by Mike Lawson
Olivia smiled—a smile that would have given small children nightmares. “I believe that when Fedorov hears that Spear might talk about him, he’ll send in a team to take him out. Then Spear will be gone, you’ll be happy, and you and Emma can stop meddling in my affairs.”
DeMarco couldn’t believe the way Olivia Prescott’s mind worked, but he figured this was a typical intelligence agency maneuver. Instead of doing the correct thing, the legal thing, the straightforward thing, she was going to maneuver a corrupt Russian megalomaniac into killing Spear by telling the Russian a lie.
“So that’s my offer,” Olivia said. “Just say the word and I’ll do my best to get Fedorov to take care of Spear for you.”
DeMarco didn’t even hesitate. “No,” he said. “I want the man in jail. I don’t want him assassinated, for Christ’s sake. This isn’t Russia.”
Although he was really thinking that with people like Olivia Prescott running intelligence agencies, maybe that wasn’t exactly true.
Olivia shrugged. “Well, it’s your call, DeMarco. I don’t care what happens to Sebastian Spear. All I care about is Nikki Orlov.”
62
As they were driving back to Washington, DeMarco was silent, staring out at the Maryland landscape, brooding.
Emma said, “You did the right thing, Joe. Orlov’s more important than getting Spear. And as for being part of some NSA game for killing Spear, you don’t want that on your conscience.”
DeMarco didn’t respond.
Emma said, “I am concerned, however, that Olivia still might use Fedorov to kill Spear, even though she said she didn’t care about him.”
Now DeMarco looked over at her. “Why would she do that?”
“Because she wants this whole thing with Spear and Brayden and Canton finished. She doesn’t want the FBI investigating Spear Industries. She doesn’t want any trials. She doesn’t want anything that might cause the FBI to learn that Nick Fox is really Nikki Orlov.”
“Well, I’m going to talk to Brayden anyway,” DeMarco said, “to see if a RICO case can be made against Spear. But I won’t say anything about Orlov or anything Orlov told us.” Then DeMarco shouted into the car radio, “Did you hear me, Olivia? I’m not going to talk about Orlov, you twisted bitch.”
Emma laughed—although she didn’t consider it outside the realm of possibility that Olivia had bugged her car.
DeMarco met with Brayden in the Alexandria city jail. Brayden had initially refused to meet with him, seeing no good reason he should, until a guard passed him a note that said: I’m trying to find a way to get Sebastian Spear. Talk to me.
Brayden would not be a resident of the jail much longer. He was waiting for the paperwork to be completed to transfer him to a federal prison. In return for pleading guilty to the first-degree murder of John Lynch and conspiring with Lynch to kill Canton, he was given thirty to life as opposed to the death penalty. The FBI had particularly wanted his plea for Canton’s death so they could clear that one off their books. He’d be eligible for parole in thirty years, at which time he’d be eighty-four years old. In other words, he was fairly sure he’d die in prison.
Brayden and DeMarco were separated by a two-inch-thick Plexiglas window; they would use phones to communicate. This was the first time Brayden had seen DeMarco in the flesh—it was somewhat ironic that the man he’d try to frame for murder and then have killed by MS-13 was practically a stranger to him.
Brayden picked up his phone to hear what DeMarco had to say. He figured the guy would rant for a bit, but he didn’t. DeMarco calmly said, “I want Spear to pay for what he did to me. He’s pretty much ruined my life.”
Brayden shrugged. He didn’t care about DeMarco’s problems.
DeMarco continued. “I also figure that you’d like to see Spear pay, too, considering how he hung you out to dry. Well, the only way I can think of to get him is on a RICO charge. You know what that is?”
Brayden nodded.
DeMarco said, “I think—in fact, I’m positive—that you committed a lot of crimes on Spear’s behalf. You bribed and blackmailed people for him and did a lot of other illegal shit to help him beat his competitors.”
Another shrug. Not a denial shrug but a “So what?” shrug.
