The phone on his mahogany desk rang, snapping him out of his reverie.
Charles put down his coffee and picked up, cleared his throat. “Max Charles.”
“Sir, I’ve got an update for you.”
“Is your line secure?”
“Yes, sir, of course.”
“So spit it out. How was the Miami operation?”
“That’s where we’ve got a problem. Trevelle Williams is missing.”
“Who’s he?”
“He’s the guy Marty traced the stolen document to. He still believes it was a hacker group based in Europe who initially breached our system about a week ago. They sent the file to a guy in New York who’s loosely associated with WikiLeaks. As you know, we dealt with him within a few hours of Marty discovering the breach.”
Charles felt his blood pressure rise a notch. His company prided itself on state-level military encryption. A breach of any sort was unacceptable, but he’d deal with that after the leak was contained. “And why did he pass the document to this Williams guy?”
“It sounded like a fluke, like he just didn’t have time to decrypt it and outsourced the work. Williams is an ex-NSA contractor gone rogue, a computer genius, apparently.”
“Christ, he sounds like Snowden.”
“There are similarities. He’s not in Moscow, though. This guy was living in some run-down shithole Miami warehouse which no one seemed to know about for the better part of seven years. But we tracked him down.”
Charles sighed. “You say in Miami. Where is he now?”
“We sent a team in awaiting his return, but there’s no sign of him. Our intelligence pointed to Williams always being back at the warehouse at oh-seven-hundred hours, at the latest. But he never turned up. We had to take out a friend of his. We couldn’t take any chances.”
“You killed him?”
“He’s dead, yes.”
“Shit.”
“We are working very hard to locate Williams.”
“Not good enough. Where the hell is he?”
Charles’s computer pinged.
“I just sent you a photo.”
Charles maneuvered the mouse and clicked on the photo. A grainy color photograph of a twentysomething black guy wearing shades, a Dolphins ball cap, and a backpack. “Where was this taken?”
“North Miami Beach bus station. Oh-five-twenty-two hours, yesterday. The bus was headed to New York, but he could’ve gotten off anywhere. His phone and computer have dropped off the grid. So he’s clearly using jamming software.”
“We’re running out of time. Find him. Quick.”
“Understood.”
“If Trevelle Williams figures out what’s in that file, we are all in serious trouble. People are relying on us to deliver. They pay us handsomely to make problems disappear. To make people disappear. Am I making myself clear?”
“You still want Williams neutralized?”
“Listen, you dumb fuck. Assemble whoever is available. Find Williams. Kill him. No more distractions.”
Five
Trevelle sobbed hard as he sat in the passenger seat of the rental car.
Reznick threw their backpacks into the trunk of the BMW SUV, started up the car, switched on the air-conditioning to high, and pulled away. He drove down Varick Street and headed through the nearby Holland Tunnel toward New Jersey.
“I can’t believe this,” Trevelle said, blinking away tears. “Two friends of mine, both dead. I’m responsible. I killed them!”
Reznick snapped, “Stop that self-pitying bullshit! You didn’t kill them.”
Trevelle dabbed his eyes. “My actions killed them.”
“Bullshit. David sent the file to you. And Fernandez crashing at your place was bad fucking luck, that’s all. Besides, wasn’t it some hacker group in Europe that stole the file?”
Trevelle nodded. “Yeah.”
“There you go. You and your two friends—dead friends—were drawn into this without asking for it. The group accessed highly sensitive information. And it got your friends killed. You’d be dead, too, if you’d been home.”
“They didn’t deserve to die.”
“I didn’t say they did.”
“I feel like I’m in a nightmare.”
“You need to wake the fuck up, man, and deal with it. Get some backbone. We need to think strategically. These guys aren’t just going to drop it; they’re going to keep coming after you. You think this is a fucking game. This is no game, trust me.”
Trevelle closed his eyes, unable or unwilling to contemplate what was happening.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard. I just wish you’d lay off me for a minute.”
“We need to get a grip on this situation.”
“They were both good guys.”
“Good guys get killed all the time.” Reznick sighed. “It’s life. It sucks. Look, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been so hard on you. It’s tough, I know, losing a friend.”
“Correction, two friends. One murder and one apparent suicide.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think your friend in the Village killed himself. That wasn’t a suicide. It was made to look like suicide.”
Trevelle scrunched up his face and shook his head, as if the full horror of what had happened had just crashed through.
“I didn’t see any sign of computers or hard drives,” Reznick said. “Maybe it was an ordinary break-in, but that seems unlikely. Maybe they dressed like maintenance guys to gain access. Whatever happened—they took all the electronic equipment.”
“Then they hanged him? Seriously?”
Reznick nodded. “From the look of the body, it happened around the same time that crew in the masks turned up at your place. That crew probably would have shot you, just like they did Fernandez. Different MO, same result.”
Trevelle stared at the dazzling lights of the oncoming cars in the tunnel. “I don’t want to be part of this. I want this to be over.”
“So what do you suggest? You head back to sunny Miami? Does that sound like a good idea to you? Well, does it?”
Trevelle shook his head.
“Get your shit together, son.” Reznick headed through the tunnel and got onto I-95 South, glancing repeatedly in his mirror.
“What’s wrong?” Trevelle asked.
“Just making sure we’re not being followed.”
“And are we?”
“No. OK, my friend, you want some advice?”
Trevelle nodded.
“You need to go to the FBI with what you know. After everything, that would be the smart move.”
“I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
“They know I stole government secrets in the past, accessed classified NSA documents, and just about everything else—probably more than Snowden. I think they’d throw the book at me. I think I’d never see the light of day again.”
Reznick knew Trevelle had a point. “Listen, you’ve spoken to Martha Meyerstein when you’ve helped me in the past, haven’t you?”
“Sure.”
“She’s a straight shooter. I trust her. You need to talk to her. I can tell her your concerns. We can get you a great lawyer. Maybe you spend a year or two wearing an ankle monitor, I don’t know, but it’s better than being dead.”