Carol was sitting cross-legged on the bed when Harry came back into the motel room, her Dell only inches from her bare feet. “Internet?” he asked. It certainly hadn’t come with the room.
She arched an eyebrow. “The network password is… ‘password’.”
“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” he observed, a wry smile on his face as he placed the briefcase containing the UMP-45 on the top of the dresser.
“Do you think they suspected anything at the airport?”
Harry thought for a moment. They had landed at the small airport outside Cedar Springs just before dusk and left the plane in the keeping of the airport’s two employees, one of whom had driven them into town.
He shook his head. “No. Doesn’t really matter if they did — this is the Navajo Nation.”
A glance into the mirror told him that she hadn’t understood the comment. “I had a friend at college — a schoolteacher coming back for his master’s. Said the Nation was the best place in the States to get your foot in the door of the education system. If you lived long enough. Folks around here have never warmed to the thought of calling in the feds.”
There was a long silence between them, then Carol looked up over the screen of her laptop. “You should know that I agree with Han — bringing an outside party into this is only going to complicate matters. You and I both believe that my father knew who was behind the assassination — it’s just a matter of figuring out what he knew.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Harry asked, staring across the room at her. It was a rhetorical question — they’d been over this ground before. “Even if there was a way, it would leave us exposed.”
He paused and she could see the uncertainty in his eyes. As if realizing his vulnerability, he turned away from her and unlocked the briefcase, withdrawing the submachine gun and extending its folding stock. “West Virginia was as secure as it gets — and Korsakov tracked us down there. I still don’t know how.”
“All the more reason to leave Vasiliev out of this.”
“Alexei has connections, connections we need,” he repeated, looking back over his shoulder. “All you need to know is that wherever I need to go, whatever I need to do — I will protect you.”
Whatever I need to do. There was no bravado there, no pretense — just a simple statement of fact. It sent a chill through her body. Carol ran a hand through her hair, her eyes running down the webpage before her. The CIA dossier on Alexei Mikhailovich Vasiliev.
Date: 2003. An SVR agent in Chechnya taken hostage in the mountains by Muslim guerillas. Vladimir Putin had dispatched Vasiliev to negotiate his release.
His method of “negotiation” had been effective, if reminiscent of Capone’s Chicago in its brutal simplicity. For every body part sent to Grozny, he’d executed two members of the rebel leader’s family, starting with his wife. It hadn’t saved the agent, but it was the last time the Chechens messed with the SVR. “Is this true?” she asked, turning the laptop’s screen toward Harry.
It was a moment before he responded, his face veiled in the shadows of the motel room. She couldn’t see his eyes, and she found herself glad of it. “There’s no Boy Scouts in this business, Carol…”
Chapter 13
One of the benefits of never calling in sick was that when you actually did it, no one questioned your integrity.
Carter leaned back in his desk chair, interlacing his long fingers behind his head. It had taken him nine hours to access the FBI’s servers. Using his own log-in, it would have taken all of three minutes, but that was like leaving your business card at the scene of a crime.
As it was, when the Bureau eventually realized their list of users had been hacked, the trail would run cold in a maze of Bulgarian servers and IP addresses.
A meow, and Maxwell the cat launched himself up onto the desk, pale yellow eyes staring him down.
“Easy, Max,” Carter whispered, a weary smile crossing his face as he swept the bobtailed cat away from the computer keyboard. He’d never forget how Maxwell had knocked over a cup of coffee on his laptop one day, frying the hard drive. Never forget the half-sheepish look on the cat’s face, as though he was emulating his namesake.
Catastrophe averted, the analyst went back to his work, filtering through another layer of security on the Bureau server. Marika had been sure that someone had hacked into their network and compromised the West Virginia op. If she was right, the hacker should have left some sort of a trail…
“We’ve got a hit.” Those quietly spoken words were enough to bring Tex Richards instantly awake.
Thomas shook his head. He’d never known the big man to truly be asleep — maybe it was the Apache blood running through his veins. “Where?”
“Arizona,” Thomas replied, tapping the screen of his laptop. “His American Express card was used to rent a Ford Expedition at an agency in Flagstaff — fifteen minutes ago.”
“He’s crossed the continent in less than thirty hours,” the Texan observed. “Somewhere — somehow, he got on a plane.”
“Let’s face it. Our boy’s brilliant.”
Tex’s lips compressed into a thin, bloodless line. “We’ll see about that. Run back over the last twenty-four hours — see if you can track down any incidents at general aviation airfields this side of the Mississippi. Anything abnormal.”
“How soon do we leave?”
“We don’t,” came the terse answer.
Thomas looked up in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“A stern chase is a long chase — something our corpsman used to say in A-stan. We don’t follow Harry, we find someone who knows where he’s going.”
Thomas looked back to see his partner holding up a print-out of the surveillance photo Carter had provided. “Rhoda Stevens…”
There was dead silence in the SUV as he dialed the number, and it wasn’t out of courtesy. Harry knew that much. More like disapproval. And he knew why.
Three rings, then four. Five before it was answered. “Hello?”
“Kak dela, Alexei?” How are you?
There was a moment’s pause, then Vasiliev chuckled. “With half your nation’s hounds out after you, I hardly expected to hear your voice.”
The Russian was good. He hadn’t used his name, nothing for the SIGINT boys at Fort Meade to grab hold of.
“I suppose it would be pointless to ask how you got my private cell number?”
“Hey, you’re a public figure, whether you like it or not.” Harry smiled. “A celebrity.”
A laugh. “So, tell me, tovarisch, what is so important that you must rouse me from bed with my wife?”
“Indeed? Please accept my congratulations. I was unaware that you were married again.”
“She’s a beautiful girl, my friend,” Vasiliev replied. “The love of my life.”
Well, he’d heard that line before. Regarding Mrs. Vasiliev #1 and #2. “We need to meet, Alexei. As soon as possible.”