ended.
“So, he doesn’t like taking stairs?” Drake said. “I don’t see that as a life-or-death issue.”
“Watch more carefully,” Collen said, restarting the video. He paused it at the point where Gazenga settled in next to the woman and proceeded frame by frame. “Look at his right arm.”
Everything below the elbow was obscured, but Drake saw Gazenga’s shoulder come up a bit and then drop back down when the elevator stopped. The woman glanced up at him and then watched incuriously as he got off.
“The elevator jerked, he bumped the woman next to him, and then he left. What are you driving at, Dave?”
“He put something in her pocket. Watch it again.”
Drake frowned skeptically as it rolled for a third time. It was possible to interpret the movement of his arm as lifting his hand level with the pocket in her jacket, but it was a hell of a lot easier to interpret it as nothing.
“I appreciate your thoroughness, Dave, and I think a little paranoia is probably warranted at this point, but —”
“Do you know who she is?”
“No.”
“Randi Russell.”
Drake knew the name — everyone with sufficient clearance did — but they’d never met personally. “Last I heard she was chasing some Taliban explosives expert through the Hindu Kush.”
“Yeah. Apparently he met with an accident.”
“What kind of accident?”
“He got in the way of one of Randi’s bullets and then fell off a six-hundred-foot cliff. She’s back at headquarters for a couple months while things in Afghanistan cool off.”
“Okay, but she and Brandon would have no way of knowing each other, and as far as I can remember, she’s worked on every continent on the planet
Collen fell into one of the chairs facing Drake’s desk. “Smith had a fiancee awhile back — she died from being infected by the Hades virus.”
“So?”
“Her name was Sophia Russell.”
Drake felt the knot that had been tied in his stomach since he’d started this operation tighten. “They’re related?”
“Sisters. And to the degree that Russell and Smith are close to anyone, they’re close to each other.”
Drake stared down at the frozen image on the laptop for a moment. “Still, it could be a coincidence.”
“There’s more security footage of what Brandon did
The tightness in Drake’s stomach began to spread to his chest. “Have we checked her out?”
“As soon as I got this, I had her called into a meeting. We turned the heat up and she took off her jacket. When they broke for coffee I checked her pocket. Nothing.”
“Then either there was nothing there to begin with…”
“Or she got the message.”
Drake opened a drawer and pulled out two Excedrins, downing them without a drink to stave off the headache he knew was coming. “If he did pass her something, it could have been anything — an invitation to a private chat room or to an e-mail account with a damn treatise on everything we’ve done.”
“I’ve gone through all his computer usage,” Collen said. “He’s a clever little bastard, but I found the footprints of his search for someone to contact. I’m pretty confident that we have a handle on everything he’s done electronically.”
“Then a time and place. A meeting.”
Collen nodded.
“If you’re wrong and she has something on us…”
“The minute I saw the video I put heavy surveillance on her. If she knows something, we’ll eventually find out about it.”
“Eventually isn’t good enough, Dave. Randi Russell is the last person we need getting her teeth into this thing. If she…” Drake’s voice lost its strength for a moment, fading under the weight of the disaster scenarios playing out in his mind. He stood and paced across his expansive office for a few moments before stopping on a rug that bore the CIA seal. “Are we prepared to move against Gazenga?”
“We’ve been ready since the day we brought him in. Should we go?”
“Can we afford to?”
“The short answer is no,” Collen said. “We think Omidi is in Uganda, and Brandon’s using his contacts to try to confirm — contacts I don’t have a relationship with. On the other hand, can we afford not to?”
“Damn Castilla and his ops team! This should have never gotten this complicated. Do it. Get rid of him. And I expect you to pick up the slack, Dave. No excuses.”
“What about Russell?”
“It’s the same story, isn’t it? Killing her is dangerous. But leaving her alive is potentially suicidal.”
“Then we’re considering dealing with her?”
Drake gave a short nod.
“I’ll start laying the groundwork, but it’s going to take time. When it comes to walking away when she should be dead, Randi Russell is a witch. This has to be planned to the very last detail.”
“We don’t have time to play around, Dave. I want to see a summary of possible options by tomorrow afternoon.”
31
Any hope that their arrest had been a simple matter of the army’s coincidentally showing up at the worst possible moment could now be safely discarded. The situation they found themselves in exceeded even the worst- case scenarios Smith had come up with on the ride there. And he was a man whose life could pretty much be summed up as one worst-case scenario after another.
There had been no calls to the embassy, no lawyers, and no questions asked or answered. The windowless room they were in was made entirely of crumbling concrete, with a rusty steel door that looked like it had been salvaged from a battleship. The air was hot and increasingly unsuitable for breathing as the carbon dioxide from their breath slowly built up.
Furniture consisted of three chairs, each bolted down and each equipped with sturdy leather straps on the arms and legs. Much worse, though, were the streams of dried blood leading from beneath them to a drain in the floor.
Sarie was feeling around the jamb, slipping her shaking fingers into the gaps and pulling futilely when she managed to get a grip. Howell had nodded off on the floor shortly after he’d satisfied himself that there was no way they were getting through the door, past the guards posted outside, and out of the dilapidated military base beyond. Saving energy and air to fight another day.
Smith crossed the room and put a hand on Sarie’s shoulder. They’d been trapped there for eight hours, and probably half of that she’d spent pacing like a trapped animal.
“Why don’t you take a piece of floor next to Peter and get some rest. Let me work on the door for a while.”
She looked back at him, obviously trying to control her fear but still looking a little wild-eyed. “We have to get out of here, Jon. This isn’t America. The government can do whatever it wants to you. They can—”
A quiet grinding became audible, and he grabbed her arm, pulling her behind him as he backed away. Howell
