The Discarded (17 page)

Not wanting to waste the time it would take to figure it out on her own, she opened her messaging program and sent a quick note to the Mole.

You there?

His answer came back within seconds.

Where else would I be?

She typed again.

.xuki—heard of it?

The Mole:

Seriously?

Orlando:

Seriously. Why?

Five seconds later, her phone rang. She donned her earpiece and answered, “Yes?”

“You’ve never heard…of it?” the Mole asked in his odd cadence, his voice electronically distorted into a metallic monotone as always.

“I wouldn’t be asking if I had.”

A pause. “You must have missed…it while you…were recovering.”

“Missed what?”

“The dot-xuki virus.” He pronounced the extension
zoo-key
.

Orlando frowned. While she had been out of the loop after she was shot, she had specifically worked hard to catch up on any important tech developments she might have missed.

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It was…hush-hush. Hit only…CIA data storage center outside Washington, DC….Inside source said only…three data banks…and their backups wiped.”

“That’s it? Just three data banks at one location? Didn’t show up anywhere else?”

“Nowhere.”

That was probably why she hadn’t heard of it.

“Why…are you…asking?” he said.

She looked around the coffee shop, but Abraham was the only one paying her any attention. “Found a dot-xuki file on a drive I’m looking through.”

“What drive?”

“That’s not something I’m prepared to share at the moment. Were the perpetrators caught?”

A hesitation, then, “Not…to my knowledge.”

“So it’s probably a good idea if I don’t open the file.”

“Can you…read me the…file name?”

She didn’t see the harm in that, so she did.

The Mole said nothing for several seconds, then asked her to read it to him again. After she did, he said, “Is the file…isolated?”

“Yes.”

“I have…a suggestion.”

“What?”

“Hold.” The pause that followed lasted half a minute. When he spoke again, he gave her a web location. “Go there. You will find…a conversion…program I would like…you to…try on the file.”

“Converting it into what?”

“Download the program…please.”

Once she had done so and opened it, she was presented with a screen containing two boxes and a button at the bottom marked
ENTER
. Written in light gray through the box on the left was
SELECT FILE
, while the box on the right held a pop-up list of three choices:
EXECUTE
,
DOCUMENT
, and
IMAGE
. She selected the .xuki file, but before clicking one of the options, she said, “Please tell me you wrote this program.”

“I did,” the Mole said.

“Which option should I try first?”

“I would only…caution that if…
EXECUTE
works, do not open…the file.”

“Gee, thanks.”

She decided to go ahead and try that one first, but the Mole’s program kicked back an error message reading:

UNABLE TO CONVERT. FILE TYPE UNKNOWN.

With some relief, she tried
DOCUMENT
and received the same response. When she clicked on
IMAGE
, instead of receiving an immediate error message, her cursor began spinning as it processed the file.

After several seconds, a new window opened and a picture appeared.

“Oh, my God,” Abraham said, staring at the screen.

The image was of a girl.

“Tessa?” Orlando asked.

“I think so. Yes…yes, it’s got to be.”

The girl in the picture was not the four-year-old he’d described. This one was older. If the picture was recent, she’d be eleven now. Her dark brown hair lay thick over her shoulders and down her back. Her eyes, also brown, were not looking at the camera but almost, as if someone standing near the photographer had called her name.

“Who…is Tessa?” the Mole asked.

“At the moment, it might be better if you don’t remember that name.”

A beat. “Understood. But I…take it that the conversion…worked.”

“It did. Thank you. I appreciate it. What I don’t understand, though, is why it was disguised with a dot-xuki extension.”

“Perhaps it was…not disguised. I have a theory that…the dot-xuki virus…was designed to do…more than just wipe the servers. What if…the destruction was…merely a way to cover—”

“Their tracks,” she said, seeing where he was going. “You’re thinking they were stealing data, aren’t you?”

