by Matthew Hart
“Uh-huh,” Tommy said. He snapped his briefcase open and thumped a stack of paper on the table. “Let me show you how we do things in my country.” He spread out some pages. “What we do is, we identify banking targets we think will elucidate certain relationships we want to understand, put all those bank accounts into the computer, and see what the National Security Agency can tell us. What they give us back is this—banking trails that show exactly how the targets move their money around.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with me,” Leclerc said, but he leaned forward to take a closer look. Hard to resist. If he was laundering his clients’ money, Tommy was showing him a diagram of the machinery.
“I’m sure this is all very important to you, Mr. Cleary, but a stack of uncertified paper documents”—he picked up a page and studied it—“a document purporting to be banking records, as I believe you’re suggesting.” He let the page slip back onto the table. “Well, again, I hardly see what this has to do with me.”
“I’ll tell you what it has to do with you,” Tommy said. “These are all numbered accounts. You set up the companies behind these accounts. You opened the bank accounts. You have power of attorney to move money in and out of them as directed. We think there’s a good chance some of that money comes from criminal activity. Ostrokhova is of particular interest to us at the moment, but I think we’re going to find some Chinese connections in there too, when we take a harder look. So that’s where you come in. You tell us who owns the numbered accounts, and we”—he picked up a paper and consulted it—“we agree to keep this one to ourselves.” He handed the page to Leclerc.
“What’s that?” I said.
Tommy stopped the playback. “A Liechtenstein account. That new algorithm we have figured out it’s where Leclerc put his private stash.”
“And that remark about the Chinese?”
He shrugged. “Spur of the moment. Hey, it’s a fake. We see what happens.”
He hit the play button, and the video resumed. Through the plate-glass window behind Leclerc, the trees on the slopes of Mount Royal blazed in the autumn air. Here and there the gray stone gable of a mansion peeked from the foliage. It was a great view, but at the moment one hundred percent of Gus Leclerc’s attention was laser-focused on the paper sitting on his coffee table. Finally he looked up at Tommy.
“Are you making a record of this conversation?”
“If it’ll make you feel better,” Tommy said, “frisk me.”
It would make him feel better. Leclerc buzzed, and a young heavy in a blazer came into the room. Tommy stood up, and the kid patted him down. Full-service law firm.
When they were alone again, Leclerc leaned forward and said in a cold voice, “Are you threatening me?”
Tommy sighed. “Come on, Leclerc. Lawyer to lawyer. Why do you think I came up to Montreal? Of course I’m threatening you. I’m giving you a get-out-of-jail-free card if you cooperate. Think of this as a discovery meeting. I’m showing you some of my case. You know what the penalties are. We see if there’s some solution that works for both of us.”
Leclerc laughed. “Case?” he said. “What case? I don’t know where you went to law school, but if you had any kind of case—and I don’t even know what crimes the case would allege or who the defendants would be—I wouldn’t be hearing about it from a stranger with a briefcase full of banking records probably obtained illegally by unauthorized foreign government actions.”
“Yale,” Tommy said.
“Eh?”
“That’s where I went to law school. So I take your point about procedure. If I were still a prosecutor in New York, where we specialized in hunting down guys like you, I’d have come better prepared. But the work I do now, sometimes we cut corners.”
Leclerc studied Tommy with a detached expression. I had to hand it to the guy: he didn’t try to smile or make a witty remark to show how cool he was. He was cool enough just saying nothing. Then he put his finger on the buzzer, and the door opened.
“Show this gentleman out,” he said. “He seems to have wandered into the wrong country.”
* * *
“You never thought he’d cooperate,” I said when we were heading out to Tommy’s rental.
“He’s in too deep. He has to fight it out.”
“You went up there to make him panic.”
Tommy opened the door of a Toyota Corolla and crammed himself in behind the wheel. The driver’s side sank and swayed as he struggled to get the seat belt fastened. It must have been the last car left in the lot. We scraped onto the road and headed down the hill.
