Chapter Two #3
Raven leaned back in his chair. “Unless Wolf’s psychic, not Wolf.”
“Have you tested him?”
“Every Christmas.”
I looked over. “What?”
“Never mind.”
I laughed and returned to the timeline. We went through Hungary next. The Budapest operation was different enough that I initially thought it might break the pattern.
ARC had been assigned a farmhouse outside the city believed to be connected to a Cerberus financial intermediary. Their planned departure from the staging site was 2:15.
Hawk reported two unidentified vehicles south of the target shortly after one in the morning, and Wolf moved the team thirty-five minutes ahead of schedule without informing anyone outside ARC.
The farmhouse was still empty when they reached it. Hawk’s reconstruction put the departure of the occupants somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes before ARC arrived.
I read the times twice.
“Wait.”
Raven glanced over.
“You left at 1:40?”
“Approximately.”
“And joint command still thought you were leaving at 2:15.”
“Yes.”
“Nobody outside the unit knew Wolf moved the timeline?”
“No.”
“Then whoever left the farmhouse couldn’t have been reacting to the schedule ARC submitted.”
Raven’s expression shifted.
“They were already gone.”
“Exactly.”
Wolf’s voice came from behind us.
“The departure window was an estimate.”
I turned in my chair.
He had approached quietly enough that I hadn’t noticed, which seemed impossible considering I could usually hear his boots before I saw him. He stood behind Raven’s chair with a folder tucked beneath one arm.
I looked back at the screen. “Hawk’s estimate?”
“Yes.”
“How accurate is he?”
Wolf’s stare made the answer obvious.
“Right. Stupid question.”
“It’s usually within five minutes.”
“So even if he’s off by five, they’re moving before your decision even matters.”
Wolf looked back at the timeline.
“I know.”
“You keep calling these operational compromises,” I said.
“They are.”
“Romania starts before you have the operation. Prague starts before final assignment. Budapest starts before you change the departure time, and nobody outside this unit even knew you’d changed it.”
Wolf set the folder on the table.
“You’ve been here less than a day.”
“Is there a minimum amount of time I have to be employed before chronological order becomes relevant?”
I heard Raven’s hands stop moving over the keyboard. Wolf’s eyes settled on me with enough weight that I knew I’d found the exact boundary I shouldn’t cross and stepped over it anyway.
“I’ve spent a lot of time inside this network, Mercer. You’ve spent one flight and a morning reading summaries written by people who were actually there.”
“I know.”
He tilted his head. “Do you?”
My face began warming, which only made me angrier because Wolf somehow got visible proof he succeeded in getting under my skin.
He continued before I could answer.
“If you’re going to tell me the working theory is wrong, bring me something that proves it. Stop throwing questions at people who have already asked them because you want everyone to know the new analyst has arrived.”
Raven looked down.
Whatever humor had been floating around the operations floor disappeared with enough speed that I became acutely aware of who else was in the room. Bear was somewhere behind me near the equipment cabinets. Jackal had been arguing with Viper five minutes earlier and had gone completely silent.
Wolf had embarrassed me deliberately.
“Fine.” I held his eyes.
“Fine?”
“I’ll bring you something.”
He picked up the folder again. “Yeah, you do that.”
Then he walked away.
For several seconds I stared at the Budapest timeline and considered several professionally inappropriate uses for Raven’s keyboard.
Raven finally cleared his throat.
“He’s...”
“If you say misunderstood, I’m going to hit you.”
“I was going to say an asshole.”
Raven shrugged. “I have eyes.”
Hearing somebody else say it took enough sting out of the exchange that I could work again.
I pulled the Romania imagery closer. “Go farther back.”
“How far?”
“Everything.”
“Mia.”
“The asshole wants proof.”
Raven smiled. “Right.”
Spite was probably not an approved intelligence methodology, but it turned out to be remarkably effective.
I started with Romania because that was where my original question had begun, but the earliest imagery was inconsistent and came from cameras whose coverage changed too often to give me much.
Prague produced hundreds of photographs of people entering and leaving the courier’s hotel, most of whom had nothing to do with Cerberus and seemed determined to demonstrate how many nearly identical dark coats could exist in one European city.
Budapest was cleaner.
French intelligence had identified the farmhouse before ARC ever saw it and collected several days of imagery while trying to determine whether one of Kade’s suspected intermediaries was using the property.
The earliest package showed the house from a distance, with two outbuildings and several vehicles parked along the side. I opened the first photograph.
