Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
Baltimore, Maryland
Dr. Emanuela Peraya slid out of her car into the rain, raising her umbrella before closing the car door. Police and crime scene technicians had long since vacated the premises. The body had been carted away.
Division Chief Thomas Kraus met her at the end of the front walk. He raised the crime scene tape on the front door, and they stepped inside the small house that had belonged to Simon Gaines.
“What are the odds the police will actually come up with a suspect?” Emanuela looked around at what remained of Simon Gaines’ life.
Kraus made a noncommittal noise in his throat and pulled out his phone. Well, a phone. Not his personal one.
This wasn’t a job they could entrust to anyone else at the CIA. Not when the stakes were as high as she believed they were. “You really think that tip from the Division Zero team was correct?”
He turned in the center of the living room, allowing the scanner time to find a signal.
“Are you going to answer any of my questions?”
Kraus had shadows under his eyes, but they didn’t have anything to do with grief. The man didn’t feel a thing, and rarely got tired. She’d long ago decided it was good that he worked for the CIA, because if Kraus’ loyalty was to their enemies, she’d be terrified.
He shook his head and started toward the kitchen. “You think it’s a good idea to have an open conversation in a room that’s not secure?”
“If Division Zero is correct, then nothing is secure.” Emanuela looked around. “Help me out here. I’m a psychologist. I have no idea what I’m looking for.”
Kraus only made that huffing sound in his throat. “The scanner found a signal.” He moved from the kitchen to the hall and stopped under the light fixture. Living room behind him. Kitchen to his right. Front door to his left. Bedrooms in front.
Maybe the device needed line of sight to as many parts of the house as possible.
Kraus dragged in a chair from the kitchen and climbed on it.
The wood creaked, and Emanuela made a face, picturing the chair collapsing under him and her boss falling to the floor, where he would probably break his leg. That would get her at least a few days to run the office before he was back, cranky and barking orders once again.
Probably not worth it to push him.
Kraus rotated the round light fixture and lowered it, revealing the inner wiring behind the lightbulb. Another device, small as the palm-sized serving of plain chicken or fish she was supposed to be eating if she wanted to stick to her diet.
She put her hands on her hips, wishing they were slender. But that was one in a long list of wishes she was never going to realize. Like running her department out from under Kraus. “That’s it?”
He set the light fixture cover on the chair and plugged the phone into the device. “Audio and video. If he was murdered, we’ll be able to see who did it.”
“And if it was one of the Division Zero team?”
Kraus ducked his head to the device, looking at the screen. Apparently, he was going to watch the footage and not even tell her what he saw. If he didn’t like it, he’d probably delete the surveillance the Agency had installed in Simon’s house and claim it was corrupted.
She moved next to him, smelling the awful tang of garlic and red onions from his lunch. Trying not to breathe through her nose while she peered over his arm. “Well? What if it is one of them?”
“I suppose we’ll have to suddenly care who’s on the team, rather than using that knowledge to our advantage later.”
“You’re playing a complicated game.” But the bottom line was, Kraus could have Division Zero destroyed at any time and no one would know they’d ever been part of a CIA strike force.
“It’s the nature of the business. Don’t forget that.”
“I’m a psychologist. I remember everything I’m told.” Like how he was going to leave his wife for her. How he loved her. How much he valued having her at his side.
Now? Emanuela wanted to be sick thinking about it.
She wanted to request a transfer and go work in intelligence gathering somewhere as far from Thomas Kraus as she could get.
“If it’s one of them,” Thomas said, “then I guess we won’t be able to deny we know who they are any longer. Or that we know which of them are wanted, and which were flagged as assets for foreign entities.”
“And if they piss you off, you’ll turn them over to whoever wants them? That’s as good as signing their death certificates.”
“You’re right,” Kraus said. “It would be more expedient to shoot their plane out of the sky and call it a tragic accident. I don’t want Colonel Montrose owing me any kind of favor.”
She swallowed. “Just tell me who killed Simon.”
“It was probably the AI that infiltrated our whole system.” Kraus sounded amused by that but didn’t smile.
“You don’t believe the tip is correct?” Several members of their team were working on who the tip had even come from, but evidently someone connected to Division Zero had reason to believe they’d been infiltrated by a worm.
“We both looked over his terminal,” Kraus said. “There was nothing in his activity to suggest someone else was feeding him orders.”
“We should loop in more of the team. Task a couple of them with going through his financials, looking for inconsistencies in his online activity. Anything that might indicate he was being contacted.”
Kraus straightened. “You do it, if you think it’s going to get you a result. But don’t come crying to me when you come up with nothing.”
“So you flat out don’t believe it? You think there’s no way an AI program could slip into our system as a worm and infiltrate our network without us knowing?”
“What do you think our safeguards are for? We run checks for that kind of thing regularly, scanning all our networks for intruders.” Kraus shook his head. “It’s impossible.”
“One day someone will invent something so advanced we can’t find it.”
“You really think that’s what this is?”
Emanuela didn’t answer right away. “What I think is that it bears investigating. Because if our anonymous tipper is correct, then we have a serious problem.”
“Follow the trail, then. Pull on the string and see what happens.”
She knew then that he planned to cut her loose if anything “happened.” Kraus wouldn’t hesitate to burn her if things turned into a situation where someone needed to take the fall. He’d tell everyone that she should’ve seen it, and that she was the reason Simon had betrayed them.
He slid a thin stylus out of the corner of the phone and tapped the screen, clicking through a menu. “There was motion-activated footage from shortly before the time of death.” He hit Play.
“Looks like he’s in the bathroom.”
“That tracks, since he was found dead in a towel. Soaking wet.” Emanuela shuddered. Not a way she would like to go.
Kraus scrolled back. They watched Simon walk down the hall and go into the bathroom, and moments later another man followed him. The killer left the door open. The two conversed, and the killer lifted a pistol to shoot him.
Kraus paused the footage at the point when the killer turned toward the camera to leave. He grabbed an image of the man’s face. “We can run this. Find out who killed Simon.”
After they identified him, it would be Emanuela’s duty to surmise why Simon had been killed.
He’d discovered something he shouldn’t have or got too close to exposing an entity who didn’t want to be revealed.
Then again, it might have nothing to do with his work at the CIA.
His death might be revenge for some slight, or a money deal gone bad.
One way or another, they were going to find out the truth.
She just had to keep Kraus out of the loop long enough to decide what to do with the information.