“I’m looking for a friend of mine, Amin Greene,” he told her. “We were in high school together.”
“High school, God, what a glorious time,” said the woman.
I’ll bet you were a cheerleader, he thought. Or at least on the pep squad.
“I still have some of my best friends from those days,” added the woman. She started naming them.
“So, is Amin around?” he asked finally.
“He took off this week. His mother…” She shook her head. “Not doing well.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Let me get his address for you. I’m sure he’d love to see you.”
The address was twenty miles out of town. Tolevi drove past the driveway a couple of times; it was impossible to see more than a sliver of the house. He found a place near a culvert down the road to park, then hiked through the woods a short distance to the field at the side of the house.
A split-level dating from the late 1980s, the home was spectacularly unspectacular, the sort of place built without much thought and lived in with even less. But Tolevi hadn’t come to critique the architecture. Taking no chances, he took out his pistol and walked across to the side yard, approaching from the side of the house that had no windows. After making sure there were no cars in the driveway at the front, he swung around to the back and came across the yard. Shredded fireworks filled the path and the nearby grass.
Going up two at a time, Tolevi bounded up the stairs to a deck made of pressure-treated wood, badly in need of paint or at least cleaning. Spent matches lay all around.
Gotta like a man who believes in fireworks.
Tolevi peered through the sliding glass door but couldn’t see much inside: a dining room table, some chairs, but otherwise, nothing.
He could break in, but undoubtedly that would be subtracted from his fee. And it might make it more difficult to convince Greene to come to Virginia with him. It certainly wouldn’t help. So Tolevi decided to walk around to the front door, where he rang several times. Getting no answer, he tried the knob — it was locked.
It wouldn’t take all that much to force it, but once again he left that as a last resort. He went first to the garage, which was also locked, then went back up the stairs to the sliding door. It slid open easily — with the help of his credit card, which slid through the jamb with space to spare.
“Hey, Greene!” he yelled, standing at the threshold. “I gotta talk to you. Some of your friends need you.”
There was no answer. Tolevi took out his gun again and, holding it close to his body, entered.
Modestly furnished, the house didn’t appear to hold many secrets. It was clear that the owner was a single male — the couch and chairs were mismatched; the sink was a mess. Down the hall, the sheets and covers on the bed were haphazardly spread, though the rest of the room was orderly enough.
The room across from the bedroom was used as an office; there was a computer screen and a keyboard on the desk, but no computer — obviously, a laptop usually sat here. A wire led to a USB hub, and another set of wires — along with a little outline of dust — showed where an external hard drive had sat until very recently.
Curious, Tolevi went through the drawers and found a flash drive; he left it. There were some bills, all in Greene’s name.
A set of file cabinets against the wall demonstrated organization an OCD sufferer would have been thrilled with — folders for everything from groceries to land taxes, auto insurance to car washes, all separated by year.
Tolevi couldn’t help but check the bank accounts. There were two, checking and savings; each had less than five thousand in it.
But his three credit cards were paid in full.
Back in the kitchen, Tolevi opened the refrigerator and checked the milk. It had been purchased not more than a day or two before, if the freshness date was to be believed.
There was a whiteboard on the wall. It looked to be something of a makeshift to-do list or calendar, though all but one entry had been erased beyond readability.
Farm—5.
What farm was that? Tolevi wondered.
He found the answer, or at least what he thought was the answer, in a file of tax receipts in the office. The property was on his way out of town anyway, so he decided he’d swing by and see if there was anything worth seeing — maybe some unexploded fireworks.
Borya called when he was about a mile away.
“How are you, sweetie?” he asked, punching the Answer key on the car’s display.
“Can I go to Jenny’s house and help her with her homework?” asked his daughter.
“Is she going to help you with yours?”
Borya laughed. “That’s crazy talk.”
“That’s fine. You’re not doing your internship today?”
“Chelsea gave me a project at home,” she told him.
“And how’s that coming?”
“Piece of cake.”
“Humph.”
“So can I go to Jenny’s?”
“As long as it’s all right with Mary.”
“See, I told you he would say it was all right,” he heard her shout to the babysitter as she hung up.
He might have called her back if he hadn’t seen the number on the mailbox matching the address. He stopped quickly, skidding a bit on the gravel, and pulled in. A dilapidated Victorian-era house sat on a hill a good three hundred yards from the road. The driveway was so pitted, he decided to leave the Mercedes at the bottom and walk up.
What he’d seen in the other house made him somewhat less cautious; he walked along the driveway for a good two hundred yards before swinging wide to get a look at the back. Unlike the other house, there was no deck, or door that he could see. Nor was there a garage.
Which meant this place, too, was probably empty.
But just to be sure, he went up the side stairs to the porch, maneuvering gingerly to avoid the two broken steps. He started to bend down to take a look in the window, when he saw that something was propping the front storm door half-open.
A leg. Attached to a body. A body in a pool of half-dried blood on the porch.
“I’m guessing you’re Amin Greene,” he told it, taking out his cell phone.
96
“There’s no question now that Ghadab’s in the U.S. And we have to assume that he’s interested in you. You specifically, Chelsea.”
Johansen’s face filled the screen at the front of the Box. He was in D.C., or at Langley, or somewhere — he didn’t say.
Chelsea glanced at Massina, standing a few feet away, arms crossed in front of him. Johnny and Bozzone were behind him.
“Where is Ghadab now?” asked Massina.
“I don’t know,” said Johansen. “The data on the flash drive we found points to Boston. They have plans for Fenway Park, Faneuil Hall, Bunker Hill, and a few other places around town.”
A USB flash drive had been discovered on “Persia,” a CIA double agent discovered killed by knife wounds on a farm in Vermont. There was no question in anyone’s mind that the man had been killed by Ghadab; the wounds were very similar to those of others he’d killed. The drive contained a host of documents and backed-up web pages that, as Johansen said, seemed to indicate Boston was once again a target. So much so that a special task force with the CIA, FBI, and state authorities was going to set up shop in town.
Johansen had shared the entire contents of the drive, though not the drive itself, with Massina’s team at the beginning of his briefing. The Agency theorized that Persia was planning to give the drive to his contact when Ghadab discovered his treachery and killed him.