We crept out of the trees and into the shadow of the closest hangar and worked our way forward from one structure to the next. We were well below the central administration building, but across a service road there was a smaller structure that provided an unobstructed view of the staging area. I pointed in that direction. “We’ll have to chance crossing the road, but it looks like we can set up in the shadows behind those foundation plantings along the side of the building. That will give us decent cover.”
Nando nodded, we dashed across the road, and once we were in place, breathed a sigh of relief. I carried the night-vision binoculars again, and Nando manned the camera. We were both armed. Nando said, “If the FBI is here, they are well hidden.”
I smiled and shook my head. “Finding us again would just make Jones’ day, wouldn’t it?”
At 9:56, the runway lights to the west of us popped on, and several minutes later we heard the distant, high-pitched whine of a jet lining up for a landing. The plane approached from the north, touched down, and used most of the runway to come to taxiing speed. After it made a U-turn onto the service strip and was heading back toward us, I was finally able to focus my binoculars on the tail. “November13Bravo64,” I said under my breath. “That’s Anapolsky’s Gulfstream.”
“I am rolling the camera,” Nando replied.
I followed the jet with my glasses as it turned off the service strip, entered the staging area, and powered down. The hatch popped open, the stairs deployed, and a man got off and hustled on foot in the direction of the main gate, blocked from our view by the building we were crouched next to. “He’s going to open the gate,” I whispered. Meanwhile, two more bodyguards got out and stood on either side as a tall, thin man came down the stairs.
“Anapolsky,” I whispered.
“The oligarch himself,” Nando uttered as the camera whirred softly.
Anapolsky stood erect with his arms crossed as two cars pulled into the staging area and parked near the plane. I recognized both cars—Turner’s pearl-colored Lexus and Boyarchenko’s metallic silver Mercedes. The Mercedes had a large primer patch on the passenger door, I noted with satisfaction.
“Boyarchenko,” I said, as his driver, the Incredible Hulk’s twin brother, opened the passenger door and let the Russian gangster out.
“And Hofstetter,” Nando added, as the lawyer emerged on the other side. “I have them all in my sights. Too bad this is a camera. I would rather have a sniper rifle.”
I swung my glasses to the other car. “That’s Turner standing on the driver’s side and Avery on the passenger side of the Lexus.” The rear door opened, and a third passenger got out. “Poindexter.”
Nando grunted. “All present and accounted for.”
The Portland welcoming committee approached Anapolsky as his bodyguards looked on. After smiles and cordial handshakes all around, Anapolsky nodded to the bodyguard to his right. The man produced a narrow black cylinder that resembled a flashlight without a lens. “What’s that black thing—?”
“A radio frequency detector,” Nando whispered. “He’s going to sweep them for wires or recording devices. He is a cautious man.”
The bodyguard swept Poindexter first, then Avery, and when he came to Turner, the pudgy lawyer stepped back. With my binoculars, I could clearly see fear forming on his face. The bodyguard glanced at his counterparts, then stepped toward Turner again, who backtracked another step. That was enough for Anapolsky’s security team. “Oh, shit,” I said, as they surrounded him, stripped his coat and shirt off, and tore off something taped to the ribs below his right armpit. One of the bodyguards held up something so small I couldn’t make it out. “What the hell is that?” I hissed.
Nando zoomed in. “It looks like a voice-activated recorder.”
Anapolsky shouted something in Russian as the Portland contingent stepped away from Turner like he had the plague. One of the bodyguards removed a gun from a shoulder holster and clipped Turner with the butt of it. He staggered and when he went down, the other two bodyguards began kicking him viciously. I lowered my binoculars after one of the blows rocked his head violently. “Shit. They’re going to kill him. We’ve got to do something.” But what? It was mostly open space between us and the Gulfstream. Anapolsky’s team was certain to be trained marksmen, and although Nando was a good shot, I wasn’t. Intervention looked like suicide to me.
