Brett Battles - The Destroyed

Mila picked up her coffee cup. At most it had two sips left. She took the first, thought Screw it, and drank it all. The last thing she wanted was for people to remember her, something that was probably too late in the case of the waitress. She put enough kronor on the table to cover the check and an appropriate tip, then left.

The place she was surveilling was three blocks away, a four-story building divided into three apartments-one on the ground floor, one on the floor above it, and the third taking up the top two. That top apartment was the one she was interested in.

The man who lived there was named Mats Hagen. He was a freelance tech, who, for a sizeable fee, could obtain almost any information a client might ask for as long as it was on a computer somewhere. When Mila had known him several years earlier, he’d been fairly new to the scene. He took on work wherever he could get it, meaning he was on the road most of the time. Since then, he’d apparently established a reputation that now allowed him to do most jobs from home.

After the fiasco in Tanzania, Mila had spent a sleepless night trying to figure out what her next move should be. If only she had been able to talk to Rosen. If she was wrong, she could fade back into her assumed life. If her fears were true, she would have to do something about it. But with Rosen no longer an option, she had to find someone else she could approach.

She did have the name of one of the other guards who’d been on the flight, but she’d already looked into him and discovered he’d moved up in the world in the years since, and would be extremely difficult to get close to.

She needed to find someone more accessible, which meant obtaining access to information she would normally be unable to get her hands on. That’s when Hagen came to mind. She had never been a big fan of his. He always looked at her in a way that made her feel extremely uncomfortable. Once he’d even tried to put a hand on her ass, but she put a quick stop to that, and he never touched her again. All this made him the perfect candidate for what she needed.

She had caught the first available flight going north. After stops in Athens and Frankfurt, she landed in Oslo, Norway. From there, she took the high-speed train across the Norwegian/Swedish border to Stockholm, where she had now been for three days.

If Hagen stuck to the habits she’d observed previously, he would leave his place for a two-hour lunch at any moment. In fact, he was running late. That worried her. Maybe he wouldn’t go out at all today. She could, of course, delay her plans, but she already felt like she’d been in Sweden too long, and the sooner she could get out of the country, the safer she’d be.

Her phone vibrated once, an alarm she’d created that was triggered by the motion sensor built into the video program. She glanced at the screen and saw that the door to the apartment building was open. Mats Hagen was stepping outside.

Finally.

As soon as she knew which way he was going, she altered her course, and less than a minute later was walking about two dozen feet behind him. As usual, he headed for the T-Bana station-Stockholm’s subway-only a few minutes’ walk from his front door.

She descended into the station a few seconds after him, used the seventy-two-hour pass she’d bought her first day there, and took up a position at the far end of the platform from where he waited. A train arrived three minutes later. She remained where she was as Hagen got on and the doors closed. Once the train started to speed away, she returned to the street.

She knew from the beginning that breaking into his place would not be easy. He was a pro, after all, and one who had more than a passing familiarity with technology. But even pros had weaknesses, especially geeky ones with obvious money to burn. Hagen’s weakness was named Eva Stahl.

Mila had uncovered the woman while researching Hagen as she’d been waiting in the airport before leaving Dar es Salaam. The first night in Stockholm she confirmed Hagen’s relationship with Eva. Knowing today would be the day she made her move, she had paid the woman a visit twelve hours earlier.

Getting into Eva’s apartment had been a snap. Mila moved quickly through the flat to the bedroom where she found the woman deep asleep. A quick blast of a gaseous anesthetic ensured she’d stay that way for at least a few minutes longer. Then it was a simple matter of administering the shot at the back of the woman’s knee where she’d never notice the mark.

Mila gave the drug five minutes, then tapped Eva on her cheeks until she opened her eyes. The drug had three effects: it removed any resistance to answering questions; the recipient would remember the episode as no more than a fading dream, if at all; and the unlucky person would feel ill for the next twelve hours, and more than likely spend the day in bed.

It took Mila less than three minutes to learn what she needed to know. She left the woman’s apartment with the two keys and the security codes she would need to get into Hagen’s place.

Now, as she approached his building, she donned a wide-brimmed hat that had been in her bag, a pair of sunglasses, and thin rubber gloves. Though she hadn’t been able to spot it, she knew that Hagen would have installed a security camera somewhere out front. What she really wished she had was a disrupter that would scramble the camera’s signal, but she’d been unable to get her hands on one. The disguise would have to do.

Keeping her head down, she walked up to the front door, punched one of the codes Eva had given her, and entered. There were three doors in the small lobby: two in front of her, and one to the right. The one on the right led to the ground-floor apartment. The other two opened onto private staircases, one leading to the second-floor residence, and one to Hagen’s place. According to Eva, his door was the one on the left.

She found the hidden keypad, input the appropriate code, and entered. The staircase doubled back twice before reaching another door at the top. A third code plus the use of the keys and she was in.

As soon as she saw the place, she rolled her eyes. No way Hagen had done the decorating. She distinctly remembered him having no sense of style. His apartment looked like it had jumped out of a featured article in Kick-Ass Homes Monthly — metal and leather and wood and granite all blended together by someone who knew what they were doing. It was a guy’s place, though not too “guy,” the kind of apartment someone like Hagen probably thought would surely get him laid. Given his relationship with Eva, it had apparently worked.

Mila did a quick search through all the third-floor rooms, already knowing there was nothing on this level that interested her. What she wanted was in his private office, one floor up. The stairs were tucked out of sight behind a faux wall between the living room and the guest bedroom. The keypad where the final code needed to be entered was located behind a small panel in the hallway closet. Mila punched in the sequence, and went up the stairs.

Apparently, the designer who’d done the living space below had not been allowed to touch the upper floor. The space was one large room that extended the length and width of the building. One wall was covered with metal shelving units filled with computer parts-some small, some whole systems stretching back God only knew how long in computer history. At the front end of the room was a workbench, with all the tools and accessories necessary to build pretty much anything electronic Hagen might need.

Scattered throughout the space were several desks, each with a different type of computer on it. Piles of magazines, files, and manuals were spread across the floor. She counted three trashcans filled to the brim with empty Coke cans and food wrappers. Tucked in the back corner beside the stairs was a low-slung couch and a television monitor hooked up to every type of gaming console imaginable.