Page 122 of The House of Cross

Bree fell asleep on my shoulder before the end of the first challenge: who could hold on the longest to a bar suspended above deep water. I made it long enough to say good night to Ali but nodded off during the late news.

CHAPTER 99

MY CELL PHONE WOKEus both from deep sleep. I looked around, confused, then grabbed the phone off the table, thinking it would be Mahoney.

It was Rawlins.

“I found a batch of exclusionary filters here in the Paladin algorithms,” he said.

“I’m putting you on speaker. Bree’s here. She knows I asked about them. Do any belong to Katrina White?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

We bumped fists.

Bree said, “What would happen if you removed the filter?”

“I already did, and she popped up,” Rawlins said and laughed. “A real GRU Sparrow. Disappeared in Istanbul four years ago.”

I said, “Do you have biometrics on her?”

“There’s not a lot of pictures of her coming up so far, but I think there’s enough if I put together a composite.”

I asked him if he could access the biometric immigration data from all the people who had entered the United States from Canada in the past forty-eight hours.

“Does a bear crap in Yellowstone?” Rawlins said. “Gimme a second here … and cross-reference…and search. And son of a bitch, there she is.”

“What?” Bree cried. “How is that possible that fast?”

The computer expert said, “Total number of people crossing from Canada into the States in the past forty-eight hours is one hundred forty-seven thousand, six hundred and fifty. Not that many to look at when you’ve got an AI sifter with the power of Paladin’s.”

I said, “We get you love their system, KK. Where and when did she come in?”

“JFK.” Rawlins sniffed, sounding mildly irritated. “Air Canada overnight from Vancouver. She entered on a U.S. passport under the name Katherine Blanco.”

I looked at my watch. It was thirty minutes past midnight.

“Can you run a universal search with her biometrics? I mean, all the data that passed through Paladin in the past forty-eight hours?”

“I can try. I’ll get back to you,” he said, and hung up.

“You need to tell Ned,” Bree said.

I called. He answered in a moan. “I’m just getting into bed, Alex. The night went smooth. Not a single problem.”

“Until now,” I said. “There’s been a breach in our national security courtesy of Ryan Malcomb. His Sparrow is here.”

CHAPTER 100

AFTER SPENDING THE AFTERNOONand evening in a luxury room at the Hay-Adams, Katrina White changed into green hospital scrubs, a black zip-collar, a long-sleeved top, the blue puffy jacket, and a knit cap embroidered with the emblem of the University of Texas Longhorns.

At 3:50 a.m., she walked toward the main entrance to the university’s medical center near the Foggy Bottom neighborhood in the District of Columbia. White carried the gray pack she’d retrieved at Union Station.

She had the burn phone in the pack along with her cover passport, other supporting cover documents, and what looked for all intents and purposes like a fancy portable boom box, complete with an antenna of braided flexible wire that she’d fed through an insulated sleeve meant to keep a hydration line from freezing.What looked like a small black microphone was screwed into the end of the braided wire and clipped to the right side of the pack’s shoulder harness.

At the bottom of the stairs to the front entrance to the hospital, the Sparrow slowed for several beats, searching in her pockets for an employee badge on a lanyard, courtesy of Maestro. When she found it, she hung the badge around her neck, put on a surgical mask, and went inside.

Acting glad for the sudden warmth, she was aware of the cameras in the high corners of the lobby but did not pay them much attention. She pulled back her hood, crossed to the scanner, and slid the badge through, confident that the guard on duty would see her come up as Cynthia Del Torre, a traveling nurse from Dallas recently hired to work on the oncology ward.

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