Page 21 of The ARC Unit: Breach

Raven shrugged. “I have eyes.”

Hearing somebody else say it took enough sting out of the exchange that I could work again.

I pulled the Romania imagery closer. “Go farther back.”

“How far?”

“Everything.”

“Mia.”

“The asshole wants proof.”

Raven smiled. “Right.”

Spite was probably not an approved intelligence methodology, but it turned out to be remarkably effective.

I started with Romania because that was where my original question had begun, but the earliest imagery was inconsistent and came from cameras whose coverage changed too often to give me much. Prague produced hundreds of photographs of people entering and leaving the courier’s hotel, most of whom had nothing to do with Cerberus and seemed determined to demonstrate how many nearly identical dark coats could exist in one European city.

Budapest was cleaner.

French intelligence had identified the farmhouse before ARC ever saw it and collected several days of imagery while trying to determine whether one of Kade’s suspected intermediaries was using the property. The earliest package showed the house from a distance, with two outbuildings and several vehicles parked along the side. I opened the first photograph.

May 15.

The next was May 16.

Different cars.

I kept moving.

On May 17, a blue Skoda appeared near one of the outbuildings. Nothing about it looked remarkable enough to deserve attention. It was the kind of car nobody remembered seeing because half of Europe seemed to own something similar. I almost moved past it but the spacing on the rear plate made me stop.

I squinted and enlarged the image.

“Raven.”

He rolled his chair closer. “What?”

“Can you sharpen that?”

“Within reason.”

“That’s a disappointing answer.”

“Television has lied to you.”

He worked with the original image rather than my enlarged copy and recovered enough of the registration to make out most of it.

I wrote it down.

Then I went back to Prague.

Raven watched over my shoulder for a while before returning to his own screen, allowing me to move through the hotel photographs without commentary. Near the end of the second day’s surveillance, a blue Volkswagen appeared across the street. Different model but the same general color. I enlarged this one as far as it could go and captured a partial plate.

My pulse changed.

“Raven.”