*

  The mo­ment the men walked into the res­taur­ant, Or­lando sent the pho­tos she’d taken of the new ar­rivals to Misty, with the note:

  St. Amand ap­pears to be meet­ing with

  these people right now. Can you ID?

  Over the comm came a thud and a soft ex­pul­sion of air, fol­lowed by Howard say­ing, “Scus­ami.”

  A few seconds later, the res­taur­ant door opened and Howard stepped out­side.

  In a whis­per, he said over the comm, “Done.”

  Quinn’s voice came next. “Nate and I are around the corner, to your right and across the street.”

  “On my way.”

  Next to Or­lando, Jar plugged a pair of head­phones into her phone, placed one of the buds in her own ear, and offered the other to Or­lando.

  On Jar’s screen was the video feed of the cam­era from the up­stairs cor­ridor. The au­dio, how­ever, was from the bug Howard had put on St. Amand’s driver. The hall­way re­mained empty for a few seconds be­fore the men walked into cam­era frame and headed down the hall to the door at the end.

  When the driver reached the room’s en­trance, he opened it and said in a voice that came through the earpiece crisp and clear, “Please come in.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Misty had been at her desk since six a.m., wait­ing for news from the team in Rome. She re­ceived her first text from Or­lando at around ten, right after their charter jet landed.

  Since then, she’d heard from her head of op­er­a­tions two more times, the first in­form­ing Misty that Or­lando, Quinn, and Howard were head­ing to the apart­ment, while Daeng and Jar were fol­low­ing the man they sus­pec­ted was St. Amand.

  The second text said the team had met up near a build­ing the pre­sumed St. Amand was in­side. There was also this little tid­bit:

  Nate is here.

  Misty had no idea how that happened, but the re­lief she felt from those three words was im­mense. Even if Nate didn’t con­trib­ute any­thing to the ef­fort, she could now hon­estly tell her cli­ent he had been part of the mis­sion. She wanted to ask for de­tails but re­frained, know­ing that could wait un­til the cur­rent ac­tion had con­cluded.

  At noon, she re­trieved last night’s leftover Chinese takeout from the kit­chen and ate it at her desk, not want­ing to miss some­thing im­port­ant. Turned out there was enough time to eat be­fore Or­lando’s fourth mes­sage ar­rived, just after Misty had pol­ished off the fi­nal egg roll.

  The text con­tained sev­eral pic­tures and the re­quest for Misty to ID the men in the shots.

  She looked them over first, but none were fa­mil­iar. She up­loaded the im­ages to the Of­fice’s fa­cial re­cog­ni­tion sys­tem. In less than a minute, the pro­gram re­turned a hit on the old­est of the three men.

  NAME: Wil­liam Sand­strom CIT­IZEN­SHIP: USA AGE: 63

  KNOWN WHITE SEP­AR­AT­IST

  FBI WATCH LIST

  LAST KNOWN LOC­A­TION: Rome, Italy

  “Huh,” she said to her­self.

  A white sep­ar­at­ist on the FBI watch list. Jack­son Reed had been a white sep­ar­at­ist on that same list. That couldn’t be a co­in­cid­ence. The FBI knew Sand­strom was in Rome, but not that he was there to meet with St. Amand. If they had, she was sure Kyle Otero at ACORT would have let her know to keep an eye out for him.

  Her com­puter bonged with an­other hit. She as­sumed it had to do with one of the other men, but she was wrong.

  ALERT IS­SUED FOR WIL­LIAM SAND­STROM

  LAST KNOWN LOC­A­TION: ROME, ITALY

  ANY IN­FORM­A­TION RE­GARD­ING HIS WHERE­ABOUTS SHOULD BE GIVEN TO SPE­CIAL AGENT HARI MOR­RAY.

  The alert had been pos­ted only ten minutes earlier. Misty called one of her con­tacts at the FBI, and learned that two agents who had been fol­low­ing a sus­pect in Rome had been ser­i­ously in­jured in an ac­ci­dent. The con­tact didn’t know who the sus­pect was, only that the per­son got away.

  Misty texted Or­lando.

  Older man is wanted.

  Name Wil­liam Sand­strom. Amer­ican.

  White sep­ar­at­ist. Ap­par­ently threw off his FBI tail on way to your po­s­i­tion.

  Agents in­jured. Would be help­ful to find out what meet­ing is about.

