Charlie Thorne And The Last Equation

The roofs in the Old City are connected by bridges and public staircases that any pedestrian can use. Charlie and Milana run along the rooftops as a sniper shoots at them. They zigzag as they run but know they need to get off the roofs. Charlie sees an opportunity ahead and tells Milana to follow her.

Meanwhile, the sniper watches them run. He does not have sharpshooter training and does not have a rifle but a handgun. Still, his aim gets closer with each shot. He focuses on the girl, though he does not know who she is. He only knows that the CIA had been confused after the failure in Bern but suddenly seemed to know exactly where to go with the girl’s help. Therefore, she is his main target. He watches her zigzag, adjusts his aim, and shoots.

Dante blocks the stairs to cover Charlie and Milana’s escape. He knows he cannot fight all the Furies but hopes to keep them busy. Then the house grows quiet; the Furies leave. For a moment, he is relieved, and then he understands that they are chasing Charlie and Milana and runs after them.

Meanwhile, Charlie drops down through a gap in the rooftops just as a bullet whizzes over her head. She and Milana crash into a marketplace below. The Furies appear, and Milana fights one as Charlie evades another, using her surroundings to block and injure her attacker. They incapacitate three of the Furies and run again.

At CIA Headquarters, Carter cannot contact the agents in Jerusalem. Finally, her call reaches Bendavid, who has been dealing with the police. At the same time, an analyst connects to the safe house cameras. Though they cannot access the live feed, they access archived footage that shows a figure approach the safe house, type the correct access code, and enter the house. The figure then kills the agents inside the house and turns off the cameras. Carter realizes the safe house was compromised even before Rats and the others arrived.

Uncertain how the attacker knew the CIA access codes, Carter decides she cannot trust the agents there. She contacts a Mossad agent named Isaac Semel to check out the safe house. Carter wonders if Charlie might be involved. Though Charlie is only 12 years old, she could easily have hacked the CIA to gain access codes, names of agents, and other information.

Charlie and Milana hide in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City. Charlie fears Dante is dead, but Milana insists he is a good agent and will survive. Milana asks if Charlie really solved Einstein’s clue as she had told Alexei, but Charlie admits that was a lie. Then she bursts into tears, and Milana suddenly remembers how young she is. When Charlie calms down again, Milana asks Charlie to write down Einstein’s clue so they can send it to the CIA cryptographers. Charlie refuses, saying that they cannot trust the CIA. The only way the Furies found them at the safe house is if an agent betrayed them.

Charlie explains her reasoning. The terrorists did not break into the safe house but had the access codes and its exact location, meaning that someone had told them beforehand. Additionally, according to the files, there are only six Furies; however, if Marko was killed at the university, and all five remaining Furies were inside the safe house, the sniper on the rooftops must be a seventh unaccounted-for person.

Milana suggests the CIA team in Bern simply missed a member, but Charlie doubts it. That would not explain how they had the access codes. Milana explains that the safe house access codes had likely not been changed in months. Charlie asks who last used the safe house before them, and Milana realizes it was John Russo, the agent killed by the Furies in Bern.

Milana explains: John Russo was a talented undercover agent. He was sent to Bern as a bartender to gain the Furies’ trust. Pretending to have similar white supremacist ideologies, he tricked the Furies into recruiting him and joined them on their hunt for Pandora. However, he made a mistake and was caught. The Furies did not merely kill him but destroyed his body so that it was barely identifiable. Charlie suggests that it was not John’s body at all but someone they killed to fake his death and that John must be the corrupt agent working with the Furies.

John Russo showers in his hotel, having just returned from a meeting with Alexei. He is angry that the Furies allowed the CIA agents to survive, though at least they retrieved Einstein's clue. Alexei knew he was not smart enough to decipher it, so he gave it to John.

The Furies do not know that John is staying in a fancy hotel, but John feels he deserves luxury after the years he spent working undercover in “roach-infested hovels.” He enjoyed the undercover work at first, but over time, the constant assignments and new identities began to wear on him. One day, while working in Bern, he realized that he was more comfortable with this new identity. He remembered his “fake birth date, fake parents, fake memories” more easily than his real ones. Moreover, he feared returning to his life as “John Russo” and decided to team up with the Furies, though he does not agree with their ideology.

He revealed that he was a CIA agent and convinced them of his changed loyalties. While helping them search for Pandora in Bern, he discovered notes among Einstein’s possessions that revealed a secret code. No one else had ever noticed it. When they were ready to move, the Furies killed a man and dressed him in John’s clothes, and then they staged John’s discovery and death for CIA surveillance. 

While in Jerusalem, John watches the new CIA agents on the Pandora case. Though he knows Dante and Milana by reputation, he believes that Charlie is the real problem. Still, he is confident that he alone possesses Einstein’s clue and the key to deciphering it. He decodes the clue and knows where to find Pandora.

Mossad agent Isaac Semel calls Carter from the safe house where they have found several dead CIA agents. Bendavid is upset and throws up in the bathroom. Carter then concludes that her first instinct is correct: Charlie, Dante, and Milana are the ones who betrayed them. Just then, Milana calls headquarters to give an update, and Carter tracks the call. Carter tells Semel to arrest Milana and the others.

Still in the church, Charlie tries to work out Einstein’s clue while Milana calls her superiors to update them about their suspicion that John. Charlie is frustrated that she cannot solve the clue and fears that she has wasted her abilities and let them atrophy.

Milana approaches to see how Charlie is doing. Charlie laments that she cannot match wits with the “greatest genius of all time” because she is “only a twelve-year-old girl” (256), but Milana objects to her saying “girl” like it is an insult. Milana encourages Charlie, reminding her that all the famous geniuses were men not because men are better but because they were given more opportunities, while women, historically, have been “denied education, prevented from having jobs, or simply been ignored” (257). Charlie has the potential to do great things if she believes in herself.

Milana returns to her phone call, and Charlie, comforted by the pep talk, returns to the clue. Her biggest problem is that she does not know the key to the code. Then she has a sudden insight and wonders if the book the clue was hidden in might itself be a clue.