“Yeah, but who’s to say they wouldn’t get to you eventually?”
Robert’s shoulders squared and his stare hardened. “Maybe he trusted me to do the right thing. You should try it sometime.”
It still seemed like a big leap of faith for someone who knew at least a little bit about Trish and what she was capable of, but now wasn’t the time to argue hypotheticals. “The human trafficking ring Joey said I was involved with, the one they were going to frame me for, did Jeff think this was connected?”
“Only partially. Like I said, he didn’t tell me much. From what I gather, the ring has small-fish buyers that are only interested in the girls, but there’s a few whales who are interested in much bigger purchases. The girls are how they get the goods into the country.”
“That’s horrible,” Denise murmured.
“Do you know where the box came from?”
He shook his head. “That’s what we were looking into when you showed up. The girl was Polish, early twenties, but Jeff’s team didn’t think she was anything more than—”
He paused here, glancing at Denise.
“—packaging.” Denise covered her mouth and lowered her head. “Frank and Nadia were investigating a company in Saudi Arabia for connections to the box but hadn’t found anything concrete yet.”
“Saudi Arabia?” I asked. Robert nodded. “No wonder someone wants you dead.”
“I don’t understand,” Denise said.
“If highly enriched uranium is coming out of Saudi Arabia, there’s a good chance it’s being produced in a plant with American equipment and American technology. And for a country that signed a no-nukes treaty, a story like that would make a lot of people look very bad.”
“How is the woman who killed Jeff connected to all of this?” Robert asked.
“No idea. For all I know, her organization might just be an intermediary. But now I know why it was so important that nothing be traceable back to them. No telling who would be implicated if any of this came out.” I thought of Willem, the disgraced Belgian senator, and wondered how many others like him sat on Trish’s Board of Directors. How many other formerly influential players clinging to whatever power they could still hold on to. “Did Jeff share any other information with you, anything at all, no matter how trivial?”
“Not really. Aside from hiding the box somewhere safe, my role was just to keep an eye on the docks and let him know if any more bodies turned up. The less I knew, the easier it was for him to trust me.”
“Damn,” I said. We were flying blind, and any information at all could only better help us figure out our next move. But getting our hands on encrypted FBI documents was easier said than—
“Sergei,” I said.
“What?” Robert asked.
“Get in the car, I’ll explain on the way.”
“You still want us to go to Aunt Irene’s?” Denise asked.
“It’s as good a place as any.”
Amazingly, nobody argued. Except Denise, who wasn’t crazy about sharing the third row with Erica. But I wanted to sit next to Robert. We had a lot to discuss.
After I made a quick phone call.
His voicemail picked up after four rings, so I hung up and called again. It was 5:30 tomorrow morning in Brussels and he was no doubt sound asleep, but I couldn’t wait for his alarm to go off. Every second counted. It rang four times again, but he picked up before the voicemail kicked in a second time.
“Hello,” he said groggily.
“Sergei, it’s Rick.”
There was the sound of rustling bed sheets and a click as he turned on a bedside lamp. “Rick? What time is it? Is something wrong with the phone?”
“No, the phone’s fine. I have another job for you.”
“Okay,” he said. The sleep was slowly bleeding out of his voice.
“I need you to hack into the FBI’s internal servers and access some files for an agent Dunbar, Jeff Dunbar.” Robert shot me a look from the driver’s seat but I held up my finger and he kept quiet.
“Oh, is that all?” Sergei said.
“No. While you’re at it, if you could tap into Mossad and MI5, that would be really helpful. I can get you the names of the agents I’m interested in with them as well.”
Sergei laughed. “And who is paying for this miracle? I hope whoever they are has deep pockets and a magic lamp with all three wishes, because that’s what it will take.”
“It’s me,” I said.
Sergei waited a beat and then said, “Do you have any real clients, or do you just recruit people to solve all of your personal problems?”
“I have several clients, in fact, and one of them is very angry with me right now.”
“Would this be the same client that had someone follow you into the bathroom when you bought my phone, scaring me half to death?”
“That would be the one.”
“I did not enjoy that experience, Rick.”
