Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
C on waited at the door for Gabby. He watched as she got out of the car and jogged to the apartment. He shut the door behind her and turned her around. His hand went to her chin. “You need to put ice on that bruise. What happened here?” He tapped her other cheek near a red mark that ran laterally across her cheek.
She toed up and kissed him. “I’m not sure what happened there, the heat of the battle and all that.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t think I believe that. You’re not telling me what happened on purpose.”
She placed her hands on his chest. “And that’s why people call you a genius. Here.” She reached down her shirt and pulled the film canister out. He did a double take at the cleavage where she hid the device but took the item from her. “It looks exactly like the canister we saw in the video.”
He nodded and dropped his hand from her waist. “It does.” He examined the device and popped off the top, which revealed a round drive with a USB port. “USB.” He frowned. “Old school.”
“While you play with that, I’m going to go wash my hands,” Gabby said and toed up to kiss him. “Don’t save the world without me.”
Con chuckled and watched her walk away. He’d be okay with her being with him all the time, which was why it slayed him to let her go to the airport without him. Logically, he knew she could take care of herself, but damn it if he didn’t want to be the one to take care of her. That was something he’d have to get used to or at least accept. He doubted he’d ever be okay with her going out into the field. That was his issue, though, not hers. If he wanted to be involved with her, he’d need to accept her as she was. And really, would he want to change her? The answer to that was a resounding no. Anyone who went into a relationship expecting to change someone would have problems. His mother and father were as different as night and day, but they loved each other for who they were. It was a weird dynamic, but it worked.
He fished around for a USB cable from the stock available in the node he was using. After locating it, he hit his earpiece. “Con to Archangel.”
“Go.”
“I’m going to go live. I have the device.”
“Roger. All the players need real-time access, plus Brando. He’s been working this case, too. Ring is working on other matters,” Archangel replied.
“Copy.” He put together a video call and hit send. The players started populating immediately.
“What do you have?” Jewell asked.
He lifted it to the camera and showed her. “USB.”
“That’s pretty old school.”
“Exactly what Con said.” Gabby walked into the library and answered for him.
“Okay, so I’m going to plug it in. Jewell, I’m sharing my computer.” Two people working from his system was better than one if there was a trap on the device.
“Got it. Okay, I’m in. Are you ready?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He plugged in the device. “Standard,” he said as the device was located. A password was required. “I’ve got it,” Con said as he worked to get behind the password. Most memory devices required secondary software to put a password on the device. Getting to the backside of that software was child’s play.
“Damn, look at that. How many partitions did he put up?” That was Brando’s voice. Con granted his brother access to his computer.
“Looks like six,” Jewell said. “I’ll take the top two.” She started working.
“Brando, the next two.” Con grabbed the last two files and opened them up. “Copy everything.”
“No shit,” Brando said.
Jewell chuffed a laugh. “Bossy, isn’t he?”
“Okay. Files are copied. Let’s find out what people died for.” Con started opening documents. He frowned as he started to read. “What does this mean?” He downloaded the files into the shared server after running a virus scan.
Gabby was over his shoulder in a second. She pointed to a paragraph. “Stop. Look at this.”
“It’s a biography of some sort?” Con read on. “Oh, shit …” His head whipped up to look at Gabby. “Is this information on a Russian spy in the United States?”
“More than one.” She nodded. “Look, the next is here. Archangel, did you copy?” she asked as she continued to read.
“I’m seeing it,” he commented. “Let’s keep going. I want to know everything Eisenberger had on that device.”
“I have a list of addresses,” Brando said. “Getting GPS coordinates for each address.”
“United States?” Archangel asked.
“All over. Russia, the UK, the US, Spain, France, Italy,” Brando replied.
“Bank accounts,” Jewell said. “Ah, an account I know by heart. Plume Pharma.”
It took about thirty minutes for all the documents to be downloaded, scanned, and put into the shared folder.
Fury interrupted as the last document fell into the file. “Brando, tell them what we found on the UK passports.”
“There was a mistake. There’s a misspelling in the holographic film,” Brando said as if it were nothing.
