Текст книги "Agent X "

Автор книги: Noah Boyd

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“That sounds more like a rationalization than a defense, Vail.”

“Of all the times Luke helped me in Detroit—and some of them were pretty touch and go—the guy never once asked me for a favor. Until last night.”

“Sorry. It’s just that I would have thought you had enough to do.”

“I guess that’s when you find out if someone is truly worth your friendship.”

“Were you able to help him?”

“I gave him a few suggestions. I’m not sure he needed them. He’s not the guy I’d want after me,” Vail said. “You ready to watch that disc? Or did you peek last night, Katie?”

“No.” She took it out of her briefcase. “But I was a little surprised you trusted me with it.”

“It wasn’t me trusting you that was the problem—it was me trusting me if I held on to it.”

She laughed cynically. “Oh, honesty. Is that your latest tactic to deceive me?”

“I figured if anything would keep you off balance, it would be telling the truth. Apparently that’s not going to work either.”

She set the disc in the DVD player. On the monitor screen, they recognized the meeting room at the Denton safe house. It was followed by a couple of seconds of static and then by someone holding a hand-printed sign in front of the camera. On it were written the date, the time, and the name Charles Dennis Pollock. “That should eliminate any guesswork about who’s starring in this little production.”

Another few seconds of static were followed by two men sitting in the room. Pollock, recognizable from his security-background photo, was unknowingly facing the camera. He opened a briefcase that was on the floor next to him and handed a sheaf of papers to the other man. In turn, the man, who carefully never let any of his face be exposed, handed Pollock three bundles of bills and then in heavily accented English demanded, more than requested, that it be counted. While Pollock obliged, the handler deliberately held up the documents he had received and slowly paged through them so they could be captured on video. Several had CLASSIFIED stamped across them. Pollock then placed the money in his briefcase. A brief discussion ensued about what other material Pollock could provide. The screen again went to static. Vail fast-forwarded it until the end. There was nothing else on it.

“That’s it? What about the golden thread or whatever you call it?”

“The golden cord,” Vail said. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe Calculus was just screwing with us and wrote ‘Ariadne’ on the envelope to frustrate us so we’d be willing to pay more.”

“That’s a possibility. Spies do love mind games. Maybe Pollock somehow has the answer to whoever’s next. There’s only one way to find out.”

“You want to arrest him?”

“That does seem to be the next logical step now that we have irrefutable evidence that he’s a spy.”

“Then I’ve got to let Bill Langston know.”

“Come on, Kate. You know that finding the next name is going to be tough enough without going through the system.”

“Even you can’t arrest someone for espionage without somebody somewhere authorizing it. There’s no other way but the system. Finding out who Pollock is and that he’s a spy has brought us back into the aboveground world of rules and—God forbid—the law.”

It was moments like this that reminded Vail he’d been correct in choosing a life in which he answered to no one. And since Kate had told him that a relationship with her was no longer possible—everything else being equal—he would have gone off on his own and done whatever he needed to do to resolve the situation with this man who had committed treason. But the only reason, or at least the deciding one, he’d taken this assignment was to help Kate regain her reputation. “How about if we just interview Pollock? If he doesn’t cooperate, I’ll call Langston for authorization. But first I want a chance to find out if he has the key to the next name before he disappears into a bureaucratic maze that in all likelihood will shut this down. With Calculus gone, it looks like he’s our only shot.”

“What are you going to do if he does cooperate, leave him out there?”

“If he’s cooperative, we’ll ask him to take a ride and hand-deliver him to Langston so he can take all the bows. That’ll keep him happy, and hopefully we’ll have the next clue.”

“So either way, by the end of the day Langston will be notified.”

“If that’s what you want, absolutely.”

“I really hate it when you start a promise with ‘if.’ ” She studied his face briefly for signs of deception. As usual there were none. “Okay, but I’m driving. That way I can abandon you at the first sign of trouble.”

Vail laughed. “That off-ramp was three or four exits ago.”

7

Kate found a parking space near the main entrance of Alliant Industries in Calverton, Virginia, Pollock’s employer. Vail opened the folder containing the information they’d printed from Pollock’s security investigation and dialed the work number, holding the phone so Kate could hear. “Charles Pollock, please.”

