And then, his training. Years in the military taught to obey his superiors. As much as he trusted his instinct, knew his course of action was the wiser one, he could not act.
Shaka was a servant to his past.
So be it.
Another time, then.
Soon.
Chapter 23
Tel Aviv
Midnight.
Lights burned in the offices of the SON Group. Danni Pine sat at her desk, frustrated, tired, at the end of her tether. She’d left the office just once since the laptop and phone had arrived from Thailand, allowing herself a shower, a nap, and a change of clothes. At some point she’d taken Luca Borgia’s urgency as her own. She didn’t like it when someone questioned either her efficacy or her integrity. Borgia had done both. She meant to prove him wrong.
“Major?”
“Danni?”
Danni raised her head. Dov and Isaac crowded the doorway. “If you tell me one more time you can’t do it,” she said, “you’re fired. You can go to the Galilee. Join a kibbutz. Grow grapes. Make wine.”
“We did it,” said Dov, meekly. “Finally.”
“Got it,” said Isaac, nodding.
Danni motioned them forward.
The engineers advanced, stopping at Danni’s desk. Neither man took a seat.
“Speak,” she said. “You’ve kept me waiting long enough.”
“He fragged the hard drive,” said Isaac. “Used some Russian software we haven’t seen in eons. Old, but good.”
“We had to start from scratch, retrieve the—”
“Spare me the details,” said Danni, hand raised. “What did you learn?”
A pause. Isaac looked at Dov, who cleared his throat. “He cleaned them out.”
“Top to bottom. Emptied all the drawers.”
“I’ll need you to be more specific unless, that is, you expect me to tell Mr. Borgia that Rafael de Bourbon stole his underwear.”
“Specific?” Isaac checked the tablet he used for diagnostics. “Let’s see. He stole 2.7 million files, eight hundred thousand emails, and three years of text messages between PetroSaud’s top executives.”
“So that’s who this is about? PetroSaud?”
The engineers nodded.
Danni knew the name. Over the past seventy-two hours she’d versed herself on all of Luca Borgia’s businesses. She had a nose for shady dealings.
“Texts? How did he get those?”
“All digital correspondence conducted on company hardware was copied and saved to a central hard drive.”
Of course it was. They did the same. “Go on, then. What did you learn?”
