gone too long without rest. His chin snapped up off his chest as the sound of Chuck’s voice roused him from a state of semisleep.
“I cracked the code,” said Chuck, speaking over the computer.
“What took you so long?” asked Jack.
He was being facetious. Anything less than intelligence-grade encryption was no match for Chuck’s supercomputers.
“Does that mean we can view the files now?” asked Shada.
“No need,” said Chuck. “I ran them through my database. Part of Project Round Up is the cataloging of every single video file traded over the worst of the P2P networks. Trust me on this: The files that you copied from that creep’s computer are not the kind of things that any normal human being would want to watch.”
Jack was almost afraid to ask. “What kind of content are we talking about?”
“Some people would call it sexually explicit. I call it graphic violence.”
“Not against children, I hope.”
“No children in these videos. Interestingly, the violence is against grown men. By women.”
That took Jack aback. “Dominatrix stuff?”
“It goes beyond that. From a trading-frequency standpoint, the most popular video shows a woman ripping out a man’s pubic hair with her teeth.”
Jack squirmed at the thought, then refocused. “So are you saying that every single file that Shada copied has already been traded on the P2P networks?”
“All of them-except one.”
“Which one?”
“Jamal’s.”
Jack went cold. “What does that one show?”
“I haven’t watched it yet, and since it’s never been traded on the P2P networks, I don’t have the content cataloged. I thought I would pull it up now for the three of us to see.”
Jack and Shada exchanged uneasy glances.
“I don’t need to see it,” said Shada. “This may not matter to you, Chuck, but I feel bad enough for the mistakes I’ve made without watching these videos.”
Chuck didn’t bite, unwilling to acknowledge her contrition just yet.
“What about you, Swyteck?” he asked. “Jamal was your client.”
Jack wasn’t eager to say yes, but if Jamal’s mother was going to hear about this from anyone, he wanted it to be from him, not Chuck. “I should,” Jack said, bracing himself, “so I will.”
Chapter Sixty-four
Andie put her head down, pulled her wool scarf up over her nose, and walked into the wind. It was snowing in the Washington area. Tiny flakes fell from the night sky, flickered beneath the glow of streetlamps, and gathered on the wet sidewalk in front of her. No doubt some tourist was giddy with excitement over postcard-quality photographs of the illuminated Capitol or Jefferson Memorial. Andie wished she were in Miami. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel was right across the street, which made her think of Jack. He’d probably booked the romantic-weekend package a half-dozen times at the Ritz on South Beach, but something had always come up and forced them to cancel. “Something” was code for the FBI.
Sorry, Jack.
Andie still wasn’t convinced that it was safe to return to Vortex. She’d left the company heliport on Sunday with the definite impression that Bahena was having doubts about his trainee. But it wasn’t Bahena who had called to insist that she return tonight to discuss her “immediate activation.” The call had come from the top. From the CEO of Vortex’s parent company. From Sid Littleton himself.
“You’re close,” Harley had told her. “You have to go back.”
Andie knew her supervisor was right.
An inch of new snow blanketed the sidewalk, and it squeaked beneath each step. Commuters had been heading home since lunchtime in anticipation of the coming storm. Even so, a long line of glowing orange taillights streamed up the street toward the on-ramp to the expressway. There were few pedestrians-just Andie and a lone lunatic jogger. A woman, Andie noted as she trudged by her. A pregnant woman. Now that was dedication: In her sixth month, easily, and superwoman was out jogging in a snowstorm. She probably worked sixty hours a week at a major law firm, too. Dropped off her three older children at three different private schools on her way to work. Hit the gym every morning at five A.M., even if it meant getting up at four to put the cookies in the oven for the Cub Scout bake sale. Teleconferenced with teachers over lunch, organized charity events on weekends, sang the barking puppy to sleep at two A.M., always had her highlights done before her hair hit “scare alert,” and made love to her husband four times a week whether they wanted it or not.
Is that who Jack thought he was engaged to marry?
Andie hurried up the granite steps to the building’s after-hours entrance. The adrenaline was kicking in. From the very beginning, Black Ice had been an exhilarating mission: uncover the truth about the interrogation tactics used at black sites operated by Black Ice through its highly secretive subsidiary, Vortex Inc. The plan was to place an FBI agent in the role of an interrogator in training. And now the reason was clear why it had to be a female agent: Black Ice used female interrogators to berate and humiliate Muslim men in the name of “enhanced interrogation.”
Still, there was the question: Why her? Of all the female FBI agents who worked undercover, why did the bureau choose Miami agent Andie Henning? True, she was an experienced undercover agent who, over the years, had fooled everyone from cult leaders to Wall Street investment bankers. But she was no expert in counterterrorism. And that was beginning to bother her. Really bother her.
She stopped at the top of the steps before entering the building and dialed her supervisory agent.
“Harley, it’s me.”
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Fine. Before I go back in, there’s just something I need to get off my chest.”
“What is it?”
Andie stepped closer to the building, away from the falling snow. “I’m in this role, and it’s my duty to see it through. But I’m not naive about why I was chosen.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is a broad investigation into private security firms. I don’t see it as coincidence that I’m investigating Black Ice.”
“Of course it’s no coincidence. There is a key role for a woman.”
The cold air made her sniffle. “Or is it a key role for Jack Swyteck’s fiancee?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know for sure yet. But my instinct tells me that I’m about to find out that I’m investigating the same black site in Prague that was at the heart of Jack’s alibi defense in the murder case against Jamal Wakefield.”
There was silence on the line. Andie took it the only way she could.
“I knew all along that Jack and I were playing on the same field,” she said. “But I can’t believe the bureau would put me in a position where my job would intersect with Jack’s like this.”
She heard his sigh on the line. “I’m sorry,” said Harley.
“It’s sleazy, at best,” she said.
“I agree,” said Harley. “I want you to know that I was just as surprised as you are.”
Andie paused. Something about the way he said it-something about Harley-made her believe him. “I’m still going to raise hell about it when this is all over.”
“Okay. But there’s something else I want you to know,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ll help you.”
“Thank you,” she said.
