Текст книги "Agent X "

Автор книги: Noah Boyd

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

31

What!”

When Vail didn’t answer, Kate asked again. “What did you say?”

“Not here.” He grabbed her by the arm and glanced back at the club, pushing her toward their car.

He started the engine, and she asked again. “What is it?”

Still he wouldn’t answer but pulled away from the curb and drove off, once more checking to see if anyone from the club was watching. When he got a block away and was certain that none of the Lithuanians could see them, he pulled over. “That night you and I broke into the Russian safe house in Denton, remember?”

“Guys in ski masks, large handguns, you setting off explosives, fire—something about it rings a bell.”

“Did you notice anything funny about that guy Barkus or the other one playing chess with him?”

“Other than their warmth toward FBI agents, especially the female subspecies, not really,” she said. “Oh, Barkus had dark circles under his eyes. Probably something to do with his not getting back to the coffin until after sunrise.”

“You weren’t as close to him as I was. Or the other one. They both had them, dark circles all the way around their eyes—and around their mouths, too.”

“What were they?”

“Dozens of tiny cuts scabbed over.”

“The areas left exposed by ski masks. From the shattered lightbulbs,” Kate said.

“And that night they were speaking in some foreign language that wasn’t Russian. It sounded Eastern European. It could have been Lithuanian. It all makes sense now. That guy in the tunnel in Chicago, Jonas Sakis, he made a reference to game theory and zero-sum games. And when I said something about him being Russian, he gave me this strange smirk. It was because he was Lithuanian.”

“That means—oh, my God!” Kate said. “That means these guys are tied directly to the Russians. They’re working with them, and they have ears and eyes in the NSA, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, and who knows where else.”

“That’s why we’ve got to be very careful. You, me, and Luke, no one else.”

“No one else? The three of us against all of them?”

Vail ignored Kate’s plea. “The real question is, what’s the connection between the Lithuanians and Sundra—and you?”

She shook her head in disbelief at his self-control, gaining her own calm from it. “Connected how?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but I got the feeling that the Lithuanian Chess Society is going to vote nay to our getting a membership list. So let’s drive around here while you write down as many tags as possible. Maybe we can identify some of them.” Vail put the car in gear, and said, “There was also something Zogas said that bothers me.”

“What?”

“You’re familiar with statement analysis?”

“A little bit. It’s been years since I used it at OPR.”

“Do you remember what he said in his announcement to the others about Sundra?”

“No.”

“I told him that she works for the FBI. He told them that we had a photograph of a missing woman who had worked for the FBI. Past tense.”

“Couldn’t that just be a translation problem for him?”

“It could be. He had an accent, but his grammar was almost flawless. Anyone who uses words like ‘commiserate’ or can explain game theory in a few words or think of something like ‘antibiography’ has a better command of English than I do.”

“Then that’s not a good omen for Sundra, is it?” Kate asked rhetorically.

When they pulled up at the off-site, they saw Bursaw’s car parked in front. “Good, Luke’s here. Maybe he can help figure this out.”

In the workroom they filled Bursaw in on everything that had happened and their conclusion that the LCS was somehow connected to both Sundra Boston’s disappearance and Kate’s being framed. Vail explained about Zogas’s possible slip in verb tense concerning the well-being of the missing analyst.

Bursaw considered it for a moment. “More often than not, that stuff is accurate. I hope it was just a translation problem. I’d like to think we haven’t been looking for a dead body.”

Vail handed him the list of license plates Kate had taken down at the chess club. “Can you get these run, but not through WFO? Have the locals run them and keep it quiet.”

“That detective from Metro Homicide we turned Jonathan Wilkins over to said if I ever needed anything. I’ve known him for a while, so it won’t be a problem to keep it quiet.”

“Until we figure it out, we don’t need to be distracted by who might know what. You, Kate, and me—that’s it. If something leaks out, we won’t have to waste time wondering if someone from the Bureau innocently mentioned it to someone that they shouldn’t have. We’ll know it’s something the opposition somehow came up with on their own and we can trace it back that way,” Vail said. “How’d you do with the missing persons?”