 “Yes…and did not want anyone…to know what they took. Once…they had the…wanted files, the drives were…wiped.” A process that could have happened in a matter of seconds, from virus arrival to total destruction.

“So the file I have here—” she said.

“Is one…that was extracted from…the CIA,” he finished for her.

“Thanks,” she told him. “I appreciate the help.”

“You know where…to find me…if you need more.”

Orlando slipped her phone back into her pocket and turned to Abraham. “You’re sure this is—” She stopped herself when she saw the streak of a tear across his cheek.

“I’m sure,” he said.

“At least you know she’s alive.”

“Yes. She is, isn’t she?” He continued to stare at the monitor.

Tentatively she asked, “Is knowing that enough for you?”

Even before he spoke, she could see in his eyes that it wasn’t. “Something must be wrong. Why else would Eli have been killed? We need to make sure she’s safe.”

Orlando squeezed Abraham’s shoulder. “Let’s see if Eli left us anything else, huh?”

CHAPTER
18

WASHINGTON, DC

Q
UINN HAD THE
compact zoom attached to his phone’s camera before the sedan pulled past them a few short blocks before DC. He snapped pictures of each of the four occupants.

The results were far from stellar. The shots of the driver and the man sitting behind him were completely useless, only a hint of a face in each. The photos of the woman in the front passenger seat and the man behind her were profile shots and therefore better, but—due to motion blur and the reflections in the window—not by much. Still, he texted them to Orlando, hoping there was enough for her to get a hit on at least one person.

They continued following the sedan past Tenley Circle, McLean Gardens, and the US Naval Observatory. When they reached Dupont Circle, the others drove only two stops around the arc before turning onto New Hampshire Avenue NW. At M Street, they turned right again and continued two blocks to 23
^rd
Street, where they turned left.

By the time Nate turned the Explorer around the last corner, the sedan was three-quarters of the way down the block and slowing.

“Pull to the curb,” Quinn ordered.

Nate eased the truck to the side of the road.

As soon as the sedan came to a full stop, two of its doors opened.

“Daeng, you’re with me,” Quinn said. “Nate, you know what to do.”

“Stay in the car,” Nate said, pretending to be annoyed. In truth, if the sedan went anywhere, his job would be to follow.

Quinn and Daeng exited and quickly moved over to the sidewalk. Casually, as if they passed this way every day, they walked toward the other end of the block. Only two people had emerged from the sedan—the woman and one of the men. While she was empty-handed, her companion was carrying a small suitcase.

The driver’s window of the sedan was open and the woman was saying something to the men still inside. When she finished, the car pulled back into the street. Behind him, Quinn could hear Nate shift the SUV out of Park and take up pursuit.

“We’re eyes only,” Quinn told Daeng. “We find out where they’re going, get a few pictures, then we’re out.”

“Sounds like fun,” Daeng said.

Quinn had known Daeng long enough to realize his Thai friend wasn’t being sarcastic. Daeng was usually up for almost anything.

The woman glanced their way as she moved onto the sidewalk, but she appeared not to give their presence any importance. With her colleague in tow, she walked over to the building that lined the block and entered through an unmarked door.

Quinn had hoped they’d stay out in the open a bit longer, giving him and Daeng more time to narrow the distance between them, but so much for that.

Picking up his pace, he made a quick study of the building. While there were businesses here and there along the ground floor, the nine floors above them appeared to be occupied by either offices or condos. Plenty of places for the man and woman to get lost in before Quinn and Daeng could get eyes on them again.

Daeng reached the door a half step ahead of Quinn and tried the knob.

“Locked.”

No keyhole in the door, only a security pad on the wall. Unfortunately, the device that could have circumvented the system was in Quinn’s bag in the SUV.

He looked around. A dozen yards to his left was the main door to the building, probably with a receptionist or security guard waiting inside. To his right, a restaurant at the corner. More people, but…

“Come on,” he said to Daeng and headed for the restaurant.

A hostess greeted them with a pleasant smile as they entered. “Welcome to Nic’s. Just the two of you?”