Nando put his camera down, pulled out his Sig Sauer, and looked at me. “We have no choice, my friend.” I swallowed, drew my Glock from my waistband, trying to remember whether the clip was completely loaded or not, and we both stood up. Nando pointed to a panel truck parked to our left, halfway to the Gulfstream. “We take cover there. I will shoot the two men kicking him. You shoot the other one.” Sure.
We made it to the truck without being seen. I held Nando back and stepped out without exposing myself completely. “Stop beating that man,” I called out. Everyone in the group whirled around to face us, and all three bodyguards drew their weapons. “Put your guns down,” I shouted. As pure a bluff as there ever was.
The bodyguard nearest to us crouched down and squeezed off two rounds. Pop, pop. The bullets thudded into the body of the panel truck where I had stood. So much for peaceful negotiations. Maybe it was all that salsa dancing, because, despite his size and bulk, Nando moved like a cat as he jumped out, lowered to a crouch, and aimed at the man trying to kill us. A single report rang out in the night air. The bodyguard pitched back, and his gun flew out of his hand.
“You got him,” I cried out.
Nando looked at his Sig Sauer, then at me in utter confusion. “The hell I did. I didn’t pull the trigger.”
CRASH.
The sound reverberated in the still night like a thunderclap. We looked to our right as an armored Humvee slammed through the sheet metal door of a hangar and started toward the Gulfstream, bathing us, the jet, and the party in front of it in a blinding swath of light. “This is the FBI,” an amplified voice warned. “Drop your weapons and raise your hands, all of you.”
The command was repeated.
Behind the Humvee a dozen agents wearing FBI vests and armed with automatic weapons fanned out on either side. Nando and I put our guns down, but one of the two remaining bodyguards raised his weapon while the other began hustling Anapolsky up the stairs of the Gulfstream. That was a big mistake.
This time I saw the muzzle flash from a sharpshooter on the roof of the central building. The bodyguard next to the oligarch pitched off the stairs and landed flat on his face. Loyal to the end, the other bodyguard laid down, covering fire as he backed toward the plane. He got off a couple of volleys before he, too, was cut down. The rest of the group scattered in panic, and Anapolsky disappeared into the Gulfstream as the turbines began to whine. But an instant later the tires on the plane were shot out.
It was all over in less than a minute. Once the FBI secured the scene, Nando and I ventured toward the plane with our hands held high. Aldous Jones was standing at the periphery barking orders, and when he saw us said, “Oh, no, not you two again.” He looked at me. “I should bust your balls for this, Claxton.”
“I called you twice, Aldous.”
“I know. I know. I saw your calls, but we were in position, and I was busy.” He pointed at Nando’s camera. “Did you get any decent footage?” Nando nodded, and Jones added, “Leave the cartridge. We can’t have too much evidence in this case. Now, stay out of the way, but don’t go anywhere.”
Melvin Turner was sitting up and being attended to by two agents. His face was bloodied, and he looked dazed, but he was alive. That wasn’t the case for everyone. In addition to the three bodyguards, whose bodies were already covered, there was a fourth corpse, conspicuous by the boat shoes on the feet protruding from a makeshift cover. We both looked around, then Nando said, “I don’t see Brice Avery.”
“Me, neither.” I nodded in the direction of the
fourth body. “I think that’s him.”
It was the body of the CEO of Wingate Properties, Brice Avery. He’d taken a stray round through the temple, and it wasn’t until two weeks later that we learned the bullet came from one of the bodyguard’s guns.
A group of agents huddled around another victim. Nando and I moved along the periphery until we could see it was Ilya Boyarchenko. He was lying in a pool of blood, but he was still alive.
The Gulfstream was surrounded by a phalanx of armed, Kevlar-vested agents, and we watched as the two pilots got off first, followed by Stanislav Anapolsky, the renowned Russian oligarch who was on a first-name basis with Vladimir Putin. By the look on his face, this wasn’t the friendly Northwest welcome he’d expected. A black sedan appeared out of nowhere, and Anapolsky was immediately placed in the car and whisked away.