“I found only one. Maurice Lyle Gaston, late of Matrix-Linx International, Springfield, Virginia. We did a security clearance on him. Matrix-Linx has a defense contract. The only fly in the ointment was that he disappeared in Las Vegas. A sister who lives here reported him missing to Fairfax County when he failed to come back from a weekend getaway there.”

“Las Vegas. Interesting.” Vail wrote down the information in a small notebook. “Good. Kate and I will look into it.”

“On a more definitive note, I did find out how Longmeadow came up in her files.”

“How?”

Bursaw smiled as if he were about to unveil an important piece of the puzzle. “In a counterintelligence case. Surveillance was following a Russian by the name of Dimitri Polakov. He was later expelled from the U.S. for suspected spying activities. It was Labor Day, last year, and a surveillance team was looking for a target to follow around. They had no reason to believe he was doing anything—they just wanted to log enough hours to qualify for holiday pay. You know, before they lost him and had no choice but to break off the surveillance and go home. All of a sudden, this guy coasts up to a mailbox and then takes off. The team leader sees there’s a signal chalked on the box, so now they realize that they’ve stumbled onto something. There was going to be a drop. Polakov drives all over for the next two hours and lands at an apple orchard that’s open to the public—you know, to pick your own apples. The target gets out of his car and wanders off down one of the paths. The crew goes into the parking lot, and they start copping tags, hoping that whoever he’s meeting has a car there. They write down fourteen of them. Meanwhile two agents follow Polakov on foot, but he never makes a drop or picks any apples, so the team thinks that they may have gotten burned. But still they had the plates. Maybe one of the tags belongs to whomever Polakov was supposed to meet. They give all of them to Sundra to look into. Subsequently she was just running out the leads by the numbers when she requested tolls on the owners of the cars in the lot. One of them was Chester Alvin Longmeadow.”

“So he was there for a drop but probably made the surveillance, and the exchange never took place. That’s nice work, Luke,” Vail said. “It ties Sundra to Longmeadow, who we now know is connected to the LCS through the sergeant’s phone records. And we know that the Lithuanians are connected to the Russians because of their coming to the safe house in Denton.”

Bursaw held up the list of license plates collected at the chess club. “I’ll head over to Metro and get these run.”

After he left, Kate said, “Well, it looks like we’ve got all the players. Now we just have to figure out how they fit together.”

“That’s why I thought the three of us should sit down and brainstorm this.”

“You’re going to wait until Luke comes back?”

“Actually, I thought we’d enlist the help of Sakichi Toyoda.”

“Who’s that?”

“He was considered the king of Japanese inventors, at least in the early twentieth century. He started a little company called Toyota,” Vail said. “But more important, at least for us, he developed the concept of the Five Whys. Ever heard of it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Toyoda figured out that when a problem occurs, if you ask why five times, give or take, you’ll trace any problem back to its root cause and then can prevent it from recurring.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Let me give you an example. You have a business manufacturing and selling porcelain dog figurines. One day your customers start calling to complain that the items they received all have the same damage. Let’s say the left ear has a crack in it. So you ask why are they arriving in that condition? That’s one. You find that every one was shipped that way. So, through a series of whys, you discover—number two—that they’re coming out of the mold like that because the mold tears during the injection process. And—number three—that’s happening because the person who’s operating the machine isn’t calibrating it properly. Why hasn’t he been calibrating it? Number four—because he’s new and he didn’t know he was supposed to. And—number five—why didn’t he know? Because it wasn’t part of his training. So you make it a requirement that anyone performing that task has to receive x number of hours of training. Problem solved and, in all likelihood, permanently.”

“So if we can answer enough whys, we can figure all this out?”

