clearance gave him direct access to the databases, ran searches on Kiska Babev’s name and known aliases, and came up with a dozen different hits or matches. He’d been examining them when Wu came in.
It took him a few moments to get past her interruption and remember precisely where he was: correlating the flights with possible return trips to see if there was an alias that he didn’t know about. His theory was that Kiska might use one name for inbound or outbound flights and another for the other leg of the trip. Finding a match between a pair of flights would give him another name for the financial queries. It was a complex search, however, with a wide range of potential variables, and after a few false matches — similar names that proved to belong to different people — Ciello had to concede that he wasn’t getting anywhere. He went back to the flights themselves, trying to coordinate them with anything known about the assassinations. He found only one, but it was provocative: a trip to France a week before the American CIA agent Michael Dalton had been killed. She’d used her real name, with payment arranged through a Russian travel bureau known to be used by the FSB.
Tenuous, but definitely something. More than just the outline Wu had demanded.
Ciello typed up a quick summary and sent it to down to Corri-
Corrigan fought back a yawn as he queued up the segment from the surveillance bugs for Ferguson. It wasn’t that he was bored — the six-hour time difference between Italy and the States was killing him. He was in effect pulling two eight-hour shifts, with Lauren DiCapri filling the last. They needed another desk person, though finding someone with the proper training, clearances, and temperament — they had to get along with Ferguson — seemed impossible.
“You ready, Ferg?” Corrigan asked.
“Yeah, if I’m not keeping you awake.”
“I’m sorry.” Corrigan hit the key to upload the video snippet to the satellite. From there it was downloaded to Ferguson’s secure laptop.
“Yeah, that’s definitely Atha. How long was he in Rostislawitch’s room?”
“Ten minutes. I have a little bit of audio, but it’s muffled. The maid must have been in the room downstairs running the vacuum.”
“Let me hear it.”
“I can send you a transcript.”
“Fine, but let me hear it first.”
The audio was completely indistinguishable; only with the aid of a high-tech sound scrubber had they been able to get anything from it. But of course, Ferguson being Ferguson, he wanted to hear that for himself.
Corrigan sent the files, then put his hand over his mike and yawned again. As he did, his computer chirped, indicating he had something new in his priority e-mail queue.
It was the Russian report from Ciello. Corrigan opened it.
“So Atha goes into the room while Rostislawitch is away, probably to search it. He calls someone on the phone,” said Ferguson. “Can we get the phone number?”
“Come on, Ferg. Be real.”
“That’s a no?”
“By the time we set something up with the NSA for that, forget it. He’ll have a new phone by then. You’d have a better chance using a scanner to intercept his calls.”
“All right. Did you send that brief to Imperiati?”
“I just got it now,” said Corrigan, opening the file Ciello had sent.
“I asked for the brief hours ago.”
“These things take time,” said Corrigan. “And it was only a half hour.”
“I told you to get it together at least an hour before I met with Imperiati.”
“It takes time,” said Corrigan. He skimmed through the summary, then saw that Ciello had done a lot more than put together a standard Agency report on an FSB officer.
A lot more.
“Hey, Ferg, Ciello has Kiska in France when Dalton gets killed.”
Ferguson didn’t answer.
“Did you hear that, Ferg? He has her in France. Shit. It’s the smoking gun.
“Let me talk to him.”
“To Ciello?”
“No, Dalton. I want to know what the weather’s like up there.”
Ciello was a master at teasing information out of the intelligence agency’s databases and files, but when it came to making a simple phone connection on the in-house lines, he had a great deal of trouble. The procedure for using the encrypted line involved entering a department code as well as a personal code, which of course he could never remember without consulting the instruction manual he kept in his bottom desk drawer. This meant he had to find the key for the drawer; by the time he finally got Ferguson on the line, the op was beyond testy.
“I almost hung up on you, Ciello. Where have you been?”
“Um, here. I haven’t left the building since yesterday. I slept on the floor. Corrigan says it’s OK as long as I don’t tell Mr. Slott. It kinda helps my back.”
“Listen, Corrigan tells me you can connect Kiska Babev to Michael Dalton’s murder.”
“Um.”
“What’s
“Um, no. I have one flight record. He went to France a few days before.”
“She. Kiska’s a she.”
“I knew that.”
“That’s all you have?”
“I’m working on more information. To get data—”
“You look at credit card information?”
“In the works. To get access to the records, first we have to make—”
“All right. Kiska has a second cousin in a mental institution in Romania.”
“Um, sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. Her last name is Stronghauf or something along those lines — it’s German. The mental hospital is right outside Baja Mare. There can’t be too many institutions around. Find out the name, then give it to this guy whose phone number I’m going to give you, and he’ll find the accounts for you. Or if you’re really nice to him, he’ll tell you how to get them yourself. Save you a couple of hours, if not days.”
“Um—”
“There’s that um again. You sure you’re not practicing yoga?”
“The cousin isn’t named in any of the reports.”
“What a shock. Guy goes by the name of Fibber. Here’s his number—”
“Is this outside, um — strictly speaking, am I breaking protocol? Because the privacy laws, see there’s an internal counsel who’s supposed to review requests, even when they involve overseas—”
“My hands are where they’re supposed to be,” said Ciello.
The Russian expression — literally “are your hands growing out your ass?” — was generally used to deride an inept boob.
“Well, then do what I’m telling you,” answered Ferguson. “Use my name as soon as Fibber answers the phone. But don’t ‘um’ him; he’s not into that New Age crap.”
“Corrigan always says we should totally obey the procedures because otherwise—”
“Run your request through channels as a backup,” added Ferguson. “This way, no one will complain. You just don’t mention that you already have the information.”
“Oh.”
