Page 31 of Shadow of Doubt

As they sat quietly together in the crisp evening air, the scent of wood smoke curled from the chimney and hovered over the deck. Harvath, ever the mariner, tilted his head back and tried to identify the first stars in the night sky. From somewhere off in the trees, a pair of tawny owls called back and forth to each other as they readied to hunt.

“I know what I want to do,” Sølvi suddenly said, breaking the silence between them. “I want to make a deal.”

“With whom?” he asked.

“Holidae Hayes.”

The response took him by surprise. Of all the potential scenarios he had been running through his mind, that wasdefinitelynot one of them.

He looked at her. “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive,” she replied, pulling the blanket off and standing up. “But first, I need a favor. I want you to speak with Grechko.”

“Grechko?Why?”

“Because we’ll need his buy-in. And for that to happen, he’s going to have to trust you.”

CHAPTER 14

DGSI HEADQUARTERS

PARIS

“Kebab, falafel,andcouscous,” said Brunelle as she set the plastic bag filled with to-go containers on her colleague’s desk.

It was amazing to her that a man so slim could eat so much food and never put on an ounce of weight.

Mohammed Motii, or MoMo for short, was a digital forensic specialist for the DGSI’s Computer Analysis Response Team. CART’s job was to crack, extract, and preserve any and all digital evidence during DGSI computer investigations.

MoMo had agreed to keep on working on the key fob Brunelle had given him, in exchange for her going out in the rain and picking up dinner from the Moroccan restaurant around the corner.

“You didn’t let them forget my fries, did you?” he asked.

“They’re in the box with the falafel. And here’s your Fanta,” she replied, pulling the bottle from her bag, which contained her own dinner of chicken tagine. “Any luck with that flash drive yet?”

MoMo shook his head. “Whoever did the encryption on this thing, it’s first-class.”

“I’ll be in my office. Let me know when you break it.”

Eyes glued to his screens, MoMo gave her a thumbs-up and she continued down the hall.

In her office, Brunelle closed the door behind her, kicked off her shoes, and hung up her coat before sitting down at her desk. A muted TV on the wall, tuned to a 24/7 cable news channel, was showing scenes from Oslo.

Unwrapping the plastic utensils, she tore off a piece ofkhubzbread and tucked into her tagine as she checked her emails.

There was plenty of the bureaucratic nonsense that clogged her inbox on a daily basis, along with a reminder that she had a pistol and submachinegun requalification coming up, and an RSVP for a counterterrorism seminar in London. Buried at the very bottom was an update from Inspector Vincent Gibert. She opened it.

The email included his case notes thus far, a handful of witness statements, and links to the CCTV footage his officers had pulled from cameras around Jadot’s apartment building, which had been uploaded to the cloud.

According to a brief note Gibert had written, they were still working on getting access to the phone. If it was encrypted nearly as thoroughly as the flash drive, they were going to have their hands full. La Crim’s specialists were good, but none of them were at MoMo’s level.

As she ate, she scrolled through the witness statements. All of Jadot’s neighbors had been contacted, but none of them had seen or heard anything. The staff at Robert et Louise, the restaurant across the street, said that Jadot was a regular, and had come in last night for a nightcap, shortly before closing. There was nothing in his speech or his behavior to have given any of them cause for concern.

When he left, the barman remembered watching him cross the street in the rain and enter his building. He didn’t recall seeing anyone else follow him inside. Brunelle decided to check for herself.

Clicking on the link for the cameras with the best views of Jadot’s building, as well as the entrance to Robert et Louise, she toggled back and forth, fast-forwarding and rewinding until she had what she wanted.

She was able to pinpoint the exact moment Jadot arrived at the restaurant and the exact moment he left. The barman’s witness statement was correct. Judging by the CCTV footage, no one had followed Jadot into his building.

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