“I suppose if a person can answer enough questions, he can figure out anything. This is not easy to do. It takes a lot of discipline, a lot of looking at the big picture and the small picture at the same time. However, it does have a way of cutting through the layers of distraction, which in this case are everywhere. If we can do it, we might find a starting point.”

“Okay, what’s the first why?”

Vail moved to a wall adjoining the one with the documents pinned to it. “I think you’ve already asked that.” With a black marker, he wrote:1. Why would the LCS be connected to Sundra, the safe house, & the Calculus list?

Kate said, “Shouldn’t that be ‘How’?”

“The important thing is to pursue answers to the questions. Toyoda probably wasn’t an English major, but he was a genius. Out of respect, let’s just use his whys.”

“Sorry.” Kate thought for a second. “The LCS has to be working with the Russians.”

“That’s the only possible explanation, with them coming after us in that safe house. And now we can trace Sundra back to Longmeadow, who we know is spying for the Russians. But Lithuanians, historically, have never been fond of the Russians. In fact, Lithuania was the first of the Soviet states to declare its independence after the fall of the Berlin Wall. So . . .” Vail wrote:2. Why would the LCS and the Russians be working together?

“I don’t know, why?”

“What’s always the best guess for motive? Someone wrote a song about it making the world go round?”

“I’m guessing it’s not love, so you think this is about money?”

“Very few things aren’t. Zogas described himself as a businessman. He said they all own small businesses. They’re entrepreneurs. When the Russians need somebody taken out, they call the LCS and are able to keep their own hands clean. If that is true, it brings us to ‘why’ number three. If the Russians are paying the LCS . . .” He wrote:3. Why do the Russians want their moles dead?

Kate thought about it for a second. “Like we’ve been saying all along, it doesn’t make any sense, because historically the Russians have always done everything to help their double agents escape to Russia or some other communist country.”

“That’s a good point. And it brings us to the next why.” Turning to the wall, he wrote:4. Why didn’t they kill Rellick immediately?

Studying the wall, Kate said, “We haven’t really answered number three yet, have we?”

“No, we haven’t. I think we need to consider both questions together. That Rellick was the exception might answer why the others weren’t given the option to escape.”

Kate said, “The whole point of framing me was to protect Rellick. Maybe he was that valuable to them. Maybe they thought that once he was safely in Russia, he would have been some sort of monument to Russian ingenuity and American decadence.”

“Let’s assume you’re right, or at least partially right. That leaves one last unanswered question.” He wrote:5. Why are other people with security clearances, who are not spies, disappearing?

“First the air force sergeant and now—for the sake of argument– let’s assume that Maurice Gaston with Matrix-Linx International is also part of this,” Vail said.

“At this point that doesn’t seem like much of a stretch.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he said mechanically, his voice already slipping away. Vail took a chair from the desk and rolled it over in front of the wall. He sat down, and his face dissolved into a reflective blank. Kate lowered herself onto the couch to wait, occasionally glancing at the questions and trying to guess where Vail’s mind was at the moment.

Almost fifteen minutes later, Vail stood up out of his chair. “There’s only one possibility—at least that I can think of. The LCS isn’t killing these people for the Russians, they’re doing it to protect themselves.”

“From what?”

“This is the age of outsourcing. They saw the need for a new service industry and offered it to the Russians. This is also the age of incompetence in government. Maybe the SVR wasn’t recruiting sources like the old KGB had, and Moscow was pressuring them to find a solution. The LCS is a full-service intelligence enterprise. Not only will they kill someone for you, but they also recruit informants for the Russians.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Two things. First, that’s why they’ve been killing their own moles when we get close. They’re afraid they may talk if we get them in custody, and once it’s exposed, that would be the end of what I’m guessing is a very lucrative business venture for the Lithuanians. It’s the only way to explain the two missing people. If you’re going to go out and recruit people to betray their country, chances are you’re not going to be one hundred percent successful. So if the LCS approaches someone and they’re turned down, what would they be most afraid of?”

