Chapter 107

 

 

East Coast of the United States

Undisclosed Location

 

2:00 p.m.

 

The office building was quiet and unsuspecting. It remained tired and unimaginative. Nash’s hand remained motionless on his handgun as he thought about his next move.

On entry the building resembled an auction house with its myriad of paintings and art linking the entrance and hallways. Only no one knew the exact time the so-called auctions were held and no one asked.

Nash gripped his Ellipse card in his hand. In Monaco, a close encounter in the hallway had allowed him brief access into Alex’s pocket, the card now rested secure with him.

She’d carried it with her always and that had been Nash’s opportunity. A quick distraction and snatch job.

The card had been easy to swipe. Nash had been trained to read reactions and instincts for years and Alex was afraid of something. His card had been her security. As she’d embraced Lascar in an off-guarded moment, his mini-spider drone had gone to work. A chameleon that behaved like the animal it had been named after, taking on colors of its location and surroundings as it moved through space and air. The chameleon crawled along the floor and latched on to Alex. Sensors on the inside told Nash the card was in her gun holster. The hidden one. Made sense, the woman took a pistol to her bed like most people use pajamas. He’d seen her in training and knew her draw was quick but sometimes foolish.

 

He recalled a distasteful conversation:

“You telling me you can’t look at another woman, but that brunette?”

She’d always had a thing for Nash but he’d never been interested. Nash didn’t have time to entertain her jealousy.

“She doesn’t seek my attention. It makes the chase a little more interesting,” Nash said.

“Depends what you call interesting,” Alex had said, seizing him by the neck and scratching a bruising kiss on his lips.

He threw her hands off his neck in one toss.

It was a desperate move on Alex’s part for lustful sex, but that had been his cue. Alex had used the same move on Lascar in Monaco’s hotel hallways. Nash had dimmed the lights with an easy hack into the hotel light system. He grabbed a baseball cap, hid his face and brushed past them.

In one move the card was his. It was now his ticket. A quick scan on his NSA network account had revealed it hadn’t been used. It was as encrypted as the day he had scrambled the data on it. Jack’s tip had worked and Alex wouldn’t notice. He had to get back to the room and was the only one of his grade level who’d ever been allowed in the NSA’s vault.

Room 717.

 

 

Nash held his breath and scanned the hallway behind him where two officers crossed the to the stairs. Room 717 was where Project Horizon met on occasion when they needed a clandestine face-to-face meeting. No security guards, no cellphones, no bugs.

Despite not signing on permanently for the K-J20 Ops of the NSA, even after he’d been literally begged by Cook, he’d turned them down.

It was personal and non-negotiable. He’d refused because he’d taken on the most important case of his life. It was when he’d first started investigating Calla’s case when Stan’s plea for her safety had reached him via the CIA.

The room had many answers, but had also created more questions as he began piecing Project Horizon together. The Project was only known to four people including the president all of whom had been present at his summoning, except the British prime minster.

Room 717 held information on classified materials privy only to the privileged few. Project Horizon was in that league, the US part of it.

It was a project the NSA’s secret arm had started. He remembered Cook’s words when he’d been given access. “No point just eavesdropping on our enemies, Shields. We don’t eavesdrop on the things we don’t understand. We eavesdrop on things we can’t explain. The president has a personal interest in technologies we don’t understand, and I’m not just talking aliens and the like here.”

He breathed hard as he approached the room.

Damn it! He’d left his good watch in the car because of its wireless capabilities. That would make him traceable. He glanced round the hallway and coded the pin pad for the room. The door slid to the left. Electronic gadgets and body heat could be sensed in this room.

He took a deep meditated breath. It had to be gaining on midnight now.

He’d timed his steps counting quietly.

A noise above him alerted him and he dove behind a stack of oversized servers that stood before him as two unsuspecting individuals conversed past his hideout position.

He studied the two men as they turned on the lights. Darkness shrank back into the corners.

“All clear, Al.”

The agent called Al spoke into a security phone. “Agent Salamon will be here shortly.”

“Right. He’s late. You know we can only open these vaults three seconds at a time.”

“Damn it! What the heck does the NSA keep here?”

“Don’t know, but wouldn’t want to find out either. I’m sure they’d have to kill me.”

Nash heard more footsteps. If he remembered the room was fifty-seven steps from the entrance door. He held his breath. He would need to sneak in right behind.

Nash pulled his visor mask down and padded his bulletproof vest. A muscle in his jaw twitched as the man approached. The last time he’d entered Room 717 he needed to pay careful attention. Everything in the room was there for a reason.

He’d thought about telling Calla and bringing her. Her night vision would’ve been useful here. But Calla couldn’t know what was in the room.

She would never forgive him.

Nash moved toward the agent. He knew what he had to do, and waited until the agent was in reach of him. The other two stood immobile as they startled at his approach and targeted their guns.

Nash strategized his next move. He’d numb them with the tranquilizer gun just long enough to get in and out of the room. The door normally opened for three seconds. That would give him exactly sixty seconds from entry before he’d be hit by the body heat sensors.

He needed one look at that list and he’d copy it the way he’d been taught to spy. But if anything relating to his unborn child was on it, it needed to be wiped… and that damn ransom. He still didn’t know what the heck he was going to do about it.