“I’m sorry, he’s not in today.”

Vail looked at Kate apprehensively. “This is Hank Bass, I’m a friend of his. Could you tell him I called?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Wait a minute, I’ve got his home number. Will I be able to reach him there?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Bass, I’m not sure.”

“Don’t bother with the message. I’ll track him down.” Vail thanked her and hung up.

“That can’t be good. It sounds like he didn’t call in. Maybe we should get some help and put on a full-court press.”

“Normally I’d say that made sense, but don’t forget, if we’re right about Calculus giving everyone up, the Russians could be moving Pollock out of here right now. Proper channels would slow us down and ensure his getting away. Let’s try his house. Maybe he’s just taking a day off.”

Kate stared past him for a few seconds. “God help me, I think I may need some sort of therapy, because that actually makes sense to me.”

Charles Pollock’s house was surprisingly large but in a state of advanced disrepair. It was a half-timbered Tudor and in need of a fresh coat of paint. A front gutter hung by one end, angling across the first-floor windows. The second-floor stucco had some deep cracks in it and was chipping off. Weeds were over a foot high and frozen upright in the lawn. As the two agents pulled in to the driveway, there was a stillness that made Vail wary.

He got to the door first and unbuttoned his topcoat, hitting the thumb release on his holster. Gently he pushed Kate behind him. He knocked loudly. After a few seconds, he put his ear against the door and listened. “Can you check for his car?”

Kate went over to the attached garage and peered into the window. “Empty.” Vail watched her as he continued to listen for movement inside. She cupped her hand over her eyes to cut the sun’s glare and searched the garage’s interior. “The inside house door is open. As cold as it is outside, that can’t be intentional.”

Vail walked over and pulled up the overhead door, drawing his Glock. Kate slipped hers out of the holster in response. They walked into the garage, and he pushed the door leading into the house completely open.

Once in the kitchen, they listened for anyone moving around. “Hello!” Vail yelled. When there was no response, he nodded toward the doorway leading to the rest of the house, and without another word he and Kate swept from room to room, covering each other. “Okay, do you want the upstairs or the basement?” he asked.

“Basement.”

They split up, each heading for a different set of stairs. Five minutes later they were both back to the kitchen, their handguns reholstered. “Do you think he’s onto us?” Kate asked.

“Could be, if Calculus is talking. The Russians would most likely warn him then. Or he could just be at the grocery store. We’d better pull back and sit on it until we figure out which.”

Kate found a spot almost a block away and parked. She went to the trunk and came back with a pair of binoculars, handing them to Vail. “Pretty high-tech for us, isn’t it?” he said.

“I figured it was time to move our little adventures forward into the seventeenth century.”

Vail looked at Pollock’s house through them. “Nice.” Still holding them to his eyes, he turned and scanned Kate up and down. “Very nice.” She hit the front of the binoculars, causing them to bang into Vail’s eyes. “Ow!”

“I thought you bricklayers were a tough bunch.”

“Not us blind bricklayers.”

“What are we going to do if Pollock doesn’t come home?”

Vail picked up the pages from the suspected spy’s file and leafed through them. “There’s a cell-phone number here.”

“You want me to call it?”

“I’m not sure how much good that will do us, since we won’t know where he’s at.”

Kate thought for a second. “You want me to have it pinged?”

“As a deputy assistant director, you should be able to get something like that done pretty easily. I mean, there’s got to be some advantage to having you along.”

“You’d be surprised how there’s absolutely no advantage to working with certain highly rated people.” She jerked the sheet of paper out of his hand and dialed her cell phone.

It was late in the afternoon before Kate got a callback. She made some notes and hung up. “He had the phone turned off until about an hour ago.” She started the car and handed Vail her notes. “Just west of McLean. Those are the coordinates. If you’ve recovered your eyesight, please punch them into the GPS.”

Daylight was fading as Kate pulled over. “Do you think that’s it?”

Vail glanced at the dashboard locator. “It’s the only building within a half mile.”

They were looking at an ancient ten-story brick building. Kate was on her phone again, calling the McLean police to find out what the structure was. After waiting for a while, she made some more notes and hung up. “It’s some sort of historical building that housed World War One wounded soldiers who were brought back here to recuperate. After the war it was turned into a government warehouse. Because its heating and electrical were so out of date and rehabbing it would have been too expensive, they were going to tear it down. But then the historical people got involved. They started filing injunctions, and it’s been going back and forth for longer than anyone can remember.”

