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“He’s anonymous. He contacts me by phone once per week and gives me one of the pass phrases listed on the instruction sheet.”
Gadai scrolled through the list of files contained on the thumb drive, feeling a growing sense of elation. They had anticipated twenty or thirty. Instead there were hundreds. How much had Rickman known? What level of access had he enjoyed? Could Taj be right? Could this innocuous data-storage device contain the means to the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction?
“Do you have backups of this information?”
“Yes.”
“In the office of the attorney who handles this client?”
“What about my daughter? You said—”
“I said she wouldn’t be harmed if you did as I asked. But you’re not answering my questions, are you, Isabella?”
He saw the ripple in her cheeks as her jaw clenched in anger, but it was a pathetic display. She was nothing more than a frightened woman who couldn’t even hold on to a husband. She would do what she was told.
“Are the backups in the lawyer’s office?” Gadai repeated. “Tell me quickly. Your daughter doesn’t have much time left.”
“No,” Accorso said, finally. “He may still have the original of the paper instructions because his secretary made this copy for me. The files are contained on the firm’s central computer. It’s backed up every night.”
Gadai looked up at her. “And do you have a way of deleting those files from both your mainframe and the backups?”
She didn’t answer immediately and he just stared at her, letting the seconds tick by.
“Yes. We have a way to do that. Sometimes we have clients who move their business and want their information wiped from our system.”
“That’s good,” Gadai said calmly. “Listen very carefully, Isabella. I want you to eradicate everything about this arrangement from your system. I want it to appear that it never existed.”
Surprisingly, she shook her head. “What happens when the client notifies my firm that the files aren’t being sent?
What will you do to my daughter then?”
Gadai smiled reassuringly. “There will be no such notification. Your client is dead. Forget any of this ever happened, Isabella. When the backups are deleted, your job and your daughter will both be safe.”
Of course, it was a lie. He couldn’t leave the woman alive. But his words had the intended effect and she relaxed slightly.
“Go back to work,” he said. “Tonight, have a glass of wine. Spend some time with Bianca. I promise you’ll never hear from me again. Once you’ve done what I ask, it will be over.”
CHAPTER 25
NEAR LAKE CONSTANCE
SWITZERLAND
DROP the weapon, Mitch. And don’t get your hands anywhere near that throat mike.”
Charlie Wicker slid forward in the tree stand and sighted through his scope. Rapp had modified his radio to constantly transmit on the frequency Gould had been excluded from. For good reason, it seemed.
Up to that moment, Wicker shared Coleman’s take on this op. Gould had crossed Mitch Rapp as bad as anyone ever could and was still breathing. If Wicker had been in the Frenchman’s position, he’d have fallen to his knees, thanked Jesus, and slunk away to the far corners of the earth in case Rapp ever changed his mind. This psycho just didn’t get it.
“We’re copying this, Mitch.” Coleman’s voice over the comm.
Through his scope, Wicker had a good view of the knoll they’d abandoned. The wind was blowing gently along it, causing the tall grass to wave rhythmically. About halfway up, something caught his eye. A patch that wasn’t swaying to the same music as the rest.
“I have movement,” he said into his throat mike.
It was the reason they’d surrendered the high ground for this tactical and literal hole. Anyone planning an assault on Obrecht’s property would want to take advantage of that knoll, but Gould’s anxiousness to put them up there had made Rapp suspicious. He’d expected a betrayal and that was exactly what he was getting.
A camo-covered arm came into view at the bottom of his scope image and then disappeared again.
