White Death

by Daniel Blake

  Dufresne was first to offer himself. Next in line was a black New Yorker, he said, and he was that. Besides, Kwasi had already killed Anderssen, so wouldn’t he feel a certain symmetry by going for Dufresne too? What purer sign of his superiority than killing both detectives assigned to his respective cases?

  Dufresne could call a press conference and really go to town on Kwasi, calling him a sexual inadequate, emotionally stunted, a weak person, all the things that would rile Kwasi and make him lose his cool. Easy to arrange for Dufresne to let it slip that he’d be in a given place at a given time, and try to tempt Kwasi to come after him there: offer himself as bait, as it were. There’d be protection, of course, but invisible to anyone who didn’t know – until it was too late.

  Patrese was tempted. They batted the idea back and forth for a bit, but as they did so, Patrese found himself increasingly uneasy with it all. Not through fear for Dufresne’s safety – Dufresne was a professional, he knew what he was doing – but because he didn’t believe Kwasi would fall for it. It was too obvious a tactic, too one-dimensional. It was exactly the kind of thing Kwasi would be expecting, and it would reinforce all his sneering arrogance about the police being dimwits who couldn’t think outside the box if their careers depended on it.

  But Patrese still liked the central idea behind it: take the battle to Kwasi, make him play on their turf rather than them on his. It was just that Dufresne was the wrong guy for the job. He had no emotional connection with Kwasi. Kwasi had only killed Anderssen through opportunism, and therefore he wouldn’t go out of his way to pull off a pre-meditated hit on Dufresne. If Kwasi was trying to get to anyone in this whole case, it was Patrese himself: Kwasi had sent his messages only to Patrese, not to anyone else. No: Dufresne definitely wasn’t the right choice. But if they could find a better candidate – someone more plausible to Kwasi, someone who had some kind of hold over him – then they’d be in business.

  The answer came to both Patrese and Dufresne pretty much simultaneously.

  ‘No way,’ Inessa said. ‘No freaking way.’

  ‘You’ll have more protection than the president,’ Patrese said. ‘We’ll control the entire environment. Wherever we do it, everyone within fifty yards of you will be our guys. Kwasi’ll be able to come in, but he won’t be able to get out. You’ll be perfectly safe.’

  ‘I’ll be a tethered goat. That’s what I’ll be.’

  ‘You’ll be perfectly safe.’

  ‘He’s killed at least eight people that we know of, maybe up to twenty-four. Your idea of “perfectly safe” is a little different from mine. Besides, it makes no sense.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The next move is down here, right? I’m not from New York, I’m not black.’

  ‘That’s the point. We’re going to take his routine away from him.’

  ‘And you think he’s going to go along with that?’

  ‘Yes. Because of what you are to him.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The first day of this case, you were on TV talking about his mom. I was watching it with him. Boy, did you get a reaction. You still get to him. We’ve got to use that. There are only two women on the chessboard: the queens. There’ve only ever been two women in Kwasi’s life: his mom, and you. She’s the black queen. You’re the white.’

  Inessa could see the logic of this, of course she could. But discussing it as a theoretical proposition was a little different from being asked to put your own neck on the block, no matter how many promises you were made.

  ‘Where would we do it?’ Dufresne asked. ‘Cambridge?’

  ‘We?’ Inessa spluttered. ‘We? You’re not the one being used as bait.’

  ‘Cambridge is the obvious choice,’ Patrese said. ‘But I’ve been thinking: the more we can get the similarities with his mom going, the better. She was killed in New Haven. Why he went there, we’ve still no idea, especially now we know it was just him, he wasn’t meeting anybody else. Maybe it’s something as simple as the geography, halfway between the two. Whatever. He killed her in New Haven.’ He turned to Inessa. ‘If he’s going to want to come after you, then putting you there will help us. Give him a subliminal trigger, you know.’

