Black List

“Yeah, but—” began Schroeder.

“Stop worrying about it,” Middleton interrupted. “You’ve isolated his account so no one can contact him on it, right?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Good, then. Now, what have you got on his midget data wizard? The Gnome or whatever the fuck he’s called.”

What an imbecile, Schroeder thought. He can’t even keep a simple code name straight. “He’s called the Troll,” Schroeder clarified, “and I don’t have anything on him. He’s gone completely dark.”

“This is the twenty-first century and you work smack dab in the middle of its power center. There’s no such thing as completely dark.”

“I know. I’m working on it.”

“Well, work harder. People run, but they can’t hide. What about that coroner’s report we’ve been waiting for?”

“It hasn’t been filed yet,” said the young man. “IDs after a fire, especially a bad one like that, take longer. It’ll hit their server soon enough, and when it does, we’ll have it.”

“I want it before it hits their server. Understood?”

Schroeder wanted to call his boss an asshole, or grab a pencil and plunge it into his eyesocket, but his rational self delivered a more appropriate response. “I’ll get it to you as soon as it’s available.”

“Good,” said Middleton as he rose. “How much longer until we’ll have a lock on Harvath’s location?”

Schroeder glanced back at his computer. “It’s populating now,” he said, studying a map that was unwinding all the servers the Skype connection had been routed through. “It looks like he’s in Bulgaria. No, wait. I take that back. It’s not Bulgaria.”

Middleton was getting impatient. “Where the hell is he?”

“I’ve almost got him. One more second. It looks like… Got him. Spain.”

“Spain? You’re sure?”

“Yes,” said Schroeder. “Near a village called Ezkutatu.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s in Basque country. The Pyrenees.”

“Send it all to my screen,” Middleton ordered as he opened the door and started to step out into the hallway. Halfway there, he stopped and turned. “I almost forgot,” he said. “About that data Caroline Romero stole.”

“What about it?”

“Were you aware that she had a sister?”

Schroeder looked up from his computer. “A sister?”

“Am I not speaking English, jackass? Yes, a sister,” he said, drawing the word out like Schroeder was an idiot. “Actually, she’s her half sister. Same mother, different father.”

“She never mentioned her.”

“Really?” replied Middleton. “It never came up any of those times you two were out shopping for shoes or having your nails done?”

Weathering the insult, Schroeder made another hash mark in his emotional catalog and came back with a response a bit more caustic than usual. “You’re aware that if I hadn’t been friendly with Caroline, we never would have caught on to what she was doing?”

Middleton laughed in his face. “Bullshit. Like every other guy in this place, you just wanted to get in her pants. You didn’t find out about her by being her friend. You found out because you were stalking everything she did.”

“I wasn’t stalking her. She was nice to me.”

“You’re a fucking sap, you know that? She was nice to you, moron, because you work for me. It’s what a woman like that calls job security. Look it up. And while you’re at it, check out strategic alliance. You’re a flipping eunuch. God didn’t give you balls, he gave you a pair of fucking raisins. You never would have said word one to her unless I’d ordered you to do so. And even then, she probably already suspected we were on to her. God only knows how much information you unwittingly passed to her during your friendship.”

Schroeder was indignant and fought to keep himself under control. “I-I-I…,” he stammered.

“You-you-you what?” Middleton mocked. “Spit it out.”

The young man could feel his cheeks flush and he balled his fists, digging his nails into his palms. He took a deep breath and let it out. “I d-d-d-d-didn’t pass anything to her. And f-f-for the record, I never wanted to get in her p-p-p-pants. She-she-she wasn’t my type.”

Middleton laughed even louder. “You’re either an idiot or a liar. She was everybody’s type. In fact, I think that sexy piece of ass made you forget who butters your bread.”

“I haven’t f-f-forgotten.”

“If that idiot Powder knew a flash drive from a fucking coffee cup, I would have given him the assignment. But he doesn’t know shit about what we do around here, so I asked you. What a mistake that turned out to be.”

“It w-w-wasn’t a m-m-m—”

“Stop stuttering,” Middleton snapped.

“Then stop m-m-mimicking m-m-me,” Schroeder replied. “It m-m-makes it w-w-worse.”

Middleton locked eyes with him and gave him an icy glare. “What makes it worse is that I can’t trust you.”

“That’s not true. I’ve always been l-l-l-loyal to you.”

“You’d better be.”

“I’ve been g-g-giving this everything I’ve got.”

“Yet you still didn’t know about her sister.”

Schroeder broke his gaze and looked toward his monitor. “I would have found her eventually.”

“Of course you would have,” the older man said, his tone thick with condescension. “You know what, Kurt? You have no idea what it’s like to count on someone, only to have them consistently disappoint you.”

Schroeder knew all too well and wished his boss would just leave him alone and let him go back to his job. “D-d-do you want me to look into the sister?” he offered, eager for the conversation to be over.

“Half sister,” Middleton retorted. “No. I’m already working on her. I just wanted you to know that she’s out there and that I have to be the one wasting my time trying to find her. Maybe that’ll incentivize you to work harder.”

There was only one thing that could incentivize Kurt Schroeder to work harder than he already was, but there was no way in hell he was ever going to reveal it to Craig Middleton. Before he could summon a response, his boss had left the room.

CHAPTER 15

Returning to his office, Craig Middleton closed his door and sat down at his desk. Waiting for him on his screen was the file with Harvath’s coordinates and a smattering of other pieces of peripheral information. Making sense of data, massaging it and making it speak to him, was Middleton’s gift. He wasn’t simply good at it, he was practically a savant. There were only a handful of people in the world who understood the capture, synthesis, and manipulation of data as well as he did. In the world of data and information, he was more than a king, he was something akin to a god.

Middleton had been with ATS for as long as anyone could remember. IBM had spotted his brilliance in high