Page 110 of Secret Weapon

“What did you think?”

“Ford likes football.It’s still kinda growing on me, but he often has a game on TV, and last year, we were watching the Stanford Cardinal versus the Washington State Cougars.The Cougars have a cool mascot, a…well, obviously it’s a cougar.Makes sense, right?But the Cardinal have a tree.And there isn’t even a cardinal sitting in it.Anyhow, Ford said it’s not a cardinal bird that the name refers to, it’s the colour cardinal.And the tree started out as a joke, but then it stuck.”

“All very interesting, but what does that have to do with our missing device?”

“We dug up some pictures of Yuma Loslov, and in one of them, he’s wearing a Cardinal cap.The Cardinal are from Stanford.And when we entered that data into Providence, we found that Marat Timonenko studied for a master’s degree in international relations there.”

Providence was Blackwood’s data analysis program.Think Google on steroids with extra bells and whistles.Once you’d entered the information you had on a subject, it ferreted out more from the internet, from Blackwood’s internal databases, and from other sources we weren’t really meant to have access to, and then it worked to link all of those little snippets together.Mack was the architect, and she’d built the Taj Mahal of programs.

And now we had a possible connection between Yuma Loslov and a member of the consulate staff?

“The two of them are linked?”

Hallie shook her head again.“Loslov didn’t go to college in the US, plus he’s twenty years older than Timonenko, so we figured that maybe he had a kid who got educated here.But I guess not.”

“Loslov probably met his comrades in a bar in Tverskoy,” Ana muttered.“A deal done in a back room.”

Quite possibly, but a Cardinal hat?I’d have to ask Naz if he knew of a connection.He always came up with fascinating snippets of what he called intelligence and what any woman would call gossip.

“Yuma Loslov only had one kid?One wife?Every other fucker in politics seems to have a mistress.I mean, Joe Deaver’s hitting on Darya right in front of Alex.”

Ana grimaced.“And he’s still alive?”

“Apparently, she has more self-control than you do.”

“Is Deaver a politician?”Hallie asked.“I thought he was a businessman?”

“He hangs out with politicians.Bad habits are contagious.”

“What’s happening with Novak?”Black asked.

“Right now, we’re in a holding pattern.Deaver’s a problem, but it’s unclear if he’sourproblem.In the meantime, we carry on looking at everyone else.”

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