The rest of the suspects—Fred Poindexter, Byron Hofstetter, and Boyarchenko’s hulk of a driver, were all standing handcuffed under the watchful eyes of three more agents. The Hulk looked defiant, but Poindexter and Hofstetter looked absolutely terrified. I was reminded of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, except the two of them were still alive.
Nando and I stayed at the scene for the next couple of hours, then drove ourselves to the FBI regional headquarters, where we each spent another two and half hours undergoing intense debriefings. When we finally pulled up in front of Caffeine Central, it was nearly four in the morning, but we were both wide awake. “Come on up,” I said. “I have a bottle of Rémy Martin VSOP.”
Archie greeted us like he’d been shut in for the last month. I filled his water bowl, gave him a doggie biscuit, and poured Nando and me three fingers of the gold liquid. We sipped in silence for a while, letting the liquor slide down our throats and warm our insides. Finally, Nando chuckled. “So, Melvin Turner was not wearing the recorder at the behest of Aldous Jones. I would have thought it so.”
“That’s right. Turns out he was on his own evidence-gathering quest. He told his wife he was going to take care of the situation. I guess this is what he had in mind. Jones said he recorded some useful stuff on the way to the airport, though.”
“He didn’t think Anapolsky would check him for a bug?”
“Apparently, the Russians didn’t wand them last time, so he thought he was okay. That’s what Jones told me.”
Nando sipped some Rémy and looked at me. “Jones seems to have changed his opinion of you.”
I shrugged and smiled. “He did say he was impressed that you and I had this whole thing figured out, that it was a fine piece of investigative work.”
“Did he mention Grabar?”
“Lip service only. They have Anapolsky. That’s all they’re really interested in.” I shook my head. “Melvin Turner precipitated this whole thing. Jones was prepared for anything, but he was planning on only documenting who was there, like us. They wanted to get a GPS tracker on one of the wheels of the plane, too, if they could get close enough. I think he’s worried he doesn’t have enough on the oligarch.”
“Even now?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Anapolsky’s a big fish. There’s a lot of international politics involved.”
We sipped some more cognac in silence. Nando focused on something across the room and said, finally, “I find it interesting that you and I were ready to put our lives on the line to try and save that sniveling lawyer.”
I laughed, but it was more nervous relief. “We would have been toast. And don’t forget, you were the one who said we had no choice.”
He smiled wistfully and nodded. “I did, didn’t I? Why did I say that? That man means nothing to me.”
“You said it because it’s built in. You hate bullies and injustice as much as I do. And you said it because you are a man of great courage. Who else would willingly go into a gun battle with me?”
His laugh shook the room like a basso profundo, then he swung his dark eyes in my direction and clinked his glass against mine. “To friendship, Calvin.”
“Yes,” I said, “to friendship.”
Chapter Forty-six
It was a little after seven in the morning when I returned Tracey Thomas’ calls from the night before, four of them. “Are you sitting down?” I said.
“Actually, I’m lying flat on my back,” she shot back in a groggy voice. “What’s happened?” When I finished telling her the story, she said, “Well, I’m standing up now, Cal. That’s incredible news. My God, what a scene that must have been, the FBI coming in like the cavalry in a John Wayne movie. North Waterfront’s history now, for sure. Is Turner going to be okay?”
“I think so, but they took him away on a stretcher. He surprised me, to be honest with you. I thought he might come to me or go to the police, but I never expected him to go it alone.”
“Well, they obviously made a mistake when they threatened his family. What about Poindexter? Did you see him?”
“Yeah, I did. He was cuffed and looking like PTSD was in his future.”
“How deeply involved do you think he was?”