There was a hump in the pavement near the floatplane dock. We hit it hard, and the car made a sickening crunch.
“Leclerc’s guy patted you down pretty well. I get that he wouldn’t have found the camera, but where was the wire?”
He rolled the piping on his shirt between his thumb and forefinger. “In here. Minnie’s idea. It’s something she invented.” His face wore an arid look.
“Minnie invented a sophisticated clandestine recording system?”
He kept his eye on the road and didn’t answer.
“And the target was you,” I said.
He tried to make a casual wave with his hand, but Tommy was nuts about Minnie. It must have hurt. Plus the humiliation when he’d had to report it to Tabitha. But a very cold feeling came over me at that moment, and it wasn’t because I felt bad for Tommy’s battered heart.
“How did you find out she was bugging you?”
“I was in the office when the techs were doing the monthly sweep. They picked it up.”
“Uh-huh. And when was that?”
“I wanted to tell you.”
“Jesus Christ, Tommy. You son of a bitch. When did you find the wire?”
“Three days ago.”
We drove through the city. Heavy traffic kept us creeping from light to light. There wasn’t much to say. The people I worked for had let Lily and me walk into a trap. Fan knew we were coming. Beijing would have warned him. At the meeting in Tommy’s office when we’d watched the video of the convoy, the Chinese had listened in on Minnie’s wire.
“Alex,” Tommy began, but I cut him off.
“Spare me, Tommy. I know how it goes. Tabitha thought that if I didn’t break into the warehouse, the Chinese would figure out we’d found the wire. You didn’t tell me because Tabitha wants to keep the channel open so you can feed misinformation the other way. I understand how it works.”
We drove in silence for another couple of blocks before I thought about Leclerc again.
“Back to the lawyer. You went up there to spook him. Did it work?”
“Five minutes after I left his office he was on the phone to George Wu.”
“Christ—Wu? That means Leclerc is working for the twins too. Wu will assume that Lily rolled on Leclerc and that maybe we’re coming after Fan too.”
“Fine,” Tommy said. “Fan panics. Let’s see what he does.”
I’d been sitting on my anger for too long. “Will you fucking try to think more than one step ahead! Who’s just gone to Vancouver? Lily. The person Fan already thinks is conspiring against him with his sister.”
“Settle down, Alex. How does he even know where Lily is?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. He has eyes at the airport. If poutine girl could find out when Lily left and where she was headed, I think Fan might be able to match the intelligence coup.”
I called Luc and told him Lily was arriving in Vancouver that afternoon. I thought Fan might try to grab her. The Canadian security establishment didn’t like us much, but they liked the Chinese less.
“I’ll get somebody on it,” he said, and hung up.
41
The Black Hawks came low up the bay, as pale as fish. They made a sound like a scythe swishing through the air. Tommy stood on the terrace watching. His chartreuse bowling shirt flapped in the cold gusts that blew in from the bay.
“Black Hawk UH-60s,” he said. “The stealth
model. That silver finish makes them hard to see on radar. Same with that modified tail boom and the hubcap thing on top of the rotor. That’s the chopper they used on the Bin Laden raid. The Pakistanis never even knew they were there.”
The helicopters sank out of sight and landed noiselessly behind the trees.
“So the Galaxy leaves, and with it goes the appearance of American control,” I said. “But we offer tactical support to keep our foot in the door.”
“Something like that,” Tommy said. “We provide the choppers, and Canada provides the muscle. Win-win.”
Muscle for what? The Canadians don’t want to act openly against the twins. They already wish they’d never touched the sister.”
He laced his thick fingers together and leaned on the railing, watching the girl with the blonde hair pull her kayak from the back of a pickup and carry it to the edge of the little lake. “The official line—it’s a policing action. Ongoing murder investigation, so need to have another look at the site. But that’s just for starters. Drilling without proper environmental approvals. Commencement of exploration without plant and animal census.”
