5:36 P.M.
THE CARLYLE
MADISON AVENUE
NEW YORK CITY
In a beautiful, high-ceilinged co-op thirty-five stories above Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a thirty-one-year-old man with sharp Eastern Bloc features was staring at a large concave-shaped LCD screen. This was Igor. He had shaggy blond hair. He was watching a video, hacked off the restaurant’s security cameras. He was isolating the figures in the video other than Dewey and running their faces against a variety of applications based on facial recognition. Like watching dominoes fall, he watched as the computer pushed the faces of the men sent to kill Dewey against a wide, multilevel, non-jurisdictional layer of metadata cued off millions of unique identifiers aggregated into a single person. Within half a minute one of the men popped a grid. Then, a few seconds later, the others did as well.
HUSSAIN, Assaf
MOHAMMED, Pierre
NUSSUF, Jean
Igor heard a low beep and tapped his ear.
“Hello?” said Igor.
“Igor, it’s Jenna Hartford from Langley.”
“Hello, Jenna.”
“Hi,” she said. “Where are you?”
“That seems rather forward of you,” said Igor in a thick Russian accent, “but I must admit I find your curiosity intriguing and quite sexy.”
“Oh for God’s sake. I need you to run some analysis, Igor. I’m sending you access to some tight-access stuff, very recent.”
“Alta Strada?” said Igor.
Jenna paused.
“How did you know already?” said Jenna. “No one has access to it.”
“Apparently someone does. While you were flirting with me, I did some research,” said Igor. “I ran the three Iranians against various databases. All three were Hezbollah. All three were members of Black Regiment, the main feeder into Hezbollah.”
“I wasn’t flirting with you,” said Jenna. “What does it mean?”
“Well, it would seem Dewey has spent time in Iran but I didn’t think he pissed someone off so much they’d risk sending Hezbollah into the U.S. Then again, he did steal a nuclear bomb? Actually, now that I think about it, that would certainly piss me off.”
“Obviously, that’s what the logical conclusion is, but what if they want to sideline him because they’re planning something bigger?”
“That seems highly unlikely.”
“I agree,” said Jenna, “but even if the likelihood is under one percent, it’s worth running down.”
“I love it when you show off your mesmerizing intelligence, Jennifer.”
“It’s Jenna, not Jennifer. Can you run the numbers?”
“Yes, let me dig deeper into the three killers,” said Igor. “If what you’re saying is true, it would mean a level of planning that should be discernable in the metadata. If they’re planning on something bigger I think it will show. I assume this is covered from a legal perspective.”
“Yes, this is under an Agency NO/SEC Protocol now; do whatever you need to do. Time is of the essence. Financial information, travel information, what they bought at the small shop at some airport, how they paid for it. If there’s a live operation going on, not only will Dewey’s survival represent a blow to the planners of this operation but more importantly it might cause whatever plan they have to be initiated sooner.”
“I agree. I’m on it,” said Igor.
“I’m going into a debrief with Dewey, Hector, and Bill. I need anything real-time.”
“I love it when you order me around with that accent,” said Igor, a hint of frustration in his voice. “I’m going to go put on my leather pants before I start doing the analysis.”
“I just threw up in my mouth,” said Jenna. “Please, just get me whatever you have.”