DeMarco said, “You need to come up with a list of those crimes, crimes that can be verified when the FBI subpoenas Spear’s records, and then you need to testify that he ordered you to commit them.” DeMarco paused. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Brayden? If necessary, you lie and say that he personally ordered you to do things, because that’s the only way we’ll get him, and a jury will believe you because they’ll figure there’s no way he could not have been complicit in those crimes.”
Brayden shook his head and spoke for the first time. “There are no records, DeMarco, because I made sure there were no records. I have no proof whatsoever that Spear ordered me to do anything. If the FBI could find Nick Fox that would help, because then he could back me up, but they tell me Fox has disappeared.”
“He has,” DeMarco said. No way was DeMarco going to say anything about Nick Fox, aka Nikki Orlov, just in case Olivia Prescott had bugged the jail. Olivia Prescott could bug the whole wide world.
“Plus,” Brayden said, “with Spear’s money and his legal team, I think no matter what I said, and even if Fox could corroborate my testimony, he’d still get off. The guy went off the deep end after his girlfriend died, but he’s not stupid.”
DeMarco stared at Brayden for several seconds before finally saying, “Well, then, fuck you.” He hung up the phone on his side of the glass.
Brayden rapped hard on the Plexiglas. DeMarco picked the phone back up.
“Tell me one thing,” Brayden said. “Who put the gun in the trunk of my car?”
“Beats me,” DeMarco said, and started to hang up the phone again, and again Brayden smacked the glass.
Brayden said, “DeMarco, because I figure I sort of owe you for what happened to you—”
“Sort of?” DeMarco said.
“—I’m going to tell you something.” Brayden paused. “Sebastian Spear’s a dead man.”
“What are you talking about?” DeMarco said.
Brayden smiled, hung up his phone, and walked away.
What DeMarco didn’t know was that yesterday Bill Brayden had met with Hector Montoya.
Brayden told the inmate who ran MS-13 inside the Alexandria jail—the man who’d planned the attack on DeMarco in the jail cafeteria—that he needed to meet with Hector.
“Why?” the guy asked.
“Just tell him that it’ll be worth a lot of money to him, some of which I’m sure he’ll pass on to you.”
The next day Hector was on the other side of the Plexiglas, and Brayden couldn’t help seeing the humor in the situation. A fucking criminal like Hector, for maybe the first time in his life, was on the right side of the glass—the right side being the side where you got to leave afterward.
Brayden said, “I’ve got a lot of money, money that I’m never going to be able to spend.”
“Okay,” Hector said, not having any idea where Brayden was going with this.
“I want you to do something for me,” Brayden said. “And I’ll pay you half a million dollars.’
“Half a million?” Hector said. “Is this some kind of a joke?”
“No. The money’s in a bank in Nassau, and all you need is the account number and a password to transfer the money to any bank you want. For a fee, like ten percent, the guy who runs the bank will help you move the money so you won’t get caught for income tax evasion.”
“But half a million?” Hector said. If you added up all the money that Hector had made in his thirty-two years on earth it probably wouldn’t come close to half a million.
Brayden said, “Yeah. And if it was a million, it wouldn’t matter to me. I’m never going to be able to spend the money I have in Nassau, so I might as well put it to work.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I’
ll get to that in a minute. But first you need to know that I won’t give you the password to get the money until you finish the job. I think you know I’ll pay you, but if I don’t, you can always get people inside the prison to take care of me.”
“You got that right,” Hector said. “So what’s the job?”
Brayden figured there was a good chance the phones he and Hector were using were monitored, so he took a piece of paper out of his pocket and held the paper against the glass. After Hector had time to read the note, Brayden stuffed the paper into his mouth, chewed a few times, and swallowed.
The note had said: Kill Sebastian Spear.
63
A helpful nurse directed DeMarco down a long corridor to Lazlo’s room.
DeMarco wanted to see Lazlo and thank him for saving his life. It had taken him half a dozen phone calls to learn that he was at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center in D.C., a place that had a lot of experience when it came to knife and gunshot wounds. He had been told that Lazlo was in stable condition, after having been stabbed four times, but that he’d lost a kidney; it was a good thing the good Lord designed folks with a spare.
