Chapter 37
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Flint stopped in the shadow at the edge of the third terrace and watched the Asian man through the glass. He worked intently for a few moments, as if totally focused on the task at hand.
Abruptly, he crossed the room to a phone on the wall, listened, said a few words, and hung up. He stood a moment with his hand still on the handset before he went to the corner workstation, set off by itself, and shut down the screen.
Perhaps he’d been summoned. He pulled a thin jacket off the back of the chair and glanced around the room. Then he went out the far door toward the inside stairs leading to the top level.
Flint gave him time to return, but when he didn’t come back it was time to move.
He slid the rifle off his back and leaned it into the shadow against the wall. He wouldn’t need it inside.
The glass enclosed operations room was warmed by the heat off the machines. From his position, Flint noticed a door at the back standing open. He checked it quickly. An unoccupied storeroom.
He came back to the long desk and the monitors stacked above it. Before he had a chance to take a closer look, he heard a sharp noise from the far corner of the operations room.
He twisted quickly to see a woman seated at a workstation in the far corner, her back partially to him, bent close to the screen. The glass walled room offered no cover and nowhere to hide. He drew his weapon, prepared to engage.
Tall, lean, lithe, dark hair pulled back. Even hunched over the desk she wasted no movements.
She worked fast, one hand on a mouse, the other flat on the desk, focused solely on the screen in front of her. After a moment he realized she hadn’t heard him because of her headphones.
He moved quietly toward her, past the wall of screens.
Every screen showed the same layout, divided into four boxes.
The top left box held a passport photo. Below the photo was the name.
The top right tracked press and public records.
Bottom left was government files. Bottom right listed standard public online databases.
Each box contained a list pertaining to its category, and each item was checked as it was cleared.
The same file setup displayed on every screen for a different person on each. Some faces he recognized and others were new to him.
He knew the man on the first screen. Senator Trip Gold’s protégé.
The man who had replaced him in the US Senate when Gold dropped out of public life, disappeared, and was declared dead.
He’d been Gold’s aide and he was all over the news accused of massive fraud.
The money meant to fix his state’s water pipes was syphoned off into his own pockets while constituents drank what ran from their taps and got sick and died.
His file on the screen showed record after record marked complete.
Which was when he realized some of these were Graves’s clients.
The screens displayed progress based on what Gaspar called the method.
The servers worked continuously around the clock to remove each client’s name from each source.
Each of these monitors showed the life of a monster being erased one record at a time.
Flint was close enough now to see the woman’s screen. Hers displayed a four-box layout. But the images were completely different.
The top left box displayed a photo of a commercial jetliner. The bottom left showed a diagram of the cabin. Every seat was numbered and passenger names listed.
The bottom right was a video that played on a loop. The passenger jet flew through a clear blue sky high over open water.
A huge explosion flashed beyond the edges of the frame, too big for any camera to contain.
The jet blasted apart sending debris in all directions.
The blast threw the pieces high, and they burned as they fell, the longest of them gone to cinders before they reached the water, the rest scattering across the sea in a wide debris field.
After a brief moment, the jet appeared whole and beautiful in the sky until it exploded again.
He’d seen the video before. The whole world had seen it. Many times. A full airliner went down over deep ocean. Governments designated the action a terrorist bombing, but it was never solved. Citizens were outraged and afraid to fly. Families and loved ones were left with grief beyond measure.
The top right box on her screen ran a live camera feed of the inside stairs with a door at the top. The Asian man had reached the door. He opened it and went through to the living quarters where Graves waited.
Now he knew where to find them. After he collected what he came for.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said to the woman. “I came for your records. Lead me to them and I’ll be on my way.”
Unfazed, she answered without hesitation, like it made no difference. “It’s all here in this room. None of it’s leaving with you.”
He looked at the wall of screens. The faces. The names. The lists being checked off one by one.
“All these people,” he said. “You’re stealing their identities. Why?”
“Is that what you believe this is?” She smiled. “You’re not as smart as I thought you were, Flint.”
It jolted him, as she’d no doubt meant it to do.
“Tell me what it is, then,” he replied.
She drew a fixed-blade knife from a sheath at her waistband. The carved bone handle was perfectly shaped to her fingers and the edge filed down to a thin bright line. She wielded it like a sushi chef in the best restaurant in Tokyo.