“Their recruit going to the FBI.”

“And the LCS can’t have that. So if you refuse, you lose—your life.”

“They can’t be approaching these people cold and expecting them to turn,” Kate said.

“You’re right, they’re probably not. The key is Gaston disappearing in Las Vegas. Where better to compromise someone than a place with unlimited liquor, gambling, women, and desperation?”

“So they’re blackmailing them into giving up classified secrets.”

“That’s the only way everything makes sense. I suppose they may occasionally get a lead on someone who’s heavily in debt or overleveraged with the bookies, but I think their tool of choice is most likely extortion. It’s as old as spying itself. Another advantage to it is that if you’re just an everyday double agent for the Russians, you can quit anytime you want to, but if our Lithuanian chess players have got something on you, you’re in forever.”

“So these people they recruit aren’t being paid?”

“Once they’re compromised, and probably recorded, the LCS owns them. I’d guess they’re given a small percentage of what the Russians pay. At this point I think we can safely assume that Longmeadow is Preston. Remember what he said on the tape: ‘This time I want a hundred thousand dollars in cash, just for me.’ In other words, he’s tired of sharing. He wasn’t talking to his Russian handler, he was negotiating with an LCS extortionist.”

Now it was Kate who stared at the five questions on the wall. She filtered them all through Vail’s conclusions. Finally she said, “You’re making some leaps, but I can’t think of anything to disprove it. It does all fit.”

“For the moment.”

“Meaning?”

“This is all supposition. They know that the only way we can prove any of this is by turning the people they’ve recruited. That’s why they’ve been killing them as soon as we get close.”

“So they’ve destroyed all the potential witnesses against them.”

“Not all of them. We have Longmeadow, who evidently they think we’ve missed so they’re leaving him be.”

“Then why don’t we go get him and see if he’ll come clean? If he is being blackmailed, he’d probably be glad to get them off his back.”

“Two things. First, we have no evidence other than that brief recorded conversation, and I’m not sure we could prove it’s his voice or that there’s any real spying involved. Second, every time we’ve gone anywhere near one of these people, they wound up dead. The LCS has some early-warning system in place. Until we can figure out what it is and how to get around it, I think we should let him be. With Rellick dead, they probably think we’re satisfied that everything has been put to rest. A couple of days isn’t going to make any difference. This is another advantage to our not telling anyone else; we don’t have to worry about it leaking out while we wait.”

“And in the meantime . . . ?”

“The routine stuff. We’ll try to find out if they recruited someone else from Matrix-Linx after Gaston disappeared, like they did with the air force. We’ve got the advantage now. They don’t know we’re coming.”

“You don’t think our little trip to their clubhouse will force them to tie up loose ends like Longmeadow?”

“With Rellick dead, I’m hoping not. They’ve killed all the evidence, remember? But if they do get nervous, they’ll have no option but to play defense, and that might mean eliminating all loose ends.”

Kate asked, “Aren’t we loose ends?”

“These people aren’t fools. The easiest way to prevent Rellick from being exposed would have been to kill you. . . .”

Again Vail’s thoughts were drifting in another direction. This time she couldn’t wait. “What?”

“Your suicide attempt.”

“My what? You knew about that?”

Absentmindedly, Vail said, “The director told me about it. That’s how he got me to change my mind downstairs that day.”

“You believed I would try to commit suicide?”

“Over you dumping me, yeah, that makes sense. He told me that your reputation was being questioned. I know how small-minded these people can be. He thought that if you and I could resolve the Calculus list, the rumors would be put to rest.”

“And you never told me? Why? And why would you go through all this if you didn’t believe it? You were almost killed—more than once.”

He grabbed her roughly by her arm and pulled her against him. His lips were almost touching hers. His breathing quickened. “Aren’t you ever going to get this?”

32

Unsure where it would take them—and not sure she cared—Kate touched her lips lightly to Vail’s.

