“Then do it, Charles,” Westcott said. “Now, tell me about the warrant. Can it be traced back to us?”
“My team is scrubbing the origin request from the Turkish systems as we speak.”
Westcott studied Mpassi and thought he detected a tell that his man wasn’t being totally transparent. “I feel like there’s a ‘but,’” he said.
Mpassi shifted in his seat. “But ... if someone with enough juice digs deep enough, they might find fingerprints we missed.”
Westcott didn’t answer right away. He appreciated the honesty, but didn’t care that he had to probe to get it. He reached for his coffee mug,took a sip, and let the silence stretch, his way of showing Mpassi he wasn’t pleased. If there was one thing Westcott despised, it was uncertainty. And these two operatives and that arrest warrant represented just that.
“I don’t like loose ends, Charles,” he said finally.
Mpassi swallowed hard. “And neither do I,” he said. “Our two biggest threats are gone. Hobb and that treacherous bitch, Sofie Bergmann, are both dead.”
Westcott nodded slowly, absorbing it all. Sofie had shown so much promise. It was too bad she hadn’t been able to see past the few unpleasantries Westcott needed to do to bring order to the DRC. Maybe he had brought her into his circle of trust too soon. Mpassi had warned him about that, but he hadn’t listened.
He sighed. He wouldn’t repeat the same mistake twice.
As for Istanbul, this cloak-and-dagger stuff was Mpassi’s area of expertise, not Westcott’s. Then he remembered a discussion he once had with Mpassi about an elite group that specialized in tracking and eliminating problems.
“Are you still in touch with your contact in the United States? The one who handled the kind of problem we’re facing in Turkey?”
Mpassi shook his head. “Her name was Laura Newman.”
“Was? What happened?”
“She’s dead. Her husband too,” Mpassi replied. “No one really knows what truly happened. The official police report said it was a murder–suicide. They found Laura’s body in the Potomac, shot in the neck.”
“And her husband’s?”
“In the woods, behind the rifle that killed his wife.”
“He killed her?” Westcott asked.
“Again, that’s what’s written in the police report. Apparently, he shot himself after killing his wife. But I don’t believe it. Someone took them out.”
“A competitor?”
Mpassi shrugged. “Who knows?”
“That’s too bad. You told me she was running one of the best freelance assets there was.”
Mpassi nodded. “She did. Elias. That was the asset’s moniker. Nobody knows who he, or she for that matter, is. And Elias hasn’t reappeared since.”
“Maybe Elias is the one who killed Laura and her husband,” Westcott said, thinking out loud.
“Could be, but it doesn’t matter, because I have no way of contacting Elias. Laura was Elias’s handler. She controlled everything.”
Westcott sighed.
“Fine,” he said. “Apart from the broker, let’s not spend any more resources actively chasing these two ghosts. But I want you to upload their data and behavior patterns to our systems. If they surface again, I want to know.”
“Understood,” Mpassi said.
“And make sure to ask your contacts in Turkey to share their passport photos with your broker.”
“Of course.”
“Is there anything else?” Westcott asked.
