Rogue Faction Part 1 Page 13

  That had been the start of Cyrus’s search for a way into Voss’s compound. Security at Voss’s facility was tighter than most international embassies. Cyrus quickly realized that the only way he was getting inside was with an invitation, so he started searching the archive of Voss’s digital data. With enough time and patience, he was certain to find something he could work with.

  From the very beginning, Cyrus gained a healthy respect for Doctor Rutger Voss. The archives which constituted Voss’s digital footprint—in fact, his entire digital history—dated back a full fourteen years to when the Coalition’s database system had first gone online. Every email the man had sent, every web page he’d visited, was all there. But for the most part, it did Cyrus little good; from the very beginning of the archive, Voss had gone to great lengths to secure his communications with encryption, which made them unreadable.

  Modern services commonly used encryption; it was finally becoming a standard practice. But fourteen years ago? It was unheard of. Most people didn’t understand cryptography well enough to secure their communication in such a way back then. This evidence further supported what Cyrus suspected—Voss was paranoid to an extreme.

  Realizing that the contents of Voss’s email were of no use to him, Cyrus focused on what useful information he could gather from the digital data dumps. And while the contents of every email message had been obscured, their subjects and recipients always remained in plaintext, and clearly visible.

  Cyrus used Voss’s email history to chart who the man communicated with and how often. And with fourteen years of data to play with, patterns had soon emerged. As is common in life, Voss went through periods where he would communicate with a friend or colleague frequently for some time, only to have that relationship stagnate after a while. Looking at those relationships and taking a closer look at many of the people Voss was communicating with, Cyrus began to wonder about Voss’s reputation for being paranoid and reclusive. It didn’t match with the man’s communication patterns. Even if Cyrus couldn’t see the contents of the messages, he continued to develop a sense of the man, if only from a mile high view.

  A year and a half of the most recent communication had provided Cyrus with what he needed. It was a thread of messages between Voss and Professor Richard Ragsdale at the University of Paris. Ragsdale was an American who had been living and working in France for the better part of the last decade. And, while the man’s academic standing offered no hint as to his involvement with Voss, a deeper look at his personal profile brought about clarity.

  Ragsdale held over two dozen patents relating to imaging technologies, and he was on the boards of three major hardware manufacturing corporations. In fact, it turned out that he only maintained a perfunctory relationship with the University—enough to keep an office on campus and remain in good academic standing. Most of his time was spent in the lab developing what was vaguely touted in some reference material as “next generation imaging technology.”

  One of the first things that stood out upon finding the link between Voss and Ragsdale, was that the pattern of communication had surged in recent months. Both email and Skype communication had increased tenfold. Cyrus pegged Ragsdale as Voss’s Achilles’ heel. While Voss sat in an ivory tower far from the reach of even the Coalition’s most advanced surveillance, the same could not be said for Ragsdale.

  A team had been assigned to covertly examine Ragsdale’s home, University office, and the office he kept at his off-site lab. His computers at all locations were easily exploited. Since that day, all communication between Voss and Ragsdale had been decrypted and plainly visible. Best of all, the signal intercept had proven timely.

  As Cyrus suspected, Voss and Ragsdale had been collaborating on a project. With access to their correspondence, the particulars of their work became clear. Ragsdale was developing the image display component of Voss’s new technology. And the first stage prototype was ready to be delivered to Voss.

  Cyrus had his avenue of approach when he examined the details of the hardware exchange. Voss was paranoid. He didn’t want Ragsdale making the delivery in person. Furthermore, he insisted that Voss use a cutout as the courier—someone who couldn’t be directly connected to either of them. It would’ve been an effective surveillance countermeasure if their communication hadn’t already been compromised.

  Thanks to the high tech spying, Cyrus knew almost everything he needed in order to intercept the delivery. He knew that a courier, rather than a conventional freight service, would transfer the package. Beyond that, he knew that Ragsdale had arranged a single ticket aboard the overnight express between Paris and Hamburg. A ticket had also been booked on a commercial flight from Hamburg to the Isle of Kapros, the last leg of the journey.

