Free The Shadowmen by David Hagberg Page A

out of its slip. If anything, the evening was softer than it had been earlier, but busier. Monte-Carlo was coming alive; just about every person here was a millionaire.
    â€œI half expected him to join the game when the Arabs left,” McGarvey said, strolling slowly in the general direction of his hotel.
    â€œIf it was our man.”
    â€œYou said that you had something interesting on the woman.”
    â€œOn both of them, actually. The guy is traveling under the name Nance Kallinger, a bookshop owner in London’s West End. A small bookstore.”
    â€œNot the kind of a business that would make enough money to dress him in expensive clothes and bring him to Monaco.”
    â€œExactly, but it doesn’t prove much, because on the surface, the woman—her work name is Martine Barineau—is loaded. Her ex is a banker in Paris, and she cashed in when they divorced.”
    â€œWork name?”
    â€œYeah. Trouble is, I couldn’t find any direct evidence of her divorce or the settlement. Could have been sealed, for whatever reason, but I couldn’t find any traces of it. So I looked further, starting with the DGSE.” The Directorate General for External Security was France’s primary intelligence agency. “Nothing there, either—at least not on the divorce. But the name Martine Barineau shows up as a person of interest, but at low priority.”
    â€œShe’s not French?”
    â€œNo. DGSE thinks she’s British.”
    â€œMI6?”
    â€œPossibly.”
    â€œDo they have a name?”
    â€œNo, and she doesn’t show up on MI6’s mainframe under Barineau.”
    â€œOkay, assuming the French are right and she is a Brit, what is she doing here, and why do they give her a low priority? It makes no sense.”
    â€œMy darlings will keep on it. In the meantime, I’m looking at the Place du Casino webcam. They’re just entering Le Bar Americain . ” The bar was in McGarvey’s hotel.
    â€œBack up the image to when they came out of the casino,” McGarvey said.
    â€œWhat are we looking for?” Otto asked.
    â€œI’m not sure,” McGarvey said. He sat down on a park bench framed with bougainvillea in full flower. “Send it to my glasses.”
    A moment later, the images, taken from the webcams that showed at fifteen-second intervals everything going on in the Place 24-7, appeared in McGarvey’s glasses. The focus was at about twelve inches, the same distance for reading something on a printed page, yet the real world in front of him was also in clear focus.
    The man and woman came out of the casino and had a brief conversation before they headed away.
    â€œCan one of your programs read their lips?”
    â€œA second out of every fifteen,” Otto said. “Maybe come up with a word or a snatch of a word.”
    â€œGo ahead with the playback,” McGarvey said.
    A young couple passed, arm in arm, laughing, completely unaware of someone dressed in a tuxedo sitting on a bench in the middle of the night apparently talking to himself.
    At one point, the man made a call on a cell phone.
    â€œThat was three minutes ago,” Otto said. “I’m on it.”
    The woman said something to him, but they continued walking, and a minute and a half later, the man pocketed the phone.
    â€œIt’s the new quantum effects encryption algorithm that just showed up about two months ago. I’m making progress with it, but we not there yet.”
    â€œWhose is it?”
    â€œThe Russians’.”
    â€œBingo,” McGarvey said. “That’s just too big a coincidence for him not to be our guy.”
    â€œQuestion is, who did he call, and why?” Otto said. “And what the hell is he doing with a British woman operating under a work name?”
    â€œSomething I’m going to ask them,” McGarvey said.

13
    A black S-Class Mercedes pulled up across the road from where McGarvey