“How did Center know we were in Miami?”
Caruso shrugged. “I don’t have a clue, cuz. You figure it out, then let me know.” He walked to his car.
Jack sat down in his BMW, started the engine, and then reached for his phone. He started to dial Melanie’s number, but then he stopped.
He looked at the phone.
After a long moment, he dialed a number, but it was not Melanie Kraft’s.
“Biery.”
“Hey, Gavin. Where are you?”
“I’m in the office on a Saturday morning. What a thrilling life I lead, huh? Been working all night on the little trinket we brought back from HK.”
“Can you come out in the parking lot?”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve got to talk to you, I can’t do it over the phone, and I’ve been suspended, so I can’t do it in your office.”
“Suspended?”
“Long story. Come out in the parking lot and I’ll take you to breakfast.”
Gavin and Jack went to a Waffle House in North Laurel and managed to get a booth in the back corner. As soon as they sat down and ordered, Gavin tried to get Jack to tell him what he did to earn a week’s suspension, since Jack had refused to speak during the ten-minute drive.
But Jack interrupted him.
“Gavin. What I’m about to say stays between you and me, okay?”
Biery took a swig of coffee. “Sure.”
“If someone took my phone, could they upload a virus to it that could track my movements in real time?”
Gavin did not hesitate. “That’s not a virus. It’s just an application. An application that runs in the background so the user doesn’t know about it. Sure, someone could put that on your phone if they had control of it.”
Ryan thought for a moment. “And could they make it to where it recorded everything I say and do?”
“Easily.”
“If such an app was on my phone, could you find it?”
“Yes. I think so. Let me see your phone.”
“It’s still in the car. I didn’t want to bring it in.”
“Let’s eat, then I’ll take it back to the lab and check it out.”
“Thanks.”
Gavin cocked his head. “You said someone took your phone? Who?”
“I’d rather not say,” Jack answered, but he was pretty sure his worried face gave away the answer.
Gavin Biery sat up straight. “Oh, shit. Not your girl.”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“But you obviously suspect something. Let’s skip breakfast. I’ll take it back right now.”
Jack Ryan sat in his car in the parking lot of Hendley Associates for forty-five minutes. It felt strange not having his phone with him. As with most people these days, his mobile had become an extension of himself. Without it he just sat quietly and thought uncomfortable thoughts.
His eyes were closed when Biery came back out to the car. Gavin had to tap on the window of Jack’s black BMW.
Ryan climbed out of the car and shut the door.
Gavin just looked at him for a long time. “I’m sorry, Jack.”
“It was bugged?”
“Location software and a RAT. I left it in the air-gapped lab so I can study it more. I’ll have to go through the source code to see the details of the malware, but trust me, it’s there.”
Jack mumbled out a few words of thanks, then got back in his car. He headed toward his apartment, but changed his mind, drove to Baltimore, and got a new cell phone.
As soon as the clerk set it up to accept calls from his phone number, he saw he had a voice mail.
As he walked through the mall he listened to the message.
It was Melanie. “Hey, Jack. Just wondering if you are around tonight. It’s Saturday, and I’ll probably only work till four or so. Anyway… give me a call. I hope I get to see you. I love you.”
Jack disconnected the call, and then sat down on a bench in the mall.
His head was spinning.
Valentin Kovalenko had been hitting the bottle more and more in the days since the Georgetown murders; later and later into the night he was up with his Ketel One and his American television. He did not dare surf the Internet, as he knew with certainty that Center was watching his every online move, and there were no sites he wanted to troll bad enough to do so with some Chinese uber-geek spook looking over his shoulder.
Late nights of pizza, booze, and channel surfing had caused him to slack off on his morning runs in the last week or so. This morning he did not roll out of bed until nine-thirty, a near-cardinal sin for a health nut and gym rat like Kovalenko.
With bleary eyes and bed head he made coffee and toast in his kitchen, and then sat down at his desk, opening his laptop — he’d been careful to shut it when he wasn’t using it, because he suspected Center would sit around looking at his living room throughout the night if he did not.
He was paranoid, he knew this, but he also knew what had brought him to this state of being.
He checked Cryptogram for this morning’s instructions and found that Center had sent him a message at five-twelve a.m., ordering him to wait outside the Brookings Institution this afternoon and to take covert pictures of the attendees of a symposium on cybersecurity.
He decided that since he had his morning free, he might as well go for a run. He finished his coffee and breakfast, changed into his running attire, and then finally stepped outside his rented apartment at five minutes until ten and turned to lock his door only to find a small envelope taped on the knob. He looked up past the staircase at the residential street, and then around the side of his building toward the back parking lot.
There was no one in sight.
He pulled the envelope off the knob and stepped back inside his apartment to open it.
The first thing he noticed as he opened it was the Cyrillic script. It was a handwritten note, just a line of scribbled text, and he did not recognize the handwriting.
“Dupont Circle fountain. Ten a.m.”
It was signed “An old friend from Beirut.”
Kovalenko read it again, then put it on his desk.
Instead of leaving for his run, the Russian sat down slowly on his couch to think over this strange change of events.
Kovalenko’s first posting as an SVR illegal had been in Beirut. He’d spent a year there around the turn of the century, and though he did not work in the Russian embassy there, he remembered many Russian contacts from his time in Lebanon.
Could this be someone from the embassy who saw him the other day and was reaching out to help, or could it possibly be some sort of a trick by Center?
Kovalenko decided he could not ignore the message. He checked his watch and realized he’d have to hurry if he was going to make the meet on time.
At ten o’clock on the nose, Kovalenko crossed the street into Dupont Circle and walked slowly toward the fountain.
The walkway around the fountain was ringed with benches, which were full of people either alone or in small