He wanted her alive. She knew this operation inside and out. He could persuade her to tell him what he needed to know if she stayed alive.
But she was fast and fierce, intent on killing him.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” he said, making his point clear enough to reach Gaspar and Drake over comms now that stealth was no longer possible.
He barely had the words out when she came fast and cut at his gun hand. He snapped the hand back and the blade just missed.
She didn’t stop. The knife came back across, level with his throat. He pulled away and felt the air of it.
She was already moving for the next slice. He gave ground to stay ahead of her blade, and she came after him fast.
She stayed on him, the blade working in short quick strokes, close, giving him no room to set his feet or bring the gun around again. She fought to keep him reacting, and as long as he reacted he couldn’t aim well enough to fire, even if he’d wanted to.
“Wise up. I’m twice your size. I’ve got a gun. There’s no way you win this thing,” Flint said reasonably.
Her stare was unwavering. She kept her stance, waiting for her next opportunity to lacerate his liver or slash his throat. If she got lucky, he’d be the dead one.
He stopped backing away. He took a cut across his forearm to get inside her next stroke.
She took the bait, rushing toward him with a vicious strike.
He trapped her knife arm against his body and drove his elbow hard into her face. He felt her nose smash and flatten.
Her head snapped back.
Her nose bled in torrents, but she kept her grip on the knife.
The noise must have alerted a woman who came in from a back room. Flint recognized her. The Thai woman who’d walked Graves out through the lobby in Bangkok. The one who had escorted Sear to his plane.
She crossed to the end of the server bank, flipped up a guard cover, and put her hand on the switch beneath it.
The tall woman saw it and broke off her drive to cut Flint. “Nan! No!”
The warning came too late.
Nan had already pushed the switch down.
Inside the cabinets something caught and burned hard, a fierce white glare behind the vents, there and gone.
No fire in the room. Just the drives dying where they sat, the metal bowing with the heat, thin smoke bleeding from the seams. The monitors above the desk went dark rapidly, one after another.
The next face and the next. The wall of screens went black.
Nan had used the destruct switch, wired to the drives, built to destroy them instantly. The data was gone. The records, the method, all of it. They’d built the system to take its secrets down with it.
The tall woman reached Nan a step behind the destruction.
“Ming?”
Ming sliced the knife across both sides of Nan’s neck before Nan had a chance to scream.
Nan dropped to the floor. She was still. Her head was bent over, dripping blood on her shirt.
Ming had killed Nan without a moment’s hesitation or remorse. She turned back to him, the knife still in her hand. The cold stare she gave him telegraphed her intentions.
He attacked her first. When she lunged, he caught her knife arm in both hands and twisted it hard until she dropped the knife.
Ming was strong and she was well-trained, but he had the upper hand, and he was stronger, simple as that.
He forced her down to the floor, pinned her arm under his knee, and got a hand on her throat.
Her free hand found the knife on the floor, and she retrieved it before he could stop her. She cut him low on his side, below the ribs. He felt the blade go in and come back out.
It was the last thing she did.
He caught her knife hand, bent it back until she let go, and shoved the blade into the side of her neck.
She went still under him.
He pressed a hand to his side. The cut was shallow. It bled, but it would hold.
Both women were dead on the floor. The servers were burned out and silent. The room smelled of scorched plastic and hot wiring.
Then he heard it. Faint, then steady, then loud. A helicopter, coming toward the house.
That was how Graves came and went. The flat ground up top, the pad, the fence. He was flying out, the way he often did.
Flint keyed the comms back on. “I’m done down here. There’s a helo coming in up top. You got it?”
Gaspar came back at once. “We’ve got it. It’s about ten minutes out.”
Flint was already moving for the terrace. “How much time do I have to find Graves?”
“Do it now. You’ve only got a few minutes.”
“Flint.” Drake said. “I’m on my way. Wait—”
“There’s no time to wait. That’s the point.”
He’d come for three things. The records were gone. The method with them.
That left Graves or whatever his name actually was. At the top of the house, minutes from a helicopter that would carry him somewhere no one would ever find him again.
Flint picked up the rifle from the terrace and darted up the last flight of stairs.