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An hour later,we had the NRO footage showing the square from different profiles. The woman we believed could be Charlene Vella-Borg was visible in about half of what they’d sent. However, after speaking with Decker, Verity reported she was on Rile’s compound that particular day, as well as those preceding and following it.
“The logical explanation is that it is someone disguised to look like her,” said Verity.
“Which one? Charlene on the compound in Mallorca or the one here?” I asked, somewhat rhetorically.
Her eyes opened wide. “Precisely!”
“What are you thinking?”
“There is no crime in someone visiting St. Moritz…” she began.
“But if we could come up with something serious enough to force extradition…”
“We could take Charlene Vella-Borg into custody or at least in for questioning.”
“In which case, we wouldn’t need to worry about extradition.” I looked up and saw Ares and Rogue watching and listening to us. Both were grinning.
“What?” Verity asked, noticing the same thing I had.
“You two are such a great team,” said Grey, who I’d almost forgotten was in the room. To this point, she’d been so quiet. “How long have you worked together?”
My eyes met Verity’s, and we both laughed out loud. I stopped as soon as I noticed Grey’s expression. “Sorry, we’re not poking fun. It’s just that I wasn’t always Ver’s favorite person.”
Verity shook her head. “I was as much to blame for our rocky start, if not more so.”
Grey smiled. “I don’t know what went down previously, but what I see now shows that, whatever it was, you’ve made it work.”
I couldn’t speak for Verity, but Grey’s words filled me with pride. Maybe that wasn’t the best word for it. Maybe it was more that the way a newcomer saw it, I belonged. It was all I’d ever wanted.
When the door opened a few minutes later and the first one through it was Magnet, I couldn’t wait to tell him what we’d discovered. However, since the look on his face was also triumphant, I let him go first.
“Success?” I asked.
“A good bit, yes.” He walked directly over to me, put his arm around my shoulders, and leaned in to kiss my cheek. Shockingly, I didn’t tense up. I didn’t even care what anyone else in the room thought about it. The best part was that no one seemed to be paying attention. Rather than not noticing, maybe they had and didn’t care.
Magnet took my hand, and we moved away from the table and over to a sofa. “Come and sit with me. I want to hear your news.”
“You go first,” I said.
He smiled and slowly shook his head.
I swatted his arm. “You already know.”
“Not all of it.”
“We believe we placed Charlene Vella-Borg here in St. Moritz last summer. Or someone who looks a lot like her, perhaps intentionally. Now, the plan is to see if we can come up with something that would allow us to question her on Gozo.”
Magnet leaned in and rested his forehead against mine. “So bloody brilliant,” he whispered. “I’m so proud of you.”
My first inclination was to argue and say it was nothing. Instead, I thanked him. “Tell me about your day,” I prompted.
“James Godwin’s image was recognized everywhere we visited, although the only person able to identify him by name was the bank manager at UBS. The alias he used there was Pietro Santorini.”
“At BJB, he was known as Jacob Novak.”
“That’s correct. While most we asked remembered him accompanied by a bodyguard, no one recalled seeing him with a woman.”
“What about at the restaurant?”
