Ice Cold (11 page)

Navarro, whose room was on the other side of the lounge area, had disappeared at about midnight. The light had shown under his door until she’d finally taken herself to her own room in the early hours of the morning. He’d no more sleep than she had. Wearing his uniform of a white dress shirt, jeans, his hair tied back, he, too, looked wide-awake and alert by the time the team arrived the next morning.

Introductions made, breakfast ordered, computers set up. Several algorithms worked in the background as Honey’s computer systematically went through possible scenarios, following threads. Most leading nowhere. “Where are you lurking, you little shit? I know you’re there. . .” Virus dissemination, malicious software attached to other software. Virus, worm, Trojan horse, time bomb, logic bomb…

The list was long, but she was patient and systematic. She’d find the endgame and yank the plug. It was just a matter of time. True, it was taking longer than she thought it would when she sat at that café in Dresden and told Navarro she’d have that comm call traced within an hour. It had been a dead end after multiple false trails. Someone knew their stuff.

Honey couldn’t allow herself to think of the human suffering the bombs had caused or the loss of lives. Her job was to find how, so Navarro could stop who.

Focus. Breathe. Do your job.

She sat at a Louis XV desk with delicately curved legs and inlaid veneer, while the men took up the rest of the space. Each worked on a separate piece of the puzzle, verbalizing their assessment of the situation, and comparing notes as they went. Weak sunlight flooded the living room from the large windows facing onto a small, snowy park five floors below. Breakfast had been consumed as if the men were being timed and penalized for chewing one too many times, Honey observed with detached interest. The operatives were good at what they did, and thankfully, following computer leads didn’t require a lot of chitchat. They barely spoke as room service came to remove the carts and returned with fresh coffee. They worked how she liked it best. Quietly and self-sufficiently.

Why hadn’t Catherine contacted her again, especially if, as Honey suspected, that had been her at the safe house yesterday? Honey liked logic and rationality. After that first e-mail, she hadn’t heard another word from her mentor. She’d used all her skills to trace where the e-mail originated, but Catherine was too damn smart to allow that to happen. Until she was ready to be found, anyway.

“Trust no one” was pretty damned vague, she thought, listening to the men. She couldn’t put off reporting the encounter with Catherine Seymour to someone in authority. She’d already left it dangerously late. Chain of command dictated she report the breach to Navarro. If not Navarro, then Nielson, who was their Control. But what if her mentor was implicating both of them under her “do not trust” umbrella? If Catherine was a rogue operative in prison for treason—and so far as Honey knew, that was the case—wasn’t Honey being a fool to believe
her
? She wasn’t a trusting person at the best of times, and this situation was fraught with potholes and landmines.

She needed more intel. Facts had always been her greatest ally, but so far, they’d given her little to work with.

Fact: She only knew Navarro by reputation. So far, he’d lived up to it.

Fact: Catherine had saved her life. If you couldn’t trust a person who saved your life, then who could you trust?

Fact: T-FLAC was only an organization. Any organization could have security breaches. The mystery woman had proved that by coming to the safe house. If there was one security breach, in Honey’s experience, there were more, which meant Catherine’s warning applied to T-FLAC command as well. It also meant she couldn’t be sure of Catherine’s motives either.

Fact: The only two people she could trust now were herself and Pollack.

She decided last night, after spending several hours trying to track down the e-mail’s point of origin, she’d give this twenty-four hours. After that, she’d have to trust
someone
. Until then, she’d keep her own counsel.

“The visit to the safe house yesterday could’ve been unrelated, but since none of us believe in coincidences, let’s say Black Rose has once again reared its ugly head,” Navarro told the group.

“Wasn’t Black Rose the code name for
Savage
?” Bennett asked, puzzled. “Thought she was awaiting execution?”

Navarro walked to the window then turned to lean against the sill. “Oh, she is, she fucking-well is. Doesn’t mean the group hasn’t gone on without her. Black Rose was just one cell, there were several more Black Flower cells we
didn’t
root out. At Savage’s capture, they went dark. Inactive as far as we know. Until now.”

“Maybe she’s no longer incarcerated,” Honey suggested without inflection. If she wasn’t, then the whole “Savage is a rogue operative” story was either bogus or she’d managed to escape from a supermax facility. Both options had other, more far-reaching, implications. “It could’ve been her yesterday…”

Navarro stared hard at her. “Death sentence, no possibility of parole. That’s what happens to traitors. No, she’s locked up for the duration. We can cross her off our list.”

The truth as
Navarro
knew it. But what if it wasn’t the truth? What if, for reasons unknown, Catherine wasn’t in prison at all? Never had been. What if T-FLAC had put out that story? Why? To trick someone else, someone higher and more powerful, into revealing themselves? Honey had never believed the innuendoes and whispers about Catherine. None of the nonsense jived with the woman she knew. Facts as she knew them. “She cont—”

“I know she brought you into T-FLAC and was responsible for training you, but she was nobody’s friend.
Especially
another beautiful woman. Savage always believed she was more cunning, more intelligent, and a hell of a lot smarter than the rest of us put together. Savage is all about Savage and fuck everyone else. So if you’re harboring any altruistic feelings about her getting out any time soon, it ain’t gonna happen. No visitors, no contact of any kind with the outside world. The woman is stuck inside a seven-by-seven cell, somewhere where escape is impossible.”

If
that
really was the truth, then the e-mail
and
the visit yesterday were the work of someone else. “You know this as fact?” Honey asked, almost relieved to know it wasn’t Catherine who’d e-mailed her. “Because every indication is that the woman impersonating me yesterday was someone who knows me very well indeed. And the only person I can think of who would know me
that
well is Savage.”

