Chapter 75: The Chip's Whereabouts
Simon found Casey in the break room at the start of his afternoon shift, coffee in hand, looking at nothing in particular with the focused calm of a man running calculations.
"How's Sarah?" Simon said.
"Mild concussion. She's fine."
"Hayes?"
"Still missing. We've flagged all his cards — the moment he uses anything traceable, we'll have a location." Casey looked at him. "You have something."
"My racing contacts have been keeping eyes on the area near Union Station. There's a yellow Lamborghini that's been parked there for two days. It's not the kind of car that sits quietly without a reason." Simon settled onto the counter edge. "If Hayes ran, he'd need something with range. That car fits."
"Bartowski."
Chuck was at the break room door, moving with the compressed energy of someone carrying news.
Casey looked at him. "You found Hayes."
"I found Hayes," Chuck said. He looked moderately pleased with himself, which was an unusual enough state that both Simon and Casey gave it appropriate weight.
"How," Casey said.
"The method is less important than the result," Chuck said. "The important thing is I've opened a negotiation channel. He's willing to hand over the chip."
"His terms?"
Chuck's expression settled into the careful neutrality of someone about to say something he knew would land badly. "Three things. First, he only deals with me. Second, full immunity — whatever the government's case against him, it goes away." He paused. "Third—"
"Third," Casey said.
"Four and a half million dollars. Small bills. Unmarked."
Simon let out a slow breath. "That's four and a half million dollars, Chuck."
"I'm aware of the number."
"I agree," Casey said.
Simon looked at him. "You're agreeing to four and a half million dollars."
"I'm agreeing to the framework of the negotiation," Casey said, with the specific economy of a man who had no intention of honoring the financial component. He looked at Simon. "You're thinking the same thing I am."
"We give him a bag," Simon said. "Do the deal. Get the chip. Take the bag back."
"Exactly."
"That's fraud," Chuck said. "I gave him my word."
"You gave him a number," Casey said. "The word comes after the chip changes hands and before the bag leaves the room."
Chuck looked between them. "I want it on record that I'm uncomfortable with this."
"Noted," Simon said. "And irrelevant."
Casey returned an hour later with a wheeled travel bag.
Simon looked at it. Then at Casey.
"That's not four and a half million," Simon said.
"Ninety thousand," Casey said.
"We're walking into a transaction for four and a half million dollars with ninety thousand dollars in a bag."
"Correct."
"And you think Hayes won't notice."
"I think Hayes demanded small bills," Simon said, before Casey could answer. He ran the arithmetic: a hundred-dollar bill weighs about a gram, which meant four and a half million in hundreds would come in around forty-five kilograms. In small bills — fifties, twenties — the weight pushed past a hundred kilos, and the volume became significant. "He knows one person can't physically carry what he asked for. It's theater. He's not going to count it on a train platform."
Chuck looked at both of them. "Why do you both know that?"
"Personal experience," Simon said, which was true in ways he wasn't going to elaborate on.
"Mine too," Casey said, which Chuck appeared to decide not to examine further.
"So we're actually doing this," Chuck said.
"We're actually doing this," Casey confirmed. "Let's go."
Union Station at mid-afternoon had the ambient energy of a transit hub running at partial capacity — travelers, commuters, people waiting for things that would arrive eventually. The kind of space where an extra few people with purpose-built postures could move through without announcing themselves.
Simon found a seat with a newspaper and a sightline to the main hall's eastern approach. Casey took a position near the departures board. Bryce materialized near the coffee kiosk in the way Bryce materialized — with the unhurried inevitability of someone who had made an art form of arriving exactly when needed.
Hayes appeared twelve minutes in — white suit, the travel bag carried at his side, scanning the hall with the alert attention of a man who had been in difficult situations before and had survived them by paying close attention.
He spotted Chuck.
They moved toward each other, converging in the center of the concourse, and began the particular negotiation of two people trying to complete a simultaneous exchange without either of them taking the obvious risk of going first.
"Casey," Simon said into his earpiece. "This is going to take a while."
"I see it," Casey said. "Stand by."
Simon watched Chuck and Hayes spend four minutes discussing the mechanics of a handoff that should have taken thirty seconds. The specificity of trust negotiations in adversarial conditions was, he'd come to understand, genuinely complicated.
"Simon." Casey's voice, lower. "We have uninvited guests. Three of them, northwest approach. Clockwise spread."
Simon's eyes moved without his head moving. He found them — three men who had the same quality of controlled purpose that field operatives shared, wearing the specific kind of civilian clothes that tried to say nothing and succeeded in saying professional.
Not their side.
Hayes saw Chuck look past him. He turned.
Made one of the three.
"That's not my—" Chuck started, reaching toward Hayes.
Hayes was already moving. The bag went with him.
"Wonderful," Casey said, standing. "Everybody run."
The three pursuers broke into open movement. Casey, Simon, and Bryce converged on the same direction from different angles — the platform access, which was where Hayes had gone because the platforms offered the only path to the trains, and the trains offered the only path out of a building that had now become complicated.
They found the situation on Platform 7.
Hayes had reached the platform but hadn't gotten further — three armed men had cut him off at the far end, positioning themselves between Hayes and the nearest train. The chip was on a keychain at his belt. The bag was on his shoulder. He was standing very still with the particular stillness of someone who had run out of runway.
Simon, Casey, and Bryce came through the platform access door together.
"Weapons down," Casey said, loud enough to carry over the ambient noise of the station. His own weapon was already out. So was Simon's. So was Bryce's.
The three men turned. One of them settled on Simon as the geometry shifted.
"Someone paid us well to collect that chip," the man said. "I'd suggest you think about whether you're in a position to make that a problem."
"I'd suggest you think about whether the money's worth what happens next," Simon said. He kept his aim steady and his voice level. "Which is a harder calculation than it looks, because you're looking at three people and only one of you knows which one of us to worry about first."
The man's eyes moved — checking the line, reading the angles, doing the math.
Simon waited.
The math always took the same amount of time.
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