“Why would Pollock be in there? It doesn’t make any sense,” Vail said.

“Maybe he was just parked here when he made the call.”

“Why don’t you see if there’ve been any calls since the first one.”

Kate called headquarters again and, after being on hold for a couple of minutes, hung up. “Nothing. They’re going to check it every fifteen minutes and let us know if there’s a change.”

When they hadn’t heard anything an hour later, Vail opened the car door and said, “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“To see if there’s a way into that place.”

“You think he could actually be in there?”

“If there’s no way in, then we’ll know he’s not. At least we won’t have to sit here the rest of the night.”

Kate said, “I’m going to call his house and see if I get an answer.”

Ten minutes later Vail got back into the car. “I take it he’s not at home.”

“No answer.”

“I found a way in.”

“What does that mean?”

“Could have been just kids breaking in. Hard to tell.” He picked up the binoculars and used them to explore the building’s windows. After a few minutes, he said, “There! On the fifth floor. Did you see it? A light, and then it disappeared.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Let’s go.”

Taking a flashlight, Vail led the way around the back of the building to a door that had been carefully jimmied open and then closed, giving the appearance that it was still secure. He pushed his fingers into the narrow crack on one side of the door and pulled on the edge until he worked it free. They both stepped inside. Vail stopped and listened. He snapped on the flashlight. “I think the stairway is straight ahead.”

Kate followed him in the semidarkness, occasionally stepping on something soft that she hoped were articles of abandoned clothing. Then they started climbing the stairs.

At each landing Vail stopped and listened, every so often turning to look at her. “You okay?” he whispered with uncharacteristic concern.

“Yeah, fine. You?”

He smiled. “I’m okay.”

When they reached the landing between the third and fourth floors, he stood motionless for a good five minutes. Kate could see that Vail sensed there was going to be trouble—and it was going to be soon. Her suspicion was confirmed when he drew his automatic. She did the same. As cold as it was, she felt a bead of sweat work its way down her spine. Slowly, Vail stepped onto the next stair.

On the fifth floor, they could see as some light from the street seeped in through a hallway window. Vail swept the floor with his flashlight to make sure there was nothing underfoot that might announce their arrival. The creaking floor was bad enough. He walked forward to the door of the room he thought he’d seen the brief flash of light come from. The number 508, painted on it in gold-edged black paint, had all but peeled off. Standing to the side, he tried the knob. The door was unlocked. He looked at Kate to see if she was ready, and she gripped her weapon with both hands. Vail turned the knob and pushed the door open.

It was pitch-black inside, no ambient light anywhere. Still at the side of the door and without being able to see in, he flashed the light into the room to see if it would draw fire. It didn’t. He motioned for Kate to stay where she was. He turned off the flashlight, took a deep breath, and stepped into the room. Quickly he moved to the side so he wasn’t outlined by the light coming from the hallway. He looked back and could see Kate leaning into the room. When he didn’t give her any instructions, she moved into the room and stepped from in front of the door as well. Vail held his light as far to the side as he could and turned it on. Other than some scattered debris on the floor, the room was empty. Ahead of him was another closed door to another room. They both moved to opposite sides of the door, and Vail opened it.

He flashed the light in and saw Charles Pollock slumped in the corner of the room. A syringe was stuck in his arm, and his throat had been cut.

Before entering, Vail scanned the light around the room, because he could see that Pollock had been dead for a while and couldn’t have been responsible for the light Vail had seen from the street. There was another door. He and Kate entered the room and felt something sticky on the soles of their shoes. He moved the light to the floor and could see that it was blood in an inordinately large pool, starting to coagulate. Vail noted that there were no drag marks from there to the corner where Pollock’s body was now propped up. They went over to him.

Vail pulled the syringe out of Pollock’s arm and held it up to the flashlight. “The color of the residue looks too dark to be heroin.”

Suddenly a burst of gunfire came through the unexplored door. Both agents dove to the floor. Vail opened fire, letting his Glock stitch the door as he emptied the magazine. He rolled back into a safe position, dropped the empty magazine, and jammed in a fresh one, letting the slide go home.