“Yes,” Quinn said.

“This way.”

She turned and walked into the dining area.

“A table by the window okay for you?” she asked.

“Fine,” Quinn told her. “Could you direct me to your restroom first?”

She stopped. “Oh, of course. Back there and to the right.”

“I could probably use a stop, too,” Daeng said. He smiled at the waitress. “Which table will be ours?”

She pointed toward the windows. “That one there. I’ll have water waiting when you get back.”

“Great.”

The two men headed through the restaurant, bypassed the restroom entrance, and entered the kitchen.

Eight people were present—five cooks and three in the cleanup crew. The only ones who had so far noticed Quinn and Daeng were the two men washing dishes near the door. But both went right back to what they were doing without saying anything.

Along the back wall in the corner was a metal security door, clearly denoting where the restaurant ended and the rest of the building began. In other words, a rear exit.

Quinn and Daeng walked quickly toward the door, and were halfway there when a member of the cook staff said, “Hey, what are you doing? You’re not supposed to be back here.”

“DC police,” Quinn barked.

If the guy said anything in response, it was lost as Quinn and Daeng rushed through the rear exit into a long service corridor.

A bundle of pipes ran along the ceiling in one corner, while evenly spaced fluorescent lights hung in a line down the center. Quinn immediately ran to the left, mentally working out the distance between the restaurant and the doorway the others had entered. Exactly where he expected it was a short corridor that ran all the way back to the outside wall. No one was there.

He could feel the tick of every second as he scanned farther down the central hallway, trying to figure out where the man and woman might have gone. He spotted a door about fifty feet away to the right with a sign that read:

COURTYARD ENTRANCE

“This way,” Quinn said to Daeng, hoping he was right.

He raced over and pushed the door open.

Bare trees and bushes lined a short, windy path that led from the door to a walkway. On the other side of the walkway was a tan block wall, high enough to conceal the rest of the courtyard from view. They followed the path up a series of steps until they could see over the top of the obstruction. The brick wall turned out to be supporting a central section where a few trees and grass probably grew in the summer.

To the left of this area, another set of stairs led up to a portion of the large courtyard that was raised even higher.

“I think someone’s up there,” Daeng said.

Quinn had heard the footsteps, too, clacking rhythmically on the stone path. He jogged up until he could just see over the top of the stairs, then stopped.

The woman and the man from the sedan were nearing a set of glass doors that led back into the building, their backs to Quinn and Daeng. At first Quinn thought they were going inside, but instead a pudgy man with salt and pepper hair stepped out and greeted them.

Crouching, Quinn moved up the steps as far as he could without being detected. He pulled out his phone again and reattached the telephoto lens. This time he was able to get much better pictures of the woman and her colleague, as they would occasionally turn enough for him to snap nearly three-quarter profile shots. He was also able to take several pictures of the man they were meeting.

From their interaction, Quinn sensed that the older guy held rank over the woman, and that she held rank over the man who had come with her. At one point, the woman turned to her companion and said something. In response, he handed the older man the suitcase.

Quinn was curious what it might contain, but unless they were going to open it, that would have to remain a mystery for the moment.

The trio spoke for a few more minutes, then the woman and her partner began to turn back the way they’d come.

Quinn dipped below the level of the stairs and looked over at Daeng.

“The older guy—you saw him?” Quinn said.

“I did,” Daeng replied.

“See where he goes. Nate and I will keep on the other two.”

Daeng nodded and moved down the stairs far enough that he could stand up without being seen. Then, as if he belonged on the premises, he headed back up again, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

When Quinn reached the bottom, he hurried along the path they’d taken into the courtyard. If he was right, the other two’s business here was done and they were leaving. He needed to be back on the street when they appeared. He skipped the entrance to the hallway in favor of a door marked
GARAGE
. This led him down one level, where he quickly located the car ramp and reached the public sidewalk before the others reappeared.