Jigsaw (Black Raven Book 2) (42 page)

“Thanks, Ragno. I love you too.”

Glancing around the cave, eyes stopping on the blade of the machete resting on the table just a few inches from where his head had been strapped, his hand itched for a firearm. As tempting as it was to get into the firefight, he had a daughter to hug, and work to do. His agents and the Protectors of Peace were more than capable of taking down the TRCR and conducting a forensic search for anything that could be a clue for Jigsaw.

“Miles. There’s a dickhead here wearing steel-toe cowboy boots. He leads this faction, maybe the whole TRCR. Take him alive and interrogate.”

Agent Miles nodded. “This network of caves is interconnected via tunnels. Hills surround us for about two miles. He couldn’t have travelled far. We’ll find him, sir.”

Zeus gave Miles a hard look. “Tough guy. He’ll need persuasion. Do whatever.”

Translation: Torture him to within an inch of his life.

“No explanation necessary.”

“When he starts praying, whether to Buddha, Mohammad, God or,” he paused, “especially Jesus, call me. I want to be the one to end him and I’ll damn well fly across the world to do it if necessary.” Zeus gave Miles a hard glance. “Have that machete handy when I arrive.”

“Yes, sir. An ATV is waiting outside to take you to a rendezvous point with a chopper.”

Zeus stepped out of the cave and into the chilly, pre-dawn air. A few yards of flat desert extended from the mouth of the cave and seemed to fall away into dark nothingness. Lights from the ATV that was waiting for him shone on tall cactus and scrub brush. As he slipped into the passenger seat, the driver nodded, then gassed it.

“Sir, hold on. We’re five minutes away from our rendezvous with a chopper. I’ll try to avoid big bumps, but it’ll be rough going. I’ve got to avoid some of the larger growth.”

A second ATV and two all-terrain motorcycles rode as escort. The horizon was a lighter blue than the rest of the night sky, but the sun hadn’t yet risen. As the ATV pulled away, his mind switched gears to the larger picture. “Ragno.”

“Yes?”

“Praptan? Gabe?” Not necessarily what he wanted to talk about, but duty took priority.
Before Sam
.

“Angel and his team met gunfire on the way into Praptan. They were anticipating it. No casualties or serious injuries on our end. They extracted remains. We’re running DNA analysis now, but given the details now provided by Stollen and collected by Gabe,” Ragno said, “we’re assuming there will be confirmation. Jigsaw gives it almost 99.999 percent probability.”

“Well, what do you know? Someone else really has been playing the Maximov card—and doing it damn well.”

“Could it be the TRCR?”

Zeus gripped the roll bar as the ATV went airborne and landed with a spine-jarring thud on the front wheels. “No. I heard a phone conversation. This outfit was being paid twenty million dollars to deliver Barrows. Someone else—with serious money—is pulling the strings.”

“Yep. Samantha is trying to navigate a way out of the disarray that knowledge of Maximov’s death will cause in the ITT. After Gabe recovered the remains, she spent the better part an hour on a conference call with President Cameron and Judge O’Connor. President Cameron wants to avoid embarrassment at any cost. Samantha and Judge O’Connor anticipate that Brier will file a motion for a mistrial. Her job will be to defeat it. Samantha is interviewing Stollen now to see if he has more information that could lead to the apprehension of whomever is perpetuating the Maximov myth. After that she is immediately heading to London so she can do damage control in the trial.”

Ana—safe.

Sam—I’ll fight for another chance, because I’m alive.

The rest? Details. A puzzle that I’ll damn well figure out. With the aid of Barrows and Jigsaw.

Inhaling the cool desert air, Zeus relished the fresh scent of a better day that it carried. He loosened his grip on the roll bar as they reached flatter terrain. “Developments from Jigsaw?”

“We’re inputting data gathered from the people and area where we extracted Agent Cox. Cell phones. Tablets. Laptops. Sim cards. IP addresses. Jigsaw is turning each puzzle piece sideways, upside down, and any which way, looking for a link to any of the perps in the ITT.”

“Have we reached TRCR headquarters yet?”

“We have a location, thanks to Blaze and some of the men we apprehended earlier. We’ve got a cyber forensic team and some serious firepower on approach. Once there, we’re doing a sweep of all devices.”

“Any link so far between this event and Caller X?” Caller X, the person whose burner phone usage pattern indicated he had spoken with Duvall’s mother and David Thompson, the alleged perpetrator of the drone attacks on the Miami cruise ship.