He nodded to Kate, and she knew what he wanted. She fired a half-dozen rounds slowly at the door while he crawled forward. He pulled himself up against the wall next to it and pointed his automatic at the doorway as Kate got to her feet, rushed forward, and pinned herself against the wall on the opposite side of the door. Vail pushed it open, again trying to draw fire. None came.

He rolled around the doorjamb, his automatic at eye level. A hole large enough for a person to escape had been cut through an adjoining wall. “Come on.”

She followed him as he went back the way they’d come and into the hall, running to the stairwell. He opened the door and listened for whoever it was that had shot at them. Kate could hear faint footsteps. Vail’s head cocked to the side in disbelief. “He’s going to the roof.”

Taking the stairs two at a time, Vail tried to close the gap. Kate was right behind him, pushing a fresh magazine into her automatic as she ran. Then they heard a door slam.

When they got to the roof entrance, the door was closed. The lock had been taken out, leaving a two-inch circular hole in the steel door. Vail pushed on it carefully, but it would not give. “He’s blocked it with something.” With measured force, he bounced his shoulder against it, testing its resistance. “There’s some give.” He stood back and kicked it hard, but it held. He took two more steps back and leaped forward, landing his foot where he thought the device was holding it closed. He did it again, and still the door remained blocked.

Kate said, “Do you smell smoke?”

Vail turned toward the stairs and inhaled. He holstered his gun and grabbed Kate’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.” When they got down to the next floor, he could smell gasoline mixed in with the choking odor of the smoke. He looked over the railing and could see that the stairwell two floors below was engulfed in flames. “Back to the roof.”

When they got to the door again, Kate said, “Can’t we shoot it open?”

“I doubt it, it’s steel, and whatever is jamming it is below the lock hole.” Once more he took a couple of steps back and this time charged the door, ramming his shoulder into it, but it held. “I have to find some way to get a little more into it. It’s close to going.” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to his side. “We’ve got to ram into it as one body. When I say go, keep pasted against me so our weights combine into one. Ready?”

She drew her hips up so they were touching his and nodded.

“Go!” Vail said, and they lunged at the door. Their timing was a little off. Vail hit it first and a fraction of a second later she slammed into his ribs. Both of them stepped back a couple of strides, and he said, “Again . . . set . . . go!” This try their timing was in sync, and there was a loud wooden crack as the door flew open. They both fell over the threshold.

“I’ll check for a fire escape. Call 911,” he said.

Vail ran to the side of the building he hadn’t seen before breaking in. When he came back, Kate was giving the address to the emergency operator. She looked at him anxiously. He said, “There are no fire escapes.”

8

The tall, slender man with the splayed nose sat behind the wheel and watched as one of his men lowered himself carefully down a rope that hung from the roof of the burning building. A second man came from around the back of the building and stood underneath until the first man was safely on the ground. Once he was, the two of them looked up before casually walking back to the waiting black SUV. They got into the backseat without saying a word. One of them smelled of gasoline and smoke. Sitting next to the driver was the big man with the eyes that barely moved. “Was either of them shot?” he asked in a heavy accent.

“I’m not sure. Possibly,” answered the man who had come down the rope.

“Which means they weren’t,” the driver said, his voice both apologetic and angry.

The passenger shifted himself in the seat and watched the top of the building as smoke continued to pour out of it. “It will be more entertaining this way.”

“Then how did the guy we chased get off the roof?” Kate asked.

Vail saw what looked like a cable hanging over the side of the building. They both went over and examined it. It was about thirty feet long but was tied to a much longer rope. Both together were long enough to reach to within ten feet of the ground. “That’s how.” The end of the cable was anchored in a nearby water drain. Vail pulled on it, testing his weight against it. “Think you can make it?”

She looked back at the smoke billowing out of the door they had forced open. “You mean there’re other choices?”

Holding on to the cable, she was starting to climb over the low wall when he said, “Hang on a minute.” He went back and closed the door. The smoke started streaming out of the cracks around it and from the lock hole. He picked up the now-broken board that had been snapped in half when he and Kate forced open the door. It was a length of two-by-two that had been jammed against a short section of two-by-four nailed to the roof. The two-by-four had a notch cut into it to hold one end of the two-by-two in place. The other end had been notched also and jammed up under the door handle. “If they’d used a two-by-four, we’d still be in there.”

