Checking the rearview mirror, and seeing no cops, he pressed down harder on the accelerator.
###
Levi and Yoshi walked along Strand Street. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of bagpipes.
“What’s with the bagpipes?”
“I’m not sure,” Yoshi said. “I had to drive around some crazy Scottish parade on the way here. A hundred guys dressed in kilts, all of them playing the bagpipes. Evidently it’s some Christmas tradition. Anyway, you wanted to talk.”
“Has anyone else from the FBI been to Helen’s house other than in response to the kidnapping? I figure you’ve been watching who came and went.”
Yoshi shrugged. “Sure, plenty of people. I remember she had a pool party for June, and lots of her co-workers were invited. Mostly the ones with kids June’s age, but some didn’t have kids.” He pressed his lips firmly. “Actually, I can’t remember exactly who was there. Most of those people I didn’t know. And that was months ago. Any security tapes of that would have been recorded over by now.”
The cacophony of the bagpipes had grown louder as they walked, and now, as they reached Prince Street, it was nearly deafening.
Levi felt one of the metal prongs on his cap tingle—and it was a consistent tingle, not fleeting. He looked down Prince Street in that direction, trying to identify the source.
Right next to the South Union Street intersection stood an old four-story brick building. Light reflected off something in a fourth-floor window.
Levi spotted the muzzle flash just as he dove at Yoshi. He felt a shooting pain in his arm. He grabbed Yoshi by his shirt collar and belt, sent him sprawling behind the corner of a bicycle store as he took another a hit in the back.
With a grunt of pain, he tripped, he fell to one knee and felt a heavy impact to the side of his chest.
And all the while, the bagpipe Christmas parade continued their deafening march past them.
Chapter Fourteen
Levi nearly bowled Yoshi over as he scrambled for safety.
“Levi! What the hell?” Yoshi yelled as he wiped a smear of dirt from his face.
Levi winced, as he squeezed his own shoulder, checking to see if anything was broken. His arm throbbed with pain as his finger probed the hole in his suit. Something slithered its way down the sleeve of his suit jacket, and a bullet dropped to the sidewalk.
“Holy shit.” Yoshi scrambled to his feet and looked from the bullet to Levi. “You got shot?”
Levi moved his arm back and forth. It didn’t feel broken, but the fingers on his right hand were tingling, likely from the shock of the hit.
A siren sounded somewhere in the distance, and there was a scent of smoke in the air. Levi peered around the corner of the bike shop and saw licks of flame coming from the roof of the building where he’d seen the muzzle flash come from.
“Levi? You’ve got a bullet hole in your back, I’ll call—”
“I’m fine.” Levi turned to Yoshi and shook his head. “I’m wearing body armor.”
“But still, it’s got to … I mean, your arm can’t be armored, I don’t understand. How is it you’re even standing?”
Levi ignored the question as he watched the crowd of people backing away from the fire as fire engines came onto the scene. Whoever shot him must have set the fire as a distraction and probably fled the area. He suddenly turned to Yoshi. “How do you know it was your brother who sent you here?” he asked. “Did you try calling him?”
Yoshi shook his head. “No, he’s on a plane to Tokyo right now.”
“Then how did he send you an e-mail?”
With a look of doubt Yoshi said, “I don’t know. I’ve used Wi-Fi on a plane before, so I figured … what are you getting at? You think this was a setup? Someone faked Ryuki’s e-mail?”
Levi scooped up the bullet from the ground and bounced it in his hand. There was no way he was the intended target—the shooter couldn’t have known he was coming here. This was almost certainly a setup for Yoshi. But why?
He lifted his arm to adjust his cap—it throbbed with pain, pulsing to the beat of his heart—and turned Yoshi back the way they’d come, toward the parking lot. “Yes, that’s exactly what I think. I think you were set up, but I have no earthly idea why.”
###
Levi winced as he removed his vest. One of the bullets that was still tangled in the lining fell onto the hotel’s bathroom counter. He looked at it closely under the light and spotted the sawtooth file markings of the expanded round.
He replayed the seconds of the event in his mind. Even through the cacophony of the bagpipes only twenty feet away, he would have expected to hear the report of the shot. Even suppressed, the crack of the bullet would have made some noise.
Unless it was a subsonic load.
A subsonic bullet would still be plenty deadly, but with a suppressor, and a bagpipe parade … no one would have heard a thing.
That was probably why Yoshi had been asked to be at that particular location at that particular time.
Brilliant.
Turning the bullet over in his hands, Levi was certain that someone had custom-filed it to expand for maximum damage. And for accuracy, since the shot was taken from about one hundred and fifty yards, the rifling on the barrel would need to have been specially adjusted to stabilize the subsonic round.
Levi removed his T-shirt and saw that his right arm was purple from his shoulder almost midway to his elbow. But the tingling in his fingers had subsided, and he was thankful the bullet hadn’t done more damage. “Esther, I owe you big for that suit you got me. I approve.”
