Vision Impossible (7 page)

“Noted,” Dutch said.

Tanner nodded like she was satisfied with his answer; then she said, “Your mission will be to determine if Kozahkov has the drone. If he does, your part is largely over. If he doesn’t, then you’ll need to get Kozahkov to set up a meeting with Boklovich, have him agree to offer your software at the same time he’s offering to auction off the drone and Intuit, and at the auction either steal Intuit back or destroy the device.”

I noticed she left out the part where she told us we’d also need to make it out alive. . . .

Tanner continued. “We’ve received two more pings from Intuit, and our best guess is that the device is still hidden somewhere near the Greater Toronto metropolitan area. By having Agent Rivers pose as Des Vries and live at the condo, we have access to a ready-made command center to run our operations out of without causing any unnecessary suspicion. It also helps us greatly that the condo building itself is currently unoccupied. Des Vries hadn’t offered any of the units up for sale yet, so it’s the perfect place to set up shop for us.”

I thought of something that worried me. “Do you know if Kozahkov and Des Vries have ever met?”

Tanner’s eyes swiveled to Gaston, and I didn’t like the look they exchanged. “We don’t know,” she admitted. “If they have, it was likely only briefly. We know that Des Vries has spent considerable time in Toronto, but on many levels Kozahkov is his competition, so it’s unlikely that the two would have spent much time mixing together in the same circles. It’s far more likely that they would have attempted to avoid each other.”

I glanced at Dutch, convinced that the uncertainty of her answer would set off alarm bells for him too, but he merely shrugged. “I know you’re worried,” he said, “but we’ll just have to take our chances with it.”

I didn’t like that one bit, but didn’t argue. Instead, I asked another question. “So what’s my cover going to be?”

Tanner clicked the remote again and a photo of Rick Des Vries popped up with his arm around two beautiful women, scantily clad. “Des Vries likes the ladies,” she said. “Especially blondes. We’re going to send you in posing as Des Vries’s newest girlfriend.”

“Does he have an old girlfriend I need to worry about?”

Agent Tanner smiled. “I’m sure he has several,” she said, flipping to another image of one particularly busty blonde dressed in a peekaboo halter top that was less peekaboo and more peekaboob. “This woman seems to be his most steady girlfriend. We did a thorough background check on her, and what we’ve found isn’t impressive. Both her parents were drug addicts, so she spent most of her youth in foster care, and repeated the tenth grade twice before dropping out of high school. She tried modeling, acting, and was a makeup artist on the set of Canada’s
Flashpoint
, but lately she’s been flying the friendly skies for Air Canada working the Prague-to-Amman junket to be closer to Des Vries. We’ve arranged it so that her flight schedule is booked with back-to-back trips for the next week, so you’re not likely to bump into her if she begins to worry about Des Vries’s absence and comes looking for him.”

“Does she know that Des Vries has been taken in by the Mossad?” Dutch asked. “I mean, she could have been working the flight he was on.”

Tanner shook her head. “We checked, and she wasn’t. Her work itinerary showed us that she was working her regular flight to Amman the day Rick was taken in by the Mossad.”

“Does anyone else know?” he pressed, clearly worried that word would get out.

Again, Tanner shook her head. “No one knows,” she stated. “Des Vries was taken off the plane in Israel by Mossad agents posing as paramedics, and at our request, the Mossad have been keeping his incarceration
very
quiet. As far as we can determine, no one should get wind that anything’s amiss with Des Vries for at least another week or two.”

I eyed the woman on the screen again moodily. Cup size aside, she was at least four inches taller than me and about ten pounds less. Clearly she needed a turkey sandwich, a soda, and a bag of chips.

“I look nothing like her,” I said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Tanner said easily, which of course only made me worry about it even more. “You don’t have to take on her identity, just portray the type of woman that Des Vries would be seen with: dumb, blond, and pretty. While Agent Rivers is working to locate Intuit, you can give your feedback on Kozahkov or any other suspects you identify directly to him. It’s actually a terrific cover for you, as no one would ever suspect Des Vries’s arm candy as being an undercover agent, which means that no one’s likely to perform an extensive background check on you.”

Great. Dutch got slick arms dealer, and I got flouncy bimbo. “Okay,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll do what I can.”

Tanner beamed at me. “Excellent. After this briefing I’ll have Dawn take you downstairs for your new wardrobe and a selection of blond wigs. Your identity has already been created, and we didn’t want you to worry about slipping up when introducing yourself. Your new name will be Abigail Carter, Toronto native.”

Tanner then tossed me a blue and gold passport and I opened it to a photo of me that had obviously been Photoshopped because in it, I had platinum blond hair and, shall we say, rather enhanced cleavage.

“What’s my occupation?” I asked.

Tanner smiled tightly. “You don’t have one,” she said. “The less we have to fabricate, the easier it is to believe you are who you say you are, but we’ve managed to arrange for a cover story. An American named Robert Carter, now living in Canada and married to a very wealthy heiress, owes his country a favor, and we’ve called it in. He has grudgingly agreed to admit to an extramarital affair some thirty-odd years ago resulting in a love child named Abigail Carter. He’s recently set up a monthly stipend and is interested in keeping the story very hush-hush.”

“Ah,” I said, because what else could I say? I mean, they were trying to pass me off as a love child? What idiot was going to buy that? Still, there wasn’t much I could do about it, so I kept my mouth shut.

Tanner got back to the briefing. “To make the lure of the original software even more appealing and give legitimacy to Des Vries showing up in Toronto with it, we’ve made it look as if he knew all along that the drone was about to be stolen, and he let the real thief take the bait because he also knew about the device’s software glitch. Hence, when the drone went missing, it would cause us to double-down our security on the
real
code to the software, revealing where it was being hidden. Last night, we snuck Agent Rivers into Canada. Once there, we had him book a flight to Las Vegas, posing as Rick Des Vries, and made sure he was seen in the neighborhood of Dr. Steckworth’s home near Lake Mead.”

