The flight out of Phoenix brought Bourne to DC in the early evening. He used an app on his phone to hail a car, and ten minutes later, a black SUV pulled up curbside outside Terminal 1. The driver, who was built like Jack Reacher, wore a turtleneck and black jeans and said nothing as he came around and opened the rear door. Bourne took note of at least three weapons concealed on the man’s Godzilla body.
He climbed inside the vehicle, then nodded at the man who was waiting for him in the back seat. “Special Agent Fox.”
“Cain.”
The SUV shuddered with weight as the driver got back inside, and the FBI vehicle shot off into Washington traffic. A glass shield separated the front seat from the back seat, and Bourne was sure it was soundproof. But even if the driver couldn’t hear them, he expected that Fox had the back seat bugged to record their entire conversation.
“It’s the Christmas season, Billy,” Bourne said, noting Fox’s standard-issue gray suit. “Shouldn’t you be wearing a light-up tie or something?”
“Ho ho ho,” Fox replied. The FBI man checked his watch. “Speaking of Christmas, my wife has reservations at a tapas bar in Arlington. It’s kind of a holiday tradition for us. If I miss it, she says she’ll kill me. And you know, she’s a Ranger, so I take that sort of threat seriously.”
“Tell Farah it’s my fault if you’re late,” Bourne said.
“She won’t care. She’ll kill you, too.”
Bourne smiled.
Farah wasn’t actually an Army Ranger anymore—something Billy Fox didn’t realize. She was actually a Treadstone assassin code-named Magician. She was Indian-born, thin and dark, and utterly lethal. Bourne had seen her in action once on a mission outside Almaty, when they’d had to shoot their way past a team of terrorists who’d taken over an oil refinery. She’d gunned down seven men with cool accuracy using her H&K, then nearly beheaded two more after a Kazakh militant shot the pistol out of her hand.
Later that night, after the violence was over, he’d bumped into her by accident at the Barakholka market, where she was sharing a plate of horsemeat sausage with her FBI husband. A quick look from Farah told Bourne that her husband knew nothing about the day’s lethal activities. He’d kept her cover, and he’d also developed an unexpected friendship with Billy Fox, who had a shorter stick up his butt than most FBI agents. Since then, they’d met up for an occasional Nationals game when Bourne was in Washington.
They also had a quid pro quo relationship when it came to trading interagency secrets.
“I hear you’ve been spending time in Tucson,” Billy commented. “Looking for a winter place? Maybe a condo with a mountain view?”
“I don’t like the desert,” Bourne replied. “I prefer cities.”
“You mean like London? Word is, you spent time there recently, too. You need to be more careful, Cain. An MI5 man spotted you at the Hilton. He put two and two together with the death of al-Najjar, and he passed the tip up the chain to Tony Audley. Tony called me to see if I knew what you were up to.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said you liked Christmas tea at the Ritz,” Billy said with a chuckle. “Tony didn’t appreciate the joke. He started burbling on about Treadstone body counts and the special relationship and the Saudis owning most of London. You didn’t actually kill al-Najjar, though, did you?”
“No.”
“Do you know who did?”
“Shadow thinks it was a Saudi hit team trying to shut him up.”
“Yes, we thought the same.”
A muffled ping sounded in the vehicle. Billy removed his phone from inside his suit coat, then checked the text message without replying and put the device back in his pocket. He ran his hand back through his wiry red hair, which, when combined with his long thin nose and pencil mustache, made him look vaguely like his namesake animal. He was as small and cunning as a fox, too.
“That’s Farah. She’s already pissed that I’m not there. We should make this quick, okay? I can connect the dots. London and al-Najjar. Arizona and Wilson Scott. You’re hunting for the Files.”
“I am,” Bourne admitted. “Are you?”
“Oh, sure, everybody wants them. FBI, CIA, NSA, DOJ. Plus most of our enemies overseas. Some of our friends, too.”
“Are you willing to trade intel?” Bourne asked.
“You’ve got something?”
“A possible connection. It’s worth exploring, but I don’t know where to start. You may know more about it than I do.”
“If you tell me anything, I’ll be forced to pass it along,” Billy announced, enunciating his words as if his superiors were listening. And maybe they were.
“Fair enough. All I ask is some room to run.”
Billy pursed his lips. He leaned forward, digging his hand into one of the seat pockets and coming out with a small recording device. With a fingernail, he popped open the back and removed the batteries. “Okay. I’ll give you a twenty-four-hour head start. I can’t do any better than that. What’s the connection?”
“First, what do you know about the Files? Where does the data come from?”
Billy shook his head. “We assume some kind of hack, but we haven’t found any common ground to determine the source. Believe me, we’ve looked. Plus, some of the knowledge seems to go beyond what you’d find in a database. There are instances of blackmail that involve information that’s not likely to be written down anywhere.”
“Like someone hiring a hit man to kill his wife?” Bourne asked.
Billy’s eyes narrowed, and the fox resemblance got even stronger. “Yeah. Like that.”
“My sources say a rumor along those lines made its way to someone in the Bureau,” Bourne said. “Did you hear about it?”
“I did. That was last year. We never found out who fed us the tip. There was also no reason at the time to suspect it had anything to do with the Files. The caller didn’t mention blackmail. But I can put two and two together as well as the Brits. Was it Wilson Scott who told you about this? I know his wife died, and there was a lot of talk behind the scenes about whether it was a mercy killing. Not that anyone around our shop was going to look into it. Everybody knows what ALS does. Fucking awful disease.”