He turned his back to the mirror and saw light bruising from where he’d taken the two chest shots. One he felt whenever he breathed deeply—probably a bruised rib—but the other he didn’t feel at all. It wasn’t the first time Esther’s body armor had saved his bacon.
His phone buzzed from the nightstand. He jogged over to it, picked it up and put it to his ear. “What’s up?”
“Levi,” Denny’s voice crackled across the bad connection. “I’ve got news on your bugs. All government made.”
“What government? Ours?”
“Yup, and I got lucky. One of them was from a batch of devices I had to track down for another reason. At least one of these bad boys started its life in FBI procurement. The others, probably the same story, but I don’t have confirmation yet. However, from the looks of them, I’d say ninety-percent chance.”
Helen Wilson worked for the FBI. Why the hell would the FBI be bugging one of their own people’s apartment?
“Denny, thanks for the data—”
“Hey, I’ve got more. Those prints you sent me from the mom’s apartment. Only one of them got a hit—the one you labeled ‘coffee table.’ It’s someone out of the FBI, a guy named Nicholas Anspach.”
Levi nearly dropped the phone. What the hell did Anspach have to do with Helen Wilson?
His mind flashed back to the day he’d first laid eyes on the forensics expert. The platinum-blond hair, the burn on his face, the missing parts of his pinkie and ring finger. In his mind’s eye, he scanned the photos on the man’s wall—photos of parties and people. He strained to recall the details even though he’d only glanced at those pictures that one time.
Yes. Helen Wilson was definitely in one of those pictures. No, more than one.
“Holy shit!”
“Levi? Are you okay?”
“Denny, how quickly can you get me everything there is to know about Nick Anspach?”
“I can’t access the personnel files directly. I’ve got people for that. Let me make some calls. It’s late, so maybe not until the morning, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Do everything you can. If money will help, I’ll figure something out. I’ll make good on it, somehow.”
“I’ll do what I can. But I actually had more to tell you. If you still want to hear it?”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
“What determines when one of those things goes online?”
“When the magnet connects with an object, it goes online. So, they’re labeled based on the order you stuck them onto people’s cars. The first device you stuck onto a car would be number one. The next car would be two, and so on, and so forth.”
Levi replayed in his mind the cars he’d attached the trackers to. “Thirteen. Anspach was car number thirteen.”
He put the phone on speaker, saw the new app on his home screen and tapped on it.
It took a few seconds to load, another few to draw the surrounding area’s map. But then dots appeared on the screen, each with a tiny numeric value. Two of them were moving, the rest seemed stationary. Number thirteen was just outside of Arlington, Virginia.
“Okay, I see him, but is there a way to see where those cars have been?”
“Sure, you see the hourglass on the bottom right hand side of the screen? Just put your finger on that and slide the hourglass to the left, it’ll move you back in time, as far back as to when the car first went online.”
Levi slid the hourglass to the left, and the dots scurried about. A clock appeared at the top of the map indicating how far back he’d scrolled. He took number thirteen from Arlington all the way back to Quantico, then replayed the journey from there.
“Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. If you’re good, I’ll see what I can do about getting info about your guy. If he’s ex-military, I know someone on the West Coast who might be able to dig up records for me.”
“The guy is missing a piece of his right hand and has got a doozy of scar that looks like it might be a phosphorus burn. You might try EOD or even an ex-cop, probably working as a bomb tech.”
“I’ll get in touch as soon as I have something.” Denny clicked off.
Levi continued to roll time forward on the tracking app.
Anspach’s car traveled north on I-95, and Levi’s face warmed with anger as he watched the car take exit 177 to Alexandria. By a little after four in the afternoon, Anspach was rolling north on US 1.
“He was the shooter,” Levi muttered. “I’d stake everything on it.”
But what was the Yoshi connection? Why set him up?
Levi continued scrolling toward the present, and the car tracked toward Arlington, then paused. He zoomed in on the map as far as the app would let him.
The car was parked in front of a Safeway, of all places. Probably shopping for a steak dinner after an attempted assassination.
He probably thinks it was more than “attempted,” Levi thought. He saw me stumble. Those rounds, the way they mushroomed open, they would have been lethal, especially where he hit me.
Anspach thinks I’m dead.
Levi sent a quick text to Dino.
His stomach growled angrily. It was almost midnight, and he couldn’t remember when he’d eaten last. He considered room service, but decided against it. He needed sleep more. So he lay back in bed, trying to ignore both his hunger and his desire to do irreparable harm to Anspach.
Those things would have to wait.
With his internal alarm reminding him that there were only five days left, Levi closed his eyes. He felt certain that tomorrow was going to bring lots of answers.
###
Chains rattled against the door at the top of the stairs. June moved in the darkness and whimpered as part of the vest rubbed against the back of her neck. It hurt like that time she got a sunburn.
The creak of the door and the stomping of heavy feet coming down the stairs announced the arrival of the robot. Or at least the man who sounded just like a robot.
June was pretty sure there wasn’t such a thing as a robot person, even though she’d seen one on an old show Mommy said was a classic, whatever that meant. Something called Lost in Space. She was pretty sure Robby the Robot couldn’t climb down these stairs. His feet were too fat.
