Silent Assassin(37)

“Contained only a date—the date of the attack—and two columns, one labeled ‘up,’ and another ‘down.’ Under each was a detailed list of stocks and commodities. I made my trades based on that list—and almost everything went either up or down that day, just as predicted.”

“Do you still have that list?”

Stuart nodded. “That desk over there. Bottom drawer. The one with the padlock. The combination is. . . .”

But the man in the red mask pulled hard enough to yank the screws from the lock hinge out of the wood. Stuart felt a bit foolish at how little security the lock actually provided.

“Should be among the top papers,” he told the man.

“Got it,” the man in red said to the other. “Is there anything else you feel like telling us, Len?” he added.

“Please don’t kill me?” he said, as breezily as he could.

“We’re not done with you yet, Len,” said the tall one. “You’re still going to do one more thing for us. If he contacts you again, and I’m betting he will, you’re gonna let us know. See that table over there, by the window? Once you get another tip-off about making another trade, you’re going to put a bottle of whiskey on it, and you’re going to leave it there. Once we get the signal, we’ll contact you. Can I count on you to do that, Len? Or do I have to remind you what happens if you don’t cooperate?”

“I understand. I’ll do it.”

The man in the red mask moved as if to hit him. Stuart cowered under his hand.

“I’ll do it! I swear!”

“You’d better,” said the man in the red mask. “And remember: we’re watching you.”

Someone put a dark cloth bag over his head. He felt them undo his ties, and then he was tossed onto the ground. He felt sharp, sickening pain as someone’s foot hit his abdomen. He heard footsteps walking out of his apartment as he retched, writhing on the floor.





CHAPTER 18


Boston, January 9





Morgan came into the garage with his car and drove down to the lowest level and then to a forgotten corner beyond the available spaces and hidden away from the view of the rest of the cars and pedestrians. He parked his car and walked out to a forgotten unmarked door with a key-card reader next to it. Inside was a dark room, which lit up when he closed the door behind him. Here was another door, and a breaker box next to it. He opened the box and revealed a biometric reader. Morgan scanned his retina and palm. The door unlocked. There was a small hallway that led to an elevator and stairwell. He knew that there was another layer of security at work here—cameras with face-recognition software checking every person who came in. The elevator door opened, and he went down.

He emerged and walked down a short hallway to the Zeta Division war room, where Diana Bloch and Lincoln Shepard were both standing, looking at one of the smaller monitors embedded in the wall while Karen O’Neal sat against a wall, flicking through pages on a tablet computer.

“Come in, Cobra,” said Bloch. “We were just looking over some surveillance footage. Please, sit down.”

Morgan pulled up a chair near the monitor, next to Shepard, but it was unnecessary, because moments later Shepard switched the active monitor to the big screen. Morgan dragged his chair back a few paces in order to get a more comfortable view.

“We’ve been going over the info we got from Stuart,” said Shepard. He sat down, slumped in his chair worse than usual—it was always obvious when he was bored—and his tone made it clear they hadn’t gotten very far. “It’s pretty thin. Painfully nondescript Asian man, average height, average complexion, dark brown hair, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. Calls himself Moriarty, after the fictional criminal mastermind from the Sherlock Holmes series. In the books, he was supposed to be some kind of godfather, ruling over every major crime in England.”

“I’m going to call it that this guy’s not the mastermind we’re looking for,” said Morgan. “The real big fish don’t bother with the cutesy nicknames. And what he’s getting here is chump change for the magnitude of this operation. Whoever’s really behind this is making a lot more than a couple hundred thousand.”

“You share my opinion on him, then,” said Bloch, who had remained standing up, subtly dominating the room as she usually did. “Shepard, why don’t you show Cobra what we have?”

Shepard stood up wearily under the screen with a clicker in his hand. “First bit of evidence is this note,” he said. With the clicker, he brought a scan of the note up on the monitor. “Written on a typewriter, which sidesteps printer ID altogether. Tells us we’re not working with an amateur.” Morgan had learned about that from working in intelligence. Every consumer printer always printed, with every document, a few imperceptibly small and light dots scattered around the document. While invisible to the naked eye, these could be scanned by a machine, which meant that any printer could be identified from a database.