They waited. The live feed camera wobbled and swung around the other side of the target.

“Wait a second, Arietta. What the hell are we doing?” Reyland said. “Can’t you get this feed into your damn supercomputer ID software to tell us if it’s her?”

“Yes, of course. I didn’t think of that. Give me a second,” he said.

If you want something done, you have to do it yourself, Reyland thought, rolling his eyes again.

He placed his hands behind his back as he watched the target head for the elevator. She was pressing the button when she turned, and the red computer box appeared around her face.

“Okay. We’re linked into the computer now. Matching up,” Arietta said as the door rolled open, and the woman got on.

“Should they follow her? Get in the elevator?” asked Emerson.

“No. Hold up, hold up. Don’t spook her. Take it easy,” Reyland said.

The elevator door had just closed when a ping came from Arietta’s laptop.

Then Reyland smiled as Ruby Everett’s military ID appeared up on the screen as clear as day.

48

Ruby came out of the elevator onto the fourteenth floor into a hallway that smelled like weed and furniture polish. As the elevator door rolled closed behind her, she took out her phone. She checked the room number on the text Wheldon had sent her against the plastic plaque on the wall. Then she made a left down the dark-walled hallway.

She’d just been dropped off by Eric’s friend Rebecca. She’d crashed at Rebecca’s apartment in Inwood the night before, and her hostess had explained that she had worked with Eric in the CIA when she was younger.

Since then, she’d put up several of Eric’s whistle-blowers as they came into town. There were more and more these days, she’d said.

Ruby counted the doors. Making a turn at the far corner of the narrow corridor, she suddenly heard the pornographic sound of a woman coming from somewhere.

She shook her head as she zipped her fleece hoodie up to her chin. She still wasn’t sure about any of this. About being up in New York. About going underground like some kind of anti-government nut.

Under normal circumstances, she liked to consider herself a good citizen. She always honestly paid her taxes, always voted, always went to jury duty whenever she was called.

She would have gladly turned herself in to the FBI to work this all out, she thought as she came to the end of the sleazy hall, if it weren’t for the fact that it seemed to be the FBI itself that was the problem.

14H was the very last door of all. It opened as she was about to ring its doorbell.

“If it isn’t Mrs. Smith,” Wheldon said. “Entrez-vous?”

The room inside was large but drab. Besides the bed and desk, there were two chairs, one just beside the door and another at the foot of the bed facing the desk. On the desk, there was a smartphone in a little tripod with its camera pointed at the bed.