lips of an Illinois farm girl with a maiden name like Molly Kaye Finnerty.
But Nichole swore it was there.
She wished she could confide in someone, ask if they heard it, too.
The only other evidence: her surveillance tapes. Pre-Molly, Nichole’s secret recordings of Murphy’s offices yielded innocuous office banter, phone conversations. But post-Molly, the tapes yielded literally nothing. Blank hiss. It was as if someone had waved a high-powered magnet over the tapes. Nichole switched to digital recording devices, but the result was the same. Even though she knew Murphy wasn’t sitting in his office all day in silence. The man loved to talk on the phone. Nichole had listened to countless hours of voice, piped through her ATH-M40fs Audio-Technica headphones.
So why dead air?
Molly listened to the blank tapes in search of an audio clue. An electronic pop or spike. Something to indicate the device that had wiped them clean.
And then she heard it.
Or she swore she heard it:
Zdrastvuyte.
Impossibly faint, at the edge of human hearing.
Zdrastvuyte.
Formal Russian for “Hello.”
The more she listened, pumping up her playback equipmentto maximum volume, the more she swore she heard two more syllables after the greeting.
Nee-cole.
Zdrastvuyte, nee-KO-ool.
It was all beginning to prick at Nichole Wise’s mind … until the day David Murphy made his next civilian hire: intern Roxanne Kurtwood. In Roxanne, Nichole saw a clear path to sanity.
Murphy’s organization was strange in that it blended operatives and civilians. Operatives ran the joint; civilians supported them.
Roxanne deserved more than “support” status. She was smart, versatile. Ivy League. From a family of Pakistani doctors. She had a flexible moral code. All that good stuff that makes for a good op. And not a trace of Russian in her speech.
Nichole decided: Roxanne would be
her
girl.
Nichole decided to recruit her slowly, bring her into the ocean one inch of water at a time. She hadn’t given Roxanne a hint of this, but quietly laid the groundwork. She hadn’t proposed this to her CIA handler yet, either. But he knew they were always looking out for new talent. She suspected they’d approve. Then they’d have two sets of eyes on Murphy. It would be hard for that snake to wiggle around two sets of daggers plunging into the grass, trying to pin him down.
Roxanne: her partner-in-training. Her savior.
And something even more important—something Nichole hadn’t known for years.
A friend.
Of course, it figured that she was dead.
After Murphy was shot in the head, and everyone decided to split up, Nichole had taken Roxanne by the wrist. “This way.”
“But …”
“Trust me.”
Nichole told Amy they’d check the elevators to be sure, but that’s not where she led Roxanne. First they headed to Murphy’s office, because whatever was going down, a burn of his office was probably next. It was the tradecraft thing to do. Molly’s betrayal was something Nichole had
not
seen coming. Every theory Nichole had about the Illinois farm girl went spinning down the toilet the moment she pulled a Lee Harvey on the big boss man. Molly hadn’t been hired to cock-block Nichole. She had wormed her way into Murphy, Knox, and was in the process of her own little hostile takeover of the company and all its assets.
But
whom
did she work for?
David’s own bosses?
Another intelligence agency?
Another country?
It killed Nichole that she didn’t know the answer.
“Where are we going?” Roxanne asked.
“Toward the elevators,” Nichole said.
Sure, they were headed to the elevator bank, but only as a shortcut to Murphy’s office. Out one side entrance and in another, a quick left, and they’d be in. Nichole would bar the door—no, wait.
First she would recover the pistol she’d stashed here and moved periodically over the past five years. Her Heckler & Koch P7. Eight 9 mm rounds. Not the most desirable weapon in the world for a
But Nichole swore it was there.
She wished she could confide in someone, ask if they heard it, too.
The only other evidence: her surveillance tapes. Pre-Molly, Nichole’s secret recordings of Murphy’s offices yielded innocuous office banter, phone conversations. But post-Molly, the tapes yielded literally nothing. Blank hiss. It was as if someone had waved a high-powered magnet over the tapes. Nichole switched to digital recording devices, but the result was the same. Even though she knew Murphy wasn’t sitting in his office all day in silence. The man loved to talk on the phone. Nichole had listened to countless hours of voice, piped through her ATH-M40fs Audio-Technica headphones.
So why dead air?
Molly listened to the blank tapes in search of an audio clue. An electronic pop or spike. Something to indicate the device that had wiped them clean.
And then she heard it.
Or she swore she heard it:
Zdrastvuyte.
Impossibly faint, at the edge of human hearing.
Zdrastvuyte.
Formal Russian for “Hello.”
The more she listened, pumping up her playback equipmentto maximum volume, the more she swore she heard two more syllables after the greeting.
Nee-cole.
Zdrastvuyte, nee-KO-ool.
It was all beginning to prick at Nichole Wise’s mind … until the day David Murphy made his next civilian hire: intern Roxanne Kurtwood. In Roxanne, Nichole saw a clear path to sanity.
Murphy’s organization was strange in that it blended operatives and civilians. Operatives ran the joint; civilians supported them.
Roxanne deserved more than “support” status. She was smart, versatile. Ivy League. From a family of Pakistani doctors. She had a flexible moral code. All that good stuff that makes for a good op. And not a trace of Russian in her speech.
Nichole decided: Roxanne would be
her
girl.
Nichole decided to recruit her slowly, bring her into the ocean one inch of water at a time. She hadn’t given Roxanne a hint of this, but quietly laid the groundwork. She hadn’t proposed this to her CIA handler yet, either. But he knew they were always looking out for new talent. She suspected they’d approve. Then they’d have two sets of eyes on Murphy. It would be hard for that snake to wiggle around two sets of daggers plunging into the grass, trying to pin him down.
Roxanne: her partner-in-training. Her savior.
And something even more important—something Nichole hadn’t known for years.
A friend.
Of course, it figured that she was dead.
After Murphy was shot in the head, and everyone decided to split up, Nichole had taken Roxanne by the wrist. “This way.”
“But …”
“Trust me.”
Nichole told Amy they’d check the elevators to be sure, but that’s not where she led Roxanne. First they headed to Murphy’s office, because whatever was going down, a burn of his office was probably next. It was the tradecraft thing to do. Molly’s betrayal was something Nichole had
not
seen coming. Every theory Nichole had about the Illinois farm girl went spinning down the toilet the moment she pulled a Lee Harvey on the big boss man. Molly hadn’t been hired to cock-block Nichole. She had wormed her way into Murphy, Knox, and was in the process of her own little hostile takeover of the company and all its assets.
But
whom
did she work for?
David’s own bosses?
Another intelligence agency?
Another country?
It killed Nichole that she didn’t know the answer.
“Where are we going?” Roxanne asked.
“Toward the elevators,” Nichole said.
Sure, they were headed to the elevator bank, but only as a shortcut to Murphy’s office. Out one side entrance and in another, a quick left, and they’d be in. Nichole would bar the door—no, wait.
First she would recover the pistol she’d stashed here and moved periodically over the past five years. Her Heckler & Koch P7. Eight 9 mm rounds. Not the most desirable weapon in the world for a
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