3. Maëlle #2
Dagger pushed away from the table. “I’m starving, and I need to move. Let’s take a break, get some air, and grab something to eat.”
We walked up to the main camp that stood at the tip of Sandy Point, with the whole of Canada Lake spread out in front of it.
I’d spent every night since we arrived at Onteora in one of two downstairs bedrooms, since that would be easiest for me to navigate with my injuries.
I hadn’t been upstairs, but from what I understood, there were seven additional sleeping quarters on that level.
Anna Hyde, Lyra’s mother and Horatio’s widow, was in the kitchen when we came inside.
“You walked down to the lake on your own.” It wasn’t a question. I wasn’t surprised she’d noticed. Very little got past Anna.
It had recently come to light that she had been an MI6 operative in her twenties. It was how she’d met Horatio, who, at the time, was with the CIA. Anna was the one who first discovered Vasiliev’s lake approach, thus saving all of our lives.
“I did.”
“Then, I would imagine it’s time for you to move into your own quarters. I’ve asked Henry to ready a camp for you.”
My eyes met Dagger’s, and we both smiled. Of course she had.
“I’d like that very much,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Did I hear my name?” Lyra’s husband asked, joining us in the kitchen.
“Is Ahnósta ready?” Anna asked.
“It is,” Henry said to Anna as he handed me a key. “It’s a short walk, and the fire has been laid, and the heat turned up if you want to stay there tonight.” He looked between Dagger and me. “It’s next door to Kárha,” he added.
While I didn’t know for sure, I assumed that was Dagger’s assigned camp.
“I can help you move things over if you’d like,” Dagger offered when we’d finished eating the meal Anna had prepared for us.
“I’ve only the one bag.” While I thought to say I could handle it myself, overdoing it on my leg wasn’t a good idea. “Thank you, and I would appreciate it.”
“Shall we do it now, then?”
“Please.”
“I’m there,” he said, pointing to the camp next door after he’d grabbed my things.
We went inside, and he took them into the bedroom.
“It’s your call whether we return to the command center or call it a day and start fresh in the morning,” he said after he had.
I stretched the stiffness out of my spine and shook my head. “I’d like to put in a few more hours.”
He nodded once, and we walked down the pathway to the boathouse.
More surveillance images began arriving after we returned from lunch. MI6 sent theirs first, then the CIA, the NGA, and the NRO.
By fourteen hundred, we had more than three hundred photos of Aristide Géraud to pore through.
Most showed the ordinary movements of a wealthy man who traveled to various countries around the world.
An hour into the search, Dagger said my name.
I stood and looked at the image on his screen. It was of Géraud, sitting at a café table, with another man I recognized before I read the tag.
“That’s Nicholas Kerr,” I said.
Kerr had been the president of Interpol, and before that, the director of MI5.
For more than twenty-five years, he’d used both positions to launder money, buy intelligence officials across half the world’s services, and order the murders of anyone who got close enough to expose his crimes.
Three years ago, he was shot and killed when his network, Argead, was finally taken down.
I called Blackjack and Beacon over.
“Jesus,” Blackjack muttered, recognizing him as quickly as we had. There wasn’t an operative in the world who wouldn’t have.
Dagger kept paging. Kerr was in four more images.
“Stop,” said Beacon. “Let me see the last one again.”
Dagger stopped on a photo of Géraud at a restaurant table. The man seated across from him wasn’t Kerr or Vasiliev.
“That’s Briggs,” Blackjack said.
“Vasiliev. Kerr. Briggs.” Beacon straightened. “One so-called financier met with all three of them, and no agency in the world has a dossier on him.”
“We’ve spent two weeks asking who Vasiliev worked for,” Dagger said.
“Maybe that was the wrong question. Kerr’s network was taken down, and no one ever found who protected him.
Briggs should’ve been charged years ago, but the investigation was shut down first. Vasiliev ran a private bank for thirty-eight years, and his own service never found it.
Three men who should’ve been caught, and one man who met with all three of them. ”
“Photographs prove they met but not why,” said Blackjack. “See if you can find a connection between his businesses and theirs.”
Dagger searched for everything he could find on Géraud while I returned to the photographs.
By nineteen hundred, he’d found all there was, and it wasn’t much.
Along with running a private finance firm in Geneva called Géraud Capital, he held a few board seats at respectable institutions and had offices, as well as a residence, in the better part of the city and an estate on the outskirts.
It was a public snapshot of the life of a wealthy man, and none of it tied him to Vasiliev, Kerr, or Briggs.
We took a break to join the others for dinner at the main camp, then Dagger and I returned to the command center.
“You don’t have to stay,” I said to him two hours later.
“We’ve had this conversation before. You said you didn’t need company.”
“I don’t.”
“And I told you I did.”
“I’m almost through this batch, then I’ll quit for the night,” I said.
It had come in from the DGSE, and all the images were taken in Geneva. After hours of looking at Géraud, every photo looked like the one before it.
I was near the end of the series when one made me stop. I leaned in and rubbed my eyes, convinced I must be seeing things.
Facial recognition hadn’t been able to identify him, but I could.
“Dagger?” My voice cracked.
When he stood and stepped closer, I pointed at the image.
“That’s my father.”