  The plan was to identify the courier when he met with Ragsdale to pick-up the package, but that hadn’t gone as predicted. For some unknown reason, Ragsdale failed to meet with the courier. Boone had tracked Ragsdale the entire afternoon, but the man had never made contact with a courier.

  While they were reasonably certain Ragsdale had somehow handed off the package, he’d somehow managed it without drawing the attention of the team following him.

  All of this left Cyrus and Gladd on the train bound for Hamburg, knowing that their target was onboard, but with no way to identify him.

  Lacking that last crucial piece of information, Cyrus had resorted to Plan B. It was more time consuming, but they were on a twelve-hour non-stop train ride. They definitely had time to burn.

  Chapter 22

  Express train out of Paris, France

  11:49 pm

  His finger tapping slowly on the tabletop, Cyrus stared at the empty place settings at the far end of the dining car. The gentle rocking and muffled clacking of the train over the rails pulled at his attention, trying to remind him of another train ride from long ago.

  He was maybe ten years old at the time. In many ways, it was also the day that he’d been born. Aside from the slight sense of déjà vu he now felt, he had no actual memory of the train ride itself. Only waking up in the wreckage of the derailment with no idea of who he was or how he’d come to be there. It was as if whatever life he’d had before that train ride had been rebooted, and his life had started anew.

  The mobile phone on the table beside Cyrus buzzed quietly and pulled him from his thoughts. The ringer had been silenced, so he was the only one likely to notice the incoming message. It was what he’d been waiting for. Without looking at the phone, he reached down and pulled a small laptop from the messenger bag at his feet. Flipping open the lid of the 12” portable, it came instantly to life. The laptop would automatically link wirelessly to his phone, and from there, gain access to the network back at Coalition Command.

  Glancing over his shoulder to be sure no one was watching, Cyrus confirmed what he already knew; the dining car was virtually deserted. The single remaining patron sat behind him with her back turned, face down on the table and asleep where she’d been for more than an hour. An empty bottle of wine and a drained glass sat not far from her elbow. From time to time he’d even caught a hint of her quiet feminine snore.

  Tapping the screen of his phone, the images he’d just received were transferred to his laptop. With a few taps of the keyboard, the half-dozen photos were submitted for facial recognition. It was a process that ran on the servers back at Command. His laptop was simply a control interface that allowed him to manage the process. Within seconds, the first dossiers began popping up in the corner of his screen. Each face was being matched to an identity—an extensive profile of each suspect was then assembled in real time and then pushed to his screen. The process had become so efficient that what had once taken days now took only seconds.

  Cyrus opened the first profile and began reviewing its information.

  Since they knew their target was on-board the train, but knew nothing more about him, Cyrus and Gladd had been forced to take a broad approach when conducting their search. Gladd had assumed the role of the tr
ain’s conductor and was moving slowly from one end of the train to the other, checking each passenger in turn. But since they couldn’t expect the courier to be wearing a FedEx hat or a name tag that read, ‘I’m your guy!’, Gladd was on the lookout for anyone he found suspect. Then, using a high-resolution camera hidden in the frame of his glasses, he would capture a photo of each possible suspect. He would then transmit the photos to Cyrus, who would review each of them in depth. It was a labor-intensive approach, but it was their best bet.

  Ten minutes later, Cyrus had finished reviewing the files relating to the images Gladd had sent. All without luck. None of them worked for a courier service or had a direct connection to Professor Ragsdale. Still, Gladd knew what he was doing. It was possible that the entire train ride was a red herring designed to throw them off the trail of the real courier. Or, maybe Ragsdale had been exceedingly crafty in selecting his courier, tasking someone so obscure they would never be able to pinpoint him or her. The ideal cutout would be a courier who had no link to Ragsdale or Voss. But, playing the odds meant the courier would have some sort of relationship with one of the men. They were civilians, after all. Neither had formal experience with tradecraft, therefor the cutout would be someone who was trusted. No mater how tangential the relationship, it seemed likely the cutout would be connected to Ragsdale or Voss in some way.

