries. Sixty basic passwords. He selects the first drive. Types the first entry on his list: password. The drive unlocks, and a list of files appears on his screen.

  Andrew’s jaw goes slack. Jen selected the most mundane, often-used password imaginable—because she knows him. He smirks, barely able to process his excitement, but it gets the best of him. “Sloane! Get in here!”

  “C’mon, Andy! I have eight hours left!”

  Andrew doesn’t hear her shuffling toward the office and offers her an incentive. “You were right.”

  “I’m coming!” Sloane barrels into the room a second later. She leans into the computer screen, grinning. “I’d say Jen trusts you. She knew you’d overthink everything, too.”

  “I’d say Jen’s a dick—sometimes,” Andrew says, scrolling through the files. “Let’s see what we have.”

  He clicks on the first file, and the complete first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer appears on the screen.

  Sloane snorts. “She keeps us entertained.”

  “Not the word I’d use,” Andrew says, choking back annoyance. The file contains several gigabytes of useless data. It’s one of the reasons it took so much time to re-upload the backup copies of the original drive. He keeps scrolling, and clicking, until he reaches the seventh and final season of Buffy. “Sloane, I think I’m going to scream.”

  “Can you imagine what Gabby is going to think when she sees her credit card statement? Five thousand dollars … for the entire Buffy collection,” Sloane says. “We’ve got one left, though.”

  Andrew clicks the folder and finds several neatly labeled files. Photo, Passport, Visa—only the start. He clicks Photo and finds an image of Anastasia Orlov and Gerard LeMatt descending a grand staircase at a Lake Como resort. He recognizes them both instantly.

  “We’ve got her,” Sloane says.

  “We should call Gabby⁠—”

  “I’m already on the line, Mr. Xiao,” Martinez says via the phone in Sloane’s hand. “Walk me through everything before we forward it to Langley.”

  Sixty-Four

  Utrecht, Netherlands

  Night works in Anastasia’s favor.

  She sits in the passenger seat of the Defender, watching the light-industrial complex from across the street. Sodium lamps wash the row of corrugated metal doors in a flat orange glow. The long building looks like a giant shed sliced into units—landscapers, storage lockers, mom-and-pop contractors.

  Only one unit is awake, and it belongs to Nikolaos Vardis. Since leaving the cooler, Anastasia and her team have been tracking him. It’s been a challenge. Vardis is one of the forger’s many aliases, but it’s his most prominent. And unlike his birth identity, doesn’t have any criminal convictions for check forgery.

  Halfway down the row, yellow light fills an office window. A small dome camera hangs over the door, angled to cover the parking lot. A security-company decal clings to the glass.

  “This guy puts in some serious overtime,” Klement says from behind the wheel.

  “His shift at Optica Secuur ended at six,” Anastasia replies, referencing Vardis’s employer. It’s a printing company that specializes in secure documents, like checks and passport paper. They’re also unwitting contributors to Vardis’s criminal enterprise. “Most criminals have second jobs, though.”

  “And this is where he makes the real money,” Klement says, studying the lit window.

  “One vehicle in the back lot,” Marlen reports over the radio. He is monitoring the building’s rear exit. “A sedan, and the plates match his registration.”

  “We’ve got confirmation,” Anastasia says. She raises her radio. “Renat, let’s initiate contact.”

  A pair of headlights appears at the end of the street. A Dutch police cruiser rolls up, passes the Defender without slowing, and turns into the industrial lot. The car is real. The officers are not.

  Sander and Renat climb out, uniforms crisp, reflective vests catching the lamplight.

  “Can you see what’s going on inside, Renat?” Anastasia asks.

  “I see lights flashing inside the building,” Renat replies. “I can smell the UV ink too. He’s busy in there.”

  “Keep it fast and smooth,” Anastasia says. “Once you make contact, don’t let him touch any of his equipment—including his computer. We need to preserve our access to his technology.”

  “Copy. We’ll be rough,” Renat says. “Knocking now.”

  At Vardis’s workbench, the world is ink, paper, and technology.

  The smell of solvents and ozone fills the air. Racks of passport booklets and specialty stock line the shelves. On a metal stand in the center of the room, a Diletta PassProducer One hums, cooling fans whispering as it finishes a forgery of a Russian passport.

  He checks the printer’s control screen. No jams. No errors. Perfect.

  A heavy knock rattles the front door.

  Vardis frowns. He wipes his hands on a rag, pecks his laptop to pull up his security camera feed. Two cops are standing at his door.

  His stomach tightens.

  He’s been careful at work. Stealing only the supplies he needs. Ordering others from Void, the dark web service he relies upon to function. He tells himself that if the cops were here to arrest him for felony forgery, they wouldn’t knock. They’d beat down the door and shove a gun in his face.

  He decides to chance it and figure out what the cops are after. After all, they know he’s here. He walks out of his production area. Enters a short hall. There’s an office on his left, and just ahead, the front door. But he doesn’t open it. “Hallo?”

  “Goedenavond,” Sander says. “We have reports of a prowler in the area. We just wanted to warn you.”

  “Would you be willing to look at a photograph for us?” Renat adds, stepping closer.