“Scott says he didn’t help her along,” Bourne replied. “He insists she died without any help. But he said someone put him in touch with a man who could speed it up. He made a call, but he claims that’s as far as it went.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I’m not sure, but it doesn’t really matter either way. The point is, someone knew all about it, and whoever it was leveraged the secret to get Scott to resign. He claims he was very careful, that there’s no way anyone should have been able to connect him to this. But they did. That means it’s probably part of the Files.”
Billy frowned. “As I recall, the tip mentioned a website. Sort of an OnlyFans kind of thing for online sex.”
“Mygirlnextdoor,” Bourne told him.
“Yeah. Right. We checked it out as best we could. You use a site like that, you know you run the risk of being exposed. It doesn’t mean there’s a link to the Files.”
“Except al-Najjar used the same site to hook up with Russian girls. Escorts. They got blown up with him in London. That’s two connections to the same website, which makes it feel less like a coincidence.”
“Yeah, agreed,” Billy said.
“You said you checked it out. What did you find?”
“I said we checked it out as best we could. The site’s not operated in the U.S. We couldn’t get to any of the programmers or the people running the hands-on parts of the scheme. Our IT guys hacked open a lot of the code, but according to them, it didn’t raise any red flags. There wasn’t any obvious spyware other than the usual cookies and trashy ads. So we figured the leak was probably the girls themselves, using info their clients provided to operate lucrative side businesses. Killers-for-hire, real estate scams, in-person prostitution, human trafficking, take your pick. Lonely men with hard-ons try to impress naked girls, and they wind up saying things they shouldn’t. They may think it’s anonymous, but it ain’t for long. It’s not a new story. But remember, we were looking for a hit man operating in the U.S. That’s all we knew. We weren’t looking for a blackmail ring.”
“Did you find him?” Bourne asked.
Billy shook his head. “No.”
“What about the site itself? What can you tell me about it?”
“Not as much as I’d like,” Billy said. “As far as we can tell, the app appears to be based out of a town called Narva in Estonia. It’s on the Russian border, so there’s heavy Russian influence throughout the town. That ties our hands. Like you said, the girls on the site seem to be primarily Russian, too.”
“Did you try getting any HUMINT off the site?”
“Yeah, we created fake accounts and dangled some bait. They smoked us every time. One of my boys thought he was getting close. He was playing hot and heavy with a girl on the site and complaining about troubles with his boss, like he’d love to see his boss have an accident or something. The girl said she knew someone who might be able to help him with his problem. Gave him a phone number and a contact code.”
Bourne rolled his eyes. “And?”
“And the number belonged to a burner phone used by the labor secretary.”
“Cute.”
“Yeah. Real cute. Apparently, the secretary was a fan of the girls on the site. He wasn’t too happy when we ran a sting and surrounded him with half a dozen agents in a DC parking lot because we thought he was a hit man. Even worse, someone tipped off the press, so video of the whole thing ran on Politico. The secretary’s divorced now.”
“Maybe he can find a nice Russian girl,” Bourne said.
“Ha.”
“What about the website server in Estonia? Did you put anyone on the ground in Narva?”
“Sure we did. After they fucked with us, we wanted to fuck them right back. So we sent in a Latvian agent who passes info to us from time to time. Two weeks later, a ten-year-old Estonian girl found his body washed up on the beach of Lake Peipus. These guys do not mess around.”
“So who are they?” Bourne asked.
“Russians, but we don’t believe there’s any official connection to Moscow or Putin. The only name we’ve got is somebody called Cody. Nothing more than that, no photos, no real identity. We don’t know much about his background, but we think he’s an ex-Wagner guy who was tight with Prigozhin. Needless to say, we assume he’s been laying low and finding other sources of income ever since his boss went down in that plane.”
“Income like hookers and hit men,” Bourne said.
“Yeah. Plus God knows what else.”
“So could Cody be behind the Files?”
Billy looked dubious. “Maybe, but a site like mygirlnextdoor is a pretty narrow niche. The Files seem to be casting a much wider net. I think it’s more likely that whoever is running the Files has been able to tap into the website’s info, and somehow it’s being combined with dirt from a lot of other sources.”
“Still, the website seems like the place to start,” Bourne said. “That means a trip to Estonia.”
“Well, if you go, steer clear of Cody. Our friend in Latvia died very unpleasantly before they threw him in the lake. I’d rather you not go the same way. Not that I give a shit about Treadstone, but you always seem to get first-base seats for the Nationals.”
Bourne smiled. “What about the Commanders?”
“Nobody gives a shit about the Commanders,” Billy replied. “Are we done here, Cain?”
“One more thing. Wilson Scott mentioned a relationship with a particular girl on the site. She was the one who made the connection to the hit man. According to him, the name she used in the chat room was Irina. Did you look into her? She may be a pawn, but she must know something. She’s the one I’d really like to find.”
Billy gave a sour laugh. “Good luck with that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, yeah, we found Irina. She’s still on the site. Still posting pics. And I can see why Scott was obsessed with her. That body, shit, it would make just about any guy weak in the knees.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is she doesn’t exist,” Billy told him. “That’s why we didn’t get anywhere with her.”
Bourne’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s an AI model. The pics, the videos, they’re all computer-generated. There’s no such girl as Irina.”