May 15.
The next was May 16.
Different cars.
I kept moving.
On May 17, a blue Skoda appeared near one of the outbuildings.
Nothing about it looked remarkable enough to deserve attention.
It was the kind of car nobody remembered seeing because half of Europe seemed to own something similar.
I almost moved past it but the spacing on the rear plate made me stop.
I squinted and enlarged the image.
“Raven.”
He rolled his chair closer. “What?”
“Can you sharpen that?”
“Within reason.”
“That’s a disappointing answer.”
“Television has lied to you.”
He worked with the original image rather than my enlarged copy and recovered enough of the registration to make out most of it.
I wrote it down.
Then I went back to Prague.
Raven watched over my shoulder for a while before returning to his own screen, allowing me to move through the hotel photographs without commentary.
Near the end of the second day’s surveillance, a blue Volkswagen appeared across the street.
Different model but the same general color.
I enlarged this one as far as it could go and captured a partial plate.
My pulse changed.
“Raven.”
He came back beside me. I put the photographs next to each other.
“Look at the registrations.”
He leaned closer and for several seconds, he said nothing.
Then his eyebrows lifted.
“Oh.”
“Oh good or oh bad?”
“Give me a second.”
His hands moved across the keyboard fast enough that I gave up trying to follow what he was doing. Several databases opened, one of which was apparently Slovakian and another I couldn’t identify before he closed it.
Jackal appeared at the edge of the table.
“What did she find?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You made the face.”
Raven kept typing. “What face?”
“The nerdgasm face.”
“That’s deeply offensive.”
“The one where your eyes get slightly wider in pure ecstasy because the computer did something exciting.”
“Please stop describing me in such vulgar terms.”
Bear came around the table carrying a mug. “What’s happening?”
I pointed between the two photographs. “Different cars. Same registration.”
Raven’s search finished and he read the result.
“Well.”
Jackal leaned over his shoulder. “What?”
“The plate belongs to a Peugeot.”
I looked at both cars. “But neither of those are a Peugeot.”
“Excellent observation.”
“Don’t become Wolf,” I quipped.
“Sorry.”
Bear moved closer to the screen. “Cloned registration.”
“Looks like it,” Raven said.
I checked the dates again.
“The Skoda was near the Budapest farmhouse three days before ARC took over surveillance.”
Raven nodded.
I opened Prague.
“The Volkswagen was outside the courier’s hotel eleven days before you were involved.”
Jackal’s expression changed enough that the joke left him.
“Same people watching both?”
“Maybe,” I said. “The plate tells us somebody wanted the vehicles to be difficult to trace. It doesn’t tell us who.”
Heavy steps came from across the operations floor.
I had already noticed that Wolf never hurried when everyone else did. He approached at the same deliberate pace he used for everything, as though whatever waited on the screen would still be there when he arrived and anyone incapable of waiting could learn.
He stopped behind my chair.
“Show me.”
I turned the two images toward him. Wolf leaned closer, planting one hand on the edge of the table beside the keyboard. His forearm entered my line of sight first.
The tattoo.
Up close, it raised more questions than it answered. A snake that size took up most of his forearm, coiling around the muscle in dark bands of ink, and I found myself wondering what would make someone choose something so deliberate and impossible to ignore.
My attention lingered for perhaps one second.
“Something interesting, Mercer?”
I looked up.
“Your tattoo.”
“Try the screen. Eyes up here.”
The irritation returned instantly, which was probably useful because his chest was somewhere directly behind my shoulder and I had become much too aware of that fact.
“I can see both.”
“Based on your work yesterday, I’d focus on one.”
I held his stare and decided murder on government property would complicate my first performance review.
“The plate,” I said, pointing toward the photographs. “Same registration on two different vehicles. Neither vehicle matches the registration.”
Wolf looked closer.
“Dates?”
“Budapest three days before ARC surveillance. Prague eleven days before you were involved.”
“Anything in Romania?”
“Not yet.”
“Then you have two cars.”
“The same false registration appearing around two unrelated Cerberus targets before your team gets anywhere near them.”
His attention settled on me.
“So find the third.”
My jaw tightened. “That’s your response?”
“What response were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. Maybe basic acknowledgment that I might be onto something.”
“You were assigned here to analyze intelligence.”
“I am aware.”
“Then analyze it.”
Raven suddenly became intensely interested in another monitor. Traitorous bastard.