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Sommers stopped about ten feet from the table and she nearly had a heart attack. Had he seen someone? Could he see the Antz?
“Stand up,” he said, cold command in his voice. The avuncular good guy was gone and he was playing hardball. “Come around.”
“Okay.” She stood up, stood away from the table.
“Show me you aren’t wearing a wire.”
She put on an astonished look. “A what?”
“A wire, goddammit.” When she blinked, still looking baffled, he added, “Recording equipment.”
Riley reared back. “Oh! Of course. Sorry.”
She’d chosen her wardrobe well. Sports bra, tank top, zip-up. Tight stretch pants. She took off the zip-up, lifted up the tank top, turned around in a full circle. Lifted one leg then the other, pulling the pant leg bottom up to her knees then letting them fall back. Not even the most paranoid person in the world could imagine she had equipment on her.
Near the table she saw the faintest hint of a shimmer. No, she’d outsourced all of that.
“Any pockets?”
“On the zip-up.”
“Turn them inside out.”
Obediently, Riley turned the pockets inside out.
“The-the thing there.” He waved a finger at the tabletop. “The mini purse thing.”
“The fanny pack?”
“Yeah.” His voice turned sarcastic. “The fanny pack.”
It was small. She picked it up, unzipped the top and turned it upside down. Three twenty-dollar bills and a flash drive. Sommers’ attention was riveted on the flash drive. She scooped up the money and flash drive and pushed everything back into the fanny pack.
Not until I get what I want.It couldn’t have been clearer if she had spoken the words aloud.
He gestured with his hand for her to sit down, an almost old-fashioned gesture, as if they were in a drawing room and he were inviting her to tea and not to a fight to the death.
She sat down, aware that they were being livestreamed. The Antz would be concentrated on her face and on his, but the livestream would only be showing Sommers. Her voice would be altered, but not his.
Behind her would be Pierce and Black and Ranesh, and maybe one or two of Black’s men. Other operators would be behind Sommers.
She sat off-center to him, pretending there were splinters in the bench right across from him. If someone had to shoot him from the front, she didn’t want to be in the way, and if someone had to shoot from the back, she didn’t want the bullet to go through him and hit her.
It had been made clear to her that the guns they would be using would be high-powered rifles.
From now on, it was a deathly game.
She had to guide the conversation, so she started. “Listen, Mr. Sommers—”
“ColonelSommers, to you,” he interjected.
“Colonel Sommers,” she repeated obediently. Body language abject, head slightly bowed, hands clasped in front of her, trembling. “I’m here to tell you—ask you—let me go. I want out. I’m nobody. I’m an office drone in the NSO who just happened upon a satellite video a couple of days ago. It was pure chance I caught it. My brief is the Chinese, and the Chinese are very active in Congo.” She looked up suddenly and could barely contain the contempt she felt. “It wasn’t Chinese soldiers in that initial video I saw. It was American soldiers, wearing the Sommers Group uniform, slaughtering American scientists from the CDC studying a new strain of Ebola.”
“That’s slander,” he said evenly. “I could sue you.”
Riley sighed. They were easing into it. “No, you can’t and you won’t. Because I can prove in a court of law that my video is the original, which was later turned into a deepfake. There might be a moment in the future when deepfakes cannot be distinguished from reality but we’re not there yet. The court of public opinion might be fooled, but a court of law won’t be. You’re not going to sue me.”
He smiled, lips stretching wide, the affable businessman completely gone. It was a smile of utter cruelty. Of the apex predator crushing his prey.
