The Survivor by Vince Flynn, Kyle Mills Page A

very public and very well-connected man in Italy. Also, I very much doubt he would know anything. While we understand the importance of the files, this arrangement would be unremarkable to the firm. Essentially just a schedule of electronic documents to be sent if certain criteria are met. It’s unlikely the attorney handling the details would even know that his client is dead. And it’s almost certain that he would be in the dark as to the contents of the files.”
    This time, Rickman had displayed his cleverness by taking a page out of Taj’s own book. Make everything too commonplace to attract attention. It was infuriating. He was within a hair’s breadth of closing his fist around Irene Kennedy’s delicate throat.
    “So, you’re telling me that we have to investigate hundreds of individual lawyers whose careers are predicated on confidentiality inhopes that they left some clue about a client they never met? That’s unacceptable, Kabir.”
    The younger man smiled, his eyes shining with an arrogant light that Taj was very familiar with. Gadai knew something but had withheld it for effect.
    “Don’t make me wait, Kabir. I’ve indulged your sense of drama in the past, but my patience is at its end.”
    “My apologies, Director. Our research suggests that this firm has a dedicated division that handles these kinds of arrangements—-scheduling, payments, requests for information, notifications . . .”
    “How many people are in this division?”
    “It’s largely automated. Most of the work is done by computer or—”
    “How many!”
    Gadai opened the dossier again, shuffling to a photo of a plump woman with dyed blond hair. “Isabella Accorso runs the entire enterprise with a single administrative assistant.”
    Taj picked up the photo and examined the woman’s face. She was probably in her mid-thirties, wearing a blouse that clung to her breasts in an obvious attempt to facilitate the faceless, nameless sexual -encounters so enjoyed by Western women.
    It was hard to believe that this female had the keys to America’s heavily guarded intelligence apparatus. That she unwittingly possessed more information on the CIA’s operations than anyone outside Langley’s executive offices.
    “What do we know about her?”
    “She’s divorced. Clean. No drugs or illegal activity. No affairs or significant financial problems.”
    Taj just glared at him. Again, his assistant’s expression suggested there was more.
    “She does have a daughter, though. A sixteen-year-old who attends public school. Quite an attractive young woman.”
    “Can I assume she’s accessible to us?”
    Gadai smiled. “Easily.”

CHAPTER 12
    T HE F ARM
    N EAR H ARPERS F ERRY
    W EST V IRGINIA
    U.S.A.
    D ID you get it put back together?” Rapp said as he walked into the Farm’s basement bar.
    Hurley was standing next to the pool table with the ubiquitous drink in his hand while Scott Coleman was beneath the elaborate scale model with a screwdriver.
    “Just finishing,” the old man said, lighting a cigarette. “The little twit outdid himself.”
    He was right. It was an impressive effort even by Marcus Dumond’s standards. The computer genius had used a drone-mounted camera to take more than a thousand high-definition photos of Leo Obrecht’s property. After stitching them together in Photoshop, he’d fed them to the railroad-car-sized 3-D printer at Langley.
    Rapp had been expecting a two-foot-square monochrome model with enough detail to make some general strategy decisions. What he’d gotten was a full-color model so large it had to be cut into three sections to jam it down the elevator shaft. Resolution was detailed enough to differentiate individual plants in Obrecht’s garden.
    The portion of the model that represented the house was built in detachable layers so that each floor could be removed in order toexamine the layout of the one beneath. The only thing missing was furniture—an omission that Dumond seemed genuinely