  It was frustrating. Other than the fact Ragsdale was working on a special augmentation of his existing imaging technology, there wasn’t anything altogether noteworthy about his contribution to Voss’s project. It wasn’t a secret or special design. Ragsdale had simply made hardware modifications specific to Voss’s requests. Even then, those were changes that any electronics fabricator in China could’ve made, if provided the proper specifications. Ragsdale appeared to be working with Voss out of professional respect and personal attachment rather than any proprietary requirement. And as far as Cyrus’s need for the courier, he was simply a way through the door of Voss’s compound. He was an introduction that Cyrus planned to exploit.

  With all of this in mind, Cyrus returned to the dossiers before him. The odds were good that the courier was among those selected by Gladd. Cyrus suspected that he needed to dig deeper into each candidate’s background. Something would connect the target to Ragsdale. It was a rookie’s mistake. In all likelihood, the connection would be personal.

  Fifteen minutes later, Cyrus had his man. Twenty year old, Anatole Benoit. He’d been difficult to connect to Ragsdale because their lives didn’t intersect directly. At least, they didn’t anymore. Benoit had been a student in a history course taught by a female colleague of Ragsdale. Benoit had since dropped out of school. And, although Ragsdale was married with two children, he’d had an affair with this colleague two years prior. During that time, the woman in question had left the country for two months. While she was gone, and unbeknownst to even the faculty of the University, Ragsdale had acted as a substitute, filling in as temporary instructor for his mistress’s history class while she was away.

  Cyrus lost track of exactly how many degrees of separation that resulted in, but it was Ragsdale’s link to Anatole Benoit. He was the cutout they were after.

  Grabbing his phone, Cyrus sent a text message to Gladd specifying Benoit as the target. Gladd would collect the young man, and they would meet back at their compartment.

  Flipping the lid shut on his laptop, Cyrus bent over and slid the computer into the messenger bag on the floor beside his chair. As he sat up, his eyes were met with the small dark hole of a pistol’s muzzle leveled squarely at his face. It was a small caliber handgun, but that didn’t make it any less deadly.

  A large, steel-haired man slipped into the chair opposite Cyrus. Cyrus sat calmly back in his seat and glared at the broad shouldered figure. Then, at the sound of someone entering the car behind him, the gunman slipped the weapon beneath the table without saying a word.

  “Excusé moi messieurs,” the waiter said from the doorway of the car behind the silver-haired intruder. “Je dois fermer le wagon de dîner dans quelque minutes. Je suis désolé pour les inconvénients.”

  Cyrus heard the translation in his head, I must close down the dining car in a few minutes. I apologize for the inconvenience. He nodded his understanding. The waiter ducked back through the door leaving only Cyrus, the steely-haired giant, and the sleeping passenger a few tables away. Looking at the gunman before him, Cyrus realized he didn’t know a word of French.

  “He said we need to leave the dining car,” Cyrus explained in English. “He’s worried you’re going to steal the silverware.”

  The larger man flicked a glance at the watch on his left wrist. The gun, once again raised above the table, never wavered. He nodded. “Geldbuße.”

  Cyrus’s brow wrinkled at the comment. Geldbuße was German for fine.

  “What’s this about?” he asked, before he realized he’d said the words aloud. No one knew he was on this train, so the silver-haired giant couldn’t be looking for him specifically.

  “Get up,” the man said in a flat tone. His voice was a deep baritone.

  Cyrus shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what this is about.”

  The man flashed a sincere grin. “Then I will shoot you right here. It makes no difference to me.” From the look in his eye, he seemed eager to do just that.