“I have your food and milk.” The robot spoke with its usual metallic sound.
“Thank you, Mister Robot. Is it almost time to see my Mommy?” June choked back tears. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t cry again.
“Soon.”
She heard him doing something in the dark, but the tiny red light on the vest was the only thing she could see.
“Mister Robot, can you make the vest stop rubbing my neck? It really really hurts, like bad. I can’t sleep when it hurts.”
“Hold still.” Something tugged lightly on the back of the vest, and a hand pressed against her cheek. A man’s hand, not a robot’s. But it smelled funny, like when Mommy went to go for shooting practice. It smelled like that.
The robot man let go and said, “I’ll be right back.”
Stairs creaked, and the door opened, and closed. But it opened again almost right away.
Clump … clump … clump were the sounds of the steps as the robot man approached.
A hand pressed against the back of her head. “Put your chin on to your chest.”
She did as she was asked, and felt something cold and wet on the back of her neck.
“Don’t move.”
The snap of a stapler sounded right behind her head, startling her.
“I’ll be back with more food and drink later.”
Clumping footsteps on the stairs, the door opening and closing, and the rattling of chains. Then the light turned back on.
June lifted her head. Something like a rubber pillow pressed against her neck where the vest had been rubbing her. He must have attached it to the vest.
“Thank you, Mister Robot Man.”
June scooted toward the cardboard box. Along with her Uncrustables and milk, this time it also contained a banana and an apple. Two things Mommy would definitely approve of.
As she peeled the banana and took a bite, she wished that Mommy could see how brave she was being.
Chapter Fifteen
As the sun peeked above the horizon outside Levi’s hotel room, he flew into a flurry of kicks and punches. Sweat dripped down his face as he maintained his fighting form, throwing lightning-quick jabs at the invisible target and diving low into a leg sweep. His right arm ached from the workout, but he also knew that it would be worse if he didn’t stretch and move the damaged muscles. The blood needed to flow through the injured area, and the pain he was feeling reminded him of his goal.
There were five days left, but Levi was pretty sure it wouldn’t matter.
After his workout, he showered and dressed. Instead of his customary suit, he wore the dark fatigues Esther had provided. Today was going to be one of those days.
He checked his phone and found several unopened texts from Dino. He hoped they were responses to his texts from last night. As he scrolled through, he nodded with approval at the images Dino had sent. It was clear that they had come from that folder Benson had given Gino.
One showed a printout containing the manifest of the incoming vessel with the so-called “supplies” along with a series of work visas for a bunch of girls who all claimed to be eighteen, though their photos told a different story. Most looked too young to drive, and some were clearly prepubescent.
The manifest was the key to the illegal shipment. It showed the shipping containers’ identification numbers, their publicly advertised contents, and which girls were in which container. The paperwork even listed names and other data associated with each girl, but their validity was clearly suspect. The paperwork claimed that they were from the United Kingdom and Ireland, but they all had dark brown complexions and a very North African look. Probably refugees from Libya or Egypt.
Levi shook his head with disgust and
dragged the photos to the “cleaner” application that Denny had provided. One of the lessons he’d learned from the technology whiz was that digital photographs sometimes carried something called EXIF data—hidden data in the image that would allow a forensic examiner to see private information about the photo, like where it had been created.
Levi wasn’t about to give up Dino’s location if the mobster had inadvertently sent him images that had his private information hidden inside. Who knows what other kind of stuff could be hidden in these things, it wasn’t Levi’s area of expertise. All he knew was that it was safer for all involved that any picture he ever sent anyone would go through Denny’s cleaner app beforehand.
Once done, he typed a quick note identifying the source of the images as John Benson in DC, put in O’Connor’s e-mail address and hit the send button.
His phone buzzed, and a message from Denny popped up. It was a scanned copy of a DD-214, military discharge papers for a Nicholas Anspach.
“Right on time.”
Levi scanned the form for the pertinent data: Enlisted and Airborne out of Fort Benning, SFAS and Q-Course out of Fort Bragg, and then seven years as a Special Forces Weapons Sergeant.
Anspach was no slouch. And he was discharged honorably. No mention of why.
Another text came in from Denny, this one with FBI personnel records. Anspach lived in Arlington, which made sense from what Levi had seen in the tracking app. He had a bachelor of science in computer engineering and a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering, both from Georgia Tech. He was thirty-eight, and had worked at the FBI for eight years.
Levi pulled up the tracking app. Most of the dots were moving, as expected—probably commuting to work.
He zoomed in on number thirteen, Anspach. His car was stationary at Quantico. Like most military folks, the man was apparently an early riser. Levi then scrolled to number fourteen, the guy he had just dropped the dime on. His dot was just arriving at the State Department.
Levi grabbed his keys from the nightstand and headed out the door. O’Connor hadn’t reached out to him yet, but he suspected that was coming—and he wanted to be somewhere in the center of the action when and if something happened.
The Inside Man Page 16