“You are kidding me.”
“Amigo”—Tommy shook his head—“you should see the regulations. A woman from Fish & Game came over to Luc’s office to brief us. Fan’s guys should have counted every fish and bunny rabbit within a stipulated radius. That’s so they can put them back when they’re done.”
A skirt of ice glimmered by the shore. The girl laid the kayak on the ground and stripped off her thick pants to reveal a black wetsuit. She pulled on a black wool cap, picked up the kayak, and high-stepped into the lake, breaking the ice as she went. When she was up to her knees, she smashed a space with her legs and put the kayak in the water.
“The Chinese will know it’s all about screwing with Fan,” I said.
“Sure they’ll know. Who cares? The Canadians have deniability. The Galaxy leaving is great optics for them. They can say they put their foot down and the bully backed off. Plus they get a boatload of banking material on Leclerc. Plus we’re letting the sister go.”
“You mean we’re dropping the extradition?”
“She’s as free as a bird.”
“So the Canadians get everything they want, and we get to fly their cops out to issue, like, parking tickets?”
He spread his shovel-sized hands. “Who doesn’t like to be a good neighbor?”
The girl climbed into the kayak and drove herself through the thin ice, smashing her paddle hard through the crust and forcing a channel out into the open water. Her blonde hair shivered behind her with each powerful stroke. Shards of dripping ice flew from her paddle and slithered across the frozen surface. Her breath came in white puffs, and the faint sound of tinkling ice chimed in the cold air.
My phone vibrated. I checked the screen: Luc. We went inside, and I put the phone on speaker and set it on the coffee table.
“We missed her,” he said. “That flight had already arrived when you called. We ran the surveillance tape from the arrivals level. She was waiting outside for an airport limo. A black Navigator pulled up, and she got in.”
“Can you track it?”
“It belonged to the twins. We’ve had a team on that house they own in Vancouver. The Navigator got back an hour ago.”
“Could they see Lily?”
“Smoked windows. But I think we have to assume that’s where she is.” I could hear Luc pacing back and forth in whatever dingy office he was using. “Maybe it’s time for you to tell me what her status is.” He sounded irritated. “She’s your agent, right?”
Lily was never really anybody’s agent. Lily worked for Lily. Even when I had her flipped against the Russians, Lily had never performed a single act from which she couldn’t extract an advantage. But everybody makes mistakes, and for sure she’d made one now.
“She has no official protection, Luc.”
He opened a drawer and slammed it shut again. “So we won’t get an official request to help her. Translation: the US government never heard of her. Even for a cold-hearted bastard like you, that’s shitty, Alex.”
“Yes, Luc. It is.”
I heard him open a door and mutter a few words. The door shut again.
“OK. We’ll do it off the books. You’re going to owe me, Alex. Meet Cedric there. I’ll notify Vancouver,” he said and ended the call.
Tommy and I sat there looking at the phone for a minute.
“I should have told you about Leclerc’s call to Wu earlier,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Alex.”
“They’ll kill her.”
For a brief moment, I could feel her in my arms. Lily ruled herself from behind a glamorous exterior, applied and maintained with care and resolution. Only in the heat of passion did I ever catch a glimpse of the lost child she’d been. In those moments she clung to me, and I loved her.
42
We came in on a looping path over the Pacific. The setting sun slashed a golden sidelight on the coast. Ferries etched their wakes on a copper sea. Cedric handed me a small backpack. I zipped it open just as the wheels squeaked onto the runway. My MPX.
A bright-yellow box truck waited on the apron in front of a deserted hangar. It had a flashing orange light on the roof and the logo of British Columbia Power on the door. A square young man with Asian features stood beside the vehicle. His blue power-company shirt had the name “Hal” stitched on the breast pocket.
“Evening, Staff,” Cedric said.