  Scratching idly at the day old stubble on his jaw, Cyrus considered the man before him. “I don’t get it,” he admitted. “I had you figured for a professional. The way you handle the gun? You’re steady like you’ve got experience with it. And I don’t see indecision in your eyes, so I don’t think you’re conflicted about using it.”

  His eyes searched the man’s face before he continued. He looked over every feature of the man’s countenance before speaking. “Those qualities make me think you’re a professional. But you’re here…which contradicts that assessment.”

  The statement had the desired effect. A look of confusion clouded the gunman’s eyes. It lasted only a moment, but Cyrus knew he’d scored a hit. “This is a twelve-hour train ride,” Cyrus explained. “A twelve-hour train ride doesn’t leave you a means of escape. You’re sort of stuck here for the duration. A pro wouldn’t make his move until the end of trip. That affords a reasonable chance of escape, or as might be the case, an opportunity to get rid of the body.”

  The final part of his statement drew a flash of recognition where the first had not. It was the vital piece of information for Cyrus. This man was here to kill him. He wasn’t interested in taking a prisoner. It was a factor crucial to delivering a measured response.

  “You don’t even have an exit plan, do you?” Cyrus continued. He could see he was getting under the man’s skin. He would see how far he could push it.

  The large man’s jaw was slowly moving. He was gnashing his teeth at Cyrus’s words. Everything he knew so far was supposition. The only thing he knew for sure was that the man spoke English—and German.

  Oh, that would work. It would be a shame to pass that one up…

  Cyrus squinted his eyes and leaned slightly toward the man, even though it put him closer to the gun. “Hey,” he said quietly. “Are you okay in there? You do speak English, don’t you? I’m not talking to myself, am I?”

  That sealed the deal. The large silver-haired German leapt to his feet. Or, at least he tried. In the tight confines of the dining car, given the close quarters, the small chairs, and the constant rhythmic motion of the train car’s gentle rocking, the move was far less graceful than intended. Unfortunately for the German, Cyrus was fully prepared for it. The moment the large man began to rise, Cyrus made his move.

  Cyrus had his hand on the German’s gun before either of them were fully out of their seats. He parried the man’s .22 off to his left as his right hand struck swiftly at the man’s throat. There was an audible snap as the cartilage of the larger man’s trachea crushed beneath the single brutal blow. Cyrus knew that he’d just ended the man’s life.

&n
bsp; The German fell away, toppling to the floor in a tangle of empty chairs as his hands slapped frantically at his throat. His eyes bulged, and his torso bucked. The desperate man tried in vain to draw oxygen through his crushed airway. It was a horrible way to go, Cyrus knew. Worse than bleeding out from a bullet to the gut? No one would ever know for sure, and Cyrus didn’t care to ever personally weigh in on the subject. Still, there was no doubt in his mind that this man had meant to take his life. Even as he watched the man writhing on the floor in the final moments of his life, Cyrus felt no remorse. It was that simple…because it had to be. It was the key to living with the things that had to be done.

  Looking at his left hand still raised in the air, Cyrus shifted himself back to the moment. He still held the German’s .22 awkwardly—backward in his hand, the way he’d first grabbed it. The fleshy span of skin between his thumb and first finger was trapped beneath the released hammer of the gun. It had prevented the weapon from firing when he first shoved the gun away.

  Cyrus took the gun in his free hand, pulling the hammer back and freeing his pinched flesh. A small drop of blood rose from the welt where the hammer had come to rest in his soft tissue. The gun had not fired so no attention had been drawn. That left Cyrus a narrow window of opportunity to dispose of the German’s body before the waiter returned to close down the car.

  Grabbing the German under the arms, Cyrus unceremoniously dragged him toward the door. The lights in the next car were dark; it had already been shut down for the night.

  Sliding the heavy exterior door aside, Cyrus pulled the lifeless German into the tiny three-foot vestibule between the two train cars. The noise of the train clattering across the rails was near deafening in the small space.