Florin had gone to Mikhail with the proposition. The potential was too good for either of them to pass up. Mikhail found a way to get the research, and they were off to the races. For two years, their man in the lab coat worked tirelessly with a team they put around him. He was making tremendous strides, and international patents were on the horizon. Florin and Mikhail expanded their profit potential by bringing in over one hundred private investors. The IPO for their new company was but months away. They all stood to make ten, twenty, even thirty times their initial investments. Everything was going far better than anyone could have hoped.
And then, just three weeks ago, the unthinkable happened. Their lead scientist, the man who had brought the idea to Florin in the first place, experienced a massive stroke while leaning over a microscope in his lab. He died twelve hours later.
Everything they had built, all the money invested, had been dependent on that one man. Now he was gone, and technology was not yet complete.
As it turned out, Kathleen would be the key.
Florin had first met her nearly three decades ago when he was with the RFI and she in her early days as a case officer with the CIA. They even worked a case together in the mid-1990s. After Luganov defected, a friend of Florin, who had worked at the CIA station in Brussels, mentioned to him in passing that Kathleen had personally taken the lead on transitioning Luganov into his new life. Florin had filed that away as an interesting but irrelevant piece of information. At the time, he had no interest at all in Luganov or what he knew about isotopes and radioactive nuclei.
And when his scientist had died three weeks ago, he still hadn’t thought of it. Why would he? Kathleen worked and lived in America. He didn’t even know where. It had been years since they had spoken. Even entertaining such an idea was on the brink of madness.
But then, at the very moment that he was biting his nails, wondering how he was going to protect hundreds of millions of dollars of his investor’s money, she walked down the street right in front of him. She was right there, out in the open, standing across the street from him like a juicy carrot. Florin returned to his yacht, and with a few calls, he had the remainder of Kathleen’s cruise itinerary. She would port in Athens four days hence. Plenty of time to make the proper preparations.
Now, Florin took another sip of his whiskey and found that he couldn’t help but admire the ease of it all. He had Vasilly to thank for that. When Florin finally had Luganov in hand and had him properly motivated back in the lab, Florin would remember to pay Vasilly a handsome bonus.
And tomorrow night, he would host the soiree on his yacht at a private dock in Naples. He would strut Simon Luganov in front of his investors and put them at ease. He would let them know that, despite all the recent rumors, their money and his technology were still moving forward.
Florin returned to the couch, leaned his head back, and smiled.
Chapter Twenty
It was dark by the time Bahar’s driver dropped me back off at Victoria Circle. After I stepped out of the car, he handed me my phone along with the detached SIM card. I stood on the exact spot where I was grabbed only hours earlier and slipped the SIM card into its tiny slot. After turning the phone on, I waited for it to boot up and glanced over at the gyro stand. Just my luck. My stomach was growling, and the stand was closed for the night.
As soon as my phone displayed a service bar, I put in a call to Boomer.
“Savage?”
“I’m all right,” I said right away.
“Man, where in the hell are you?”
“I’ll explain later. For now, I need you to come get me.”
“Where are you?”
“Victoria Circle.”
“You’re kidding me? Do you know I drove all over there for two hours? Granger kept pinging your phone but couldn't get anything. I swore we had another Kathleen situation on our hands. You sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. But I’ve got a lot to explain. What did you end up doing with Emmanuel?”
“He’s still in the trunk of the car.”
“He’s still in there?”
“You disappeared! I pulled him out long enough to pistol whip him a little. But after I didn’t get anything out of him, I shoved him back in. He’s probably pissed his pants twice over by now.”
“Let him go,” I said. “We’ve got everything we need out of him.”
“Let him go?”
My phone vibrated with an onslaught of new voicemails and texts coming in from its time offline. I glanced at the screen. “Boomer, I’ve got to go. I’m here at the Circle. West side.”
“All right, brother.”
“And let Emmanuel go.”
He paused. “I’ll unhook him.”
We hung up, and I started through the texts: Charlotte, Zoe, Brad, and even Roscoe, all of them asking where I was and to call them. A quick scan through the details suggested something had happened with Zoe. I bypassed the voicemails and called Charlotte.
“Is Zoe okay?” I asked.
“She is now. Did you get my texts?”
“I’ve been out of pocket. I haven’t read them yet. What happened?”
“Earlier today, she was followed all the way from The Reef up to Homestead. She noticed a man following behind her and finally called Brad.”
“Good girl,” I said.
“Brad intercepted him, and the man had taken several photos and videos of Zoe.”
My grip tightened on the phone. “He did what?”
“He was being paid to do it. After Brad arrested him and the Homestead PD carted him off, he had Spam dig deep on him. It turns out he picked up a two-part request from the dark web. The first part of
