Page 14 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

My mom looks toward Kella. “What do you know about Julian Rooke?”

Kella doesn’t need to check her notes. “Rooke Strategic Services is a legitimate international facilitation firm. High-net-worth clients hire them for difficult logistics, strategic introductions, acquisitions, private travel, permits, crisis resolution. Basically, if there’s an obstacle, Rooke knows someone who can remove it.”

“Publicly,” Nora adds.

Kella nods. “Privately, intelligence agencies have suspected for years that he provides the same services to a small number of carefully vetted criminal clients.”

“Meaning?” my mom asks.

“He connects people who shouldn’t be able to find each other. Someone has something valuable, someone else wants it, and Rooke knows how to put them in the same room without either side exposing themselves.”

“Very good.”

“So,” Nora says, “a criminal concierge service.”

My mom clicks to another slide. It’s a collection of suspected transactions, names, businesses, and photographs. “Rooke’s brilliance is that he rarely commits the underlying crime. He doesn’t steal the intelligence. He doesn’t move the weapons. He doesn’t hack the system. He facilitates. He arranges introductions, transportation, access, payment structures, people.”

“Connections,” I say.

Her gaze lands briefly on me. “Exactly.”

I look back at Julian Rooke’s photograph. He built an empire on knowing the right person.

“For almost six years,” my mom says, “multiple agencies have tried to prove Rooke knowingly facilitates criminal transactions. We have never had enough to make a case stick. His legitimate and illicit business overlap too cleanly. His communications are careful. He compartmentalizes. Most of the people involved in any given transaction never know who else is involved.”

Jace folds his arms. “Who hired him to sell our asset roster?”

“That part developed in the hours since Gianna got Radomir’s package out. Once Radomir’s information reached us, ISID immediately audited access to the seven records. They found an employee who had accessed all seven files outside the requirements of their assignment. The employee is now in custody.”

That happened fast. Then again, when seven protected identities are being sold, and one of them is already dead, nobody waits until morning.

“The employee had been recruited by an intelligence trafficker to look for restricted information that could be monetized. They copied the roster and passed it along. The trafficker had already retained Julian Rooke to sell it before ISID discovered the breach.”

“Do we have the trafficker?” Emerson asks.

“No. CIA and ISID are handling that investigation jointly. That is not our assignment. Our assignment is recovering the roster before Rooke sells it.”

“How far along is the sale?” Jace asks.

“We don’t know. All we know is that the solicitation Radomir saw had been created within the last forty-eight hours. Historically, transactions this sensitive take Rooke somewhere in the range of two to three weeks from initial solicitation to final transfer.”

Gianna shifts on the hospital bed and immediately winces. “Before anyone forgets,” she says, “I would like it entered into the official record that the package you’re all discussing required me to get chased through two alleys, knocked down a service stairwell, jump a canal wall, climb through the window of a moving tram, and spend twenty minutes pretending to be a very concussed tourist while holding onto it.”

Ledger’s mouth quirks. “Stepping into retirement with style, I see.”

“I also dislocated my shoulder badly enough that a Czech paramedic called me several names that I’m choosing to believe were compliments.”

Charlie reaches for the sealed evidence pouch near my mom’s tablet and hugs it against her chest. “I will swaddle it in encrypted bubble wrap, tuck it behind a protected firewall, and sing it lullabies until it tells me all its secrets.”

“Thank you,” Gianna says, more genuinely than is typical for her.

In a quieter voice, my mom adds, “Radomir made sure she survived so she could get that package to us.”

For the first time, Gianna’s composure slips. Just slightly. She nods. Then Elliot moves into the edge of the frame and says something quietly to her.

“I’m getting kicked out of my own debrief,” Gianna says.

“You need rest,” my mom tells her.