“Yeah,” Court said. “And whoeverwasmeeting in there, at least one of those parties knew Irene was going to be there. A lady was tailing her on the train, and they already had the meet location secure with more bodies.” He thought a moment. “If Irene is not the leak in the government we’ve been looking for, then she could be in danger from whoever is.”
Travers shook his head. “I wouldn’t say ‘danger.’ The two men I saw…they looked like muscle, like contractors, former soldiers, cops, whatever. But they didnotstrike me as assassins.”
To this, Hightower used his coffee mug to motion across the table towards Court. “Does this squirrelly little fucker strike you as an assassin?”
Travers conceded the point. “Not at all.”
“I’m five-ten,” Court mumbled in frustration.
“Which brings me to my next point,” Hanley said. “Today was not how I want us doing things. Making the decision to push Arnold into the eye position for what could have been a critical—”
Court interrupted. “You realize that if Teddy, me, or Night Train were in that museum today, we could easily have been picked up on by countersurveillance. It took sending a guy like Bricklayer in there…” He looked to Arnold. “No offense.”
Arnold just waved a hand in the air, dismissing his worry, and he sipped his coffee.
Hanley said, “You’re the fucking Gray Man. You could have—”
“I was dressed as a telecom repairman. I had a change of clothes in the Pacifica, but I didn’t know we’d be going to a museum until after I’d gotten into the Savana.”
Hanley turned to Hightower. “What’s your excuse? You look like the roadie for an aging death metal band.”
Zack’s eyes flitted around the room. “Thanks?”
“You’re getting a haircut and a shave before you do anything else operational.”
“Understood. When I get back from Boulder, I’ll look like a choirboy.”
Matt sighed. “You don’t have to look like a choirboy. You can look like a car salesman, an accountant, whatever. You cannotlook like a professional wrestler.”
“Loud and clear, boss.”
Jill had been busy on her computer, but now she looked up. “I’ve got the first match. On Arnold’s glasses, the room Ortegadidn’tgo into. One subject is Lewis Shaw; he’s an employee of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He’s in IT, not an analyst, he’s GS-10, a midlevel government employee.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Pretty impressive, actually; he’s only thirty years old.”
Hanley said, “That’s the same agency Ortega works for. Why is she interested in an IT guy in her office? And who is the other person he met with in that room?”
“I’ve got nothing on him coming up so far.”
Hanley said, “Send me the image. I’ll get Pace to run it at CIA and see if anything—”
“Oh my goodness,” Jill interrupted, leaning close to her screen now. She manipulated an image there, enlarging and then refining it.
“What is it?” Hanley asked.
“This man…interacting with Shaw. He’s…he’s not real.”
“He’s notwhat?” Hanley exclaimed.
“I mean…his face isn’t real. He’s wearing a mask.”
Travers said, “A mask? Like a medical mask?”
“No, like a Halloween mask.”
Court rushed around the table so he could see the screen. “What the hell are you talking about?”
She cleaned up the image even more. At first to Court, it looked like a man in a black watch cap; his skin was a little pale and he was older, maybe fifties or sixties. But when she zoomed in on his eyes, it was evident that there were slight rings around them, as if there were eye holes in some sort of high-quality latex mask. “I’ll be damned. That’s good.”