“Maybe they didn’t have any.”

“Two-by-fours are a lot easier to find than two-by-twos.”

“At the risk of sounding like I’m giving you an order, can we discuss this on the ground?”

Vail walked back to the braided cable and examined it more closely. He took out his lockback knife and opened it. “Are you still carrying that thing?” she asked.

Carefully, he cut into one of the strands and sniffed it. He looked at her soberly. “It’s det cord.”

“Det cord as in detonation cord?”

“I’ve seen it on demolition jobs. When it’s ignited at one end, it explodes so fast you can’t tell which end was set off.”

“Why would they use that?”

“That’s something we have to figure out before we go any further.” He got down on his knees next to the drain that the end of the cable disappeared into. “Let me have that flashlight.” He tried to pull the drain cover off. When it wouldn’t budge, he said, “It’s been spot-welded.” He got closer and used the light to peer down into the small crack surrounding the cable. After a few seconds, he stood up and snapped the light off with finality.

“What is it?”

Vail didn’t answer right away but instead looked over the side of the building and tugged easily on the braided cord.

“What is it?”

“There’s a device connected to the end. Det cord is set off with a blasting cap. There’s one of those in there, too. There’s also a battery and a large, heavy-duty spring. What happens is when there’s enough weight on the cable and rope, the metal spring lengthens and makes contact, closing the circuit between the battery and the blasting cap, which in turn sets off the det cord. If we’re both hanging on it ten stories up—poof. It’s gone, and so are we.”

“But whoever was shooting at us used it.”

“We never got a look at him. We don’t know how much he weighed. He could have been a hundred and thirty pounds for all we know.”

“How much do you weigh?” she asked.

“One-ninety. What are you, about one-eighty?”

“One-thirty-five, Vail.”

He got down on his knees again and turned on the flashlight. He took a few extra seconds looking into the thin opening before getting up. “You should be all right.”

“What about you?”

“They had to build some tolerance into it. I’m guessing that to open that spring up fully and set it off, both of us would have to be on it together. You go first. Once you’re down, I’ll get on it.”

In the distance Kate could hear the sirens now. “Maybe we should wait for the fire department.”

“They haven’t got anything that can reach ten floors.” He squatted down and put his hand flat on the deck. “It’s getting hot. We don’t have that much time.”

Kate went over to the side and grabbed the cable. Vail could see the uncertainty in her eyes. “I could be wrong about how much weight this can hold. Maybe you should take off your clothes just to be safe.”

She got a new grip on the cable. “Vail, I’d rather do a two-and-a-half into the concrete.” She slipped over the side and looped the cord around her foot as a brake to control the speed of her descent.

From the black vehicle, the four men watched Kate come over the side of the roof and wrap the cable over her foot. As she started down, all of them looked back anxiously at the roof to see where the second agent was.

Suddenly it seemed as if the sirens doubled in volume. The driver’s eyes darted over to his passenger, but he was still watching the roofline intently. The sirens grew even louder.

The driver started the engine as a plea to leave. The passenger snorted in disappointment and then turned forward in his seat and closed his eyes. The SUV made a U-turn and drove away just below the speed limit.

As soon as Kate let go of the rope and dropped the last few feet, Vail was over the side as fast as possible. Just as he reached the ground, a fire truck pulled up, and Vail told the crew about the explosive cord. “The fire shouldn’t detonate it, but if it does, I don’t think it’ll hurt anyone inside the building. It’s only the upper thirty feet or so.”

Kate and Vail went to their car to get out of the way. He started to say something, and she held up her hand. “Not a word until I call Bill Langston.”

“Okay, but I can tell you he’s—”

She thrust her hand at him to demand his silence as she dialed. Without supplying any details, she told the assistant director that they had identified Pollock and how they tracked him down, finding him dead. She told him about escaping from the burning building and that the fire department was there now trying to extinguish it. At last she said, “I’ll be here,” and hung up. “If you were planning to say he’s not going to be happy, congratulations on your extraordinary understanding of the human mind.”

“Just for that, next burning building you can stay home.”