  Vardis relents. He pulls back the deadbolt and cracks the door, allowing Sander to appraise him. He isn’t the hulking brute Remi was; he’s leaner. His hair is cropped short and black, and he moves with the fluid, coiled tension of a man who is light on his feet and dangerous in a scuffle.

  “Sorry, I’m a bit busy,” Nikolaos says, eyeing them suspiciously. “Can I see the photo?”

  “Yes, sir.” Sander unfolds the paper. He holds it up right in front of Vardis’s face—absurdly close, obscuring the man’s vision entirely.

  Vardis frowns, leaning back. “I can’t see⁠—”

  Renat doesn’t wait. He kicks the door with everything he has.

  The reinforced door slams into Vardis’s face, sending him careening backward into the office. He stumbles, arms windmilling, but his athleticism saves him. He recovers, pivoting on his back foot, and answers with a sharp hook to Sander’s ribs.

  The punch lands with a meaty thud. Sander grunts but stays locked in, grabbing a fistful of Vardis’s shirt.

  Renat comes in from the flank, trying to tie up Vardis’s arm, but the man is slippery—and bleeding from a gash on his cheek. He twists, snakes his arm free, and drives a knee toward Renat’s groin.

  For a second, all three struggle in the center of the room. Vardis is hurt, but confident. He’s fighting with frantic, wiry strength. His eyes cut toward the printer station. The laptop glowing on the counter. If he can reach it and slam the lid, everything goes offline. Years of records will vanish behind a military-grade encryption.

  “You’re under arrest, Vardis!” Sander shouts. “Get on the ground!”

  “Make me!” Vardis roars. His strength surges as he struggles for enough momentum to break their grip.

  He doesn’t account for Anastasia.

  She sprints through the open doorway and snatches the collapsible baton from Sander’s belt.

  With a fluid, brutal motion, she swings the steel shaft into the side of Vardis’s knee.

  It isn’t a break, but it’s close. The jolt of pain is instantaneous. Vardis screams, his leg folds, and he buckles.

  Sander seizes the opening, gripping Vardis by the throat and slamming him onto the floor. Renat follows him down, twisting the trapped arm behind his back until the shoulder joint pops. The fight leaves Vardis in a heap, replaced by ragged, pained gasps.

  “Hands!” Sander barks.

  Renat wrenches the second arm back and snaps the cuffs on.

  Vardis spits a curse at the floor, sweat dripping from his dark hair. “What the fuck? You guys let this bitch cripple me?”

  Sander drives a palm into his shoulder, pinning him. “You’ll shut up,” he says calmly, “or I’ll add resisting and assaulting an officer to your list of poor life choices.”

  Anastasia returns the baton to Sander. Her pulse is up, but her hands are steady. “Move him to the office sofa. Keep him there. No more injuries for now.”

  Renat drags Vardis to his feet and shoves him onto the couch. Sander takes a position at his shoulder, one hand resting on his holstered pistol.

  Vardis looks up at Anastasia, chest heaving. “Who the hell are you?”

  She ignores him. Raises her radio to her lips. “Any sign of alarms?”

  “Negative,” Klement says. “No radio traffic from the local police. You’ve got all the time in the world.”

  “Good.” Anastasia nods toward the back room. “I’ll be quick. If he moves, break something I don’t need.”

  She leaves Vardis fuming on the couch and steps into the studio.

  Up close, the Diletta is impressive. Racks of passport booklets sit in labeled trays—Dutch, Australian, Italian. Men like Remi Kawu could throw a dart at a map, and Vardis will get them there. The Diletta is still humming through its task. A MacBook Pro is glowing at its side, and the desktop is visible.

  Vardis didn’t have time to lock anything.

  Anastasia approaches the computer—her target. Folders clutter the desktop. Jobs, Templates, Clients. She accesses the Clients folder and follows the branching files by gender.

  Dozens of identities fill the screen, each with a date stamp and a thumbnail. She sorts them by the most recent date and scrolls.

  Her heart ticks a little faster as she reaches the eight-week mark.

  A quarter-way down the list, she sees it: PRICE_SARAH_USA_DELIV_NL.PDF

  She double-clicks.

  The document opens, filling the screen with a custom passport biographic page. Blue security pattern, ghost image, microprint. And in the middle, the face that’s been haunting her since Victor’s death.

  Jen Yates.

  Her hair is shorter. Cheeks thicker. The lighting is different. But the lines of the jaw, the eyes, the set of her mouth—it’s all there, camouflaged by a mesh of forged security features.

  Anastasia leans in, one hand tightening on the mouse.

  In her mind, the photo overlays a different image: Jen in a British shipping port; Victor on his back, in critical condition seconds before she puts a bullet through his head.

  Heat crawls up her spine. For a moment, the room narrows to the size of the monitor.

  “Anastasia?” Klement says. “Talk to me.”

  “I’ve got her,” Anastasia says. “She’s traveling on a U.S. passport as Sarah Price.”

  Anastasia snaps a high-resolution screenshot, then uses a USB cable to connect her phone to the laptop. Once she has access, she downloads Vardis’s entire file library. While the files transfer, she finds the studio’s security footage. Deletes it, along with the memory of a man who won’t live to see the sunrise.