Catherine Seymour was, other than Pollack, the closest thing Honey had to a friend. Which was pretty damn sad, she thought, annoyed she was letting emotion affect how she did her job. It wasn’t like her.

“Then you have another admirer, Winston. It wasn’t her.”

Maybe so, but Honey wasn’t done trying to track the e-mail, nor was she going to let up on Rocha, tasked by Navarro to track down the mystery woman. Confirming Catherine was where she was supposed to be was a top priority.

“Let’s all debrief where we are, make sure we’re all on the same page. Lenny, what do we hear from Dresden?”

“Slow and methodical,” Len Bennett told him, holding his comm loosely in one hand as he waited for a call back and dangling a triangle of toast in the other. “Bäcker’s located several more components from the device and some residue that looks promising. He’ll have something for us within the hour, and be ready to begin the reconstruct right away.”

Honey let the conversation flow around her, listening with one ear as she did mental gymnastics. Being the sole woman on an eight-person team didn’t disconcert her, but she
was
the odd one out. Not because of her sex, but because the men had all worked together at various times and knew each other. They obviously trusted one another. She was the unknown element. She trusted no one, with or without Catherine’s warning.

She was used to being the odd one out, so she didn’t give it any more thought. There was no doubt in her mind yesterday’s bold and fearless visitor to the safe house was Catherine. Catherine or one of her people. The unanswered question was why the hell had she done something so overt and foolish? It wasn’t like Catherine to scream fire unless she
wanted
people to notice her.

NINE

 T 
hat was the prime minister’s office,” Roan told the group an hour after breakfast. His shaggy brown hair, charming smile, and good looks said he probably knew how to use his appearance to his advantage. His rapid speech was European in accent and syntax but hard to identify. “The PRA just claimed the London bombing as their handiwork. Winston—” He rattled off the number that the IRA had called to report the bombing, the time and duration of the call, then stuck his comm back into his pocket. “You good?”

“I am.” She turned back to her computer, an extension of herself, and started keying in data to authenticate the call and trace its origins, similar to last night’s procedure when she was trying to find Savage.

While the men discussed the call, she started backtracking, searching for confirmation or anything that would authenticate the PRA’s claim that they were responsible for bombing the bank.

“I don’t give a shit what they claim. The PRA had nothing to do with this.” Sam Poole was in his early, very early, twenties and looked about nineteen, with a smooth baby face, silky blond hair, and intense brown eyes. He paced. Back and forth. To the door and back to the table. From the table to the door. Just watching him, wore her out. He was like a thrashing live wire.

“While they like bombs just fine, they’re more inclined to go for smaller targets—post offices, small government offices. They’re small dogs, their claim isn’t realistic. They probably
like
the idea of people thinking they have a big bark, but they don’t have the contacts for this amount of bite.”

“Agreed.” Roan made a twirling motion with one finger and pointed to a chair, but Poole kept moving. Honey caught the look that passed between Banks and Navarro. Pool would be gone in an hour, she thought, amused, or one of the two men would sit on him until he learned to center himself and cool down. This was just the beginning of discovery for the op. If the kid were already hot under the collar, the team would consider him a liability.

“The call to Downing Street came from a public phone outside a pub in Donegal,” she announced, taking advantage of a few moments of silence. “
Could
be the local PRA group, but I’m digging deep—Hot damn. No,
not
the pay phone at the pub. The call was rerouted from…” Honey tapped out a sequence of numbers to keep tracking the call, and at the same time overlaid a map of the area so she could see where she was. “A one-thousand-square-foot farmhouse in Saint Amans Sout, in the south of France.” She glanced up, meeting Navarro’s eyes. “Place has been on the market for two weeks.”

“Not PRA, then. No surprise.” Navarro turned to Oliver Reed “Olly, don’t you have a contact inside the London cell? See what they have to say about someone claiming to be them.”

“They’ll be fucking
delighted
that someone else is enabling them to get more street cred without their having to lift a finger or spend a penny.” Oliver Reid pushed out of the chair as he took his comm out, walking to the other side of the room where it was quieter. Honey wondered how he’d gotten the layers of shiny scar tissue on both wrists. The big man made no effort to cover them, but the location and the obvious severity spoke of hours of torture. He was also missing the tip of his middle finger on his right hand.

“How’s the scrutiny of the computer logs going?” Navarro asked her.

Aren’t you fortunate that I can juggle ninety-nine things at once?
She went out of one screen and into another. “The bits and pieces I’m looking for aren’t physical, just minute data variances. Not as easy as picking up items with tweezers. Do you think the explosions have something to do with the transactions logs I’m reviewing?”

“No solid connection, just trying to put the pieces together to see if there’s a connection.”

Honey added a different code to what she had and scanned the numbers dancing like fireflies across the screen before she spoke again. “Or eliminate it. Taking out bank systems redundancy, it would be easier—not easy, but easi
er
—to move money out of personal or corporate accounts and harder to track with systems out of sync on the mirror site.”

She turned to look at the group as a whole. “Easier than getting into a vault and hauling around that much cash. Doubling up a couple thousand transactions per second would have the money in the ether before…” she trailed off as she continued the thought in her head, lost in the process.

“Have you seen any anomalies in the failovers?” Mandek inquired, picking up a strip of cold bacon and holding it near his mouth as he spoke.

“…in the failover, no.” She blinked the room back into focus. “But with the mirror out of sync, it’ll take weeks to compare the logs and find any erroneous transactions. Then multiply that by Athens, Mexico, Germany, and London…” She was talking to herself, but they couldn’t say she hadn’t tried to tell them her part of the investigation. “Running the algorithm to slow down the process rate would—”