The woman I feared I might’ve already lost because of choices I made four years before we ever met.
48
Lien-hua and Natasha were waiting for me in the lobby.
I tried to read Lien-hua, hoping to see if she was harboring any animosity about last night, but she kept her emotions well guarded. She greeted me cordially-neither overly friendly or noticeably distant.
On the walk from my room, I’d noticed that the snow was letting up, but now as I glanced out the north-facing window I saw that the wind was fiercer than ever and the windswept landscape looked arctic and boreal. Even on a snowmobile it wouldn’t be easy to get to the site of the old ELF station this morning, let alone find anything useful.
Natasha went for some coffee, and when Lien-hua and I were alone she asked how I was doing. “Is the ankle feeling any better?”
“It’s not bothering me nearly as much as I thought it would,” I said truthfully.
“The hypothermia?”
“Quite honestly, the whole river incident seems like it happened a month ago instead of yesterday.”
Lien-hua nodded.
We’d discussed this sort of thing in the past-the ways that the mind deals with tragedy or trauma: sometimes events that happened recently become recorded in the brain as if they happened weeks, months, or years ago, and conversely, distant memories can slide forward and obscure more recent ones. “Memory isn’t as contiguous as time,” she told me once. “It’s the mind’s way of dealing with pain and fear and heartache.”
Fear.
Heartache.
Trying to bridge into the topic of last night, I asked, “So how are you?”
“Okay.”
I waited, gave her the chance to say more, but she chose not to.
She excused herself to get some juice, and I awkwardly offered to join her.
“Okay.”
We filled our glasses in silence, then she pulled out some granola bars she’d brought with her. I grabbed a couple doughnuts to get me through until I could get some real food, we found a quiet corner in a private room just off the lobby and waited for Tait, Natasha, and Jake to join us. Silence stretched between us, and even if it was the right time for words, it didn’t seem like either of us could think of what they might be.
Alexei had no intention of killing the woman who lay tied up in the bedroom down the hall.
But he was ready to do so if need be.
Or at least he told himself he was.
Yesterday, after retrieving the remaining $1,000,000 from the drop point and switching vehicles, he’d returned to the cabin near the Schoenberg Inn and parked the woman’s car in the garage and brought her inside. At the time, he hadn’t wanted to know her name because he figured it would just make things harder, but this morning he realized maybe that’s what he needed.
So now he was going through her purse.
Kayla Tatum.
Yes, he’d been right, knowing her name was going to make this harder.
He set down the purse.
Last night, after leaving her bound in the room, he’d gone to the Schoenberg to look for the Eco-Tech team and slipped, unnoticed, into the basement. But when he went to the area of the hotel where he’d had the confrontation with Clifton White, he found it vacant. Even when he wirelessly hacked into the hotel’s registry he found no rooms listed under the four group member’s names he’d been able to identify.
He’d thought about locating the manager and persuading him, by whatever means necessary, to tell him the location of the group, but then Alexei had another idea. Perhaps he could use the manager’s cooperation in a slightly different way.
Using his phone, Alexei went online and, studying the maps of the area, discovered that the Navy used to have a small communication station in the area of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest where the Eco-Tech team had traveled toward with the duffel bag of money before they’d disabled the signal. A little research apprised him that years ago, environmentalists had protested against the base while it was in operation.
On Wednesday when Valkyrie sent him to go speak with Rear Admiral Colberg, Valkyrie had said, “Tell him we need the access codes to the station. He’ll know what you’re talking about.”
So.
Alexei’s gaze went toward the room where he’d left Kayla.
Yesterday, Becker, the ponytailed Eco-Tech member, had told him that his team would be done at exactly 9:00 p.m. tonight. If he was telling the truth, that gave Alexei less than twelve hours to work things out. But he was also well aware that agendas can change, and he wasn’t sure how his flight from the authorities might alter their timetable.
And then there was the matter of Valkyrie, who was quite possibly in the area, evidenced by the fact that the remaining $1,000,000 had been there at the dead drop.
Yes, evaluate, adapt, and respond.
Alexei looked around the cabin. After leaving it this morning, he had not anticipated coming back. He began to pack up his equipment.
His threefold agenda: (1) take care of Kayla Tatum; (2) locate the Eco-Tech team; (3) find Valkyrie and kill him-or her-slowly.
Though he usually worked alone, he had an idea that might move things along more quickly. He knew of one person in the area who could help him, a person he was confident would do whatever it took to find the Eco-Tech team and stop them.
But recruiting him was another story.
49
Natasha returned, and while we waited for Jake to join us, I borrowed Lien-hua’s cell and phoned Sheriff Tait to find out when he would be arriving. He told me he wasn’t going to be able to make it to the briefing because of the roads and the number of emergency calls his department was getting-people trapped on the roads, power outages, accidents. Apparently, with the wind, it was proving nearly impossible for the county to keep the roads cleared. “I’m probably gonna be tied up here for at least a couple hours.” He still sounded sick. “And I wasn’t able to get any officers over to the old ELF site. I’m sorry.”
One step forward, two steps back.
“There’s nothing out there anyway, Agent Bowers.” Weariness in his voice. “I’ve been there myself, last fall-some poachers on forest service land. I’m telling you, the station is gone.”
“I understand,” I said.
If an underground bunker and tunnels for electromagnetic lines did exist, the Navy would’ve had to take herculean measures to keep it a secret-not just from the environmental activists and protestors, but also from the locals. And while that wouldn’t have been an easy task, over the years I’ve learned that despite government bureaucracy, pork-barrel spending, and WikiLeaks, when the government puts its mind to keeping something a secret they can be surprisingly effective at it.
After all, there are currently six military detainment facilities on US soil that the media has never gotten wind of, not to mention the FBI’s two domestic processing centers and the CIA’s sub rosa facilities abroad.
I assured the sheriff that I would brief him on everything we covered in our meeting, then picked up a key from the clerk at the front desk so we could lock ourselves in the room beside the lobby and not worry about being disturbed. A few moments after our call ended, Jake arrived and we began.
“All right,” I said. “We have a lot to cover.” It was hard for me to broach the next subject. “First of all, do we know how Ellory’s family is taking the news of his death?”
Natasha answered, “I talked with Linnaman last night and he said that until we have a body he can’t officially pronounce Ellory deceased.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Ellory might have surfaced somewhere downstream,” Jake said. “It’s possible he’s still alive.”
“No.” I shook my head. “There weren’t any other stretches of open water in sight.” This discussion only made Ellory’s death weigh more heavily on me. “He didn’t make it.”