Page 23 of Belgian Betrayal

After a long pause, the screen lighted up, and the phone sprang to life. He immediately checked his text messages.

Ace: The team flew back to Zurich this afternoon. If you need backup, Dmytro’s plane is available. We can be there in a few hours.

Fearghas nodded. That they were back from Jordan was good to know. He and Catya might need their support if things got much worse.

The second text was from Hank Patterson.

Patterson: Spoke with Dmytro. Passed information to Swede back in Montana. Like Dmytro, he’s got his feelers out looking for Atkins and more information about the disk's contents. More info as we get it. Stay safe.

Fearghas liked that his boss and his boss’s boss had checked in and offered to help. He and Catya were not alone in the effort to find Atkins, the disk and discover the source of the problems.

With little else to occupy his time, he searched the internet for the names he knew of the people involved in the mission that had almost killed Catya.

He started with Gia Rosolino, the woman Catya had been sent to kill. When he entered her name in the search bar, the screen filled with several Gia Rosolinos. He looked at each until he found the daughter of Rocco Rosolino, owner and CEO of Rosolino Industries, specializing in international commerce and logistics.

He found few mentions of Rosolino’s daughter. One congratulated her on being named teacher of the month at a preschool in a community outside Florence, Italy. The other mentioned her with a group of volunteers visiting the elderly at a nursing home.

Catya was right. Gia didn’t seem to be the kind of target the MI6 would want to eliminate.

He turned his attention to Rocco Rosolino. He found the man’s obituary. He was survived by an only child, Gia Rosolino. Another article mentioned the fire at Rocco Rosolino’s house and that the owner of Rosolino’s Industries had died in that fire, making it seem as though the fire had killed the man.

Catya had told him Rocco had suffered a gunshot wound to the head before his house had burned to the ground and that he’d facilitated illegal arms shipments before his untimely death.

If he’d been involved in illicit arms deals, he might have compiled a list of buyers and sellers. If that list was released to the public or governmental organizations, it could cause an uproar or point to key individuals who’d prefer to keep their involvement a secret.

Why would Rocco’s daughter have that kind of information on a disk, and how would anyone have found out about it?

Unless she’d contacted an organization she’d thought she could trust to hand it over.

If she had been as she’d appeared on the surface—a sweet preschool teacher and volunteer—turning over a damaging list of players in the illegal arms trade would make sense.

If her status as a preschool teacher and volunteer was nothing more than a cover for her real job of supporting her father in his illicit affairs, she might have put the disk up for auction to the highest bidder. Such an act would have brought a shitload of bad guys out of the woodwork to get their hands on that data.

Discovering Gia’s motivation wouldn’t help the dead woman, but it might help them determine who was pulling the strings and why MI6 got involved.

He moved on to query Peter Atkins of MI6. Fearghas didn’t expect to find much on the agent. Like the CIA, MI6 agents didn’t broadcast their affiliation with their spy organizations.

Like Gia Rosolino, several Peter Atkins from the UK came up in his search. One was a general surgeon at a prestigious hospital in London. Another worked as a stevedore on the Felixstowe docks on the southeast shore of England.

A stevedore could be a good cover for a spy with access to ships coming into the UK from all over the world. Fearghas dug deeper. This Atkins managed stevedores, which meant he wouldn’t have time away from the job to conduct missions for MI6. His employees would notice.

Fearghas moved on to the next Peter Atkins. He found an image of a Peter Atkins with what appeared to be his grown daughter in front of Trinity University. She held up a T-shirt emblazoned with the Trinity logo, proudly announcing her acceptance into the university.

When he followed that Peter Atkins, the trail led to a man who worked for a real estate company. There was no mention of a wife or other children. Peter and his daughter lived in London.

Fearghas made a screenshot of the photo of Peter Atkins and his daughter and then glanced at his watch.

Catya had been asleep for four hours. The sun would rise in another hour. He’d hoped they’d hear something by then. If they didn’t find Atkins, Catya would insist on showing up for the exchange in Bruges empty-handed.

Whoever showed up would know something. At the moment, they had nothing and nowhere to start digging.

Fearghas would prefer to whisk Catya away to some quiet island where they could start over and make a new life together.

He glanced at the sleeping woman.

Maybe she’d consider it once they found Atkins, retrieved the disk and discovered who had authorized the hit on Gia.

Fearghas stayed on the internet, reading news stories from around the world.

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