Sarah had decided on spaghetti, which pleased everyone, and it was done in fairly short order. She scooped it out onto plates and set one in front of each of the three men before making one for herself and taking a seat at the table.
“Be careful, Noah,” Moose said. “She’s acting domestic. I think that engagement ring must be too tight, it’s cutting off circulation to her brain.”
Sarah backhanded him on his shoulder. “Shut up, jerk face,” she said. “Remember the emergency protocols? We’re supposed to remain in character. According to the file they gave me, I’m Rosemary Wingo, engaged to be married sometime soon. Gotta act the part, right?”
Moose chuckled, and Noah simply turned and looked at Sarah. “Realistically, you’re right, but if we really were Wyatt and Rosemary, you don’t think I’d want you to wait on my friends, do you?”
“You shut up, too,” Sarah said as she spun her fork in the spaghetti and shoved it into her mouth.
Neil had spent the time before dinner hacking into every government database he could think of that might have a reference to Nicolaich Andropov. The man had been seen four times over the past two months. He was in Spain first, apparently negotiating an arms deal, then went to Rome for a week. No one seemed to have any idea what he was doing at the time, but then he turned up a couple of weeks later in London, where he was seen entering the North Korean embassy only days before that country escalated its efforts to rekindle the Korean War. He was almost captured there, but managed to slip away from his pursuers at the last second before they were ready to close in.
The most recent sighting of him, though, had been in Los Angeles. He was identified by an FBI agent there on a security video, in the company of an unknown mercenary who was in the process of purchasing weapons. A raid was mounted to try to capture both of them, but it failed.
That was just two weeks previously, but it meant that he was within the United States at least that recently, and that, combined with the fact that he was the only person who might have both the motive and the means to pull off such an operation, was enough to put him at the top of Noah's suspect list for the attack on Neverland. Since that time, however, there had been no news concerning him at all.
“He isn't done,” Noah said. “This attack on Neverland, that's just the beginning. Neverland is too big for him to take down, and he knows it. He's not trying that, he's after something specific.”
“Yeah,” Neil said. “He's after you, Boss. This bastard doesn't ever give up, does he?”
“I'm not sure that makes sense,” Noah said. “If he managed to gather enough intel to let them get into our main office, then he probably knows enough about us to figure out who I am. Why would he make an attack like this when I'm not even around? You’d think he’d want to wait until I got home and attack me directly. Why wouldn’t he just do that?”
“Because the intel that he had wasn't enough,” Neil said. “I'd be willing to bet my Hummer that he was after information, and probably information about you. You pretty much single-handedly destroyed his entire operation. Somehow, I don't think just killing you is enough for him to feel like he's gotten revenge. I think he's out to destroy you, the way you destroyed him. To do that, he's got to find out more about you. He needs to know who you really are, or should I say, who you really were.”
Noah's eyebrows lowered as he thought over what Neil had said. “Who I was is dead, with enough high-powered government witnesses to confirm it that he'd never be able to expose me that way. He'd be smart enough to figure that out on his own, so why would he want any more information on me?”
“Background,” Sarah said. “Maybe he's trying to find someone in your past that he could use against you.”
“I guess that's possible,” Noah said. “On the other hand, if he learns anything about me at all, it would probably tell him that such a ploy wouldn't work. I've only been close to two people in my life, before now, but they think I'm dead. Even if he managed to get to them, there'd be nothing I could do for them.”
“But that's you,” Moose said. “It takes a while to get the idea that you don't operate the way normal people do. Hell, you had to knock the shit out of me before I figured it out. He might try to use some old friend against you, just because he wouldn't know any better.”
Noah stared at the wall for a moment, but then shook his head. “No, I think it's something else, but I can't put my finger on it.”