“How did you think to check that?” Con asked.
“I didn’t. Fury did,” Brando said. “He’s damn good with passports.” There was a bit of admiration in Brando’s voice Con wasn’t glad to hear.
“The UK government is heading out to round up Abrasha’s crew. They’ve been under surveillance since Centurion found Abrasha’s hiding space on that plane. The plane was also seized by the British authorities when it landed.”
“But no one knows where Abrasha is?” Jewell asked.
“Darren Kowalski is positive he can get us a location,” Archangel said.
Con stared at the screen. “The bank accounts. Are they personal or business?” he asked Jewell.
“I haven’t received permission to break into the financial systems.” She looked up. “The request is in your inbox, Jace.”
“Do it. I’ll sign it later.”
“On it.”
“Do you need help?”
“Nah,” Jewell said as she started to work.
Con stared at the USB drive. “Brando, if you were trying to hide something from someone, would you put a second-party password on the device?”
Brando’s head popped up, and he blinked as he looked at the camera. “No, and I wouldn’t put anything on a USB drive, I’d cubby it somewhere in the nether regions of the internet and then erase all indications of where I put it.”
“However, we know Eisenberger wasn’t into computers.” Con moved his head back and forth and narrowed his eyes. “Still.” Fuck it, he took a chance and searched the operating system of the USB device. CD-ROM popped up. “Bingo. I should’ve looked sooner. He has a partition installed that keeps the information unerasable/non-formattable—basically an ancient read-only shovelware partition.”
Both Jewell and Brando looked into the camera. “That’s ancient,” Jewell said.
“But it is here,” Con said and continued to work. “Look, a video and two folders.”
“How did you get the Vendor ID and Product ID to find it?” Brando asked.
“A tool I’ve had forever. I’ll send it to you.”
“Can we get to the video and stop all this bullshit?” Fury demanded.
Con frowned at Fury, but he pushed the video to start it.
A grainy film began to roll. “Tropical,” Jacob King said. “Maybe a desert. Those shrubs could be either.”
Fury leaned forward. “What is that? Can you clear it up or make it bigger?”
“It’s a building,” Jewell said. “We can’t do anything with it while we’re watching.”
“Whoever is filming this is in a vehicle. The road sucks,” Jacob continued, ignoring Fury. The bouncing stopped, and whoever was taking the film jumped down to the ground. “It has to be in his pocket.” Both he and Gabby had their noses inches from the screen. The resolution was horrific, but you could tell what was going on. They watched as whoever was taking the film and another man unfastened the back tailgate of an old military truck. The tailgate flopped down, exposing a large box. “Is that a pelican box?” Archangel asked.
“Looks like one,” Fury responded. They watched as the two men inched it out of the back of the truck and then held it between them.
“Stop!” Jewell yelled, but Con had seen it already. He hit the stop button and inched the video backward ever so slightly.
“What is that?” Con stared at the contraption inside the box.
“Fuck me standing,” Fury whispered.
“Not even with lube,” Con answered before he could stop himself.
“That’s a bomb. The writing is in Spanish, right?” Jewell asked no one in particular.
The man on the video said something before they grunted beneath the weight and started walking toward the building. “What did he say?” Archangel asked.
“I’m playing it again.”
The words were muffled except for one word. “Yuma.” The men didn’t speak again as they made their way into the building.
Brando typed furiously. “In Cuban, according to my translation program, Yuma is a term that refers to strangers but is mainly meant for Americans. There are subtle differences in some of the words from Mexican Spanish to Cuban to traditional Spanish.”
Con let the film go forward and turned the sound up as far as it would go. The door slammed behind the men, and they grunted as they entered the building. There was a flap of plastic they walked through, then another, and finally a third.
“Hold the video. Is that what I think it is?” Jacob asked.
“It sure as hell looks like a nuclear marking.” Joseph sighed. “So, we aren’t talking bombs; we’re talking dirty bombs or, God forbid, nuclear-capable devices.”
“Isn’t it too small for that?” Con asked.