“Evening, sir,” he replied, deep-sixing for good the fiction that Cedric was a constable.
“Staff Sergeant Chen is field leader for the Vancouver ERT,” Cedric explained to me. The Emergency Response Teams were the RCMP’s tactical units—highly-trained specialists with advanced weapons. “Mr. Turner is a friendly,” Cedric said, introducing me. “It’s his associate we’re going to extract.”
“Yes, sir,” Chen said. “Perhaps we should start with a situational.” He banged his hand on the side of the truck, and the back door sprang open. Inside, a communications unit with two flat-screen monitors and a phosphor green map of Vancouver glowed on the right-hand wall. An operator in a headset sat in front with her eyes on the screens. Three guys and a woman with pigtails pinned tight to her head sat on a bench against the other wall. They all wore street clothes—jeans and beat-up cargo pants, old sweatshirts with the sleeves ripped off at the shoulders. They weren’t wearing what they usually wore to work: head-to-toe black tac suits and the Mounties’ gun of choice for their elite force—Heckler & Koch MP5A3 submachine pistols. Still, you wouldn’t mistake them for the pizza guy.
I wondered what weapons they had. Maybe the question was written on my face. The one sitting nearest to me looked a few years older than the others. He tugged up his sweatshirt. He had a SIG Sauer P226 in a quick-draw rig. He let the shirt fall back and pulled up one leg of his jeans. He had a black KA-BAR knife in a ballistic sheath. The model they call the Warthog. Six-inch blade.
“Sergeant Cox is team leader,” Chen said. He stuck out his hand, and Cox gave him a tablet in a metal case. Chen tapped in a code, and a map of West Vancouver popped up. Marine Drive paralleled the shore of Burrard Inlet.
“The target house is here.” Chen tapped a finger on the screen at a point on the shore. He tapped again, and the map dissolved to an aerial view of a large house. What looked like a gatehouse guarded the entrance to the driveway. The house was about a hundred feet in from the road. Behind the house, lawns and gardens faced the water. A flight of broad stone steps led down through flower beds to a wharf and boathouse on the shore.
“A marine unit is watching the water side. We have surveillance on the gatehouse. Ostrokhova is assumed to be inside. Fan is visually confirmed on the property. The gate is steel. We gain entrance by pretext. Power to the house has been intermittent for the last three hours.”
“So they’re expecting you,” I said.
“They’re expectin
g the power company,” Chen said. “Power will be cut again one minute before we arrive, so no lights and no cameras. At the same time, our people on the water simulate engine trouble and put in at the dock.”
“Drawing off security from the house,” Cedric said.
“Correct.”
“What about the twins?” I said.
“We subdue them,” Cedric said. “It’s an extraction of a kidnap victim. We don’t anticipate an official complaint from the Xis. If we are wrong and she’s not there, it was a bungled robbery by persons unknown.”
The twilight was thickening around us. It would be dark by the time we reached the house. Cedric changed into a shirt like Chen’s. He would ride shotgun in the front. He handed me my bag and a Kevlar vest, and I climbed in the back. They shut the door and we drove off.
I put on the vest and opened the bag in the dim green light from the screens. I took out the MPX. I screwed on the silencer. Cox made an approving murmur and asked for a closer look. He hefted it, snapped out the clip, clicked it back in and passed it around. The back of the truck relaxed into a companionable chat about gun weight and rate of fire and the merits of short-stroke gas-operated action. Then Cox inspected my face.
“That’s some shiner,” he said. “I guess this isn’t your first date.” He gave me a fist bump and handed me a headset.
A dry, steady voice called off our progress. On the dimly glowing map, the blip that was our truck moved through the city. One of the monitors was locked on a view of the gatehouse, the steel gates, and the thick hedge that concealed the property. The other showed the view from the water—the floodlit dock and the steps leading up to the house. The voice in my ear had just announced ten minutes to target when a dark SUV appeared inside the gate.