Suddenly the door downstairs opened. She drew her head back and, with her voice unintentionally throaty, said, “That’s Luke.”

“Luke who?”

She put her head on his chest. “I wish I could remember.”

She started to move away, and Vail pulled her hand to his mouth, nipping the skin at the back of it. “What idiot gave him a key?”

As soon as Bursaw walked in, he sensed he’d interrupted something. “I . . . uh, forgot something in the car,” he offered diplomatically. “I’ll be right back.”

“That’s all right, Luke. We were just finishing an argument,” Kate said playfully.

Bursaw noticed the new handwriting on the wall and went over to it. “Is there one answer to all five questions?”

“We think the LCS is doing contract recruitment of sources for the Russians. Using blackmail when they can.”

Bursaw reread the questions and Vail’s terse, cryptic answers. After a minute he said, “Impressive. Logically, it does answer all the questions.”

Vail turned to Kate. “We must be right. Philosophers take a death oath to never agree with any definitive conclusion.”

Bursaw said, “I guess the challenge is proving it?”

“That’s what we were trying to figure out.”

“Do you think Sundra was approached?” Bursaw asked.

“Hard to say, but my guess would be that they found out she was making inquiries about Longmeadow. Somewhere it leaked out. Maybe, like us, she picked up on all the calls to car washes and started making inquires into Zogas’s businesses and he got wind of it. We may never know now. If they approached her, maybe she was offered money to shut her up. It wouldn’t have been hard for them to find out how much debt she was in. If they offered her something and she refused, their only option left would be to make her disappear, along with her computer files.”

Bursaw turned around, and the anger he was trying to suppress was obvious. “So she was just doing her job.”

“Her problem was that she was doing more than her job. Don’t worry, Luke, we’re going to settle this, I promise. But right now we all need to be cool.”

Bursaw took a few seconds and then nodded. “I’m okay.” He opened his briefcase and removed a stack of papers. “I had those plates run and got only a couple of hits.” He smiled more calmly now. “But I had an idea. The few plates that came back to them all listed the club’s address, so I had this gal I know at DMV security run an offline search for all vehicles registered at that address for the last three years.” He handed Vail a sheet of paper. “Everyone from Alex Zogas on down. Eight altogether.”

Vail scanned the list. There was Algis Barkus, who’d had the cuts around his eyes at the club, and one other that Vail found very interesting. “Jonas Sakis.” Vail turned the list so Kate could see it. “The guy who tried to kill me in Chicago.”

She said, “Then two of them are probably the guys you and John shot in Annandale.”

“Which would mean we’re down to five.”

“So what do we do now? Sit on the club?” Bursaw asked. “We don’t have a home address for any of them.”

“They’ll be looking for us there. No, I was thinking that my car needed washing.” Bursaw looked at him questioningly. “Zogas owns car washes. His machines have money in them. You don’t think a good businessman would leave them full overnight, do you?”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Let me change into some surveillance clothes,” Vail said. “Kate, you want to come along?”

“Surveillance? You mean me watching you sleep? As enjoyable as that would be, it’ll be slightly less boring if I get back to the office and put another dent in that paperwork. You’ll call me if you get anything?”

“Only if there’s going to be shooting involved.”

Alex Zogas had been brooding since the FBI left, and he hadn’t said a dozen words. The other four men knew not to say anything when he was like that. At the moment he was playing chess against Algis Barkus, and Barkus could tell by his distracted play that Zogas was planning something. Although he’d told the agents that all the men of the Lithuanian Chess Society were chess masters, only Zogas was, and right now Barkus was playing him even. It was part of Zogas’s planning process. There was something about the discipline of the game that he used to unravel and reassemble the most complicated problems. Finally he shifted in his seat, redirecting his concentration to the board, and almost immediately made a brazen move, straightening up and smiling confidently. Whatever the problem was, it had been solved, and Zogas was now less than a handful of moves from checkmate.