“The material itself isn’t the issue. It’s the design of whatever they’re carrying,” Archangel said as they watched the men put the box on the workbench.
A woman’s laugh turned the men. “Freeze that,” Archangel barked, and Con clicked the mouse. “The bitch.”
“Who is it?” Fury demanded.
“Trueman,” Archangel growled.
Brando asked, “What? You mean she’s the same lady who was killed at the ball?”
“Yes, the Undersecretary of Defense.” Jacob nodded.
“Hey … wait, she has long hair here. Hold on. I mean, continue. I have something I want to check out.” Con had seen that profile before.
He listened as others discussed who they needed to notify, but Con headed to the mission on that island. The one where he and Gabby had jumped from a fucking plane and landed smack dab in the middle of. “Bingo!” He pulled the picture up and put it beside the image of Trueman. Then he clicked the woman’s face, drawing a box around it, and did the same to the picture of the woman on the helicopter at that island. Only her chin and cheekbone were exposed, but by using AI, the program could fill in the blanks when comparing it to the other photo. The facial recognition program did its thing.
Jewell whistled. “A ninety-three percent match.”
Jacob frowned. “Where is this?”
“You dropped Centurion and me onto this island. It’s where Ice and Londyn were. The one with the computer systems you needed to get information from,” Con responded.
“Shit. The man in the pilot’s seat,” Fury growled. “Can you enlarge it?”
“Hold on.” Con clipped it out of the video and pulled it as close as he could.
“Could that be …” Fury shook his head. “Am I going insane, or does that man have the same profile as Molchalin?”
Con narrowed his eyes and completed the facial scan on the pilot’s profile and the pictures he’d been able to get from Pierre Archambeau’s facility the night in France just under a week ago when they’d tried to capture the bastard. The program came back with an eighty-nine percent chance of a match.
“Let’s see the rest of the video,” Archangel directed them forward. Con hit the play button. The woman’s voice was garbled.
“I can clean it up and do a voice match with what we have on her.” There were no doubt numerous recordings of meetings, speeches, and reporters hounding her. He’d be able to get enough.
“Do it,” Archangel ordered. “But after we get done.” They watched as the woman looked at four boxes, all the same as the one the two men had brought in. That was when shit hit the fan. The woman leaned over, and the video got a direct shot of a black booklet in the side pouch of her purse.
“That’s a diplomatic passport. You can see the seal!” Fury yelled, and Con turned down the volume a bit.
“Black passport. Freeze it again.” Jewell swung around to her other monitor, and Con wondered what in the hell she was doing. “When we were working on Dr. Whitehead’s disappearance, I went through all the information about their time in Cuba. In one of the interviews … hold on.” She typed furiously and then slid two different documents into the shared file. “Here, the men who Bear, Whitehead, Sage, and company detained. The techs or so-called scientists assembling the dirty bombs. They said a foreigner, or was it an American … Hold on, let me find it. There. American woman with a black passport was in charge.”
“You think this is the woman? That Anne Trueman was the woman who conspired to build the dirty bombs?” Archangel asked.
“It makes sense,” Jacob agreed with Jewell.
Archangel sighed. “It does. Let’s keep going.”
As Con started the video again, Gabby’s finger smashed the screen. “Who is that?”
“Where?” Brando asked.
“In the corner.” Con drew a box around the shadowed person and tried to lighten the freeze frame.
“Abrasha,” Jewell and Fury said at the same time. Con wasn’t going to argue that point.
“A lot of threads coming together.” Archangel lifted his phone and did something quickly. “Centurion, expect incoming. Let’s get to the end of this video.”
She nodded and glanced at Con. Her father would be inbound. “Pushing play again.”
They watched as the woman talked to a man he didn’t recognize, but by the accent, he was probably Cuban. Just as the woman turned to walk away, the person who was filming the video was turned violently. The phone was taken out of his pocket, and Abrasha’s face came into full view. There was no doubt it was him. Abrasha swung the camera around to the face of the startled man. A moment later, they witnessed a bullet go through the man’s brain, and the splatter of the gray matter covered the man behind him, who was also shot. The video ended abruptly.
