Yardley held her breath. She didn’t know Dr. Brown wellenough to know whether his ego was such that he would believe KC would keep his secrets above all others, but KC seemed to know him. She held eye contact with him for several seconds, until Yardley watched tension she hadn’t known where to look for melt out of his expression.
He wanted to believe KC. If he could, it would mean his hold on her was intact. Double agents had such a problem with narcissism.
KC’s gaze flicked to a dark hallway. Yardley’s schematic told her it led to a bedroom with sliders that opened to the wide lawn facing the narrow road along the water.
Yardley sent the schematic to confirm KC’s escape route, hoping she hadn’t read too much into that glance. That glance meant KC was thinking, and thinking would keep her alive.
Then KC’s eyes blinked in an odd flutter.
“You’ve managed to find the drive. What are your orders?” Dr. Brown leaned against the wall behind him. His tone had lost the note of imperious formality. That was promising. Any amount Dr. Brown trusted KC was time bought and paid for to get her out.
Unless KCgenuinelytrusted Dr. Brown, and he could tell, which was why he was so relaxed.
KC’s eyes fluttered again.
“C,” Atlas whispered. “C! That’s Morse code. With military abbreviations.”
“C’s affirmative,” Yardley whispered, though KC couldn’t hear her. “My goodness, honey.” She directed the drone over the exit area from the sliders and sent the feed to KC to give her the view she’d asked for.
“You know I can’t tell you.” KC’s tone wasn’t one Yardley hadever heard before. “But my time’s about up. We’ll need cover inside at the auction, or they’ll come looking for me.”
“Jack with the Sisters has got it handled,” he said. “No one knows I’ve stepped out. Meanwhile, everyone’s wondering where you’ve got to. I have a boat waiting and Franklin in my ear hassling me over how long this is taking because he’s pissed Ada couldn’t talk the diplomats into letting us bunker-bust on Swedish soil.”
General Franklin, he meant. And he’d name-dropped an active Canadian agent and the president. Either Dr. Brown was operating at a deeper level of cover than Yardley had been privy to or he wanted to make KC believe that was the case.
There was a flurry behind Yardley. “A burn notice was issued.” It was Gramercy’s voice. Thank heavens. “Flynn has ID’d him as the man who arrested her in Dublin. We have pretty solid intel from the analysts suggesting we should assume everyone with a Northern Europe assignment is dirty.”
“That’s a small army,” Atlas said. “Yardley.”
“Yeah.” She understood the implications of what Gramercy was saying. It meant that whoever Dr. Brown worked for knew about and potentially controlled every perimeter, extraction, and mission unit they had out here. For now, they had no idea how deep the corruption went.
Plans B through F were out of the question.
This was well beyond KC’s experience. Dr. Brown was packing an armory, and KC hadn’t even brought a knife to a gunfight.
He’s turned, she typed for KC to read on her visual. The hair on the back of Yardley’s neck stood on end.
Not a single change in KC’s biometrics, and she didn’t give them another Morse acknowledgment. She sidled closer to Dr.Brown. “If that’s the case, then come with me.” She sounded strangely compliant. “We’ll do this together.”
“I can’t.” Dr. Brown smiled. It was a nice smile. At a vulnerable time in KC’s life, he’d been present for her. He’d opened doors. How could she be expected to think with her head, not her heart, at a moment like this? “You’ll have to give me the drive. Report the handoff to your team, and we’ll talk at the ambassador’s residence.”
Their presence at the residence was Sensitive Compartmented Information. Even inside the agency, no one should have known they were there except people who absolutely needed to know.
Maple Leaf was well and truly compromised.
“We have to dump the drive and extract KC,” Yardley said. “It’s done. He’ll kill her for it if she tries to hang on to it, but if she hands it off, she has a chance. We can find another way. He can’t have been that careful. We’ll infiltrate whoever he’s with.” She was talking fast, thinking faster, channeling her resources into her innate talent for strategy because it was one advantage she had over Dr. Brown.
All she had to do was keep one step ahead of him. Half a step.
“That’s not what they’re telling us to do.” Gramercy’s voice was tight. He still wore the emergency comm link that gave him a direct line to the director and the White House. “They want her to try to hang on to it. I’m sending you the orders now.”
Yardley glanced at them.
No.
A robot drone had been deployed to the slider’s entrance. It still hadn’t been tracked. She was to order KC to toss the drive for the drone to retrieve under what would be a hailstorm of Dr. Brown’s gunfire.
They really, truly intended to get KC Nolan killed.
