Secret Contract

“Somebody meant to kill them?” she asked finally.

“I’m not sure. Either them or me.” He stopped for a meaningful pause. “The pressure valve blew too early maybe. I was supposed to join them in a few minutes.” He shook his head then shrugged as if the possible threat to his own life was of no consequence. “In any case. I want to keep you safe until I figure out what’s going on.” His voice implied that he had the investigation well in hand.

She nodded, looking stunned and numb, but ethereally beautiful. He maneuvered her to the sprawling leather sofa with ease.

Chapter Three

“You must have been wondering what your mission is going to be.”

Brant Law stood at the head of a training room that was smaller, but much better furnished, than the prison classroom where the women had first met him. Tarasov and Moretti stood to the side, tension making the mood in the room brittle.

He turned to the desk that held his laptop and started a presentation, projecting his slides to the white screen on the wall. The first image was of a rectangle with a shadow of a man’s profile with a big question mark over it.

“Your target is someone who has managed to elude law enforcement for the last twenty years. He has no known picture. We haven’t been able to narrow his location to as much as a country. We don’t know his first name, or exactly how old he is.”

“So what do you know?” Gina spoke up.

The four women were together again. That she wasn’t completely alone in this mess made Carly feel slightly better, although she was far from trusting any of the people in the room. With her basic training over, she was allowed to spend most of her time in the computer lab while Nick was making mincemeat of the other women on the training course. She only saw him twice a day now. They ran together in the morning then did an hour of self-defense, and he continued her introduction to various guns for an hour each afternoon.

She was catching up with what she’d missed in information technology over the years, planning her disappearance, looking up some distant family on the Internet. She hadn’t contacted anyone to tell them that she was out. She never would, most likely. At the moment, not being able to discuss the mission, all she could tell them would be lies. And later, when she broke free, contact with anyone from her old life might lead law enforcement to her.

Her family had never been close. Her mother hadn’t kept in touch with her father’s side after his death. And since her mother was the only child of parents who had no siblings themselves, the pickings were all around slim for family reunions.

Anita and Gina had been allowed to call their families the first day they had arrived at the training facility, to tell them that they were out and involved in some kind of readjustment program where for a while they couldn’t be reached. They’d had visitors in prison who had to be told something. Sam had nobody, no clue where she came from, no memories of her life before she came to be living on the streets.

“We know him as Tsernyakov,” Law said as he pointed to the shadow outline. “But we’re not sure if that’s his real name. He is one of the biggest illegal weapons dealers in the world. We suspect he might have had some position in the old communist government in the USSR, might have been in the military—his access to large amounts of decommissioned weaponry points that way. He has ‘ears’ in every branch of law enforcement of just about every country. He has unlimited access to money. He is ruthless. If he thinks someone crossed him, he doesn’t wait for proof. He kills on first suspicion.”

“So you want us to do what? Take him out?” Gina asked.

Carly was taken aback as much by the question as by Gina’s casual tone. Anita’s hand flew to her throat.

“Getting a location on him would be enough.”

“Why us?” The question escaped Carly, spurred by suspicion. “I mean, even if you teach us everything you know, which is probably not possible, you still have tons more experience. Why not you, a commando team or the FBI?” Not that the setup didn’t sound intriguing—a lot like one of her favorite video games, which she hadn’t played in ages.

“As I said, you have a unique set of skills. But more importantly, you have something none of us do, a one hundred percent authentic background that doesn’t involve any agency work—an unbreakable cover.” He hesitated a moment. “And as far as we can tell, our target, Tsernyakov, has only one weakness—beautiful women.”

He looked uncomfortable saying that, as if he expected them to jump up and yell sexual harassment.

She glanced at the others. They were all looking around at each other. He was right, she realized. Anita was a classic Latin beauty. Gina was petite with pretty features, her body round in all the right places, and a pronounced presence that made her hard to ignore. Sam had the beauty of youth, in spades, those large green eyes that would swallow you up. She was the odd bird out, Carly thought of herself. Too tall, too athletically built to be called feminine. They got her for her hacking.

“How will we find him?” Anita regained her balance first.

“You don’t find Tsernyakov. Nobody does. Your job is to make him want to find you.”

“How?” Sam drew up a black eyebrow that had two silver rings in it. She’d somehow managed to get her hands on an amazing number of body ornaments within days of release.

“We are going to put you in his way. The rest is up to you.” Law brought up another slide, a map. “Cayman Islands, off-shore banking paradise. One of the money-laundering centers of the world.”

“We’re going?” For once Sam seemed to forget her aloof pose and sounded genuinely excited.

Carly tried hard to keep the grin off her face. One of the to-do items in her slowly forming escape plan was to find a way to get out of the country once she got away from the “mission.” Looked like they were going to help her out with that. Excellent.

“He’s got businesses there?” Gina asked, then when Law paused, she added with some sarcasm, “No, don’t tell me. You don’t know.”

“We don’t know whether Tsernyakov has interests on the island or not,” Law said in an even voice. “But we suspect that some people he’s involved with do. Your job will be to get to know these people, get them to trust you and have them lead you eventually to Tsernyakov. Or—” he paused “—more realistically, lead Tsernyakov to you.”

“What will we be doing exactly?” Anita asked.

“Your cover will be a consulting company that facilitates entrepreneurs in setting up small businesses. Miss Caballo will handle accounting, Miss Jones will do IT, Miss Torno will take care of security, including background checks on employees, and Miss Hanley is the support person for the team.”

“I’m the freakin’ secretary? No way.” Sam threw herself back in her seat.

“You’re an undercover agent in a top secret operation.”

Apparently, Law said the right thing because Sam didn’t make another comment. God, if she bought that line, she was obviously way too easily scammed. Somebody ought to watch out for the girl.

The agent brought up another slide that had the name Savall, Ltd. at the top with a logo, an address, phone and fax numbers, Web site address and mission statement.

“What else do you want us to do? A start-up consulting company isn’t going to attract much attention from the type of people Tsernyakov would hang with,” Gina said.

“Correct. Savall, Ltd. is your cover. What you’ll really be doing is money laundering.”

“Are you asking us to engage in illegal activities?” Anita sounded shocked.

“You need to move in the same circles that Tsernyakov’s associates move in. You are authorized by the FBI and CIA to use whatever means necessary to get close to the man.”

Carly shifted in her seat. Official carte blanche. Man, it sounded weird. She’d spent the last six years angry at the government for making something as innocent as a quest for knowledge a punishable offense. And now here was an FBI agent telling her to go ahead, break the law as she pleased.

“This is not gonna come back and bite us in the ass, no matter what?” Gina nailed the man with a hard look.

“Correct.”

“You need us, people with authentic backgrounds instead of existing agents, because if we get lucky enough to get this guy’s attention he’ll have us checked out and he knows people in the right places,” Gina thought out loud.

“Yes.”

“I’m guessing something like this would be a last-ditch effort,” she added.

Law didn’t respond.

“You tried before with your own men and didn’t succeed. Did he have them killed?” Gina pushed.

“We lost a number of operatives.”

The room went silent for a long minute, then Law brought up the next slide, more on what Savall, Ltd. did and a list of how they could help their clients.

“Miss Caballo was convicted for the embezzlement of nearly four million dollars that was never recovered. Your operations will imply that she had that money safely stashed away, met up with the rest of you in prison, and decided to start a company that would grow her nest egg outside of the United States.”