said, “maybe I’ll call you.”
“Didn’t I give you one already?” Ferguson asked.
She cocked her hand slightly, gesturing that if he had, she had lost it. Ferguson pulled one from his pocket.
“Call me,” he said, sliding her the card. “It’s a service. But they’ll get in touch.”
She took the card and smiled, then got in the cab. Ferguson gave it a friendly pat as it left—placing a small global positioning device on its rear fender to make it easier to follow.
~ * ~
12
CIA BUILDING 24-442
Thomas Ciello paced back and forth in his small office on the second floor of Building 24-442. It was a relatively large office—thirteen paces by eleven and a quarter paces—and he had arranged the furniture so that he could stride in more or less a straight line. Building 24-442 was primarily located underground, so being on the second floor meant he had no windows. But this wasn’t a drawback as far as Thomas Ciello was concerned. On the contrary. The very blankness of the walls helped him focus.
Thomas Ciello was the chief analyst for Special Demands, a somewhat nebulous job title that matched his somewhat nebulous job description. In theory, he liaisoned between the team and the CIA’s “regular” research and analysis side, digging up background and other information necessary for missions. The reality was considerably more complicated, as Ciello often found himself gathering information on his own, through whatever source he could think of.
But analysts liked to say that the problem wasn’t so much obtaining information as making sense of it. Ciello was living that saying right now, as he tried to puzzle out what Arna Kerr’s work in Bologna meant.
She’d left vehicles and taken rooms in several parts of the center city; obviously T Rex’s target was there. Most interestingly, she’d taken measurements of three public squares in the city of Bologna. From what the First Team had reported, she had documented the distances between the buildings as well as their heights.
Why?
A sniper would want to know distances. But Ciello thought it was unlikely a sniper would plan an assassination in the public squares; the buildings that surrounded them were mostly open to the public, which meant there would be a lot of people who might see him coming in and out. It would certainly be possible—Ciello had to admit that T Rex might know much more about the buildings and the business of assassination than he did—but he thought it unlikely.
Besides the public squares, Arna Kerr had visited three university school buildings, math, computer science, and the Art School Annex, a temporary building being used while the main art buildings were renovated. None of them seemed likely to attract the sort of high-profile victim T Rex was generally hired to target.
After a search of their faculty and student lists failed to turn up anything interesting, Ciello had set out to compile a list of conferences and lectures they were hosting. Getting information on the mathematics school was easy; it posted a calendar online. But the public lectures it listed weren’t exactly major hints: “The Evolution of Euclid” and “String Theory” were the highlights. “Computer Science” was equally esoteric; the focus seemed to be on graphic compression routines and video. The Art School Annex listed no guest lectures or conferences until after the Christmas break, when “Fresh Thoughts on Medieval Brushstroke Techniques” would start the new year off with a bang.
Ciello put his thought process on hold and lay down on the floor. The ceiling tiles had a very interesting pattern. Probably they involved a code, but not being a cryptologist, he couldn’t decipher it.
That wasn’t an excuse, though, was it? Cryptologists were just mathematicians, and everyone knew mathematicians were crazy.
“Thomas, what are you doing?”
Ciello looked up and saw
“Didn’t I give you one already?” Ferguson asked.
She cocked her hand slightly, gesturing that if he had, she had lost it. Ferguson pulled one from his pocket.
“Call me,” he said, sliding her the card. “It’s a service. But they’ll get in touch.”
She took the card and smiled, then got in the cab. Ferguson gave it a friendly pat as it left—placing a small global positioning device on its rear fender to make it easier to follow.
~ * ~
12
CIA BUILDING 24-442
Thomas Ciello paced back and forth in his small office on the second floor of Building 24-442. It was a relatively large office—thirteen paces by eleven and a quarter paces—and he had arranged the furniture so that he could stride in more or less a straight line. Building 24-442 was primarily located underground, so being on the second floor meant he had no windows. But this wasn’t a drawback as far as Thomas Ciello was concerned. On the contrary. The very blankness of the walls helped him focus.
Thomas Ciello was the chief analyst for Special Demands, a somewhat nebulous job title that matched his somewhat nebulous job description. In theory, he liaisoned between the team and the CIA’s “regular” research and analysis side, digging up background and other information necessary for missions. The reality was considerably more complicated, as Ciello often found himself gathering information on his own, through whatever source he could think of.
But analysts liked to say that the problem wasn’t so much obtaining information as making sense of it. Ciello was living that saying right now, as he tried to puzzle out what Arna Kerr’s work in Bologna meant.
She’d left vehicles and taken rooms in several parts of the center city; obviously T Rex’s target was there. Most interestingly, she’d taken measurements of three public squares in the city of Bologna. From what the First Team had reported, she had documented the distances between the buildings as well as their heights.
Why?
A sniper would want to know distances. But Ciello thought it was unlikely a sniper would plan an assassination in the public squares; the buildings that surrounded them were mostly open to the public, which meant there would be a lot of people who might see him coming in and out. It would certainly be possible—Ciello had to admit that T Rex might know much more about the buildings and the business of assassination than he did—but he thought it unlikely.
Besides the public squares, Arna Kerr had visited three university school buildings, math, computer science, and the Art School Annex, a temporary building being used while the main art buildings were renovated. None of them seemed likely to attract the sort of high-profile victim T Rex was generally hired to target.
After a search of their faculty and student lists failed to turn up anything interesting, Ciello had set out to compile a list of conferences and lectures they were hosting. Getting information on the mathematics school was easy; it posted a calendar online. But the public lectures it listed weren’t exactly major hints: “The Evolution of Euclid” and “String Theory” were the highlights. “Computer Science” was equally esoteric; the focus seemed to be on graphic compression routines and video. The Art School Annex listed no guest lectures or conferences until after the Christmas break, when “Fresh Thoughts on Medieval Brushstroke Techniques” would start the new year off with a bang.
Ciello put his thought process on hold and lay down on the floor. The ceiling tiles had a very interesting pattern. Probably they involved a code, but not being a cryptologist, he couldn’t decipher it.
That wasn’t an excuse, though, was it? Cryptologists were just mathematicians, and everyone knew mathematicians were crazy.
“Thomas, what are you doing?”
Ciello looked up and saw
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