A Murder of Crows (23 page)

And as he stood by the door and watched her fingers snap away at her laptop, knowing she was betraying him with each keystroke, he forced himself to remember Tali Saddon wasn’t a castoff like Rahul Patel or a lifer like him and Roger. Part of her loyalty would always lie elsewhere, just as Hicks’ loyalty would always lie with protecting his country.

He made a point of zipping up his jacket, hoping the sound might make her stop typing and look at him. He knew she had heard him. She kept typing anyway.

But he knew she must have trusted him on some level. After all, she was typing with her back to him.

It wasn’t much, but it was all he could take with him into the close hours of a chilly March night.

A
S SOON
as Hicks got to the lobby, he checked his new handheld for any secure federal signals in the area. The scan came up empty. On the street, he looked for watchful eyes, but all he saw were parked cars. No signs of exhaust betraying a running motor to keep the heat on. No fogged up windows, either. Only the odd pedestrian walking a dog, or stumbling home after too many drinks.

A number of yellow cabs glided by, slowing at the sight of a possible fare walking alone. Hicks let them all go, deciding to walk back to Twenty-Third Street instead. Staying on foot was a calculated risk, especially with The Barnyard still on the hunt. But after burning down their facility earlier that evening, Stephens and Avery had other things on their mind right now.

He needed the walk and he needed the time to himself. Each moment of the past twenty-four hours had seemed to be a constant barrage of information or crisis or danger. He’d either been rushing to something or running away from something or struggling to comprehend a new turn of events. Even his love making with Tali had been ruined by work. He needed to allow his mind to decompress, especially since the Carousel of Concern had suddenly gotten a little bit larger.

Jabbar. Stephens. The University. Roger’s plan. Shaban. Rahul.
And now,
Tali.

The sky had brightened to a dark blue as dawn was only an hour or so away. The streetlights were still on and the crosswalk signals blinked warnings to empty streets. It seemed like the whole city had been turned on for him and he decided to enjoy the illusion while it lasted.

He crossed the street and checked his email on his handheld. He scanned the hundreds of alerts he saw from dozens of Faculty Members sending updates on dozens of operations from all over the world. There was a report from a Faculty member keeping tabs on a joint Russian-Chinese mission to Antarctica. Hicks smiled. Not even penguins were safe from the University’s influence.

He checked to see if Rahul had given him a status report. According to OMNI, his jet had landed in London over an hour ago. Rahul’s handheld device showed he was now in his suite at the Mayfair Hotel, where a University Adjunct was babysitting him. No girls and no booze, not even through room service. The Adjunct wasn’t skilled enough to trail Shaban, but keeping an eye on a hotel room was a fairly easy task.

As Hicks kept walking south, he checked Rahul’s activity log from the tablets and handheld he’d been given on the flight. Hicks had expected him to sleep through the flight but the log showed Rahul had opened over seventy percent of the files Hicks had downloaded onto Rahul’s devices. What’s more, he had read a good amount of each file and used his tablet to email former Indian intelligence contacts he knew to be living in London.

Rahul appeared to be hitting the ground running in his investigation of Shaban, but it was still too early for Hicks to rest easy. The University was entering dangerous, uncharted territory. The organization had always positioned itself as a clearinghouse feeding information to other agencies around the world. The University’s strength had always been in its technological capacity.

But hacking computer and camera networks could only tell so much of the story. Not even high definition images could detail the subtle nature of a situation. A furtive look of a target. A damp upper lip or a twitch at the mention of someone’s name. The way a woman stood when she spoke to you or something she did with her hair when she lied. The way a man either played with the change in his pockets in a crowded elevator or didn’t. The way tension could build between two people or in a room full of traitors. These were subtleties no camera could see. Only a trained operative could catch them and use them to flesh out the narrative crafted by OMNI’s email searches and web search histories of a target.

Appreciating such subtleties was a world unto itself; a world where people like James Hicks and Roger Cobb and Tali Saddon had made their home. It was a world where organizations like the University thrived.

Hicks was already halfway to Twenty-Third Street when his phone began to buzz in his pocket. It was Jason. He answered the phone anyway.

“I apologize for calling so late,” Jason began, “but I saw you were on the move. Is this a good time for us talk? There are some details we must discuss following your selection as Dean.” Jason’s voice sounded heavy, like a combination of sleeplessness and alcohol. Hicks didn’t even know if Jason drank and didn’t care.

“I should’ve called you earlier,” Hicks admitted, “but something always got in the way. Roger, Rahul, and…” It sounded like he was apologizing and stopped. He remembered he was the Dean now. He didn’t have to apologize for anything, especially not to one of his own people. His predecessor never had. Hicks would keep the practice alive. “Anyway, I know you’re running the New York Office and the Dutchman duties at the same time. I know it’s a lot, but I’d like you to continue doing both for the time being. In fact, it would be a good idea if we began looking for a replacement for the New York Office so you can focus on being the Dutchman.”

