by Jack Slater
But now he was in the wind, that would be a dozen times harder. And the worst of it was that Grover began to think that César was right. His plan only worked while he was on the front foot. The odds of success evened out if Reyes could bring this to the mat. And there was real danger of that happening.
“Fine. He’s yours. But I want results.”
César smiled, an evil thing. “You will get them.”
19
“So what do we know about him?”
Kelly looked up from the stack of files and printouts scattered on her lap. She clearly had the particulars committed to memory, and Trapp suspected that she only referred to them to make everyone else more comfortable. Presently, though, she only had an audience of one, and her stage was the cramped, windowless and humid rear compartment of a purported telephone utility van, lit only by the glow of several large LCD screens.
“Father of two. Married.”
Trapp’s eyebrows kinked. “Happily?”
“Far as we know,” she confirmed. “No easily identifiable profiles on dating websites or apps. And no evidence in his telephone or email records of any extramarital activity.”
“But?”
“Gambling problem. For most of the last year he’s been about $60,000 in the red across four credit cards. His wife’s are paid off every month, so I’m guessing she doesn’t know about his money troubles. The cards were paid off last week.”
“That the extent of it?”
“Probably not. A 725 number rings him like clockwork every Monday morning, around eight-thirty.”
“Just after he gets to work,” Trapp observed. “Where’s 725?”
A smile – or at least a faint echo of one – appeared on Kelly’s face. It was some evidence, at least, that she wasn’t simply a machine. “Vegas.”
“So not so happy after all,” Trapp mused, glancing up at one of the screens.
“Depends how long he keeps it from her, I guess…”
A nest of cameras sat on the roof of the surveillance van they currently occupied, disguised among the ladders and construction equipment the notional technician would require. Currently the only live feed in the van was of the front of Leo Conway’s house, a four bed, two bath redbrick – currently painted light gray – not far from Grant Circle Park in North DC.
“This is a good catch, Kel,” Trapp said, closing his eyes to give them a break from the glow of the computer screens. He knew better than to reward her with praise more fulsome than that – personalities like hers responded best to forms of encouragement that others might perceive as a near-reprimand.
But regardless, it was true. Pope had chosen well. This really was a good catch. Anyone could pick up on the credit card debt. The computer did most of the hard work for you. You just had to look. But that was table stakes. Recognizing the significance of that area code spoke volumes about her attention to detail – which in turn boded well for her career. You couldn’t teach gut instinct, and Kelly clearly had that in spades.
As he’d expected her to, she didn’t respond to his compliment anyway, saying instead, “Looks like we got movement.”
“I see it,” Trapp replied, focusing on the screen.
It was early in the morning, not quite first thing, but up and down New Hampshire Avenue, parents were getting their kids ready for the school run. The Conway family was no different. They watched as Rita Conway, his wife, exited with the two kids. Both were young enough to be attending pre-school, Trapp guessed.
“Come on,” he murmured under his breath. “Go with her.”
The couple had two vehicles registered in their name. Both purchased on finance, though there was nothing particularly unusual about that. It was difficult to buy a car any other way in America these days, and the financing was so cheap it was a no-brainer.
Not for you though, Leo. Not anymore.
Money was as good a reason as any to betray one’s country, Trapp supposed. He’d never liked working with assets motivated by that incentive, though. They tended to sell you out once they found a higher bidder. Then again, he didn’t really like working with anyone else at all.
The ones motivated by ideology were no better. They always measured you against what you could do to achieve their ends, always waiting for you to fall short or disappoint them. But at least they believed in something other than themselves.
They watched as Leo Conway stopped in the doorway and kissed his wife goodbye. His arm was in a Velcro sling. She lingered for a few seconds as she returned his affection, perhaps spooked by his brush with death a couple days before. He stooped and hugged each of his kids goodbye in turn.
“Damn.”
Trapp glanced up at Kelly’s face, mildly surprised by her use of the expletive. Not because he doubted that she knew such language – most cops did – but because he didn’t think anything ruffled the young FBI agent.
“Just be patient,” he murmured, looking back at the screen and watching as Rita Conway walked out of shot. “If he’s our guy, he must be feeling the heat. He’ll do something to screw up, and we’ll be there to watch it. Assuming this isn’t just a wild goose chase, of course.”
“You really think it might be?” Kelly asked.
Trapp concealed a smile. Not so cold after all, kid.
“I think it’s usually best not to get hung up on a hypothesis. We’re all just dumb apes at the end of the day. Even the best of us look for evidence that supports our arguments, even at the expense of ignoring the bits that don’t.”
“Noted,” Kelly replied without comment.
Up at the house, the camera watched without judgment as Leo Conway lingered for a few seconds longer, gripping the door frame with one hand for support as he waved with the other. The sound of his wife’s car starting up and then driving away was audible even through the van’s thin metal skin, which was a good reminder for them both to keep their voices low when they conversed.
Leo glanced down at his watch and then seemed to peer down the street, as if checking that his wife was really gone.
