Yet her specialty was computers, so she regularly consulted with people who were designing state-of-the art software for data-mining other people’s networks. She paid a call that Saturday morning on a man in one of those offices and flirted with him a little while they discussed the problem he was currently working on. He had designs on Sarah’s body and was campaigning for a weeklong vacation together in August on Fire Island. When he mentioned the trip again this morning, she told him she was thinking about it.
As it happened, they were sitting in his secure space when the telephone rang and a colleague asked him to come to his office for a minute. He said sure, hung up the phone, and glanced at Sarah, who was looking at a printout of software code.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, and left her alone in the office with his computer logged onto the network. It was a violation of the security regs, but what the hey, they were friends, with a relationship that he wanted to go someplace special. And it was Saturday, with only a few people in the office.
The instant the door closed behind him, Sarah attacked the keyboard. Two minutes later she was back reading the printout, and she was still at it when her friend returned, five and a half minutes after he departed.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “He needed the help now.”
“No problem,” Sarah Houston said, and smiled.
When she got back to her office after lunch she logged onto the network. She now had access to the deepest data-mining and surveillance capabilities of the NSA network, which she had granted herself. She began tapping in telephone numbers. The first three numbers she typed belonged to Dell Royston: his home, office, and cell.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The sheriff’s office was in a substantial, three-story cut-stone courthouse with oak floors. There wasn’t a soul in sight that Saturday. Our footsteps echoed on the wide staircase and in the empty hallways. When we found the door labeled SHERIFF, I half expected the door to be locked and was relieved when the knob turned in my hand.
The sheriff was a pleasantly plump fellow pushing sixty. He had his feet under his desk and was working on a report when the receptionist showed us into his office. I stuck out my hand. “Zack Winston, Sheriff, like the cigarettes. Sorry to bother you, but we’re looking for my girlfriend’s uncle, who might be lost in this county.”
The sheriff looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “You lost him?”
“He wandered away from our camper when we made a pit stop in the northern part of the county last week.” I looked at Kelly. “It was last Tuesday, wasn’t it?”
She nodded.
“And you waited until now to report a missing person.”
I looked sheepish. “We’ve been looking, believe me, and just haven’t found him. We didn’t even know he was missing until we got to Staunton and stopped for gas. He must have got out of the back of the camper at one of our stops.”
“He got a name?”
“Mikhail Goncharov.” We had to give his real name. He might have given it to someone, although if the sheriff knew it when he sent in the prints for an ID, it seemed to me he would have said so.
“That sounds Russian.”
I nodded. “He’s a refugee. Russian is the only language he speaks. He’s here visiting Kelly.” I introduced her to the sheriff.
“You both look like Americans to me,” the sheriff said dubiously. “Either of you speak Russian?”
Kelly reeled off a sentence or two. It sounded Russian as hell to me, and it must have to the sheriff, too, because he relaxed and smiled.
“We may have found him. Something wrong with him?”
“Alzheimer’s,” I said, nodding.
“Well, he’s staying with a couple up in the northern end of the county at a fishing camp along the river, fellow named Jarrett. Go to Durbin and take the river road south about six miles. His name is on the mailbox.”
“Thanks,” I said enthusiastically. “We’ve been so damned worried, let me tell you.” I pulled out a hankie and mopped my brow. “I feel like such a fool.”
“Glad to be of service. But the person you should thank is Linda Fiocchi, Jarrett’s girlfriend. She took him in, wanted him to remain as their guest while we tried to identify him. Aren’t many people that kind in this world.”
We talked about that for a bit. The sheriff really admired Jarrett’s girlfriend. “Fiocchi’s a class act. I think she thought he might be an illegal,” the sheriff said, watching my face.
Kelly laid her hand on my arm. “Let’s go get him now,” she said to me, and smiled warmly at the sheriff. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“Wish you had put in a missing persons report,” the sheriff said.
“He’s scared to death of the police,” I explained. “Living in Russia… perhaps you can understand. We were afraid that if he saw a policeman…”
“Seemed fine to me when I saw him,” the sheriff said gruffly, giving me the eye. If he wanted to think Goncharov was an illegal, that was okay with me. In the abstract everyone wants the immigration laws enforced, but when the problem is reduced to real people, few people are ready to send them back to whatever they fled to get here. This county sheriff in the heart of the Alleghenies had not called the INS, and I doubted that he would.
We thanked him profusely and made a hasty departure.
I stopped at a filling station to call Jake Grafton. As I was using the pay phone, Kelly went to the ladies’.
“The sheriff says he’s staying at a fishing camp on the river, near the facility,” I told the admiral when he answered. “Sounds to me as if he’s no more than five or six miles from it.”
The admiral grunted. “Dell Royston has been busy today. He’s made over a half dozen calls in the last two hours, a couple of them to numbers that you gave me. Something’s up. Don’t know what.”
“Okay.”
“Better find Goncharov and get him out of there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Be careful, Tommy.”
“I will,” I said, and hung up. Kelly was still in the ladies’ when I went into the men’s.
It seemed to me that there was no time to lose. Whatever Royston might be up to, it couldn’t be good. And the sheriff might just decide to drive up for a visit with Goncharov and his niece; I wanted to be gone before he arrived.
I waited in the car for Kelly. Why do women always take so long in the john?
At least now we had a name for Mr. Big. That was an accomplishment in itself. I remember reading about Royston these last few years. He had become a public personality while on the White House staff. I seemed to recall that he had spent most of his career as a political consultant, one of those professional cynics who creates an image for whatever politician signs up to foot the bill. The president was Royston’s horse.
How in the world had Royston gotten into the KGB’s files, if indeed he had? Did he analyze American politics for them or write op-ed pieces for Pravda? Perhaps the KGB paid him to write op-ed pieces for the New York Times and Washington Post. The second possibility seemed more likely, but I was just guessing. Or had the Russians paid him to kill Goncharov before he could talk?
Kelly came out of the restroom and plopped herself into the passenger seat of the rental car, and I fed gas.
“You did good in the sheriff’s office,” I said as we rolled out of town.
“Hope he bought it,” she muttered, and half turned in her seat to look behind us. I glanced in the rearview mirror. No cruiser yet.