“I was expecting you to say the opposite. I know we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, but…”

“But we don’t need to. The mission is more important than the men. Always has been and always will be.” Talking to Jason about a non-University related topic felt odd, so he quickly changed gears. “Have you been following the fire in Weehawken?

Jason seemed just as eager to get back to business. “I was able to confirm it was the same building where they were holding Roger. Local fire officials have been pressured by the feds to wrap up their investigation quickly. Since there were no fatalities, the fire will be written off as vandalism or rats chewing threw wires or something. No one will be filing any insurance claims and no firemen were hurt fighting the blaze, so this is being crafted to fade away as quickly and as quietly as possible.”

Which was exactly how Hicks would have handled it. “Has OMNI been able to discover if Stephens and the others have relocated elsewhere?”

“There’s no digital signal of them anywhere in the area, but we have a new group to worry about.”

When it rains, it pours. “Who?”

“The Mossad. It’s one of the reasons for my call. I couldn’t help but notice your OMNI signals have overlapped with Tali’s signal for the past several hours. I assumed you briefed her about the Bajjah situation.”

Hicks didn’t know if the ‘over-lapping signals’ line was a literal reference or a dig. He let it go. “We hadn’t sent her a daily progress report on Bajjah, so she demanded to interrogate him personally. I had to tell her he’s dead, but spared her the details. I told her he’d accidentally died during questioning, but left out the link to Jabbar. Why?”

“Because she’s been burning up the lines between her laptop and Tel Aviv in the past hour. Mossad encryption is tricky, so I haven’t been able to see all the information she’s sending out, but I can see her online activity has spiked since you left. I hope you know she’s relaying anything you discussed with her as we speak.”

Hicks knew it, but hearing it only made it worse. “Yeah, I know. Have OMNI monitor Tali’s bosses in Tel Aviv. Her boss used to be a man named Schneider. He might not be her handler anymore, but he’s a good place to start.”

“I will,” Jason said, “but remember their email encryption programs are almost as difficult for OMNI to crack as the Russian programs. We can do it, but it usually takes a couple of hours per email and Tali is sending a lot of emails.”

“Don’t only focus on her emails. Keep an eye on all travel requests into and out of New York from Tel Aviv for the next forty-eight hours, particularly civilian carriers and private jets capable of trans-Atlantic flight. Cross-reference them with known Mossad agents and aliases. Bajjah’s death might be enough to get one of her bosses on a plane here to New York. I’d like to know about it first before they knock on my door.”

“Consider it done.” Hicks heard Jason’s fingers on the keyboard. “Might I also suggest we also monitor Tali’s OMNI activity closely? We don’t have direct access to her laptop, but there are other methods we can use. Even if she decides to turn her handheld off and lock it in a drawer, it will tell us something.”

Hicks hated the idea, but watching allies as closely as enemies in this line of work was necessary. “Do it, but don’t bug her apartment or conduct direct surveillance of her yet. Conduct all observation through her handheld. Keep her on all of her current assignments, but don’t give her anything new until further notice.”

“Understood. There’s also another development you need to know about.” Jason cleared his throat a couple of times. “He’s gone.”

Hicks stopped walking. They may have been only two little words, but they were heavy enough to stop him cold. “He? You mean…”

“He had made arrangements for one of the Trustees to notify me after he passed. I don’t know how it happened or when or where. I only know he’s gone.”

Hicks had known it was coming—the Dean had said it himself—but it didn’t make the news any easier to take. “Which Trustee told you? I don’t know anything about them.”

“I don’t know much about them either,” Jason admitted. “All I know is the email came from a secure email address labeled Trustee Number Five on the OMNI system. The sender and location was redacted and classified, even for me. There will be a small memorial service held for the Dean early tomorrow evening in Savannah, Georgia. The Trustee also made it clear your attendance at the service is mandatory.”

Jason went on. “The jet is still in London because of Rahul and won’t be able to make it back to New York in time to bring you to Savannah, but I’ll be able to make any other travel arrangements you wish. I’m sorry for your loss, James. I know you two were close. If you need me for anything, you know where to find me.”

Jason ended the connection, which Hicks didn’t mind. He didn’t have anything more to say, anyway.

Hicks felt winded and leaned against a light pole to get his balance. He pocketed his handheld before he dropped the damned thing. He had known the Dean’s condition was terminal, but finality of his death still hit hard. He had lost people in his life before, both before the University and since. The University had never replaced the family he had lost, but it had come close.

And now the stranger who had been the closest thing to a mentor and a friend was gone. And it was up to Hicks to occupy the void he had left in the University system.

Alone.

As alone as he was on a deserted New York street an hour or so before dawn. Since solitude was all he had, he decided it was time to make it work for him.