“I think we might have something,” Trapp muttered.
They watched a little longer as their target disappeared from the doorway without closing it. He reappeared about forty seconds later, now wearing a thin jacket, and gingerly descended the stairs to ground level.
“I’ll call it in,” Kelly agreed, her eyes glued to the screen. She bowed her lips to a small microphone and depressed the transmit button before murmuring a few clipped words into it.
A second car engine started in the background, as the wife’s had just done. It grumbled for a few seconds without really catching, then growled into life. Then it, too, departed.
Trapp hooked his earpiece in just in time to hear the caterer’s voice confirming that she had eyes on the target. He grabbed an orange construction helmet from the hook on the van’s wall, then grinned. “Go time.”
About twenty houses farther down the street, a Toyota Prius pulled out into traffic. The left rear passenger door bore the scrapes of some long-forgotten sideswipe, though nothing serious enough that it would be unusable for a ride-share driver. Dangling from the rearview mirror was a pair of novelty dice, prominently marked with the logo of one such company.
Ikeda was sitting in the back, concealed by a window tint that was a couple of shades darker than would ordinarily be allowed. She had a notebook computer open on her lap, which was in turn connected to a small mobile Internet router.
“CIA gets all the cool shit,” Nick Pope remarked, momentarily looking at his supposed passenger through the mirror.
“We have a cheat code,” she remarked, manipulating the mousepad without glancing up.
“What’s that?” he asked, killing the indicator light.
“Strictly speaking, we don’t have to play by the rules you guys do.”
“Or at all.”
“That too.”
Pope grunted with amusement as the Prius slowed to a stop as they reached a set of traffic lights
. “His cell phone moving?”
Ikeda looked up and shot Pope a thumbs-up. “Yep. You can hang back a bit. No point giving him a fair chance at spotting us.”
“Just the way I like it.”
Trapp shouldered his way through a set of hanging plastic fronds that shielded the business end of the surveillance van, Kelly in close pursuit. She closed and locked the doors behind them.
Together, they walked toward the nearest telephone pole, ostentatiously peering up at it before turning down the street and tracing an imaginary line in the air. It didn’t mean anything, but it looked as though it plausibly might, and that was all that was important.
“How’d I look?” Trapp grinned, gesturing down at the bright orange hi-viz jacket draped over his shoulders and a khaki utility belt weighing down his waist. It was loaded with tools, but they were mostly for show. The important kit was in the pouches, hidden from view.
Kelly shrugged and deadpanned, “Guess it’ll be comforting having this to fall back on. If the Bureau thing goes wrong.”
Trapp grunted his amusement. He took one last, long look up and down the street, still tracing imaginary telephone lines in the sky but scanning for any sign that either Leo or Rita Conway were about to return.
Before executing, he keyed his radio’s transmit button and murmured, “Location on the wife?”
Ikeda replied without missing a beat, her familiar voice clear in his earpiece. “Still driving. School’s ten minutes away from the house, so you should have at least that much warning.”
“Copy. Thanks.”
“You got it.”
They walked slowly from the van to their target. Though the street was busy at this time of the morning, if anything that worked to their advantage. In their company-issued – or at least company-adjacent – workwear, they might as well have been invisible to the professional classes that occupied this neighborhood. Both still scanned the windows and doorways all around for any sign that they were being observed, but they could have just as easily not bothered.
Only a wooden gate and fence separated the Conways’ backyard from the street out front. Trapp often wondered what the point was in bothering to use locks like the one he was confronted with. Any junkie or criminal worth their salt could shoulder their way through the flimsy mechanism without breaking stride.
It took Kelly less than five seconds to defeat it the old-fashioned way. She was good, he saw, picking the lock without leaving so much as a scratch.
The yard behind was neatly maintained and scattered with abandoned toys and a wooden swing set, which hung entirely still in the morning’s calm. The flowerbeds and foliage were pleasant enough but had that sense of sterility that came with hiring a landscaping company. One last scan confirmed that many of the windows overlooking the yard were still obstructed by curtains, and those that weren’t were empty.
Trapp inclined his head, and the pair of them walked quickly but deliberately to the back door of the house. Once under cover and shielded from any unwanted attention from nosy neighbors, they paused for breath – though not for too long.
They went to work like a well-oiled team, though they’d only met each other a few days before. Trapp pulled an electronic detection device from one of the pouches on his utility belt and turned it on before crouching down. He ran it along the base of the door frame, then up each side, then along the top. It detected all forms of semiconductor activity and would growl like a well-trained working dog if it came into contact with a system that could plausibly warn someone – whether Leo Conway or another player entirely – of a forced entry.
But the unit didn’t make a sound. And when Trapp gave a half-shrug, silently asking whether his partner had detected anything on the visual spectrum, she confirmed that she had not. As far as either of them could reasonably make out, the Conway house was clean. It was always possible that a passive system was in place: maybe a camera or an infrared device positioned somewhere out of sight or well-disguised, but you couldn’t legislate for every possibility.