“Not that I’m aware of. Let me check,” Ragno said.

The ATV rounded a small hill and arrived at a relatively flat clearing. A sleek, powerful Sikorsky waited, with engines running and rotors turning. The clearing was patrolled by Black Raven agents in ATVs. Zeus nodded goodbye to his driver, then ran to the chopper. He buckled up behind the co-pilot. Through the windshield, the horizon was turning lighter blue as they lifted off.

“Sir,” the pilot turned to him with a welcoming grin. “We’ll be at the El Paso airstrip in twenty-seven minutes. You’ll see sunrise with your daughter.”

“Great news.”

“Zeus,” Ragno said, her voice back to her normal crisp, clear, and efficient tone. “Barrows just informed me there is no link between the TRCR and Caller X as of yet.” The plan had been for Barrows to return to Denver the moment Agent Cox stepped into the Cessna with Zeus for the ride to the DZ. By now, a little more than ten hours after Zeus had boarded the Cessna for the jump, Zeus had no doubt that Barrows and Ragno were in the office space they shared in Denver, directing the teams of analysts working under them with lightning speed and stealth-like precision.

“How much more do we need before we can identify and find Caller X?”

“From Duvall’s mother and the connection to Thompson, the alleged perpetrator of the drone attacks on the Miami cruise ship, we just need to determine who called TRCR,” she answered.

“We should have that soon, even if it’s through interrogation.” Keeping his eyes on the horizon, Zeus forced himself to focus on business, when all he wanted to do was see Ana. “Cell phones would be better, though, correct?”

“Absolutely,” Ragno answered. “If the TRCR job was instituted via burner phones, we can analyze whether there was parallel usage of co-existing digital devices. Once we get that, we can run an analysis for co-existing digital devices in the vicinity of the call from the burner phone, and conduct a worldwide search for current use of the devices.”

“Barrows still hasn’t managed to do this for the earlier calls made by Caller X?”

“Correct,” Ragno answered. “Jigsaw isn’t able to trace as far back historically as Barrows would like it to go. He is modifying the program, but for now, we can’t trace co-existing digital devices from the data we have relating to Duvall’s mother and the Miami cruise ship bombing. Those incidents occurred more than a year ago and there are problems with doing historical analysis that far back and recreating the digital footprint of co-existing devices.”

She paused for a moment, fingers clicking furiously at her keyboard. “Just pray these people weren’t smart enough to strip themselves of all other co-existing digital devices—laptops, tablets, regular phones, smart watches, etc. You know the drill. We’re looking for whether Caller X made calls from burner phones to the TRCR with co-existing digital devices operating at the time. Even something as tiny as a smart watch ping anywhere on the cyber grid in common with any of the other calls from burner phones, and Jigsaw will find him. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Something we don’t have much of.” The helicopter flew west to east. Daylight was breaking on the far horizon, while overhead stars were fading into a navy blue sky.

“We’re aware. Zeus. I’ve dropped Sebastian and anyone else listening in.” And she’d changed her tone to the gentle tone that she used when discussing his personal business. “Should I connect you to Sam? She asked me to break into the interview if there was news about you.” Ragno’s voice was in full friend mode—soft, concerned, and trying hard to guide him. “Would be better coming from you than me.”

“No. I’ll talk to her later. Just let her know I’m fine.” What he had to tell her on a personal level would be better said in person. Not something he’d tell her when she was in the middle of an interview with a mass murderer.

“Mistake, Zeus.”

“Don’t think so.”

“You should talk to her now, and keep talking to her. If you love her—”

“If?” He chuckled.

“Well, be as persistent as you’ve ever been about anything in life, and I know you—you’re nothing if not persistent. Before tonight, I agreed with Angel; I thought your efforts were wasted. But,” her tone became thoughtful, her words slow, “I’ve been the one to give her updates on your status on this interminably long night. She even broke down and called her grandfather when she learned you were missing. She’ll come around, Zeus. That woman loves you even more than she knows. In my opinion, now is the time to start fighting for her.”

“I am fighting for her. My way. She is scary smart and fiercely determined. I know her better now than I did before this all started. Realize now that I can’t force her to admit she loves me. I can only tell her what I think of her and let her absorb it in her own due time. Which I’ll do, when I see her in person.”

