by Seeley James
Ms. Sabel continued. “They had just wrapped a scene in Barcelona when a producer started grabbing her. She punched him in the nose and ended up on the garage floor looking up at you.”
She could see the curiosity on my face. “We had breakfast this morning.”
“So, I blew it?”
My three friends muttered their agreement in unison.
Ms. Sabel’s phone chirped with a news alert. “Chuck Roche promoted David Watson from his transition team to Chief of Staff. The most important role in the administration.”
Not wanting to discuss our illegal recording of Roche, Watson, and Hunter, I minimized my response to a knowing glance and a shrug. She let the others discuss the appointment and asked me to join her in a meeting. She grabbed her cane and limped away. I followed.
“Kasey Earl is here.” She blew out an exasperated breath. “He wants to negotiate his fee.”
Kasey Earl twisted around in a chair when we walked in. He wore a clean shirt with his hair slicked down like a dirt farmer going to church.
“Stand when a lady enters the room, Kasey.” I kept a lid on my desire to punch him for his bad manners.
“Don’t bother,” Ms. Sabel said with a dismissive wave. “Do you have proof of my birth father’s murderer?”
Kasey scowled, first at me, then at Ms. Sabel. “Wow, them Russians did a number on you.”
Ignoring his comment, she rolled her hand. “What do you have?”
He pulled a thick folder out of his backpack and tossed it on her desk. “Check it out. Tell me whacha looking at.”
He leaned back, crossed his legs, and plastered a smug look on his face.
We glanced through a stack of copies. Each one had been redacted with a black marker so juicy the ink had saturated clear through. Three on top were paper-clipped together. They were Roche Security payment records for contractor services. One of them was not redacted. It listed the payee as Leroy Johnson. Five thousand dollars had been paid the day before Ms. Sabel’s parents were murdered. The service was listed as “pruning”. The next stack had the name and social security number redacted. The second page listed the same amount and date, also for pruning. The last had an additional payment of $25,000 the day after the murders.
We looked at each other. She said, “Leroy didn’t live long enough to get his second bonus. But the man who killed my father did. Is that what this is?”
We turned to Kasey.
“See what I been telling you?” He grinned and stuck a toothpick in his teeth. “Straight up, bitches.”
Ms. Sabel started thumbing through the other copies. “What are these?”
“Authorizations and annual payments for pruning.”
“Authorizations—you mean who hired them?”
“Yessiree, ma’am. And the project manager too. Ain’t you proud of me now?”
I leaned against Ms. Sabel’s desk and crossed my arms. “It has to be Chuck Roche since it’s his company.”
“Nah, I ain’t falling for that.” He shook his head. “I told you, none of your tricks. You don’t know who it is. And there’s three people involved anyhow.”
“Kasey.” Ms. Sabel thumbed through the stack. “These pages are two decades old. Companies like Roche Security don’t keep records that long. They’re only required to keep records for seven to ten years. Where did you get these?”
“I was doing me some research on a current issue. There was a kinda odd thing. A whattaya call it?”
“Anomaly?”
“Yeah, one of them.” He leaned forward. “So, I kept digging back in the records looking for that same alomany. It come up every year like clockwork. But they only keep records back like you said. Then I asks one of the accounting ladies if there’s any older shit. Pardon my language, ma’am. And she said there used to be a warehouse, but nobody goes there no more. They just shred the old stuff now. So, I go on down there. It took a week of pushing through dusty old boxes, but I done found it.”
She dropped the papers on the desk. “What do you want for these?”
“Five million. Final offer.”
“Years ago, I published a reward of $100,000.”
Kasey started to shake his head.
“Kasey—” I interrupted his thinking “—we’ve known each other for a long time. That whole time, it’s never been a secret that you’re seven beers short of a six-pack. And you’ve always been aware that I graduated high school in my junior year and got a full-ride scholarship to Iowa State. Which doesn’t make me a genius, but does make me a whole lot smarter than you. So, let me give you some free advice here. See, she can call the cops, tell them you have this information. The cops will go to your place with a warrant, take all this information for free, and charge you with attempted extortion. You’d go to jail.”
