Page 113 of The Devil's Ransom

Wolffe smiled and said, “Yeah, I think I can.”

“What’s the smile for?”

He went to the gray phone on his desk—a secure, encrypted line directly into the CIA—and dialed, saying, “Nothing. I told him you might need some help.”

The phone rang through and Wolffe got a flunky telling him Kerry was at the White House for an update. Wolffe told him in no uncertain terms to get Kerry to a gray line immediately and call.

While we waited, I told Wolffe everything I knew aboutSphinx. He was here, in the United States, had given the Auriga gateway to Dark Star, had tricked Branko about the target, and had also supplied the malware code to penetrate. I’d thought Branko was Doctor Evil, but it was Sphinx, and I was sure I could find him. If I had enough time.

The phone rang and it was Kerry. Wolffe passed the handset to me and I said, “I need someone to squeeze a Russian oligarch, and I need it in the next hour.”

“Russian oligarch? Why?”

I explained the connection to Sphinx as quickly as I could, and he said, “Okay, given that, how am I going to find him? I need more than the name Andrei.”

I said, “I have his house. It’s in Liechtenstein, but I don’t know who he is. You guys keep track of that stuff, right? Being the CIA and all?”

“Yeah, if you can give me something to go on.”

I snapped my fingers off the phone, holding my hand over the receiver, saying, “Get Creed’s ass up here with a computer. One networked to the CIA.”

To Kerry I said, “I’m sending all I know. He’s the key to Sphinx. He knows who he is.”

Creed showed up with a laptop and I motioned to Jennifer, knowing she would have already read my mind. She started talking to Creed, and he started pounding the keyboard. On the phone I said, “It’s coming to your counterterrorism mission center now.”

Kerry said, “Give me a minute,” and hung up.

Literally one minute later, the gray phone rang again. I answered, and he said, “It’s Andrei Obrenovic. He’s a tech sector guy, large-scale computer systems and database management, made his money after the fall of the Wall. He does a lot of black marketstuff, but he’s not into geopolitics. He lives in Liechtenstein because he doesn’t want to deal with Putin in Russia. He’s an unlikely guy to be doing this.”

“He’s not doing it. He was bankrolling Dark Star, and now he’s hip-deep in this mess even if he doesn’t know it. Sphinx gave him the gateway and a zero-click malware attack that allowed the penetration. Sphinx is some computer guy on this side of the pond, but he knows who he is.”

“I can’t squeeze him in person. We don’t have any assets in Liechtenstein with the requisite skill set. They’re in Switzerland.”

Shit.

“Get me a number to him. Some way to talk to him. We have about two hours to find out who Sphinx is.”

“I think you have less time than that. POTUS is going to order them to abort.”

“Abort? They’ll be killed.”

“Better them than the entire space station.”

“Just get me that number.”

I hung up and turned to Wolffe saying, “POTUS has ordered them to abort. We need to turn that off, immediately.”

George Wolffe called Alexander Palmer in the Situation Room, putting it on speaker. Palmer answered saying, “George, I don’t have time right now.”

Wolffe said, “Tell POTUS to turn off the abort. We might have a way to stop this.”

“What? How? You have some line on the Iranians?”

“I don’t have time to explain right now, but it’s not the Iranians. Don’t let them abort.”

“The president has already given the order to their mission control.”

I said, “Then tell him to countermand it!”

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