“So Popov is…” began Jen without completing the thought.
“Popov is first and foremost an information broker. He steals data, blueprints, technological secrets and sells them on the open market.”
“Kind of like a freelance industrial spy,” said Jen.
“Yes, but he’ll hack the bank accounts of private citizens, too, as long as there’s money to be gotten.”
“I guess my account is safe then,” joked Angel.
“Popov falls in the cracks between being a spy and a thief,” said Kit, who was already aware of most, but not all, of the background information Buzz had been presenting.
“Exactly. Very few people in his organization even know they work for him. He uses six-person cells of hackers, and it’s rumored they move from location to location every few months. He also uses highly trained analysts, former Russian intelligence people, to sift through all the stolen information and rate its value on the open market. The analysts work out of large RVs, those big ones the size of a bus.”
“So his operation is very decentralized.”
“Very.” Buzz touched his pipe stem to a circle on the whiteboard. “In this circle are the hackers and analysts.” Buzz wrote WORKERS in the circle with a black marker. “They are the worker bees, the desk jockeys. They don’t know anyone else in Popov’s outfit except members of the security team—which is this circle.” Buzz indicated a circle and wrote SECURITY/SOLDIERS.
“So Popov has thugs protecting his hackers and analysts. And spying on them, too, I would imagine,” said Kit.
“Yes, and he has many of what I just call ‘soldiers,’ otherwise some other mob could easily move in and take over. Those soldiers fall into the security circle.”
“What’s the next circle?” asked Jen, who used a cleaning wipe to finish tidying up her laptops.
“Special operations.” Buzz wrote SPEC OPS inside the circle. “An example of that would be the crew that took down the armored truck. They do specialized, high-value crimes, and they are very, very good. But again, they’re insulated from the rest of the organization.”
“And the last circle has to be Popov and his upper management. So who is his top person in Los Angeles?” asked Kit.
“A young guy named Mikhail Travkin.” Buzz wrote POPOV/TRAVKIN in the final circle. “He’s Popov’s nephew. Has graduate degrees from both Stanford and MIT, paid for by Uncle Viktor.”
“Mobsters with business degrees and Ph.D.s in physics and engineering—that’s the Russians for you,” said Kit.
“I heard that Russian mob guys will shoot you just to see if their gun works,” said Angel, with his usual rat-a-tat-tat delivery.
“They are smart, ruthless, and have a business sense that puts them in a class by themselves,” said Kit. “But everyone has a weakness. Maybe we can locate the nephew. He could lead us to Popov.” Bennings ran his fingers through his coarse hair and scratched his head, as he often did when lost in thought. After a moment, he looked up. “Thanks, Buzz, that was good information. We’ll just have to develop more details, like locations, on our own.”
“Popov has been seen occasionally in West Hollywood, where thousands of Russian immigrants live, but his people are under orders to avoid places frequented by their fellow Russians.”
“West Hollywood has dozens and dozens of places where Russian immigrants hang out,” said Kit. “We’d need an army to put every location under surveillance.”
“Good luck keeping a Russian away from a steam bath,” cracked Angel.
“It’s funny, Angel,” said Buzz. “Popov himself is old school, but his entire organization is very young. They don’t care about the old ways. They have assimilated into the American Dream.”
“Yeah, except they’re not earning their piece of the American Dream, they’re stealing it,” carped Jen.
“The Russians are the hardest-working crooks you’ll find,” cracked Angel.
“If we can find them. Popov told me himself he has multiple passports under different names, so he could be anywhere in L.A. Meaning Staci could be anywhere.” Kit rubbed his eyes. “Jen, when Popov calls me on this cell,” Kit held up the cell phone the thug had tossed to him in Moscow, “can we track his location?”
“Maybe. I’ll need about an hour to set up.” Jen took the phone and left the room.
Buzz looked directly at Kit. “We need to talk about your Russian bride.”
“My loving wife?” Kit joked sarcastically.
“Why don’t we just blindfold her, drive her to the beach, and turn her loose?” asked Angel.
“If we do that, how will we find out what her role is?” asked Kit.
“I think the two tracking devices explained what her role is.”
“It’s possible she’s being blackmailed, similar to myself.”
“For what purpose?” asked Buzz.
“I don’t know that anymore than I know what my purpose is in this whole thing,” said Kit, feeling frustrated. “Believe me, it’s driving me crazy.”
“Smells like you’re being set up as a patsy… maybe her too,” said Angel.
Kit nodded. “I’ve considered that. The bottom line is, we know a lot about Popov, but we know squat about what his plans are.” Worry lines etched themselves across his forehead as he fingered the key he wore on a thick silver necklace.
“We don’t have time for some masterful interrogation, so let’s just waterboard her.”
Kit and Buzz raised their eyebrows.
Angel continued, “Some say it’s torture, some say it’s not. To me, torture is what those Islamist terrorists did in that Kenya shopping mall attack; they pulled the fingers off of hostages with pliers, they gouged out people’s eyes, and ripped off their noses and ears. They castrated men and dismembered women. That’s torture. Waterboarding won’t kill your Russian wife, it doesn’t do permanent physical damage, but it’s damn uncomfortable—intolerable. That’s why people talk, because they want it to stop.”
“But Angel, we don’t have much of a baseline of truth. She could lie through her teeth and we wouldn’t know.”
“She’s expendable, or she wouldn’t have been sent with you,” said Buzz. “So I seriously doubt she knows what Popov’s plans are. That suggests there’s little of real value she could give us, so waterboarding or any other interrogation technique would be a waste of time.”
“Okay,” said Angel quickly, “then maybe she’s a disinformation agent. She as much as admitted she had two tracking devices, but so what, we were about to find them, anyway. She might even be an assassin playing a role, just waiting to deliver a killer line.”
“I don’t trust her, either, guys,” said Kit. “But for now, she’s not my priority. It doesn’t hurt us to keep her on ice until we have a bigger picture.”
The ringing of a cell phone sent them all to silence. Then Kit realized it was his old U.S. phone. He checked the number. “It’s Larry Bing. Angel, your stopwatch. Time one minute so the call can’t be traced.”
Angel nodded and engaged the stopwatch feature on his chronograph.
Kit pressed the green button and put the phone on speaker. “Colonel Bing, this is Major Bennings, on speakerphone.”
Colonel Larry Bing commanded the Activity. Like Bennings, he was rock hard, fair to a fault, and cared about his people; that generated a lot of loyalty in the ranks. Unlike Bennings, most of the battles he fought weren’t with the enemy but with the feckless, the small-minded, the yes-men and yes-women, the sycophants and the sellout bureaucrats and the general officers in and around D.C. who only cared about CYA—covering your ass—and not about kicking the ass of America’s foes.