  ‘You’re fucking crazy. I’ve given you all the help I can on this, and …’

  ‘… and this will be the most helpful thing of all. Come on, Inessa. What’s the most spectacular thing in chess? The queen sacrifice, right? A game-changer. A brilliancy that snatches victory from the jaws of defeat.’

  ‘That’s true. But you’re still overlooking one thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When you sacrifice the queen, she dies. You win, but she dies.’

  It took several hours, but Patrese finally won Inessa round. He managed to convince her of two things. First, that she’d be absolutely safe, whatever happened. The Bureau was experienced in things like this: psychological operations, smoke and mirrors. They knew what they were doing.

  Second, this was their best chance of catching Kwasi and ending this thing once and for all. Patrese didn’t directly appeal to her sense of civic responsibility, as he knew that would only piss her off, but the implication was left hanging there all the same: this was not only the right thing to do tactically, but ethically too.

  They went back to New Haven. Patrese put the plan together in his head as he drove.

  It would work, he thought. It had to.

  61

  Monday, November 29th

  New Haven, CT

  This being America, land of the lawyer, and the Bureau being as keen on red tape and form-filling as any bureaucracy, Inessa had to sign her life away before they could proceed. Her helping out Patrese on an unofficial basis was one thing: but now she was technically putting herself in danger – no matter how remote the possibility of her being hurt – the Bureau’s lawyers wanted indemnity against any eventuality.

  They didn’t just want her to sign forms. To be sure she’d follow official rules and procedures, they wanted her to be a temporary consultant to the Bureau. That meant a biometric ID card, and that meant an iris scan, fingerprint-taking, the works. Inessa protested long and hard at how ludicrous this whole performance was, and again Patrese had to calm her down and assure her it was purely a formality and it meant nothing. She couldn’t pull out on them now, he pleaded.

  CBS filmed the piece in the morning and started running it by lunchtime. The Bureau had been forced to pull in all kinds of favors to get this done, most notably promising CBS exclusive access to all the main players after the case was over, and persuading a rental agency to let them use a vacant downtown penthouse just across the road from Yale’s Old Campus. A reporter named Catja Thum had flown up from New York at dawn, and CBS’ local affiliate, WFSB, had provided camera, lights and make-up.

  ‘For the past month, FBI Agent Franco Patrese has been leading the hunt for world chess champion turned fugitive serial killer Kwasi King,’ Catja said. ‘Agent Patrese has been working night and day on this case, and among those whose help he’s sought has been the lady here today with us: Inessa Baikal. Miss Baikal is a former girlfriend of Kwasi King’s, and she’s also a chess champion in her own right. Inessa, what kind of help have you given the FBI?’

  ‘Just tried to tell them how Kwasi’s mind works, really.’ She was sitting with Patrese on a sofa. The Gothic ziggurat of Yale’s Harkness Tower filled the window behind them. ‘I’m not sure how much use I’ve really been …’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Patrese interjected. ‘Inessa’s been fantastic, and not only in terms of investigative support. I’ve worked a lot of these cases. The strain is unbelievable. Though you want to keep it all inside and be strong, sometimes you just need to talk to someone. She’s a very good listener. She’s bright, she’s funny, she’s warm, she’s generous: I wish I could involve her in every investigation.’

  ‘And can you tell us how this particular investigation’s going?’ Catja said.

  ‘We’
re leaving no stone unturned, and we’re closing in. I can’t divulge operational details, obviously, but … yes, we’re closing in, for sure.’

  ‘And in your downtime: you guys play chess?’

  ‘We sit at the same board, but it’s never much of a contest.’

  Catja gestured around the room: high ceilings, vaulted windows, oak furniture. ‘And this apartment we’re in – it’s pretty swish, I can tell you feel at home – this belongs to a friend of yours, Inessa, is that right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It’s not costing the taxpayer a dime,’ Patrese said.

  ‘It sure isn’t. It belongs to a friend who’s away on business. I’m just house-sitting here. But I love it. Cool space, great views.’ The camera went to one of the other windows, which looked down over Dwight Hall and the Old Campus Courtyard.