  Or­lando replied within mo­ments.

  Would an au­dio re­cord­ing do?

  Misty:

  Well, sure. You have ears in­side?

  Or­lando:

  We’re a full ser­vice out­fit.

  Misty:

  Don’t tell Quinn, but I think I love you.

  Or­lando:

  Oh, I’m telling him.

  Misty called Otero.

  Fif­teen minutes later, she had new in­struc­tions for her team.

  *

  Or­lando and Jar listened as the men in the room greeted each other and en­gaged in small talk, every­one, in­ter­est­ingly enough, talk­ing in Eng­lish. Since they had ob­vi­ously met pre­vi­ously, no names had been men­tioned so far. That was un­for­tu­nate.

  Since Or­lando had heard and seen St. Amand’s driver speak­ing in the hall­way, it wasn’t dif­fi­cult to pick out his voice among the oth­ers. The three new men were also easy to identify from their Amer­ican, or per­haps Ca­na­dian, ac­cents, with the slightly grav­elly voice most likely be­long­ing to the older guest.

  She as­signed the tem­por­ary ID St. Amand Thug Num­ber 1 to the other voice dom­in­at­ing the early con­ver­sa­tion. He was the deeper slow talker who spoke with the slight­est of ac­cents; she could nar­row it down only to East­ern European. Every once in a while, other voices would speak up but not enough to war­rant dis­tinc­tion yet.

  The cas­ual talk con­tin­ued un­til after the food was brought in by two waiters, seen via the hall­way cam­era, who had to make four trips be­fore every­one had a meal. While the ser­vice was go­ing, a text ar­rived from Misty with in­form­a­tion about the older guest.

  Wil­liam Sand­strom.

  Or­lando had never heard of him, but that wasn’t sur­pris­ing. Though she and her col­leagues did the oc­ca­sional do­mestic job, most of their work was done out­side the US.

  Also not sur­pris­ing was the fact Sand­strom was in the same busi­ness as the pe­do­phile they’d taken down in Ok­lahoma. ACORT was wor­ried some­thing was go­ing on. And now she was listen­ing to what could turn out to be con­firm­a­tion of that.

  The next sev­eral minutes were filled with the sounds of sil­ver­ware knock­ing against plates, a smat­ter­ing of in­noc­u­ous con­ver­sa­tion, and the oc­ca­sional smack­ing of lips.

  “Would you care for an­other help­ing?” Thug 1, the deep, slow talker.

  “No, thank you,” Sand­strom said. “Mr. St. Amand, I no­ticed you’re not hav­ing any­thing.”

  Or­lando and Jar shared a look, then Or­lando toggled her mic. “Just had con­firm­a­tion that St. Amand’s in the room.”

  “Copy,” Quinn said.

  Over the ear­bud, Thug 1 said, “Mr. St. Amand prefers to eat alone. But he does not want that to pre­vent oth­ers from en­joy­ing a good meal.”

  Be­cause he doesn’t want to take his stu­pid scarf off, Or­lando thought.

  “Can I in­terest you in some dessert?” Thug 1 said. “They have a won­der­ful tiram­isu here.”

  “None for me, thank you.”

  “Non­sense. You don’t want to leave without at least try­ing it. Paolo, tell Mat­teo to bring some up for every­one.”

  “Right away,” one of the un­as­signed voices said.

  Seconds later, one of St. Amand’s men ex­ited the room and walked down the hall­way.

  “Thank you for the meal,” Sand­strom said. “And for see­ing us.”

  “Of course,” Thug 1 said.

  “I’d like to say right off, I am deeply sorry that you were not im­me­di­ately in­formed about the trouble in Ok­lahoma. There was mis­com­mu­nic­a­tion on our side. I had thought Cox had told you what happened, and he had thought we wanted to keep it quiet. Let me just be clear. We would never con­sciously choose to keep that kind of in­form­a­tion from you. We con­sider you a vi­tal part­ner. Yes, our goal is am­bi­tious, but it is achiev­able. With your help, Free­dom Day will oc­cur in less than eight­een months.”

  And there it was, Or­lando thought. Proof.

  “And without our help?” Thug 1 asked.

  “I’d rather not even con­sider that an op­tion.”

  “But it is an op­tion. While we ap­pre­ci­ate your apo­logy, the fact re­mains that we were kept in the dark. Some­thing like that could have been very dan­ger­ous for us. How do we know it won’t hap­pen again?”

