My watch had crawled past 2:00 P.M., and we’d had the footage for over sixteen hours. The Taskforce had done what they could with it, starting with the usual IP addresses and other computer linkages. It had produced nothing, the kidnappers masking their computer trail well, using temporary ISPs and the Tor network. Leaving the network associations behind, the Taskforce had looked at the image itself, and with what they’d found, we’d necked the location to five different hotels within a half-mile radius of the city center, but so far it hadn’t been enough.

Retro and Knuckles were at one more hotel, the last on our target deck, and the one least likely to prove any use. It was a budget number that barely registered above a hostel. It didn’t even have a website, so expecting it to have Internet was beyond the scope of wishing, but we were all holding our breath, waiting on Retro’s call. The one good thing was that I didn’t need to worry about Kurt Hale or Showboat calling instead, ordering me to leave.

Through voice analysis of his speech and accent, the Taskforce had concluded the captor was from the Caucasus—Georgia, Chechnya, Dagestan, or some other such place. Further, because of his stated affiliation to the Islamic State and his specific threats of beheading Shoshana, the analysts were speculating that he might be the mythical Chechen called Omar al-Khatami, the tactical genius behind the Islamic State’s ability to roll up most of Iraq and Syria. If it was him, the analysts were flabbergasted that he’d left the protection of the Islamic State, and felt it was a huge spike of something serious. That had been enough to turn off the war drums for the team going immediately to Venice. Nobody was sure if it was Omar, but it was enough to tip the balance. They had sent every photo they had of the man, some crisp and others grainy, showing a large fighter with ice-blue eyes and a lumberjack’s red beard, constantly adorned with grenades and weapons. Kurt had given me something better; another day to sort out whether he was here, in Tirana. After that, the Oversight Council figured Omar would be in the wind, and further searching would be a waste of time.

Left unsaid was the threat of Shoshana’s neck being ripped out by a bread knife. I could give a crap about the Chechen, but it got me twenty-four hours to find Shoshana, time that I was rapidly burning through like a drunk dropping quarters into a slot machine.

Initially, the Taskforce had made great strides toward necking down her location, impressing the hell out of me and almost making it seem easy. After working such issues in the past, I should have known it wouldn’t be. The American James Foley was testament to that. In 2014, US intelligence had identified what they thought was hard data on his location. Special Operations forces had launched a daring nighttime raid into the heart of the Islamic State in Syria, and found a dry hole. Foley was beheaded shortly thereafter.

In our case, the Taskforce, after the hyperventilating and jumping up and down over Omar, had dissected the video almost at the ones-and-zeros level, and they’d sent us a pretty impressive list of forty different points. Some speculation, some facts. Most were worthless, but three were critical.

They identified a noise in the background. After isolating it from all other sound, they determined it was a clock tower, and that it was tolling 9:00 P.M. Nine from the gongs, and P.M. because a cycle of darkness hadn’t yet happened.

They used image extrapolation to identify an object in the shadows. It was the corner of a laptop, and it had an Ethernet cord coming out.

They’d seen the edge of a map coming out of the Chechen’s pocket, and, after magnification, had identified Cyrillic writing along the top. They’d used digital manipulation and a proprietary predictive algorithm to create their best guess of what the writing said: Justin’s Place.

We put the information to immediate use. Knowing that the firefight had happened right at dusk, it meant the Chechen had had less than an hour to take Shoshana and hole up somewhere, which indicated he was still inside Tirana.

Brett had identified the only clock tower in the city, a once-derelict brick structure that had been restored in 2010 and was now competing in stature with the minaret of a mosque next door. Using that as a focal point, we’d drawn a half-mile radius around it, then identified all hotels, motels, and hostels within that circle. We had about twenty. Way too many.

We’d immediately focused on those with any variation of the name Justin in the title, and had come up completely empty. Truthfully, that piece had been a bit of a guess on the Taskforce’s part, so I wasn’t surprised, but Aaron—having expected more—had not taken it well.

Disgusted, he’d cursed under his breath and stomped to the bathroom, growing more and more impatient. I wasn’t looking forward to what would happen when he reached the end. I could only imagine the pain he was feeling because he’d allowed his professional obligations to supersede his personal ones. At 9:00 last night, we were planning for the assault against Rashid. I wondered if he was second-guessing his decision, believing he’d placed too much faith in our ability to find Shoshana.

It hadn’t helped things when the video showed the Chechen demanding Israel back off of the Islamic State. Somehow, they’d figured out Shoshana’s nationality, and it might have just been the usual blustering, but if they did know, it didn’t take much to imagine what they’d done for the information. I’d let Aaron go, returning to the list of forty points from the Taskforce.

Studying it, Retro had found the remark about the laptop with Ethernet, which had set up our next step. We refined the search, seeking out all potential hotels that had Internet. In Tirana, it wouldn’t be a large list. We’d come up with four. A manageable number.

Between the Taskforce analysis and our own work, we had burned through most of the night. At 8:00 A.M. I’d sent Retro and Knuckles to the first hotel, dragging along a healthy hacking package. They’d gone in and, with the help of the Taskforce computer network operations center, had flayed open the system, looking for a computer with the telltale vestiges of the YouTube video. And had come up empty again.

They’d taken about five hours going from hotel to hotel, and had found nothing. They’d come back to the Sheraton bleary-eyed and aggravated, primarily because we weren’t sure that they hadn’t been to the right hotel, only to have the suspect computer air-gapped from the Internet when they probed, or turned off.

We were war-gaming a second line of attack when Jennifer had entered, interrupting us. Retro was banging away on Google Maps, Knuckles, Aaron, and I looking over his shoulder while Brett talked to the intel geeks in the rear. Jennifer said, “Pike, I think I’ve got something.”

I held up a finger, still staring at the screen. She leaned past me and said, “Retro, search for any hotels near the Tirana castle. It’s inside the envelope of the clock tower.”

I started to snap at her, the lack of sleep shortening my temper. Aaron took one look at Jennifer and said, “Listen to her. Do it.” He was searching for a miracle, wanting to see Shoshana’s unique abilities in Jennifer. He would believe anything at this point, and I didn’t have the courage to disagree. I nodded, and Retro began typing.

He found one hotel, called the Kalaja, built right into an old wall left from centuries ago, the last vestige of the castle that had once stood there. The hotel had some reviews on various travel sites—none very flattering—but didn’t have a website of its own, which didn’t leave much hope for them having Internet, a cut line given the information we had. I said, “Why are we wasting time on this?”

She said, “Something about the name Justin was sticking in my head.”