Chapter Four
MIA
By noon the next day, the estate outside Stuttgart had taken over the largest screen on the operations floor and most of the table beneath it.
Hawk had already walked the wooded ridge north of the property before sunrise and come back with mud on his boots and the disappointing news that the best angle on the pool disappeared behind the cabanas at exactly the point everyone was most interested in seeing.
Raven had spent the morning working through Aster’s temporary network setup and the security subcontractor’s equipment orders.
Bear had marked two places where the outer wall could be defeated if an extraction turned ugly, then crossed out the first after deciding the stone would create more problems than it solved.
Viper and Jackal had driven the roads around the estate separately and returned within ten minutes of each other with the same conclusion.
There were too many cameras near the main entrance and nowhere to sit for long without becoming memorable.
Wolf stood at the head of the table in a black shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, one hand planted beside the satellite image while Raven moved camera angles across the wall.
His mask covered the lower half of his face while his hair had been pulled away from his forehead with his zig-zag headband.
Part of the snake disappeared beneath his sleeve every time he leaned farther over the map. Not that I was paying attention.
“North ridge gives Hawk the rear terrace and most of the west lawn,” Raven said. “He loses the lower garden here.”
A red line appeared across the image.
Hawk nodded from the other side of the table. “Cabanas block the pool edge. I can see anyone moving between the house and garden, but not what happens behind them.”
“East service road?” Wolf asked.
Jackal slid a photograph toward him. “Delivery vans, catering, security shift change and enough landscaping trucks that I can get a vehicle through once without looking stupid. Twice starts looking like surveillance.”
Viper tapped another image. “South entrance is worse. Cameras catch the approach before the gate. Valet station gets every plate that comes in, but anyone sitting outside the property will be noticed.”
“We don’t sit,” Wolf said. “Rotate.”
Viper nodded.
Bear pointed toward the side of the house. “If this becomes an extraction, service access is better than the main gate. Hinged steel pedestrian door here, vehicle gate farther east. I can open either if I have to, but if I have to, the party already knows we’re there.”
“Then don’t unless I tell you.”
“Wasn’t planning on getting dressed up to blow a rich man’s gate off its hinges.”
Jackal looked over. “You could. Formal breaching charge. Little bow tie on the detonator.”
Bear stared at him.
“Classy,” Jackal added.
Wolf did not look up. “Done?”
“Almost certainly not, but I’ll stop.”
I had been sitting beside Raven for almost an hour with Luca Bellandi’s file open in front of me, watching six people construct an increasingly sophisticated plan for learning everything about a party except what to do about anyone inside.
The weakness in the plan became obvious pretty quickly. We could watch people arrive and leave, track their cars and even keep eyes on most of the terrace. Hawk could identify faces from the ridge, while Raven could monitor phones and other signals around the property.
The problem was everything we couldn’t see.
The cabanas were mostly hidden, and parts of the house were completely out of view.
If Bellandi or anyone else stepped away for a private conversation, we would know they had disappeared from sight but not what they were saying.
It was a good surveillance plan as long as everyone stayed where we could watch them.
“What about inside?” I asked.
Wolf turned toward me. “What about it?”
“We’re building a complete picture of everyone arriving and leaving, but if Bellandi spends three hours talking to someone in a cabana, we get… a picture of him entering a cabana.”
Raven rotated one of the estate photographs. “If he keeps his phone on him, I may get device proximity.”
“Which tells us his phone stood near another phone.”
“Correct.”
“Useful,” I said. “Not exactly a transcript.”
Jackal leaned back in his chair. “We could bug the cabanas.”
Wolf answered before Raven could. “No.”
“I was joking.”
“You weren’t.”
Wolf’s attention returned to the map. “We don’t cross the perimeter before the event. Nobody gives their security team a reason to start checking for us.”
Annoyingly, he was right about the perimeter.
I looked at the photograph of the pool again, all white stone and blue water beneath cream umbrellas. A line of cabanas sat far enough from the house to make private conversations easy, with tall hedges behind them and enough landscaping to hide half the lower garden from the road.
“So we can see the outside,” I said.
Wolf made a small sound that meant he was already tired of the direction I was taking.
“We established that.”
“We can’t hear the inside.”
“Also established.”
I looked around the table.