All you could do was play the odds. And Trapp was satisfied that they were, at least, in his favor. He nodded again, and Kelly beat the back door lock as well. It took her a few seconds longer, but the job was done just as cleanly.
This time he doled out a thumbs-up. He received no response.
Atta girl.
“Looks like she’s back in the car, Jason,” Ikeda said into her lapel mic.
She could have probably gotten away with a radio handset in the relative safety of the back of the Toyota, but there was always the chance she would need to go on foot. It was better to be prepared.
“ETA?” Came the no-nonsense response.
“Twelve minutes. Count on nine, just in case she steps on it.” Ikeda squinted at the screen on her lap, her eyes focused on the red dot that was assigned to Rita Conway’s cell phone signal. “Hold up. She’s heading away from the house. Must be going grocery shopping or something. You’ve got plenty of time.”
The acknowledgment of the update was equally terse. She smiled, having expected nothing less.
Pope spoke from up front. “And our boy?”
“Still a couple of hundred yards ahead of us. Looks like he’s heading into the center. He’s on Sherman Avenue now. I’ll tell you if he turns.”
“Got it,” Pope said, briefly stomping on the brakes as another rideshare car cut him off.
“Asshole,” he muttered under his breath. “I should write you a fucking ticket.”
Ikeda couldn’t help herself laughing out loud, though she kept her eyes glued to the screen in front of her, alert to any sign that either their target —or the wife —was changing course. “That might give the game away a little, don’t you think, Nick?”
The FBI agent driving her mumbled something equally irreverent underneath his breath but fell silent as his evident irritation faded and concentrated on his driving instead.
Rita Conway’s signal disappeared for a few seconds, a ghostly, pulsating dot superimposed on the map where it had been last spotted. Ikeda zoomed in and found that she was looking at an underground parking garage, which relieved her a little. She kept an eye on the signal until it reappeared about 90 seconds later as the cell phone reacquainted itself with its parent cell network. The device was moving slowly now, indicating that she was probably on foot. Unless the Conways were running a fairly sophisticated intelligence operation between each other and had somehow handed the phone off to a runner, it was safe enough to assume that Rita was out of the picture for a while.
By this point, her husband’s signal had passed through Columbia Heights, the FBI surveillance vehicle following at a restrained distance. He didn’t appear to be slowing, so Ikeda settled in for the ride.
Trapp and Kelly checked the entire Conway house for electronic surveillance and found nothing. It was a little more difficult to be certain that the place was clean than it had been to be confident that the doorway wasn’t monitored. Two decades into the 21st century, almost anything could be a vector for electronic surveillance. Refrigerators were connected to the Internet. Computers weren’t just on every desk, but in every pocket.
Hell, Trapp thought, shaking his head as he spied a home automation speaker from the rainforest company nestled on a side table. Millions of people all over the country had willingly brought into their homes devices that had the sole intention of spying on their owners. And paid for them!
The Conways were apparently no different.
When he had joined the Farm, the CIA’s training school in Virginia, there were still a few instructors left on staff who’d been there through the dark days of the Cold War. Real relics, men – and all men – who barely knew how to operate a toaster, let alone a cell phone.
The world had moved on a long way since then. The espionage business had probably shifted even further. Trapp sometimes wondered whether he too was now a vestige of a bygone age. Was there still use for men like him in a world where bytes were a thousand times more
deadly than bullets?
And who’s instructing now?
He shook his head to clear it and retrieved the first of the listening devices from his belt. It was the size of a little fingernail and almost transparent. The battery life could stretch to a couple of weeks if it limited its frequency of transmissions, though he didn’t anticipate that this operation would take nearly that long. If they didn’t have results in a couple of days, then it would probably be time to think about bringing Leo Conway in for questioning.
He knelt to the ground by a large, rectangular coffee table stacked with high-end fashion magazines, none of which appeared ever to have been opened, and a selection of three photo books of a type that were designed to be displayed rather than read. The table bore indentations which looked to have been inflicted by momentarily unsupervised toddlers – messy scratches and welts, all confined to an area that Trapp judged would fall within a young boy’s reach.
In another room, he sensed Kelly’s almost silent footsteps as she padded nearby, performing a very similar task. Neither of them spoke, just in case they’d missed a listening device that some other party had already left behind. And besides, there was nothing much to say.
Quietly, Trapp donned a latex glove for his working hand, leaving the other unencumbered for any more tactile work. He placed the listening device on the tip of his right index finger, then lowered his body to the ground before gently flipping onto his back, the underside of the table now occupying his vision. With his free hand, he reached for a penlight and searched for a spot to install it with its beam. He quickly found one, nestled in one of the corners at which the legs joined the tabletop.
He placed the flashlight between his teeth and peeled the adhesive back of the listening device off, sticking it to his lip for safekeeping while he worked. Actually installing the bug took only seconds, most of which was taken up by checking that the device actually did what it was supposed to. The old wooden floorboards beneath him creaked as he climbed back to his feet.