“This isn’t funny, Steve. I’m not letting you talk me into anything like this again.”

“You act like it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done to you. How about when I stole the three million dollars from your safe? And you didn’t know what I was doing and, even worse, where I was so you could yell at me.”

She finally smiled. “Okay, that was worse.”

“And what happened? You were a hero, even got invited to the Irish ambassador’s New Year’s party. Of course, I got the best night of my life out of it.”

She turned to him and searched his face for a moment. “I bet you say that to all the women you seduce with sculpture.”

“Less than half, I swear.”

Kate laughed. “You’d better let me handle Langston when he gets here.”

“That’s the best offer I’ve gotten all day.”

“Enjoy it, because that’s the only offer you’re going to get all day. And by ‘all day’ I mean ever again.”

“You say that now, but a few more dead bodies, another shoot-out or two, maybe an explosion, and you’ll be putty in my hands.”

Kate stared out the windshield for a moment. “I guess there’s no doubt now that the Russians have Calculus talking. But why kill Pollock? And why try to kill us?”

“Think about what would have happened if their plan had succeeded. The det cord would have exploded, leaving us dead on the ground with a rope that would have appeared to have come untied. For lack of a better explanation, it would have looked like we ineptly started a fire to destroy evidence. Inside was a murdered spy whose blood was all over both our shoes. Not only do the Russians no longer have to worry about what Pollock might tell us, but the Bureau gets a huge black eye out of it.”

Kate said, “That seems a little drastic, but maybe the Russians have decided to play hardball. Didn’t Calculus say something about how they were under orders not to get caught spying?”

“There’s only one reason they would have gone to all that trouble—it’s the disc. The way we snuck into the safe house, they probably figured the two of us were freelancing. And then again tonight it was just the two of us. If we’re sneaking around on the Bureau, they probably assumed—correctly—that no one else knows about the disc. If they got rid of us, they don’t have to worry about it. Which means there’s something else on it that leads to the next spy.”

“That’s a lot of supposition, Steve.”

“There’s one way to find out. We need to take another look at the DVD.”

Thirty minutes later Bill Langston pulled up next to their car; his deputy, John Kalix, was driving. Vail said to Kate, “We can’t let him know about the disc.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, since I’m not sure I believe it contains anything. We’ve already looked at it, remember?”

As Kate started to get out, Vail nodded toward the assistant director and said to her, “Boy, am I glad I’m not in your shoes. He looks mad.”

A few minutes later, Kate got back in the car. “He wants to talk to you.”

“You told him I was here?”

“We’ll see if you still have your sense of humor when you get back.”

Vail slid into the rear seat of the assistant director’s car. Langston turned around, and his look of displeasure was clear. “I thought you were instructed to keep me advised of any developments.”

“You don’t think this is a development?”

“I think this is at the end of a chain of developments.”

Without mentioning the possible lead to the next mole, Vail answered Langston’s questions. He laid out everything that had led them from Calculus’s text message to tracking Pollock to how he died. “You broke into a Russian safe house?” Langston thundered.

“That’s where the answer was,” Vail said, with a calm that was intended to contrast the assistant director’s anger.

“You can’t do that,” Langston said, his voice quieter now but still strained.

“Not the first time I’ve heard that this week,” Vail said. “To keep this civil, I’m going to pretend that you are going to accept what I’m about to say, although I seriously doubt you will. You and I come with two different sets of instructions. Where your methods end, mine begin. I wasn’t brought into this because I was likely to follow the agent handbook. And I’ll continue to do what I think is necessary until the director tells me to turn around and go home. Don’t take my tactics personally. What I do has only one purpose—to find the answer. It has nothing to do with you.”

“I’m not asking you to do things differently. I’m just asking you to keep me informed.”

Vail laughed. “Did you really want me to let you know I was going to break into property owned by the Russian embassy?”

It was at that moment Langston realized how foolish he was being. Of course Vail was right. He was taking all the chances, and although Langston wasn’t exactly in charge, his division’s major problem was being resolved. The time would come when Vail was no longer needed, a time when the assistant director could grab the reins of the investigation from him and claim its success. As though in response to Vail’s question, Langston laughed. “I didn’t say I wanted to be informed of everything.”