If he could only establish it was Alex, what the heck did she need the money for? Nash had never been comfortable with spying, but this was personal. It was his family. The spying business had hit home and now was the best asset he had. Joining the NSA didn’t make him exempt from government interference in his life. But if he copy could the damn drive he’d be on even ground.

He crammed a fist in the man’s gut and knocked him unconscious. The second man darted from the room.

Damn it. He only had three seconds.

 

 

 

 

Reykjavik, Iceland

 

Day 18

Thursday, July 24, 5.21 p.m.

 

A golden beam of evening sunlight fell on Calla’s face. In the early cool of the morning the glass fortress villa, built to imitate an ice palace and twentieth-century imagination, stood on the edge of an interlocked wooded forest.

Calla observed through her binoculars as a woman came out for a bag of logs.

“I think I’ve seen enough,” she said. “Let’s go.”

She mounted her motorbike and angled toward the secluded location. Rowe had been foolish enough to tag Michael Compton’s current location in his email.

Right behind these ice walls. A secluded getaway in Iceland. The house was surrounded by a large garden and a security fence. An alarm system and cameras ensured the safety of its habitants.

Deceptive from the outside, the interior seemed as glacial as its exterior. Jack accelerated his motorbike beside her until they were at a safe distance from the villa.

Calla hopped off and secured the bike in the woods. “I’ll go to the front, Jack.”

She made a gesture to him to go in the back way. He parked his bike next to hers and drew a silencer, and his cell phone that guided him to the exact location of the three security cameras they had to blind out.

He shot three times.

The cameras blew out.

They crossed the two-hundred yards from the gate to the house. Calla edged her back against the quiet entrance and set a finger on the door. She pushed it.

A melodic opera piece poured from the house’s inbuilt speakers, a Puccini’s Che gelida manina, if Calla guessed right.

Jack’s eyes met hers as he advanced in from the back entrance. They made their way through a quiet hallway lined with modern art and fitted wooden floors.

A sound caught their ears. They hurried to either edge of the door that led to a wide den. More motion alerted them.

She mouthed to Jack: “Compton.”

When she was sure no one else was with him, she made her move into the den.

Compton zipped his head round and dropped his whiskey glass to the floor. The smashing glass pierced through the room.

Large gray eyes bore into Calla. Compton’s thick hair was the color of ebony. Tall and with a broad-shouldered build, he nearly toppled from the low chair, as his dark skin contradicted the light in his sharp eyes.

Calla took a protesting step forward. “I need the research you stored on my tattoo.”

He shot up, his eyes narrowing. “What tattoo?”

“Don’t give me that,” she said making a move toward him. “You hide much from the prime minister, but one thing you share are the same gambling habits.”

Compton reached for his gun on the table. She intercepted him by smashing a sharp side palm on his neck. His hands shot to the back of his neck and he lost the smirk on his face. Two guards appeared at the den door behind Jack and halted when they saw the weak position she’d put Compton in.

Compton limped upward. “I can’t give that to you even if I wanted to.” He spat the words out. “It’s classified. Besides, we gave that research to buyers who offered a lot more than my government pension. You see, pretty face, you wasted your time.”

A noise by the door interrupted them.

Alex, was it?

Calla loosened her grip over Compton and dropped him on the floor. She wouldn’t acknowledge Alex until she had what she wanted from Compton.

“Calla Cress! I must offer you congratulations. I didn’t say it earlier,” Alex said.

Calla finally moved her eyes to her. “Alex, is it?”

Alex’s long fingers sifted through her hair.

“My business isn’t with you,” Calla said setting her boot on Compton. “It’s with him and people like him.”

Alex wasn’t about to give up and she drew a firearm. “Where’s Shields?”

The bite of fury settled in Calla’s chest as her boot remained steady on Compton.

“I can help you get the list,” Alex said.

“What list?”

Alex’s confidence robbed Calla of her speech as she moved close enough for Calla to catch a whiff of her perfume.

“This way.”

Calla shot Jack a look as the men took his gun. She feigned indifference with a casual shrug and followed. Compton gripped his throat for air as Alex led her and Jack to a part of the building bathed in natural light seeping through glass. The room was covered with more sheep furs than Calla could count. This was Compton’s home. He had afforded it every luxury money could buy for a home which would explain his readiness to part with her data.

 

An earsplitting blast made her stop. The windows flew open and her ears picked up the sound of fluttering and then speed. In an instant, Alex ducked out of the way and headed for the far door, slamming it behind her as the men dragged Jack off.

The drones flew low targeting Calla.

Miniature and mounted with tranquilizer projectors, they zipped straight toward her. She dove for the floor, realizing the drones were programmed to annihilate her.

She crawled to the door and tried the handle.

The drones lifted from the ground seeking their target.

The door refused to open. Calla’s senses drew in fumes and her ears caught the sound of hissing steams as the mini-drones dropped their payload of sense-dumbing gas.

As the gas seeped into her nose, she heard a banging on the door but she couldn’t get to it.

“Calla!”

She heard the voice.

“Calla, open the door!”

The gas attacked her lungs.