Page 120 of Stuart Woods' Golden Hour

Braun punched one of his gloved hands into the other and grinned at Dieter. “Now, where were we?”

Twenty minutes later, Teddy wasin Mark Weldon’s suite with Stone and Vesna, whom he had just introduced, whenhe received a phone call. He took it in the other room and then rejoined his friends after he was done.

“That was Constance Mueller from the festival,” he said.

“And?” Stone asked.

“Braun took the bait,” Teddy said.

“Then I guess we have no choice but to go through with this, yes?” Vesna said.

“You took the words right out of my mouth.”

43

On the opening day ofthe film festival, Jillian headed to work at seven a.m., after tossing and turning through her second night in a row.

It was thoughts of what Braun might do to Billy Barnett—if the producer turned out to actually be Teddy Fay—that kept her from any serious sleep. She knew it wouldn’t be good, just as she knew whatever he did to Barnett would be her fault. She was the one who pointed Braun in Barnett’s direction, after all.

She’d been so excited when she solved the difficult puzzle that connected Billy Barnett and Teddy Fay. It was a shot of dopamine straight into her brain.

Unfortunately, Lawrence had walked into her office before she had time to think about the consequences of what she’d discovered, and he had wanted to know why she was so happy.

“I found him!” she’d blurted out, then proceeded to show him what she’d learned.

It wasn’t until he said they needed to tell Braun right away that she realized her mistake.

Today, as she rode the train, she tried to think of something she could do to try to remedy the situation that wouldn’t get her killed. By the time she reached her stop, she had a plan.

When she arrived at her office, she closed the door and woke up her monitor. Using the encryption key Lawrence had given her, she accessed the message inbox.

In addition to the folder that held the messages she had been given access to were several others that were password protected. This would have stymied most people, but Jillian was not most people. The best researchers were also hackers, and she was one of the best of the best.

Within thirty minutes, she had access to all the other folders. There were hundreds of messages from multiple sources.

She performed a keyword search using the name “Teddy Fay” and received hits on a dozen messages. Four of those messages were ones she’d already had access, too, and concerned the rumors of him still being alive.

Interestingly, the remaining eight messages all came from the same source.

She clicked through the messages. Several had documents attached. She opened these.

All were official CIA documents. Most were career summaries of the same people who were on Braun’s list.

The only one that wasn’t a summary turned out to be the mission report for an operation called Golden Hour. She’d heard the name before. Braun had said it to Lawrence the day she’d been brought up to Braun’s office to meet him.

Within the document was a list of the mission participants. It was a match to Braun’s list.

She grinned. These messages were what she’d been hoping to find.

She rolled her head from side to side, rubbed her hands together, then began trying to see if she could trace the messages back to their sender.

Two hours later, she leaned back, triumphant. The sender had not been quite as careful as he thought he had been. Most of the messages were untraceable. Two, however, had been sent from a personal computer belonging to one Richard Pearson. Ironically, both messages were ones questioning when payment would be received.

Breaking into the CIA network took another hour. Once in, she checked if there were any Richard Pearsons working for the Agency. Turns out there were two. One was on the janitorial staff, while the other was a senior analyst specializing in European matters.

“You’ve been a very bad man, Mr. Pearson,” she said.

Jillian decided the best person to contact with what she’d learned would be the person at the top—the CIA’s director, Lance Cabot.

---