Sympathy For the Devil by Terrence McCauley Page A

Hicks’ face as he pulled the camera from the dead man’s hand before shutting it off.
    The footage didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know, but it told him something. Judging by the way the camera shook, the cameraman had been standing in the cold for a while. It also confirmed that these boys were amateurs. Pros would’ve had better equipment. They would’ve outfitted Colin with a small camera somewhere in his clothing. They would’ve picked a location where they could’ve seen Hicks without being spotted. They would’ve dressed warmer and had better clothes than cheap Jordan knockoffs. And they wouldn’t have been waiting to shoot him with a gun in their bare hand in a blizzard.
    The whole scene vibed desperation. It vibed panic. It vibed intent with no thought given to execution. These men were underfunded and undermanned and inexperienced as hell. Colin must’ve done something or saw something that scared them and now they were scrambling to protect whatever Colin had threatened.
    Hicks ran the serial number stamped on the bottom of the camera and found out it was made in China and bought at a Best Buy in Long Island City, Queens. A cash transaction over two years before. He tried to access the store’s surveillance camera footage from the time of the purchase, but it had been long since deleted.
    Hicks put his computer to work on the disk to analyze it for other images. Even if a file or image had been deleted or recorded over, the disk might show a trace of what had been on the disk before. And unless the camera had been sitting in a closet some place since it had been bought—or if the SD card was new—chances were good that there’d be something on that card he could use.
    While he watched the progress bar of the scan crawl from left to right, Hicks cut, then lit, a cigar: a Nat Sherman Timeless Churchill. It was a long smoke that would keep him focused and grounded while the technology did its job. Even with all of the gadgets and gizmos at the University’s disposal, the intelligence game was still a waiting game. A patient man’s game. Because intelligence involved human beings and, even in a high tech world, human beings were unpredictable. They moved at their own pace. Technology was a tool, but human beings decided how to use it.
    Hicks let out a long plume of bluish smoke and watched it drift up toward the air scrubber in the ceiling. The fan pulled the smoke from the room and the carbon filters scrubbed the air clean. He wondered what Jason would say if he saw him smoking a cigar in a University facility. He’d probably fire off a terse memorandum reminding him that smoking was prohibited in all University facilities.
    And Hicks would’ve politely reminded him this was technically not a University facility. After Holloway’s death, Hicks had built the New York office from the ground up through his own means. Extortion, blackmail, and good old fashioned thievery were all fair when assembling a vital intelligence network. He funded his New York Office much the same way. He’d broken an awful lot of laws and even more bones to build the New York office into the flagship of the modern University’s network. And although the Dean had given his approval, he’d given little else beside the hardware and remote access to OMNI to make it happen.
    Hicks wanted it that way. He’d never wanted to be just a clock watcher, some asshole who scribbled down bits of information he overheard and entered them into a database while he calculated his pension every month. He’d been trained to take the fight directly to the enemy and he couldn’t do that from behind a computer screen. He’d crafted his office to be the tip of the spear and he kept it very sharp. Sharp enough to cut anyone who got in front of it. Including people like Jason.
    To Hicks, the only thing more important than the University’s overall goal was protecting the New York Office. Whoever had turned Colin had also threatened