He found Lazlo in a private room, sitting up in bed, reading a John Grisham paperback, looking perfectly healthy. The guy was so tall his feet extended beyond the end of the bed. With his shaved head, brutal features, and the eight-pointed stars tattooed on his neck, the reading glasses perched on the end of his nose seemed incongruous. DeMarco had expected to see a guard sitting outside Lazlo’s door, but there was no guard, nor was Lazlo cuffed to the bed.
DeMarco stepped into the room and said, “Hey,” and Lazlo looked at him over the top of the glasses.
“Ah, it’s you,” Lazlo said, then surprised him with a broad smile. Considering that Lazlo had almost died saving his life, DeMarco had not been expecting a warm greeting.
“I’ve been reading about you,” Lazlo said. “You know, you’re the only guy I know who was actually framed for a crime. Everybody else I know, including me, deserved to be in jail.”
“Yeah, well, I just came by to see how you were doing and to tell you thank you. You saved my life. So how are you doing?”
“Doin’ great,” Lazlo said. “I’ll be going home tomorrow.”
“Home?” DeMarco said.
“Yeah. I got a lawyer, told her how the sheriff assigned me to be your bodyguard and how I was almost killed. The lawyer started talking about a lawsuit, and by the time everything was all said and done, they decided it would be best to let me off for time served. So I’m free man, thanks, I guess, to you.”
DeMarco never had found out what crime Lazlo had committed to be in jail in the first place—and now, frankly, he didn’t care.
After seeing Lazlo, DeMarco turned in the rental car he’d been driving and took a cab to his place in Georgetown.
Ever since being evicted from Melissa Monroe’s beach house, he’d been staying in a rental property that Neil owned in Springfield, Virginia, because he hadn’t wanted to take the chance of running into any relentless journalists who might still be staking out his own house. The last thing he wanted was to get his picture in the paper again; he wanted the media to forget all about him.
But now he was headed home, not to move back in, but to pack.
He was planning on leaving town the next day.
DeMarco had decided that he couldn’t just sit around for the next four months stewing about what might happen in the midterm elections, and the way he looked at it, he had two choices when it came to how he should spend his time.
One: Take the hundred grand in his bank account, pay off his mortgage, and spend the time until November looking for a new job. Yep, choice one would be the smart, prudent, practical, grown-up thing to do.
Two: Throw his golf clubs into the trunk of his car and spend the next four months playing every golf course he’d ever wanted to play—greens fees be damned—and seeing America.
It didn’t really take him too long to make up his mind.
He sneaked into his house after first checking to make sure no strangers with cameras were lurking about. He cleaned out of his refrigerator the food that would spoil—and the food that had already spoiled—turned off the air conditioner, and set the timers for the lights. He then tossed his golf clubs, golf shoes, and a suitcase packed with casual clothes into the trunk of his car. Tomorrow, on his way out of town, he’d drop off at the post office the form that would forward his mail to Emma. He’d also call the neighbors across the street, a guy and his wife he’d known for years, and ask them to watch his house until he returned.
But there was one more thing he had to do before he took off to see the U.S. of A.
He just had to.
He had to look Sebastian Spear in the eye and say, I’m going to be watching you for the rest of my life, and if I ever get a chance to get you, I’m gonna get you.
64
Boris Kasso and Yuri Kamenev were parked in front of Sebastian Spear’s home in McLean.
They were exhausted. They hadn’t slept in a day and a half.
They’d flown from Evgeni Fedorov’s private island off the coast of Greece to New York. From JFK, they took a cab to Brighton Beach and bought guns and a car from a guy who used to be a gangster in Moscow and was now a gangster in Brooklyn. They couldn’t borrow the car, because there was a good chance they wouldn’t be bringing it back. From New York, they drove to Sebastian Spear’s headquarters in Reston, Virginia, hoping to pick up Spear when he left work.