“Hard to say. My guess is he was on the periphery, there to insure the project got approved by the city with lots of generous tax incentives. We’ll see what charges they bring against him, and whether he decides to cooperate in exchange for leniency.”
When Tracey and I finished up, I called Claire in New Iberia and told her I thought it was safe for her to go back to Cambridge. When she asked why, I said, “Because the man who threatened you is under arrest and in the hospital in critical condition,” and went on to fill her in.
When I finished, she paused for a long time before saying, “You need to find a safer line of work, Dad.”
She had a point.
Three days later, I picked up Angela and we drove to the Good Samaritan Hospital in Northwest Portland, where we met Dorothy Turner. “Thanks for coming, both of you. I’m very grateful,” she said as she shook my hand, then gave Angela a hug. “His room is at the end of this hall.” We followed her, and after a policeman at the door scanned for our names on a clipboard, checked our IDs, and stood aside, we entered Melvin Turner’s hospital room.
“Come in, come in,” he said, forcing a smile that was more of a grimace. “My jaw’s wired shut, so I can’t speak very well, and I’m still a little loopy from the concussion.” He looked like hell, with a sutured gash above his left eye and an even longer, vertical wound running from his eye to his jawline. Angela sucked a breath as he motioned her to take the chair next to his bed. She sat down hesitantly, and he turned his head toward her as his eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t think you’d come. I, uh, don’t expect you to ever forgive me, Angela, but I wanted to humbly apologize for my behavior. I’m so sorry for what has happened and for the role I played.”
Angela nodded faintly, her hands folded in her lap.
He pointed to an envelope on a portable table next to the bed, glanced at me, then back at her. “Your mom’s actual will is in that envelope. I want you to take it with you, and read through it with Mr. Claxton. Your mother, uh, passed before it was fully executed, but that’s not going to be a problem. Mr. Claxton can see to that. She left everything to you except for some money for her brother and sister. She saw the growth in you, Angela, and figured by the time she was gone, you’d be ready to keep Wingate Properties on a course of social responsibility. That was her dream.”
“What about you and Brice Avery?” Angela asked.
“Well, if I was still able, she wanted me to stay on to help you. But Brice isn’t in the will. She had decided to get rid of him and take the reins of Wingate Properties herself.” He forced another painful smile. “That was your doing, young lady.”
Angela showed a hint of a smile in return. “The Women’s March in Washington had more to do with it than me.”
“She knew you loved art over business,” he went on, “but she figured you would be smart enough to hi
re the right leadership down the road.”
Angela’s hand went to her face to stem the tears. “She said that?”
“Yes, she did.” Melvin let a breath out slowly and glanced at his wife before continuing. “I, uh...I made the mistake of telling Brice about your mother’s plans, and he convinced me to forge the will after the hit-and-run. It was an inexcusable act of cowardice and greed. And I was such a fool to think that Margaret’s and Helen’s deaths were both accidents.” He swung his eyes to me. “I finally woke up, thanks to Mr. Claxton, but when I started asking questions, they threatened to kill Dorothy and the kids.” He lowered his eyes. “You know the rest.”
The room went completely silent and motionless. Finally, Angela reached out, and when Melvin realized she was offering her hand, he grasped it with his. She said, “Thanks for telling me this, Melvin. It means the world to me.” She sniffed hard. “I’d be the worst hypocrite ever if I didn’t forgive you. God knows how much I’ve screwed up, and I’ve learned how hard it is to ask for forgiveness.” A faint smile spread across her tear-stained face. “As a matter of fact, you and Dorothy are on my list of people to make amends to.”
Silence reigned again, and when a nurse came in shortly after that to chase us out, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. As we were leaving, Melvin added, “Mr. Claxton, my firm’s dropping the lawsuit against you, of course. I hope you’ll forgive me for that, as well.” I nodded to assure him I did.
After we said our goodbyes to Dorothy Turner and were walking back to where my car was parked, Angela said, “What will happen to Melvin now?”
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