“So until then you’re giving her the silent treatment?”

“No. You’re going to let her know I’m fine. When she’s through with the Stollen interview, I’ll call her. I’m making a prediction. All we’ll do is talk about work—because she won’t be the one to bring up personal issues. She and I will have to communicate about business issues until the trial ends and—hope against fucking hope—we figure out who has been impersonating Maximov. I’ll keep talking to her about work, until she decides she’s ready to talk about personal issues. And if she’s not ever ready to do that, well…” He was quiet for a second. As the helicopter landed, and his gaze rested on the people who were waiting for him, he added, “I’ll eventually change tactics. I’m not giving up, Ragno. Just trying to outsmart her without breaking my heart.”

He stepped out of the chopper and ran across the tarmac, arms outstretched, as his baby girl ran to meet him.

“Daddy!”

He fell to his knees as she collided with him. Enveloping her in his arms, he buried his face in her dark hair. With his arms and shoulders shaking from the force of emotion he couldn’t suppress, he squeezed her tightly as he thanked God that she was alive and safe.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

London, England

Thursday, February 10

The elevator dinged as the door opened on the fifth floor of One River Thames. As Zeus stepped into the hallway, he glanced at his watch. 1415. It felt like years since he’d been in Texas, reunited with Ana, but it was just over twenty-four hours. Now, although it was midafternoon in London, his body felt like it should be the middle of the night. Still, his adrenaline rush from Ana’s kidnaping energized him. He’d barely slept on the transatlantic flight he’d just taken. Instead, he’d maintained contact with Ragno and Barrows, monitoring developments in Jigsaw, as information was fed into the program.

When jet lag catches up, it’ll be a bitch.

On Wednesday, shortly after Zeus’s reunion with Ana, DNA results had confirmed that the remains Gabe found in Praptan were Andre Maximov. Once Maximov’s remains were identified, the judges of the ITT had recessed the trial until Friday morning. For today, Thursday, Judge O’Connor had convened an unofficial status conference for the U.S. prosecutors, defense lawyers, and Amicus counsel.

Rather than conduct the status conference at the Royal Courts of Justice, where the London phase of the ITT trial was being held, Judge O’Connor—through Sam and Zeus—had chosen One River Thames, the private building where the Amicus team was housed, as the location for the conference.

Zeus agreed with the rationale for the location. Having the status conference at the Royal Courts of Justice, a public building, would have created a media event. One River Thames was more private than the large hotel where the U.S. judges were staying. Plus, Black Raven had already secured the premises, as the team’s London home base was in apartments on the seventh and eighth floors.

Walking through the long, wide hallway that led to the conference room, Zeus nodded hello to Jenkins. Glancing further down the carpeted passageway, he spotted Deal and Miles—two agents on Sam’s team, along with agents who made up the security teams for Charles and Abe. Six U.S. marshals, providing security for judges and lawyers, were also present.

“Gabe, I’m on site.” Gabe had flown to London to be lead agent in charge of the Amicus team until Zeus arrived. He was in the conference room.

“Roger,” Gabe responded in a low whisper.

“Ragno, I’m about to head into the conference room.” He walked to a buffet table and poured coffee into a paper cup. “Give me a quick update.”

“As of five minutes ago, DHS has William Peterson in custody. They’re going straight into interrogation. They also apprehended a man named Christian Lawrence, who happened to be in the apartment with William Peterson when DHS arrived. Sebastian is now here, at headquarters, working with his father-in-law. Which is good, because even I can’t understand some of the things Barrows tries to tell me. Sebastian’s cool interpretation of Barrows-speak is going a long way.”

Jigsaw had identified William Peterson as Caller X, as Zeus had been in flight from Miami to London. Using communications data gathered from the TRCR—in particular a cell phone used by DIC—Jigsaw had isolated burner phone usage on incoming calls to DIC at points in Paris and London. Jigsaw determined parallel usage patterns between the calls made to Duvall’s mother, the Miami cruise ship bomber, and the calls to the TRCR. Jigsaw then pinpointed the location of the burner phone at the times the calls were made. Although the burner phones with which Peterson had made the calls were long gone, he hadn’t stripped himself of all of his co-existing digital devices that had been in use when he used the burner phones. Jigsaw searched for the devices in current time. Jigsaw had located Peterson in London, in an apartment on Chancery Lane, walking distance from the Royal Courts of Justice.