“You sure about that?” Kasey’s smug grin disappeared. “Hell. Don’t matter none. They can’t serve me no warrant.”
Ms. Sabel and I shared a confused glance. She put her hands on the desk and leaned forward. “You don’t have the documents?”
“They’re safe. I can get to ’em when I want. Probably.”
I palmed my face. “You left them in the warehouse. Let me guess, you bragged about what you found?”
“I didn’t tell nobody nothing.” Kasey swiveled his gaze between us. “I ain’t stupid. But the accounting guy come around and asked me why I’m on the video down at the warehouse making copies.” He fidgeted his fingers. “They done changed my access code. Now I gotta apply for another one.”
I did some math in my head. A big company like Roche would have many layers of management. It would take time for one guy scratching his head to ask another guy higher up the ladder, “Do we have any incriminating information in storage section X:Y?” And the question would bubble up the food chain until it reached whoever authorized the checks. If he’s still working there, Kasey was a dead man, and our chances of seeing the real box of documents would drop like a skydiver who forgot his chute.
Ms. Sabel did the same math and pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “Look, Kasey, I’ll give you $500,000 to bring the whole box down here. But tell me something. Roche has thousands of employees. This could’ve been a project by an aggressive VP looking to move up the ladder, or it could’ve been Roche. Do these records spell out exactly who’s involved?”
“No, no, no.” Kasey waved his index finger like a school teacher. “I ain’t telling you shit until … pardon my language, ma’am. Let me just say this: you ain’t gonna believe it til you see it.”
We kicked him out. He promised to be back soon with the originals but stuck to his five-million price. The money wasn’t a problem for her. What she hated was the principle of giving a slimeball like Kasey that much money.
I returned to the employees’ wake. Ms. Sabel went elsewhere.
Miguel and I were shooting pool when the butler tapped me on the shoulder. “Could you spare a moment, sir? There is a man at the door from the US Senate. He insists on speaking to you or Ms. Sabel.”
I followed him to the foyer, where a man dressed in a deep blue suit with a white shirt and a red tie stood at ease.
While my stride was still beating out a rhythm crossing the marble toward him, he started talking. “I’m Ivan D’Aquino from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Are you Jacob Stearne?”
He held up an official-looking ID card with his picture on it.
I said, “I am.”
He whipped out an equally official looking folder and slapped it on my chest. “Are you the head of personal security for Pia Sabel?”
My hand slid to the folder and took it from him. I opened the folder to find some beautiful stationery with official-looking seals from the US Senate. “Yes, I have that responsibility.”
“Will you be in contact with her today?”
“Most likely, why?”
“I expect you to give Ms. Sabel her copy.” He slapped a second folder into my hands. “You are both hereby served
with a summons to appear before the Senate. You will be compelled to give your sworn testimony about the Russian military personnel in Kaliningrad who you murdered.”
CHAPTER 47
Yuri and Roman sat on the balcony overlooking the beach on a muggy afternoon in Santos, Brazil. They sipped beers and groaned about their bandages and whether taking the pain medication would be worthwhile. It might ease their agony, but they would lose their edge. Paranoia is a healthy thing for geeks when Viktor Popov is your sworn enemy.
Aleksandr was the third member of SHaRC to reach Roman’s apartment in Santos. Roman led him to the balcony, where he gasped at Yuri’s injuries. The three of them took their beers to the railing, leaned on it, and looked over the beach. Crowds had gathered. Many of Brazil’s famously beautiful women sunned themselves just below them.
“That one is for you, Aleksandr.” Roman pointed to a dark-skinned woman far below them.
“You can see with only one eye?” Aleksandr clinked Roman’s bottle.
