Page 93 of Turn the Tide
Chapter 11
Berlin, Germany
Sunday, March 6, 2:58 p.m. CET
“I told you to wait for me.” Sanborn stood in the safe house’s dining room, wearing a dark suit without a tie, shirt open at the neck, his clipped tone burning hotter than napalm.
“Look at what they did to her!” Logan said. “Would she even be alive if we had waited?”
Sanborn cut his fiery gaze from him to Ashley. “I trusted you, ensured you had the right training to survive, believed you could get this mission done. An assignment you lobbied for. All you had to do was follow orders. Instead, you endangered the team. What were you thinking?”
Ash hunched over the table, wrapping her arms around herself as if trying to keep a storm of feelings contained. Weariness hung on her bruised face.
“The Agency does countless unethical things. Is never held accountable for its actions.” She peered up at Sanborn. “When I realized what was on the drive, I didn’t know how it would be used. If you could go back in time and had the power to prevent…say, the atom bomb from ever being invented, would you?”
Sometimes working for the CIA had been like serving the Evil Empire. Who knows, maybe the data on the thumb drive was the equivalent of the blueprint for the Death Star?
“I thought it best if the Company didn’t have it,” she said.
Sanborn’s normally unflappable composure fell back over him. He stood cold and hard as granite, his face implacable. “That wasn’t your call to make. It still isn’t. I’ve seen the surveillance footage from outside the Reichstag. I know you have the drive. Give it to me.”
After an audible swallow, she straightened. “If you want to keep serving in hell as Satan’s greatest little helper, so be it. But you’re going to know what’s on that drive first.”
“I know about the Ianus project. Word of it first came through the Counterterrorism Division. What I read was heavily redacted, but there’s concern it threatens our national interest. That’s all I need to know.”
She recoiled, but from the sharp gleam in her eyes, those wheels in her head were turning, spinning fast. “Do you have any idea how BioGenApex planned to use it? Do you know all the horrifying implications ofhowthe Agency could possibly use it?”
That must’ve given him pause. Logan could almost feel the weight of Sanborn’s scrutiny leveled upon her.
“Okay. Educate me.” Sanborn extended a hand, directing her to the privacy of the back room.
This was a matter of need-to-know. Sanborn obviously felt they didn’t have a need, or it was simply safer for them not to know.
Ashley went to grab Mike’s laptop.
“No,” Sanborn said, raising a palm. “It’ll ping Langley.”
She nodded. Then they disappeared in the room down the hall and the door closed.
Logan couldn’t sit still while they waited. Part of him itched to know what was on that drive. The smarter, saner part of him wanted to bury his head in the proverbial sand and never hear another word about it.
Ethan rubbed the back of his neck like he had a crick in it. Mike opened a bottle of water, took a sip, closed it. Seconds later, he was twisting the top off again and peeling the label from the plastic container.
Only Knox stood composed, leaning against the wall. Sometimes his mannerisms, the way he handled situations, was so much like Sanborn it was scary.
A whack came from the back room. Logan was on his feet and moving toward the hall.
Knox blocked him, putting a hand on his shoulder, and gave him a look that saidSanborn would never hit her. Logan knew it to be true. Sanborn was driven, yes, excellent at what he did, of course, but he was also honorable. He was a good man.
But anotherwhackhad Logan tensing again.
When the two of them returned, Ashley wore a shining look of vindication and dumped the shattered pieces of the drive on the table.
“Wow,” Mike said on a low breath.
That was an understatement. If Sanborn had destroyed the drive, then it must’ve been something truly cataclysmic.
Ashley sat beside Logan. “Glasses, the man who tracked and interrogated me, uploaded about 30 percent of the data on the USB device, from what I could tell. It’s out there somewhere. Who those men were and what parts of the research they have, I don’t know.”