It was Zogas’s fourth move that caused Barkus to tip his king over in surrender. Zogas got up and went to the office. The men could hear him typing on the computer. A couple minutes later, he came back and gave Barkus a slip of paper with an address on it. “Nine o’clock. Meet me there.” Zogas nodded at a second man playing chess, Bernard Mindera, to go with him. Short and powerfully built, Mindera seemed pleased to be chosen and started picking up his chess pieces from the board.

It was after 8 P.M., and the temperature had fallen well below freezing. Vail and Bursaw sat parked at a discreet distance from one of Alex Zogas’s Sunshine car washes. “Man, I can’t believe that in the dead of winter so many people stand out in the cold to wash their cars,” Bursaw said.

“It does seem like a license to steal.”

A silver Lincoln pulled in and parked in an out-of-the-way spot that precluded the possibility of its being there for a wash. The two agents watched the well-dressed man get out and tug up the collar on his topcoat. “That’s Zogas,” Vail said.

There were three washing bays, and they watched as Zogas emptied each of the machines of the day’s receipts and put them into a canvas bag. “I had my doubts,” Bursaw said, “but you were right about him not wanting to leave the money overnight.”

Zogas got back into his car and waited for a break in the traffic. Vail said, “I assume you can follow him without getting made.”

“Although I should never bet against you when food is at stake, dinner says I can.”

“Why do I get the feeling that my supper tonight is going to be at some drive-through?”

The Lincoln pulled into traffic heading north.

“Any idea where he might be going, Steve?”

“I’m just hoping he leads us to where he lives. We have no background on this guy at all. With a residence we can get a phone number and all kinds of other information.”

They followed him to a second Sunshine Car Wash, and Bursaw, once again, set up down the street.

After a third car wash, Zogas drove to a bank and parked in the lot. He sat in the car for a while before Bursaw said, “Looks like he’s counting money and filling out a deposit slip.”

“I do believe we have found where he does his banking. Those records should be interesting.”

Finally Zogas got out of his car and walked over to the night depository, using a key to open it. On the way back, he checked his wristwatch. “Looks like he’s got something scheduled. It’s after eight thirty, kind of late. Maybe it’s spy stuff,” Bursaw said.

“Wouldn’t that be nice?”

The Lincoln pulled back into traffic, and Bursaw waited for a couple of cars to get between them before easing into the same lane. “He’s driving too slow. Think he’s early for an appointment?”

They had been traveling southeast for almost twenty minutes when they reached Temple Hills. Zogas parked outside a large apartment complex. The two agents watched as he turned off the ignition and dialed his cell phone. “What do you think, Steve?”

“I have no idea. We’ve just got to stay with him.” They could see him dialing a second number now. After a minute he hung up, started his car, and made a U-turn. Vail and Bursaw looked at each other questioningly. Bursaw turned the Bureau car around and maintained his distance behind the Lincoln again. They followed him for almost a half hour to an upscale neighborhood in Capitol Heights, where he pulled into a three-car garage and then closed the door. Vail made a note of the address.

“So now we know his bank and home address. Not a bad night’s work,” Bursaw said.

But Vail didn’t answer. Bursaw glanced at him. He was sitting with his head back and his eyes closed. Finally Vail said, “Why did he go to Temple Hills to make a couple of phone calls?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to call from his home because he’s worried about us getting a fix on what cell tower he was running off of. You know these people always think we have more capabilities than we do.”

“Maybe,” Vail said. He took out a map book of the greater D.C. area. After studying it for a few seconds, he said, “Do you know what’s less than two miles from where he stopped in Temple Springs? Andrews Air Force Base. Where does Longmeadow live?”

Bursaw reached into the backseat and retrieved his briefcase. He shuffled through the papers and pulled out Longmeadow’s information. “His current address is in Camp Springs, Virginia.”

Vail looked back at the map. “It’s adjacent to the base, less than two miles from where Zogas made the calls. They’re going to kill Longmeadow.”