Con didn’t hit stop because there was still time on the video. A modern video started showing what appeared to be a hotel room. A man came from behind the recording device and sat down in a chair facing the camera. “My name is Michael Eisenberger. I’m making this video as an insurance policy. I’m including it here and not in the other drive I’m making to give to my blackmailer.” He sighed, and Con could see the man’s hands shaking. Finally, he clasped his hands together and lifted his eyes to the camera. “I’m being blackmailed for the video you witnessed before I spliced this recording to it. I don’t know who will find this information, but the clerk at the store told me she partitioned the device to hide it. I watched to make sure she didn’t access or copy the information. To the best of my knowledge, she did not.” The man adjusted his glasses. “For the last four years, I have been working for a Russian citizen, Abrasha Molchalin. In the beginning, the man led me to believe he wanted my help because he truly believed a digital crash was coming. I did research on what actions each of the major governments would take. We were supposed to be building an archive of printed information. And in a sense, we did. The research was to help the governments by showing weaknesses in their responses. Molchalin had money. He said he could make the governments pay attention, but he wanted a repository just in case they refused to listen to reason.” Eisenberger swiped at his thinning gray hair. “I have a house. The address is in the documents I’ve included here. Molchalin sent me a warehouse full of documentation—manuals on how to recreate the analog age. I have gone through all the boxes, page by page, have filed them in the correct fashion, and cross-referenced all the documents for ease of access after the crash we both assumed would occur happened. But there were other things in that old documentation. The video I’ve included was on an old CD-ROM. I have an ancient computer that still works, so I watched it.” The man closed his eyes and sighed. “Then there was microfiche. I spent many long days and nights translating what was on the fiche. After the first twenty pages, I knew I could no longer, in good conscience, continue to work for the man. I hid the microfiche in the heating vent of the document house near my desk. I do not run the heat in that home because of the amount of paper that could catch fire. On the microfiche are transactions in Russian that depict wide-scale graft and fraud, not only in Russia but throughout the world.” The man shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Names, dates, actions. I cross-referenced each of the dates with news articles. With the exception of the events that took place in Russia, I could validate the events occurred within a month or two of the date listed on the microfiche. With this information and the video, I decided I had to take action. I made the mistake of contacting the CIA liaison to the American embassy in London.” He shook his head. “That, I believe, sealed my death warrant. I did not give the man the video or tell him where I had placed the material I referenced in our conversation. Perhaps that’s the only reason I’m alive to record this video. I’m currently in Australia, but I’ve been visited by men who threatened to kill me if I did not produce it.” The man smiled a bit. “I know better than that. I told them I would surrender it to the woman in the video. If you haven’t recognized her, her name is Anne Trueman. She is the Undersecretary of State, Security Divison, for the United States.” Eisenberger shook his head. “The other documents attached in this hidden area of the device are addresses for Molchalin’s safe houses. The ones on the unsecured side of this drive are false and put there to confuse Molchalin if he somehow acquires the drive. I will be leaving for France shortly, but only after I post this drive to my cousin in the American embassy in France. She is not complicit in any of these events and has only agreed to help me because she owes me for a favor I gave her many years ago.” Eisenberger leaned forward. “I hope honest people find this information. If not, I fear for the world. Molchalin is building rockets capable of launching into orbit. From my research, it is most certainly a device that can cause an EMP blast capable of destroying all digital capability over the territory over which it explodes. From what I have deduced, his attempt to obtain the nuclear material is his only hindrance to constructing the missiles. Most of the unaccounted-for material that disappeared after the Iron Curtain dropped has been located and is monitored by numerous agencies. He has a storage facility in Switzerland, several city blocks long under which are his lab and where the missiles that will deploy the nuclear blasts are being built. If he obtains the material needed, there will be no stopping him.” Eisenberger’s hand trembled as it touched his cheek. “Trust no one. The stink of corruption is rife throughout many governments.” The man stood up and walked behind the recording device. The picture went dark.
Con blinked and stared at the screen and sighed. “Holy shitballs.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Fury said. “And that means hell has officially frozen over.”