  “Be­cause I’m telling you it won’t, on my word of honor.”

  Or­lando could hear a couple of whispered voices, but not what they were say­ing.

  Thug 1 spoke again. “Mr. St. Amand knows your words are said hon­estly. But what of Mr. Cox? Will he fol­low through on your de­sires?”

  “Mr. Cox will no longer factor in any of our in­ter­ac­tions. You will be deal­ing dir­ectly with me.”

  More whis­pers.

  “You have given us much to think about,” Thug 1 said.

  “Let me give you some­thing else to think about.”

  “Please, we’d like to hear whatever you have to say.”

  “Per­haps…”

  For a few seconds, the only noises were squeaks from chairs.

  Thug 1 then said in Italian, “Clear the room.”

  On the hall­way cam­era, the meet­ing room door opened. St. Amand’s men ex­ited, leav­ing the driver, the man Jar said had been in the front pas­sen­ger seat of St. Amand’s van, and the scarf-wear­ing man in the room.

  Sand­strom said, “Dean, Mar­lon.”

  His com­pan­ions ap­peared in the door­way. They talked for a mo­ment, their voices too far from the bug for Or­lando to pick out any de­tails. When they fin­ished, one stepped out­side while the other stayed in the room and shut the door. The guy in the hall crossed his arms and stood at the room’s en­trance, like a boun­cer not in the mood to let any­one in.

  “So, Mr. Sand­strom,” Thug 1 said, “what else should we be think­ing about?”

  Or­lando’s phone buzzed with a text, but Or­lando only glanced at the screen be­fore put­ting the cell back down. Whatever Misty wanted, it could wait a few mo­ments.

  “We ap­pre­ci­ate all that you’ve done so far,” Sand­strom said. “You’ve been in­stru­mental in sup­ply­ing so many in our net­work. But our re­quests so far have been small in com­par­ison to what will be needed on Free­dom Day, and though that’s still a little while off, we be­lieve the time has come to start build­ing our stock­piles and plan­ning fu­ture sup­ply lines.”

  “You un­der­stand why we may be a bit skep­tical,” Thug 1 said. “After all, you’ll be go­ing up against the best trained, best equipped mil­it­ary in his­tory.”

  “We think that is a false as­sump­tion. Gran­ted, there will be ele­ments of that which we will en­counter, but it is our be­lief large num­bers of their forces will re­fuse to en­gage us, and a good per­cent­age of them will even join our cause.”

  Or­lando and Jar shared a look.

  “Is he talk­ing about the US mil­it­ary?” Jar asked.

  “It sounds like it.”

  “Would the sol­diers do that?”

  “Not a chance in hell.” There might be a few de­fec­tions, but noth­ing close to the num­bers Sand­strom was im­ply­ing.

  An­other round of whis­pers en­sued, then Thug 1 said, “You have our at­ten­tion. How much equip­ment are we talk­ing about?”

  Or­lando heard a sheet of pa­per be­ing un­fol­ded.

  “This is just a work­ing doc­u­ment. Our needs will con­tinue to grow the closer we get to when we fi­nally act.”

  A mo­ment of si­lence, then Thug 1 again. “This is a very im­press­ive list. It will not come cheap.”

  “We wouldn’t ex­pect it to.”

  The sound of some­thing heavy be­ing set on a table, then the clack-clack of briefcase locks open­ing.

  “This is merely a show of good faith,” Sand­strom said. “There’s two hun­dred fifty grand here. If you agree to keep us as your cli­ents, be­fore I leave this room fifty mil­lion dol­lars more will be trans­ferred into whatever ac­count you would like.”

  The room went quiet.

  “One mo­ment,” Thug 1 said.

  The whis­pers re­turned, last­ing longer than the pre­vi­ous in­stances. When they stopped, Thug 1 said, “Your terms are ac­cept­able.”

  “Ex­cel­lent,” Sand­strom said. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”

  “We, too, are pleased. We had hoped that we could work out our dif­fer­ences. In an­ti­cip­a­tion of that, we have brought some samples of the latest tech, which has re­cently come into our pos­ses­sion. May we show you?”

  “Of course.”

  More items thumped on the table, heav­ier than the earlier ones. For the next ten minutes there was talk of uses and specs and an­ti­cip­ated res­ults of nearly a dozen weapons. To say it was creepy to listen to would have been an un­der­state­ment.