As Jigsaw started putting the puzzle pieces together, Zeus had contacted the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and the director of the National Security Agency and kept them apprised of the developments. DHS had mobilized agents—already in London as part of the ITT security team—to arrest Peterson. Interrogation would be conducted by government agents who were briefed on the classified aspects of Jigsaw, but because Jigsaw provided firsthand information to Black Raven, and not to either the NSA or the DHS, Black Raven’s assistance had been requested in the interrogation of Peterson. “Your team’s providing interrogation assistance?”

“Yes. We’re providing strict controls on what kind of information Black Raven provides. We’re succinctly laying out what we have in a manner that will encourage the suspects to start talking, but not giving them anything regarding our methodology.”

“No need to tell the how and why of it.” Zeus sipped the coffee, opened a peanut butter power bar that had been sitting in a basket, and took a bite as he listened to Ragno, whose calm tone conveyed underlying excitement. He felt it too, the thrill that Jigsaw—the brainchild of Ragno, Zeus, and Barrows—was putting cyber-puzzle pieces together and producing answers. Barrows was a fucking genius, and his hefty salary was worth every penny.

“I’ve got live camera and video feed into the interviews, so I’m seeing it in real time,” Ragno added. “They will soon understand from the DHS interrogators that they have only a couple of bargaining chips. One, admit their crimes early. Two, bring down anyone they’re working with.”

“Either Peterson, or, what’s the name of the guy who was arrested with him?” He finished the power bar in two more bites.

“Christian Lawrence.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“I thought so too. Getting ready to run more expansive searches. Oh. Wait. Get this: Lawrence, a lawyer, was formerly an assistant United States attorney. That fact just came in as you chewed in my ear. We’re working on putting some flesh on his AUSA profile.”

“Are either Peterson or Lawrence talking?” He washed down the power bar with the last of his coffee and dropped the cup and wrapper into a wastebasket.

“Not yet.”

“What do we know about William Peterson, aside from him being Caller X?”

“Minimal at this point. Just that Peterson, like Lawrence, is a lawyer. Details coming shortly. Seems he retired a while back.”

“Great. So they’re both lawyers. What the hell? Anything else?”

“Jigsaw is still pulling the threads together. Wait. This just in—Lawrence’s laptop was used in the proximity of burner phones that placed calls to the TRCR, when those calls were placed. Meaning it’s becoming more likely that Christian Lawrence and William Peterson are accomplices, and now Jigsaw is dissecting Lawrence’s cyber history, which…Oh. You’ll love this. As of last week, Lawrence did a good bit of searching for information on you, Ana, and Barrows, at the same time Peterson was doing similar searches and making contact with the TRCR. This confirms that it wasn’t just a coincidence that Lawrence and Peterson were together today, when Peterson was arrested.”

“Too bad authorities got to these fucking bastards before me.”

“Given the tone of your voice, I’m glad the authorities apprehended them. Need I remind you that you can’t always get away with being judge, jury, and executioner? Wait. Information is now flowing so fast I can’t keep up with the items of interest.” Through the mic, he heard her fingers clacking furiously on her keyboard. He could imagine her eyes scanning the numerous monitors in front of her workstation as she typed. “Holy hell. From 1992 to 2010, Peterson worked in the office of general counsel for Sullivans of New York, the company that sells insurance coverage due to terrorism.”

Click.
Another puzzle piece fell into place. Potential motive? Money—a lawyer’s wet dream. “Hell. Peterson probably drafted the terrorism clause.” The skin on the back of his neck prickled as another thought occurred to him. “Could Peterson or Lawrence be secret partners in Sullivans?”

“Zeus, you could be one of the secret partners for all I know. We have yet to discover the identities of the secret partners. Lawrence certainly has the old-family money, Ivy-League pedigree that could make such a monied background a fit. Peterson comes from humble beginnings. What I do know is, given the sparse payout history of Sullivans for claims, the company is making boatloads of money off of their terrorism coverage. Every time there’s an uptick in terrorism, more companies seek coverage.”

It made perfect sense. “And these guys are creating the upticks in terrorism. Either they’re getting paid to do so, or they’re part of the company.”

“Potentially,” Ragno said. “Don’t forget, a hell of a lot has to come together before we can prove this theory. But we’re close, really, really close. Without Jigsaw, this would take three years or more to put together. At the rate Barrows’s masterpiece of a program is going, we’re hopeful we’ll have all the pieces tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.”