While Roman and Aleksandr chose future brides from the assembled throngs, Yuri looked down the beach with his good eye. An ominous feeling came over him. The sense of being watched. Rows of twenty-story apartments rose along the curved stretch of sand. Something along that row caught his eye: a blue glint. He scanned again, looking for something out of place. Then he saw it. A glint of sunlight on a spotter’s scope.
It was on a building three hundred yards away. The blue coating of the lens reduced the sparkle but made it a unique signature to a major who started his career as a sniper.
A spotter and sniper were taking aim. He saw the puff of smoke.
Yuri felt like a man in a nightmare. He willed himself to move faster than the supersonic bullet could travel. It was an impossible task. He spun in place, reaching out with his arm. He shouted something. His extended arm hit Roman hard. The two of them went down. Roman’s head hit the sliding glass door.
Aleksandr’s head had already exploded. His body slumped against the wall.
Roman’s eyes were on Yuri. He followed the major’s gaze and realized what happened. He flipped over onto his hands and knees and scrambled inside. “Grab the laptops. Do you have your phone?”
“Right behind you.” Yuri’s head throbbed. None of his broken and reset bones were healed enough to handle the blood pumping hard throughout his body. “Do you have a safe room?”
They scrambled to their feet, grabbed the electronics. Outside, they could hear boots tramping up the stairwell.
“Better.” Roman walked quietly and whispered. “Follow me.”
They slid out of the apartment and down the hall. The pounding boots neared the corner. Yuri raced behind Roman to a nearby apartment. Roman unlocked it with trembling hands. He closed the door quietly and relocked it with an iron bar across the door.
Yuri looked around at the spartan accommodations. A TV monitored Roman’s beachfront condo via streaming video. In the upper corner, Aleksandr’s body remained in a heap. Roman made a call.
“Who are you calling?” Yuri asked.
“The police, of course.”
Outside their escape room, the boots landed on their floor. Three crashing sounds later, they watched the live video as the attacking soldiers entered Roman’s apartment. The men cleared the room and rifled through Roman’s things. They tore open Yuri’s backpack and found Babineau’s passport. One of them began to make a call.
Sirens screamed in the streets below.
On the TV, the Russian soldiers in Roman’s apartment looked at each other with alarm. They had not expected such a quick response. Packing up, they made a beeline for the exits and disappeared off camera.
Yuri grabbed Roman. “You did this! You spoke to that man … Brad.”
“No.” Roman shook his head furiously. “We never discussed location. I would never divulge this place. This has always been my safe house. I planned on getting out of Stavanger months ago. I always used a spoofed IP phone. Brad hasn’t contacted me since I left Paris. I swear.”
Yuri pushed him away. Brad’s tradecraft was superb. The American implied he was working against Strangelove and Popov, but trusting his words could be a fatal mistake. If Roman had allowed himself to be tracked, it could’ve easily been either party.
“Damn it.” Yuri paced with his arms wrapped around himself. “He was just a kid. What the hell is wrong with these people?”
Roman watched him but didn’t reply.
“They tracked him here.” Yuri’s pacing picked up speed. “No. He’d only been here a few minutes. They were in place on the rooftop. I saw the spotter quite by accident. Did they follow me? No. I used Babineau’s passport and paid cash from Montreal all the way here. New phone, never turned on my laptop. They always follow money.”
Yuri stopped and stared at his new lieutenant.
Roman dropped his shoulders. “I kept an account in Panama.”
“They found it?”
“That’s how I bought this.” Roman waved his hands around. “When you conscripted me, you knew I was involved in the credit-card hack of Target. What you didn’t know: I was also responsible for the Home Depot hack. My take was $3 million. It’s been invested in Exxon Mobil, Amazon, and United Healthcare in America.”
“I can’t be angry.” Yuri’s head pounded with excruciating pain. “Your emergency system worked well for us.”
Roman dropped to the sofa and gingerly held his bandaged face in his hands. “How did Popov find us so quickly?”
