both sides to see if there was another way in that was open. There wasn’t. When he came back around to the front, Hoffman was there with four officers, none of whom had any breaching tools.
Speaking to the nearest cop, Harvath said, “Give me your ASP.”
The officer complied, and with a snap of his wrist Harvath extended the collapsible baton. Turning his head to the side, he swung hard and shattered the glass in the right front door.
He reached inside, unlocked it, and pulling both doors wide open, kicked down their rubber-capped stops.
Pointing at the handcarts arrayed on one wall of the lobby, he gave instructions. “I want every file cabinet out of here as quickly as possible.”
As the cops rushed for the handcarts, Harvath said to Hoffman, “You and I will grab the computers and any DVRs they may be using to store security footage.”
Hoffman nodded and the pair charged inside.
Beyond the lobby with its front desk and packing supply area was the office. It was a mess. There were papers everywhere. None of the cops knew where to start. Harvath told them to take all of it. A suspicious black Navigator, a massive explosion, and a missing police officer. Deng had been here. And he had been here for a reason. Harvath wanted to know why, and he hoped that something in the paperwork would tell him.
Despite the heat and the danger of the rapidly encroaching fire, the officers removed stacks of documents, file cabinets, and boxes filled with even more files. While Hoffman pulled out the computers and spirited them to safety, Harvath located the storage facility’s DVR.
When everything that could be removed had been removed, Harvath took one last look inside. He sifted through desk drawers and cabinets looking for external drives, or any other items that they might have overlooked. Satisfied that he had gotten it all, he used his empty hands to carry out as many of the owners’ personal effects as possible. Despite the best efforts of the firemen, the fire was still spreading and the office wasn’t going to make it.
Hoffman looked at the pile of everything they had managed to save. “What do you want to do with all of this?”
What Harvath wanted to do was to stick his hand into it and pull out exactly what he was looking for, but he knew he’d have a better chance of getting hit by lightning or winning the lottery.
Sorting through massive amounts of data, searching for patterns, wasn’t his forte. But he knew someone who was excellent at it.
Harvath looked at his watch. “I’m going to bring in a specialist.”
CHAPTER 41
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The man who stepped out of the Gulfstream G450 suffered from a condition known as Primordial Dwarfism. It was an extremely rare affliction, affecting fewer than one hundred people worldwide. What the man lacked in physical stature, though, he more than made up for in intelligence.
He was a genius when it came to algorithms, and he was a computer hacker par excellence. His friends called him Nicholas. His enemies, which included most of the international intelligence community, referred to him as the Troll.
Sold to a brothel by his soulless parents, he had been subjected to a monstrous upbringing. No child, much less one who wasn’t expected to reach three feet tall or live past thirty, should have to endure the inhuman cruelty he had experienced.
But Nicholas had survived. And what’s more, he had learned to thrive. His sharp mind was his greatest asset, and he had wielded it like a scalpel. Keeping his ears open and his mouth shut, he had picked up all sorts of information from the rich and powerful men who passed through the brothel. Once he understood that it wasn’t knowledge that was power, but the application of it, his life had completely changed.
Some called what he did blackmail. He, though, liked to think of it simply as leverage. As his power had grown, so had his bank account. He became a master at the purchase, sale, and theft of black market intelligence. Intelligence agencies hated him and the powerful feared him. He had come a long way from the brothel in Sochi along the Black Sea.
He had also come a long way from his cutthroat days of intelligence theft. He still plied the dark digital arts, but with his thirtieth birthday a decade behind him, he had longed for something more. A perpetual outcast his entire life, he had wanted to become part