Bear was studying the service entrance. Hawk had a terrain map open beside him. Viper was comparing two photographs of the valet area. Jackal had stolen one of Raven’s pens and was spinning it between his fingers until Raven noticed and took it back without interrupting whatever he was doing.
Six men who could breach a building, shoot across a valley, chase somebody through an alley or make a communications network regret existing. Not one of them could walk into a luxury pool party without looking as though the host had accidentally hired the world’s most aggressive bachelor party.
This was it.
“Send me.”
Wolf answered so quickly the second word had barely left my mouth.
“No.”
“You didn’t even think about it.”
“I did.”
“For what, half a second?”
“Long enough.”
Jackal stopped spinning the pen he had somehow reacquired.
I pushed my chair back. “I’m literally the only person here who can walk through the front door without looking like I’m there to assassinate the catering staff.”
Jackal glanced around the table. “That’s unfair. I can look extremely social.”
Viper looked at him. “You look like you sell cocaine to DJs.”
There was a beat of silence.
Jackal nodded. “Still invited to more parties than you.”
Bear covered his mouth with one hand. Raven lowered his eyes toward the keyboard with suspicious speed and even Hawk’s mouth moved. Wolf waited until the room had finished betraying itself.
“Mercer isn’t going inside.”
I turned back to him. “Why?”
“Because you’re an intelligence officer.”
“You say that like intelligence officers are grown in server rooms.”
“You’re not an operator.”
“I didn’t say I was.”
“Good.”
“I also don’t need a Glock and a plate carrier to drink champagne next to Luca Bellandi.”
Wolf straightened slowly. The movement made him seem larger even from across the table.
“You don’t know Bellandi.”
“I know his businesses, the school he went to, the last four funds he raised money for and the fact that he has spent the better part of five years investing in companies with ownership structures messy enough to hide a corpse in. I know he likes watches, colognes, brunettes and talking about himself in interviews. I know enough about the people around him to survive a conversation.”
Jackal glanced at my hair.
I caught it.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say shit.”
“Your face did.”
Raven murmured, “That one appears to be contagious.”
Wolf ignored them. “Reading a man isn’t the same as working him.”
“I’ve worked sources.”
Wolf’s attention sharpened at the mention of source work.
I continued before he could decide I was exaggerating.
“I’ve done source meetings under cover names, sat through surveillance I knew was happening and interviewed people who couldn’t know why I cared about the answer.
I’ve worked around financial investigations where the only way to get anyone talking was to sound like I belonged in the room.
I speak Italian and French, plus Serbian and Russian.
I’ve handled multilingual interviews where changing languages halfway through was the entire point. ”
Wolf folded his arms.
“And when one of Bellandi’s friends decides to take you somewhere private?”
“I don’t go.”
“Security asks who invited you?”
“I use the cover Raven builds.”
“Somebody searches you?”
“Then we make sure I’m carrying nothing they find interesting.”
“Kade appears?”
“I observe him. I don’t try to arrest him with a cocktail umbrella.”
Jackal coughed into his fist.
Wolf’s gaze never left mine. “Somebody pulls a gun?”
“I leave.”
“Someone doesn’t let you leave?”
Well, that question felt different. I resisted the urge to glance toward the training yard where I had watched him move five operators through a building like pieces he could feel without looking.
“Then I use the extraction plan,” I said. “The one you’re already building.”
Wolf’s eyes narrowed.
“You don’t have a tactical extraction background.”
“Correct.”
“You don’t have close-quarters combat experience.”
“Also correct.”
“If it turns into a gunfight, you’re a liability.”
“Yes.”
He shifted.
Only slightly, but I saw it.
I leaned forward and put both hands on the table.
“I’m not asking you to pretend I’m Viper.
I’m not going to clear a house, breach a gate or crawl onto a ridge with Hawk.
If the plan requires any of that from me, it’s a bad plan.
I’m telling you there is one thing this operation needs that none of you can do cleanly, and guess what?
I can. I can walk inside, talk to rich people, listen and leave without making the entire party wonder why a six-foot-three man with murder in his posture is pretending to care about private equity. ”
Jackal made a strangled noise. Wolf slowly turned his head toward him.
Jackal raised both hands. “That wasn’t even my joke.”
“I know.”
“Hers was good, though.”
“Jackal.”
“Done.”
Wolf looked back at me. “No.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Great argument. Very persuasive.”