“Strangelove did the background on your accounts. He never told me about that one.” Yuri paced again. He considered Alexi’s accounts, the ones he’d used. Did Strangelove let everyone keep some outside money in case they made a break for it? Accounts he could track when he needed to? “We need to pool our money into new accounts. Yours and mine. I’ll bet the others have an account here and there. We get the word out. Change phones, change IDs. Lay low.”
Someone knocked on the door. Yuri drew his weapon. Roman waved him away and opened it. Uniformed Santos police officers stood in the hall. Behind them, three men were handcuffed and pressed against the wall.
One of the officers spoke to Roman in Portuguese. Roman responded in the native language, much to Yuri’s surprise.
“They are offering us a look at Aleksandr’s killers,” Roman said in Russian. “The reason I came to Brazil—police protection is much cheaper here.”
Yuri grasped his shoulder. “I have chosen my lieutenant wisely.”
Roman replied with an impatient glance, telegraphing Yuri that his leadership would be short-lived if he didn’t prove his value quickly.
They brought the Russian soldiers in one at a time and interrogated them. On the face of things, nothing came of it. But Yuri sensed a hesitation in one man’s voice. A sign of weakness. They let the cops take all but the hesitant one away to be tried for murder. The cops let them know the coroner would retrieve Aleksandr’s body soon.
When they were alone with their bound captive, Yuri dragged him to Aleksandr’s body. He pushed the soldier to his knees in front of Alexandr’s corpse. “You did this. You murdered my friend. Tell me who put you up to it.”
The soldier offered no reply.
Yuri shoved the man’s face into Alexandr’s blood. They questioned him again. He showed signs of fear, but he didn’t crack. Yuri pushed him to the floor and gave him one last chance to reveal his boss. The man refused.
He wrapped his hands around the man’s neck and squeezed.
Roman pulled Aleksandr’s phone from their dead friend’s pocket and checked it. Then he grabbed two more beers from the fridge and sat nearby and watched.
When it was over, he handed Yuri a beer. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yes.” Yuri rose to his feet and flexed his fingers. “You know, it takes a great deal more hand-strength than I ever imagined. I’ve been working my fingers with those grip strengtheners for a few days. I feel a remarkable improvement over the last two. One day, I will
use these hands to strangle the life out of the oligarchs and the generals.”
Roman nodded and sipped his beer.
“This was for Aleksandr.” Yuri sat and took a sip of beer. “There. I feel better by talking about it.”
“Popov sent them.” Roman shrugged. “Brad is soft like an American. No Russian would take orders from him.”
“Do you think Popov ran the operation himself? Or is there a new Strangelove? Whoever it is, we need to make him understand that coming after us is more difficult than leaving us alone.”
“That is a noble undertaking for the man who would be king of the stateless.”
Yuri nodded and smiled.
Then Aleksandr’s phone rang.
Roman put it on speaker.
“We’ve never met, Yuri.” The voice spoke in crisp, formal Russian. “I am Viktor Popov. I’m having the nicest lunchtime chat—with your mother.”
CHAPTER 48
Pia listened to her corpulent attorney from a facing couch in the library. He explained the intricacies of Senate investigations. She poured herself another cup of coffee.
“Promise me you’ll plead the Fifth Amendment at the first sign of a loaded question.” He took the last doughnut off the plate and stuffed a quarter of it in his mouth. “And keep your eye out for complex question fallacies. ‘Who is the monarch of England?’ is a legitimate question because it assumes there is an England and that it has a monarch. But ‘Who is the King of France?’ assumes two things at once, that there is a France and that it has a king. The former is true, the latter is not. Senators pull these questions all the time.”
“Thank you.” She blew across her mug. “I’m as ready as I can hope to be.”
“In court, we can object to the judge when the prosecutor asks loaded questions. In the Senate, your only salvation is the Fifth. People may say ‘ooh, you pleaded the Fifth,’ but it’s your right. Otherwise, a trick question can lead to perjury charges.”
“I understand.”
He rose, looked at the remaining pastry in his hand, and stuffed it in his pocket. He shook her hand and left.