Free Unforgettable - eARC by Eric James Stone Page B

we’ve done that, we’ll see what we can do about shutting it down, at which point he would be free. Okay?”
    I reluctantly agreed. Rezaei had seemed like a nice guy caught up in a bad situation, and I felt a little guilty for not helping him out.
    “What about your secondary mission, finding the thief who stole the InterQuan prototype?”
    “No luck,” I said. “I haven’t spotted her.”
    Edward sighed. “Okay. Come back for debriefing and we’ll see if you can ID her.”
    * * *
    After about fifteen minutes of sitting in Edward’s office scrolling through pictures, I saw her face. “This one,” I said, handing the tablet over to him.
    He tapped the touchscreen to bring up more info. “Her name is Yelena Semyonova.” He went silent as he read more.
    I watched him, moving restlessly in my seat just to make sure he wouldn’t forget I was there.
    “She probably drove to Paris,” Edward said, “because she took a flight to Kiev out of Charles de Gaulle yesterday.”
    “So she gave me her real first name?” I asked. “That wasn’t very professional.” I did it all the time, but that didn’t matter because nobody remembered. I wanted her to be a professional, because being taken down like that by an amateur made me feel stupid.
    “Hmm.” With arthritic fingers, Edward tapped the tablet. “We’ve got kind of a good news/bad news scenario here. The good news is she’s not with the Russian SVR.”
    “Ukrainian?” If so, I felt a bit better about letting her get away with the prototype, as the current Ukrainian government was pro-American.
    “No. She used to be in the SVR, but she quit eleven months ago. The bad news is that we suspect she now works for one of the Russian syndicates.”
    I winced. “I should have anticipated she would—”
    “Everyone makes mistakes, son,” Edward said. “But there’s more bad news: the syndicate she works for has been hired by this man.” He handed over the tablet, which showed a photo of a bald, morbidly obese man. I recognized him before Edward continued, “Kazem Jamshidi. Iranian citizen, made most of his billions in oil.”
    “Yeah, I’ve even met him,” I said. “I hacked his computer in London and found out he was working on a quantum supercomputer.”
    Edward raised his eyebrows. “You’re the one who got that intel? That’s caused a bit of ruckus around here—especially since Jamshidi returned to Iran last week and then we lost track of him. Anyway, we used to think he was relatively harmless, just trying to make Iran into the Silicon Valley of quantum computing so they’ll have something to export when the oil runs out. But it turns out he’s got a top-notch quantum physicist working for him. Guy by the name of Parham Rezaei—he’s Iranian, too.”
    “Yes, I met him in Rome—I’m the one who confirmed he was working for Jamshidi. The report I gave you should be in your folder there somewhere. He gave me a note that said he was being forced to work against his will.”
    “Really?” Edward blinked a couple of times. “I figured Jamshidi recruited him through Iranian patriotism.”
    “Maybe at first,” I said. “But not anymore.”
    Edward scratched his nose. “Anyway, from what we can tell, Jamshidi’s trying to build a quantum supercomputer to precisely predict the future. That has strategic implications we’re still trying to figure out, but for one thing he could easily become the richest man in the world just buying and selling stocks at the right time. And that’s the most benign scenario.”
    “And he’s hired the Russian mafia to steal technology to help build it?” I asked.
    “Not just steal. They’ve kidnapped quantum physicists and engineers from around the globe—although they’ve steered clear of Americans and Western Europeans, probably to avoid riling us up. We’re pretty sure they’ve assassinated key people in the industry, too.”
    “So,” I said, “how do we stop him?”
    Edward grinned at me.