Evgeni Fedorov had told them that Spear had to die. All they knew was that Evgeni had gotten a phone call, and after the call he’d stomped around for a while cursing, yelled at his girlfriend, made her cry, and then told Boris and Yuri to get their fat asses to Virginia and kill this guy Spear, whoever he was. Evgeni told them, if possible, to make it look like an accident—a car accident, a hit and run, a house fire, whatever—but if faking an accident wasn’t possible, then just shoot the son of a bitch.
Boris and Yuri had done this sort of thing for Evgeni several times before so they weren’t surprised by the assignment. When an oligarch like Evgeni had a significant problem with a person, one that couldn’t be solved with money, he had the person killed. What they didn’t like was killing the guy in the United States. The cops actually caught killers in the States, and it would take more than a bribe to get them out of jail.
So yesterday they’d watched when Spear left his office, driving as if he might be drunk, slowly, under the speed limit, yet oblivious to other drivers and traffic signals. He rolled through two intersections without stopping, and it was a miracle he wasn’t T-boned by another car. Boris said to Yuri that it might not be necessary for them to do anything, as it looked as if Spear might arrange his own fatal accident.
Oddly, Spear ended up at a cemetery, where he parked his car and walked over to a headstone. Then the damn guy lay down in the suit he was wearing, curled into a fetal position, and appeared to go to sleep on top of a grave. He didn’t move for an hour.
What the fuck?
Yuri, who was younger than Boris, and had been hired for his muscles, not his brain, said they ought to just walk into the cemetery and put a bullet in Spear’s head while he was lying there. Boris said no. He pointed out that they’d be completely visible, standing in the middle of the cemetery shooting the guy, and if someone should drive into the cemetery—
Just as Boris was making this rational argument, a twenty-car funeral procession, led by a black hearse, drove into the cemetery. Boris gave Yuri a now-you-see-why-I’m-in-charge look.
Spear must have heard the funeral procession—the doors slamming as people got out of their cars—because he got up. But then, instead of leaving, he looked down at the grave for another couple of minutes, talking to himself. Or maybe he was talking to the person in the grave. After he finished his speech, his prayer, whatever it was, he staggered back to his car, and Yuri thought the way he moved made him look like one of those Walking Dead zombie
guys. Yuri loved that show.
From the cemetery, Spear drove to his house in McLean, again driving as if he were the only driver on the road, and again Boris thought a fatal accident might be a lucky possibility. When he reached his house, he opened the big driveway gate with a remote, drove halfway into his garage, then zombie-walked into the house. He didn’t close the gate, and his car was only halfway in the garage, and the garage door was wide open. If someone shut that garage door it was going to bounce right off the roof of a very expensive car.
Yuri said, “There’s nobody on the street. Let’s just go shoot him. Please. We go in through the garage, walk into the house, shoot his ass, and make it look like a robbery.”
Boris pointed. “You see the camera over the door, dummy? The way he parked, it looks like he’s going out again. We’ll just wait. When he leaves, we follow him. With some luck, he’ll park someplace, cross a street, and I can run over him.”
Hours later, they were still waiting in front of Spear’s house as the sun disappeared over the horizon. The neighborhood was a wealthy one, and well lighted with streetlamps, and Boris was afraid that one of Spear’s rich neighbors might call the cops and tell them two strange men were parked on the street. Boris knew that he and Yuri looked like the kind of guys the cops would roust and search, and then they’d find the weapons they were packing. As he was thinking this, lights went on in Spear’s front yard, like lights on timers, and Boris thought, So much for a nighttime assault.
Boris said, “Okay. We’ll go buy some ski masks, find a motel, have some dinner, and get some sleep. Tomorrow morning we’ll come back early, and if the gate is still open, we’ll just whack him.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Yuri said, the idiot not realizing it wasn’t a plan at all.
The next morning—a Saturday—they arrived back at Spear’s house and saw that the gate was still open and Spear’s car was still parked halfway in the garage.