“Will you be able to sleep now?”
He laughed. “Yes, I do believe I will. Sweet dreams to you, Agent Caine. Thanks for the ear, and the agreement.”
Fancy that, Nicholas had acted like a real partner, called her to get her opinion before acting. She smiled as she climbed into bed. Sweet dreams? You bet. But short ones, given it was four something o’clock in the morning.
23
QUEEN TO A3
Chicago
Adam Pearce was staring at the brightly lit Chicago skyline when his phone beeped that an encrypted e-mail had arrived. It wasn’t his personal phone, but the special cell the FBI had provided.
It was the middle of the night. Why had they chosen now to make contact? He hadn’t heard from them in weeks, not since he’d been placed in this apartment and told to lie low. He was bored. He needed to work, to stretch his brain, to do something.
The e-mail was simple.
We have a job for you. Call in.
At last! His brain lit up like Christmas, his blood roared. Even though Adam still chafed at the idea of working for the government, it was better than rotting in a federal prison or being extradited to one of the many countries he’d worked against. His call sign was no longer Eternal Patrol. Now his call sign was Dark Leaf. He’d spent the last few weeks skimming around the darknet, spying on his brethren. Carefully. If the rest of the hacker world knew he was working for the government, there’d be a contract on him by morning. There were still a lot of very powerful people in the world who would like to bury him deep.
He built in a second layer of encryption so his voice would be garbled to anyone who might be listening in and dialed the number. Paranoia had always been his watchword.
Nicholas Drummond answered the call, said immediately in his posh British accent, “Did I wake you?”
“No.”
Nicholas laughed. “Ever the hacker, keeping night hours. I don’t sleep much myself. How are things? You’ve been comfortably relocated, I trust?”
“Yeah, yeah, things are fine, but Nicholas, I’m so bored I’m tempted to hack Director Comey’s computer and tell him to give me something to do. Please tell me that’s why you called.”
“It is, my friend. You’re aware of a group called COE?”
“Celebrants of Earth? Of course. Dorky name. They’ve been doing bad things, making you guys look like monkeys. Wow, I guess I’m now looking like a monkey, too, since I’m officially one of you. Are they behind the attack on the oil companies tonight?”
“You’ve heard about it?”
“Sure. The whole Net is buzzing. A Shamoon attack, was it?”
“No comment. Have you ever come across Gunther Ansell?”
Adam whistled. “The Blue Whale? Sure, everyone has. He does superior work, for an old guy. He’s what, thirty?”
“Yes, nearly ready for the glue factory. Adam, he’s dead, murdered.”
There was a long moment of dead silence, then, “All right, you’d better tell me all about it.”
Nicholas did. “I’ve got a request in for everything he was working on, maybe something’s there to nail COE. But I really don’t need it, I know COE. And I know they’ll need someone new to keep up the cyber-attacks.” He paused, waited. “Adam, you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I’m trying to get my brain around this. Gunther, gone, it’s crazy, dude. So, Nicholas, you want me to offer my services to COE?”
“You’ll need to show them you’re better than their people, ah, and that you share their values and goals, which, at this moment, we’re no longer sure we know. They’d been so focused, and now they’ve switched gears, and I’m simply not sure if their fanatical hate is at the core of it now.”
“I do share some of their values, Nicholas.”