“Oh my God, I did not think… Yes, I know this word. This ‘dead drop.’”
“Maybe someone left something for her that she was unable to collect after she left. Something vital to all of this. Do you still have contacts in Moscow you can trust?”
“Yes.”
“Could they check the locations of her last dead drops for us?”
“The ones in the book? They will already be picked over. People there know about the book too.”
“Not those dead drops. There was one more. One that she insisted we leave out—but now it’s starting to make sense. Where are we? I’ll tell your driver where to go.”
Chapter 30
Carter
Silvia rested her linked hands on the table. “Carter, I get that you don’t know who to trust right now, because your whole career has been about figuring out who you can and can’t trust, but for you, this is a better-the-devil-you-know situation. And at this moment the devil you know is me.”
“I don’t know anything about these guys. All I knew was that they were after us.”
“Or, more likely, this evidence you’ve found.”
Carter remained silent.
“Does Alice have it?” Silvia continued.
Carter met her gaze calmly but inside he felt anything but. If he told them Alice had nothing of value, would they deprioritize finding her? What if Schneider knew that his name was on the list? Would that motivate him? The guy was still standing by the door, arms crossed over his chest like he thought that would psych Carter out.
Silvia, meanwhile, looked like she might reach out and take Carter’s hand. Carter would have thought the good-cop, bad-cop routine was beneath her, though her disdain for Schneider was genuine. And yeah, she’d been one of the good guys, when he’dknown her, but she was also very good at doing her job—which was to protect the national interest, not him or Alice.
“We have entire teams across the CIA and FBI that we can direct into finding Alice,” she said, “but we need more intel—what the Russians are so desperately trying to find, how everything fits, whether we need to escalate this to the diplomatic level. It’s time you stopped going it alone, before the innocent woman you dragged into all this pays the price.”
“Perhaps it would help if you knew more about the company Ms. Thornton is currently in,” Schneider interrupted, making Silvia physically tense. “This guy,” he said, nodding toward Silvia’s now-dark phone, “the driver of the van… If you met him in the street, you’d have him pinned as a regular, plaid-shirt, born-and-bred Canadian. Truth is, he’s Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Been in North America for decades, came into the U.S. through the back door from Canada. Slipped through the 2010 crackdown and disappeared, after being identified as the prime suspect in the torture and murder of a Russian national in Michigan. These sleeper agents, we’re finding them now. Used to be, they’d look through a graveyard in Toronto or wherever and find a kid who died around the right age, claim the birth certificate, and they were away, like this guy. Melt into the crowd. The dead kid’s family would never know. What we don’t know is if Ms. Thornton is working with the Russians willingly.”
“Of course she’s not, and you know it. She’s a schoolteacher who thought she was helping Nika write a novel. A regular good person. That’s as far as her involvement goes.”
“Then why has she been evading the authorities? Why did she walk directly to the van, like she knew it was gonna be there? Have a look at the whole video,” he said, jerking his head toward Silvia in an instruction.
Mouth tight, she cued it up on her phone and played it for Carter. Sure enough, Alice walked straight up to the van, head down, and disappeared behind it. A minute or so ticked by and the van took off, leaving the sidewalk empty, like a magic trick. Carter slowly filled his lungs. She would have been terrified. And where was she now? They wouldn’t kill her immediately, not until they had the kompromat. What if she’d taken them straight to the apartment, handed it over?
“There’s nothing to suggest she’s working with them,” Silvia said, her impatience directed at Schneider, even as she spoke to Carter. “Which is why we need her to be found, and quickly. So if there’s anything you can tell us…”
“Though if shewasn’ttaken against her will,” Schneider added, “we don’t want to commit resources unnecessarily.”
“Sounds to me like you don’t want her found.”
“You really do have a problem with trust, don’t you? Okay, okay,” Schneider said, raising his arms in surrender as if Carter had protested, “let’s say shehasbeen taken against her will. The best thing you can do for her is tell us what you know, and tell us where to find this evidence you claim to have so we can get to the bottom of all this. If you don’t, she could well suffer the same fate as this poor schmuck in Michigan. I’m sure I can find the photos of what they did to him, if that helps motivate you.”
“That a threat?”
Schneider planted both hands on the other side of the table and leaned in toward Carter. “How about quitting with the time-wasting? Tell us where to get the evidence, and I’ll be able to redirect a whole lot of resources into finding your schoolteacher. Until then, we have no leads to follow and we’ll just have to stand our teams down.”
Carter stared right back. Sure, the guy wasn’t out to charm anyone, but the way he was puffed up, jumpy, red-faced, trying to bulldoze Silvia…
It felt … personal. Like he was feeling threatened.
What if there was something to this list, after all? Schneider. Deputy Director Folds. Tyler Wade. Leonard Poole. Tania Garrett. What if they did all have something in common?
And what if it wasn’t what everyone else had assumed?