  At the end, items were ad­ded to Sand­strom’s list.

  “We look for­ward to a long and healthy re­la­tion­ship,” Thug 1 said.

  “Thank you for giv­ing me the time to ex­plain our po­s­i­tion,” Sand­strom said, not hid­ing his re­lief.

  On the hall­way cam­era, three people car­ry­ing desserts walked down the hall to where Sand­strom’s man stood at the door. A mo­ment later, they were let into the room, and talk turned to dessert.

  Or­lando flipped on her mic. “I think this thing’s go­ing to be over soon.”

  “What was the meet­ing about?” Quinn asked.

  “Food and hurt feel­ings. Oh, and that part where St. Amand’s people agreed to sell Sand­strom at least fifty mil­lion dol­lars’ worth of arms and am­muni­tion.” Her phone vi­brated, re­mind­ing her of the mes­sage she’d re­ceived.

  “Is that all?” Quinn said, with a smirk in his voice.

  As she grabbed her phone, she said, “Ac­tu­ally, no. Sand­strom also ad­mit­ted to be­ing linked to Jack­son Reed, plus whatever this big thing is they’re plan­ning, they’re call­ing it Free­dom Day, and it’s sup­posed to hap­pen in about eight­een months. And I’ve got to say, St. Amand? Not a big talker.”

  She opened the mes­sage.

  “That’s all re­cor­ded, right?” Quinn asked.

  When Or­lando didn’t reply right away, Jar said, “Yes. All re­cor­ded.”

  “We should prob­ably send a copy to—”

  “The mis­sion just changed,” Or­lando said. “Where are you guys?”

  “Around the first corner north of the res­taur­ant, west side. What’s go­ing on?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get there.” Or­lando waved Daeng over, then pulled out Jar’s ear­bud and held it out to him. “Listen in with her and keep me up­dated. And I want to know the second they leave that room.”

  “Will do,” Daeng said.

  “Jar, make a clip of the au­dio to this point and send it to me. And both of you be ready to move as soon as I tell you.”

  “What is the new mis­sion?” Jar asked.

  “Tar­get ac­quis­i­tion.”

  Or­lando pushed up and headed across the roof.

  *

  St. Amand was sel­dom shocked, but there was no other way to de­scribe his re­ac­tion to Sand­strom’s fifty mil­lion-dol­lar of­fer. He’d thought he’d be lucky to get just a quarter of that.

  He leaned over and whispered in his double’s ear. “Con­sulta­tion mode num­ber one.”

  Clau­dio Laz­zari nod­ded and sat back in his chair. He then leaned to­ward St. Amand—play­ing the part of right-hand man, Ant­o­nio Becker—and whispered non­sense words.

  Real St. Amand nod­ded sev­eral times and turned to Sand­strom. “Your terms are ac­cept­able.”

  For the first time since he’d ar­rived, Sand­strom smiled. “Ex­cel­lent. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”

  St. Amand then showed Sand­strom the samples Drake had brought. Sand­strom’s eyes grew wide at the dis­play, es­pe­cially at the high-tech gren­ades and ul­tra-light night vis­ion goggles. He placed or­ders for sev­eral of the items.

  A knock on the door an­nounced the ar­rival of dessert.

  “Per­fect,” St. Amand said. “Please tell them to bring it in.”

  *

  Quinn, Nate, and Howard met Or­lando as she ex­ited the build­ing.

  “We’ll walk and talk,” Quinn said, to avoid draw­ing at­ten­tion if they gathered in one spot.

  They headed away from the street where De Luca’s was loc­ated.

  “So, what’s the change?” Quinn asked.

  “We’ve been ordered to grab Sand­strom,” Or­lando said.

  “Sand­strom? What about watch­ing St. Amand? Do we just for­get about him now?”

  “No, we’re to keep someone on him, too. But our main fo­cus will be Sand­strom.”

  “It’s that crash, isn’t it?” Quinn asked. The US gov­ern­ment, like pretty much every gov­ern­ment around the world, was not fond of hav­ing its people messed with.

  “Misty didn’t elab­or­ate, but that would be my guess.”

  “Are we even pre­pared for a grab?” he said.

  Daeng, who with Jar had been listen­ing over the comm, chimed in with, “We have half a dozen Beta-Som­nol syr­inges back at the flat.”

 

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