The Destroyed Read Online Free PDF Page B

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