The Survivor

CHAPTER 24

Kabir Gadai checked his phone and then laid it back on the table. The screen continued to display Isabella Accorso’s daughter in the crosshairs, as it had for the last forty minutes.

He felt the unaccustomed sensation of nervousness spreading from his stomach to his extremities, producing a barely perceptible tremor in his hands. The life he’d led was one of careful plans rewarded with an uninterrupted string of successes. This situation, though, had been beyond his control from the beginning. It was one thing to trust in God, but another to rely on his intervention. Allah might see this as arrogance and punish those involved.

Bianca Accorso was a young woman with highly predictable habits, and Gadai was confident that she would remain sitting with her friends for precisely another seventeen minutes. Taj was certain that this time wouldn’t expire without her mother bringing the files, but it would be idiocy not to plan for a worst-case scenario.

A quick return to Pakistan would be the most obvious course of action, but he had been serving Taj for too long to think that was a viable option. If he arrived without the Rickman files, it would be the beginning of his own destruction. Not immediately, of course. Taj was too subtle for that. But within the year, he would find himself accused of treason or assassinated by one of the Taliban loyal to Taj.

If Accorso didn’t appear in the next twenty minutes, it seemed almost certain that she had contacted the Italian authorities. Gadai would have no choice but to run. He would never be able to return to his country. He would never see his sons again. His life would become nothing more than an endless procession of days consumed with trying to stay ahead of Taj’s assassins.

His Bluetooth earpiece buzzed and he pressed the button to pick up the call.

“Go ahead.”

“She’s entered the lobby.”

“Any sign of the police?”

“None.”

Gadai let out a relieved breath and walked across the room to the door. There was no denying that as great as the risks were, the rewards were equally great: a position second only to Taj at the helm of the modern era’s first Muslim superpower. He would have a hand in spreading Islam across the globe in a way that had never before been imagined. All while the Americans cowered.

Gadai peered through the peephole, looking across the hallway at room 200. It would be over soon, he reassured himself. Taj had once again been right. While terrifying and unpredictable, he was a great man favored by God.

“She’s exiting the stairway,” the voice said over his earpiece. “Twenty seconds. No other activity.”

Accorso appeared a few moments later with an envelope under her arm. He watched her from behind as she knocked timidly on the door of the empty room.

“Still clear?” he asked.

His men were monitoring the parking lot, the lobby, and all points of entry to the second floor.

“Yes, sir.”

Gadai opened the door. “Isabella.”

She spun, fear and surprise playing out across her face.

“Come in,” he said, keeping his words purposely vague. If she was wearing a wire, the police would assume he was in room 200 instead of being across the hall.

The woman did as she was told and he closed the door behind her.

“Have you brought me what I asked for?”

She gave a short nod and held out the envelope.

Gadai sat at a desk that he’d moved away from the draped window and tore open the flap. He inserted the thumb drive he found into his laptop and began perusing the accompanying single page of paper while it loaded.

The written instructions were somewhat more complex than he’d expected. Files were individually designated and various scenarios were laid out, each with a different release schedule.

“You’re following the second scenario?” Gadai asked.

Accorso nodded, perspiration beginning to form on her upper lip. “We were informed that Akhtar Durrani died by an authenticated email. When we didn’t hear from the client, we released file D-six on the third of the month.”

He nodded noncommittally. It would have contained the information on the Russian mole in Istanbul. The next file to be released, designated R-12, was scheduled for Thursday. What revelations did it contain? The identity of a highly placed informant? A list of bribes to foreign officials? Evidence of wrongdoing by the CIA’s administration? It was impossible not to speculate.

“And by ‘released’ you mean you simply sent it to the email address in the instructions.”

“Yes.”

“Have you looked at the files?”

“They’re encrypted.”

“Do you know who the client is?”

“He’s anonymous. He contacts me by phone once per week and gives me one of the pass phrases listed on the instruction sheet.”

Gadai scrolled through the list of files contained on the thumb drive, feeling a growing sense of elation. They had anticipated twenty or thirty. Instead there were hundreds. How much had Rickman known? What level of access had he enjoyed? Could Taj be right? Could this innocuous data-storage device contain the means to the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction?

“Do you have backups of this information?”

“Yes.”

“In the office of the attorney who handles this client?”

“What about my daughter? You said—”

“I said she wouldn’t be harmed if you did as I asked. But you’re not answering my questions, are you, Isabella?”

He saw the ripple in her cheeks as her jaw clenched in anger, but it was a pathetic display. She was nothing more than a frightened woman who couldn’t even hold on to a husband. She would do what she was told.

“Are the backups in the lawyer’s office?” Gadai repeated. “Tell me quickly. Your daughter doesn’t have much time left.”

“No,” Accorso said, finally. “He may still have the original of the paper instructions because his secretary made this copy for me. The files are contained on the firm’s central computer. It’s backed up every night.”

Gadai looked up at her. “And do you have a way of deleting those files from both your mainframe and the backups?”

She didn’t answer immediately and he just stared at her, letting the seconds tick by.

“Yes. We have a way to do that. Sometimes we have clients who move their business and want their information wiped from our system.”

“That’s good,” Gadai said calmly. “Listen very carefully, Isabella. I want you to eradicate everything about this arrangement from your system. I want it to appear that it never existed.”

Surprisingly, she shook her head. “What happens when the client notifies my firm that the files aren’t being sent? What will you do to my daughter then?”

Gadai smiled reassuringly. “There will be no such notification. Your client is dead. Forget any of this ever happened, Isabella. When the backups are deleted, your job and your daughter will both be safe.”

Of course, it was a lie. He couldn’t leave the woman alive. But his words had the intended effect and she relaxed slightly.

“Go back to work,” he said. “Tonight, have a glass of wine. Spend some time with Bianca. I promise you’ll never hear from me again. Once you’ve done what I ask, it will be over.”