I turned to look at Dutch. “That’s where you were?”

He nodded.

Agent Tanner continued. “This morning we posted an internal alert to most of the federal securities agencies that there had been a major breach to a secure facility located in the area of Lake Mead.”

“There was?” I asked.

Agent Tanner shook her head. “No,” she said patiently. “There was no security breach. We just made that up because we knew it would be leaked. What we are attempting to orchestrate is a smoke screen. We want to create a bit of a paper trail to make it look as if Des Vries was able to steal a copy of Intuit’s code should anyone like Boklovich question its sudden appearance.”

“Ahh,” I said. “I get it.”

Tanner continued. “We’ll get you two into Canada tomorrow morning, and from there Agent Rivers will make contact with Kozahkov and ask for a meeting.”

The director then hit the remote control again, clicking to a gorgeous-looking building. “This is a photo of Des Vries’s condo in downtown Toronto. We’re working to change the security code to his alarm as we speak. You’ll have no trouble getting in, but I want to warn you that even though Des Vries is fairly small-time, we know this building has been monitored by the CSIS ever since they learned that it belonged to Des Vries.”

“CSIS?” I asked. I had no idea who or what that was.

Tanner explained. “The Canadian Security Intelligence Service. It’s the Canadian equivalent to the CIA.”

“Are they joining us in the effort to get the drone back?” I said.

There was a perceptive shift in posture from several members of the staff in the room. “No,” Tanner said carefully. “We have not asked them to join in the mission because we cannot trust that someone within the CSIS won’t compromise Agent Rivers’s identity.”

I stared at her in amazement. “If they’re monitoring Des Vries, won’t they
know
you guys are around?”

Gaston answered my question. “We’ve mentioned to them that Des Vries was recently recruited to assist the CIA in a global investigation, and we’ve gained their permission to monitor Des Vries for a few weeks until he leaves the country again.”

“They agreed to that?” I was a little shocked the CSIS agents were willing to allow the CIA to tread on their territory.

“They have,” he said simply. “But it’s with the understanding that their surveillance will also remain in place. We already suspect the doorman at the condo may be a CSIS plant, and we also think Des Vries’s condo unit will be bugged, so use caution and stay completely in character until you’ve swept it for microphones and recording devices.”

Tanner then looked keenly at me and issued a warning. “Ms. Cooper, there is also something you should know about Rick Des Vries.”

Uh-oh.

“What?” I asked.

“He has a violent temper that extends to his women. We’ve obtained police reports from Amsterdam that suggest he put four former girlfriends in the hospital. One woman he dated for several years in the late nineties, Anna Wyngarden, went missing shortly after Des Vries scored his first big arms deal. She’s never been seen since and is presumed dead. It was Anna’s disappearance that finally forced Des Vries to flee his home in Holland when the police began closing in on him as the primary suspect in the case.”

I felt my face drain of color. “Are you saying that you want Dutch to beat me up?”

Tanner licked her lips and appeared uncomfortable. “No,” she said, “but it might not hurt for him to act angry and aggressive toward you and for you to appear frightened of him when you two are out in public.”

Dutch’s brow lowered dangerously, and I could tell he didn’t like that idea one bit. “I’m not okay with that, Director.”

“I didn’t say you should hit her, Agent Rivers,” Tanner replied coolly. “I’m merely suggesting that you—”

Dutch cut her off. “No,” he said firmly, and the granite expression he wore brooked no argument.

Tanner eyed Gaston, whose expression seemed to say, “I told you so.”

With another sigh she finally said, “Very well, Agent Rivers, but Ms. Cooper, I cannot stress enough that the real Richard Des Vries would not tolerate a woman who talked back to him and it would seem
quite
out of character for him if he did. Do you understand?”

“Fully,” I said woodenly. I was to keep my trap shut and look scared. I knew I could manage the latter at least.

Tanner nodded. She then folded her hands together as if that was about all she had to brief us on. “Do you have any questions?”

I did. “How will we make contact with you to keep you in the loop about our progress?”

“Agent Frost will be close to you at all times,” she assured me. “And of course we’ll have a team of agents ready to mobilize quickly should the need arise or should your lives be in imminent jeopardy.”

I tried to keep my facial expression neutral, but it was really, really hard. My personal assessment of Agent Frostbite was that he didn’t much care if we made it through or not. In fact, when I glanced at him across the table, he seemed far more interested in his manicure than in the topic at hand.

And that meant that Dutch and I would have to look out for each other, which, I decided, wasn’t anything new.

T
hat night back at the hotel my thoughtful fiancé drew me a delightfully warm bath and ordered me into it. Our room was actually a suite, and the tub was huge, so I wasn’t surprised when Dutch climbed in with me.

“How’s your shoulder?” he asked, sitting behind me and working his fabulous fingers into my sore muscles.

I replied with something witty like, “Oooh . . . ahhhh . . . yeah baby . . .”

Dutch chuckled. “So, did you really think I was someone else today?”

I sighed contentedly and leaned a little to the right so he could work my other shoulder. “Yep.”

“Seriously?”

“Dude, you look totally different.”

“Different how?”

“Different dangerous.”

Dutch seemed to consider that.

“Different sexy,” I added to keep those fingers moving.

“Sexy?”

“Yep. Like, Daniel Craig sexy.”

“The double-oh-seven guy you keep telling me that if you two ever meet and the opportunity presents itself, you get to have sex with him and it doesn’t count as cheating?”