Closed double doors marked the entrance to the conference room where Sam was working. He hadn’t seen her since she’d boarded Raven One in Miami. She’d been headed to ADX Florence for her interview of Stollen, at the same time he’d been headed into the Sikorsky with Sebastian to rendezvous at the latitude and longitude where Martel’s GPS chip had been signaling. It felt like a lifetime had elapsed, but it had only been a little more than forty-eight hours. “Alert me if they start talking.”

“Will do.

“By the way, Peterson is, apparently, a serious chain smoker. Interrogators are going to enjoy depriving him of his smokes. Wait a sec.” He could hear Barrows and Ragno talking. “Zeus. We’re close to identifying someone else.”

“How long will that take?”

“Not sure. Using Jigsaw’s analysis of co-existing digital devices, we’re analyzing cyber footprints from any and all devices used in the proximity of digital devices owned by Lawrence and Peterson.” Her fingers raced across the keyboard as she spoke. She was telling him things he already knew, but he didn’t mind. “It’s a hybrid indoor/outdoor positioning system that Barrows developed. It allows pinpoint tracking of Wi-Fi enabled devices—and these days, everything is Wi-Fi enabled. Turning off a device doesn’t help. The big slowdown is trying to forensically analyze historical data. We’re working through it, given that we don’t have to go too far back. Peterson, aka, Caller X, called TRCR several times last week—so we’re dissecting that time frame.”

“Keep me updated.”

“Wait. Before you go in, you’re not planning on revealing the apprehension of William Peterson and Christian Lawrence to Judge O’Connor or Samantha, are you?”

His hand rested on the doorknob. “The identity of William Peterson as Caller X is certainly relevant to the ITT proceeding. I’m communicating with the powers that be at the DHS and NSA on what to reveal, when. We’ll have to tell the ITT something, and soon.”

Ragno clicked away at her keyboard as she spoke. “Ideally, Jigsaw will reveal that Peterson was the mastermind behind the Paris metro bombings, the Miami cruise ship drone attacks, Ana’s kidnaping, and other events. At the moment, however, we can’t forget that Jigsaw is proprietary to Black Raven and run in the context of a top-secret government job.”

“Understood.”

“Unless and until you get the green light from DHS and NSA, you don’t have authority to go public at this point in time with anything. Even after we have the green light, we still have to tread carefully with what we reveal. From our perspective, technical aspects of Jigsaw aren’t for public consumption. It isn’t in Black Raven’s benefit to give away Barrows’ thought processes and trade secrets.”

“Agreed.” He appreciated Ragno’s words of caution. Given the importance of Jigsaw, and its capability to become a crime-fighting tool of unprecedented dimension, the last thing he wanted to do was to expose it prematurely in a proceeding that had been doomed for failure at the inception.

Zeus quietly slipped inside the large conference room, which had high ceilings, recessed lighting, and two walls of floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Thames. There were no drapes to close on the windows, so the glass panels remained exposed. Flat afternoon light from the overcast day filled the room. Zeus knew from his prior assessment of the building that the windows were tinted, so that no one could see into the high rise. The other walls were paneled in large squares of polished mahogany. A long rectangular table that could easily seat thirty was centered in the expansive room. In each of the four corners of the room were smaller circular tables.

Judge O’Connor and the other three judges from the U.S.—Judge Kent Devlin, Judge Amanda Whitsell, and Judge Mark Kennedy—sat in the middle of one side of the table, their backs to the river, facing the doorway through which Zeus had just entered. In dark business suits, not judicial robes, their somber, thoughtful expressions provided an immediate gauge as to the serious nature of the business they were conducting.

Robert Brier and his team of defense lawyers sat on the far right of the table, with the pretty brunette at his side. Benjamin McGavin and his team of prosecutors sat on the far left. Sam and her team sat with their backs to the doorway, directly across from the judges. Abe was on her left, Charles on her right.

“Your honors, I repeat, there is absolutely no need for a mistrial.” As a nod to the informal nature of the conference, Sam, wearing a light green business suit, was sitting as she spoke. Her voice, cool and moderate yet infused with the passion she conveyed as an advocate, took his breath. Her blonde hair was in a sleek ponytail that revealed her slender neck. In the perfect world, within minutes of this conference being over, his lips would be on that slender neck, his hands filled with her breasts, and there’d be no need to talk.