Daylight (Atlee Pine #3)(87)

Not many people could get into this building, and even fewer into this room.

Robert Puller was obviously one of them.

He had created algorithms—five of them, in fact—and unleashed them on all the databases at his disposal, which were some of the most exclusive ones in the world. He had also sent his search formulas, like charging armies, into every other database he could think of.

He sipped on a Coke and let both the carbonation and the sugar wash over him. He had been at this for a while now. It was something he was used to doing, but not for the purposes for which he was now doing it.

He stretched, stood, and did some light calisthenics. Though not yet forty, sometimes he felt twice that age. The pressure of his job, plus the countless hours bent over a computer, did not equate to a healthy posture.

His phone buzzed and he frowned. It was his brother.

He said, “What the hell are you doing using your phone?”

“I promised the nurse to be off in under a minute and she told me in no uncertain terms that she was coming to check, so talk fast. Anything yet?”

“If I had I would have contacted you. Now turn the phone off and go to sleep.”

“I got a text from Carol Blum a little while ago. She’s watching a building right now.”

“Why would she text you?”

“She said she wanted to keep me in the loop.”

“Why is she watching the building?”

“Because our shooter is in there.”

“Shooter?”

“The guy impersonating a cop who killed Jerome Blake. His real name is Adam Gorman. He’s head of security for a congresswoman named Nora Franklin.”

“Nora?”

“You know her?”

“Just in her official capacity. She’s the ranking member on Ways and Means. I’ve testified before that committee.”

“What’s your call on her?”

“Smart, dedicated, committed, patriotic.”

“Which begs the question of why she’s got a murderer as head of security. Can you dig up what you can on Gorman? Pine apparently did a fast and dirty, but we need more.”

“Okay. And where is Pine?”

“In her text Carol said Pine’s in Manasquan, New Jersey. She got a line on Tony Vincenzo and is running it down.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can find while I’m waiting for my algorithms to do their thing. Now, your sixty seconds are up.”

“I know, Nurse Ratched just stormed into my room with duct tape.”

The line went dead.

Robert Puller turned back to his computer screen and typed in a search on Adam Gorman. He didn’t expect to find much. The man would have been thoroughly vetted before landing a position with a congressperson. But background checks had been known to miss things. And the government had grown lax with doing them and allowed a backlog to accumulate. So maybe there was something useful that had slipped through.

His first search brought up the basics. Name, rank, and serial number. Puller did think it odd that the man had been a member of the intelligence services for another country before coming here. It was true that Austria wasn’t exactly Russia, China, or Iran. It was a member of both the UN and the EU. A federal republic with a parliamentary-style government, Austria had proclaimed itself politically permanently neutral back in 1955. They obviously did not want a repeat of the Third Reich.

However, a country wasn’t a person, and who knew where Gorman’s true allegiances lay?

He did another search, read over the results, and then noticed something curious buried in the timeline background info on Gorman. He made a phone call to someone he knew in the State Department.

“Hey, Don, it’s Robert Puller. Yeah, it’s been a while. Look, I’ve been doing some digging on something and an issue popped up that I think you might be able to help me with.”

Puller proceeded to tell him about Gorman and the possible issue he had found. His friend told Puller he would look into it and get back to him.

Then Puller turned his attention to the other person: Nora Franklin.

Accessing both databases available to the public and those available only to a handful of people like him, Puller quickly accumulated what looked to be significant material. Taken alone, none of it added up to much. But when it was all put together, Puller sensed something that was important. He sensed a pattern.

Later, his phone buzzed. It was his friend, Don.

“Got what you wanted. It was a six-month period. Best as I can tell Gorman went back to Austria for a sabbatical.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But passport control records don’t indicate that.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Don. “That puzzled me, too.”

“And the airline he flew on after he got overseas was curious as well.”

“Right, it’s a sub of Aeroflot. Is this something we should focus on?”

Puller said, “I’ll let you know the answer to that as soon as I can.”

He clicked off and went back to the search on Franklin. He was looking at two things: financial disclosures and travel, going back fifteen years.

The financial disclosure forms required by the government were, to his mind, a joke. Everything could be placed into ranges. One million to fifty million. Assets could be hidden behind shell companies, or in relatives’ names to avoid having to disclose. There were a million different dodges, and Puller had found that the politicians with the most money and assets worked very hard to hide their wealth. For electability reasons, they would much prefer to have the image of just being ordinary folks working for a living.