  Harkness Tower one way, Dwight Hall another. It wouldn’t be hard for Kwasi to find this place. That, of course, was precisely the point. He could get here if he wanted to.

  ‘Cool space indeed,’ Catja concluded. ‘Agent Patrese, Miss Baikal, thank you for your time, and we wish you all the best.’

  Patrese turned to Inessa and smiled: a little too long, a little too bright just to be friends. The camera caught that too, as Patrese had intended: anything that might rile Kwasi, the more the merrier.

  The moment the cameraman called wrap, Inessa bolted for the john and threw up.

  62

  Tuesday, November 30th

  Patrese wasn’t good at waiting at the best of times. He liked to be doing things, keeping himself occupied. Sitting around was anathema to him: the one part of cop work he’d always hated was the stakeout. The movies make it look glamorous and exciting: a brief moment of subterfuge followed by a squealing car chase. The reality was twelve hours in a confined space that soon stank of your own worst odors, eating junk food and pissing in a bottle.

  He wasn’t quite having to piss in a bottle here – in fact, the bathroom was practically bigger than some apartments he’d lived in – but the junk food and that strange mix of apprehension and boredom were the same. Waiting for someone you knew was coming was bad enough. Waiting for someone who might not come at all was ten times worse.

  He’d told Inessa they were taking no chances, and they weren’t. There was no doorman who might turn Kwasi away before he’d even got inside. The block’s other residents had all been asked to let in anyone who buzzed the intercom. Patrese apart, there were four armed men in the apartment at all times, two from the New Haven PD and two from the city’s Bureau office. There were men in the building opposite permanently watching the front entrance: there were men in an office block that overlooked the rear of the apartment, where a fire escape ran from roof to ground. The street cleaner outside, the mother with a stroller – Ruger Blackhawk inside, not a baby – they were all part of the operation too. There was almost more firepower in this one small area of downtown New Haven than there was in Fort Bragg.

  Patrese knew that his nerves would grate on Inessa, so he tried to keep himself as occupied as possible. The mask company in Van Nuys had handed over its mailing list, and the Bureau was checking every address in the tri-state area of New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Some of them were PO box numbers, and the postal service was being as much of a stickler for subpoenas as the ICC was being.

  Talking of subpoenas: the department in question assured him that a decision would be made soon. Patrese said he’d deliver it himself to the ICC offices in Pittsburgh, as any information about the possible location of Kwasi’s computers might be so crucial to the investigation that he didn’t want to palm it off on one of the Bureau’s local men. It was thanks to his old college buddy Caleb Boone, head of the Pittsburgh field office, that he’d joined the Bureau in the first place, and he could have asked Boone to do it himself: but no, this was Patrese’s bag.

  Commercial flight times from New Haven to Pittsburgh were at least three and a half hours and involved a stop in Philadelphia, so he’d asked for one of the Bureau’s charter planes on standby. Not the plush ones the top brass traveled in, of course, but the little turboprop ones. They’d still get him there in less than half the time, and could of course arrive and leave when he wanted.

  He was twitching to go: get up, get busy, and get on with it. But in the meantime, he just had to wait, and wait, and wait. And still Kwasi didn’t come.

  63

  Wednesday, December 1st

  The subpoena came through first thing.

  ‘I’ll be back later.’ Patrese kissed Inessa, first softly, then harder. ‘Don’t talk to any strange men while I’m gone.’

  She looked round at the four pistol-packers crowding the sitting room and laughed. ‘Talk to them? Give them the slip, more like. I’m going nuts here.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. It won’t be long now.’

  Patrese went over to the Bureau’s New Haven office, printed the subpoena off, and headed for the airport and the plane to Pittsburgh.

  In Pittsburgh, Boone had sent a car for him. In other circumstances, Patrese might have allowed himself a tinge of nostalgic pleasure at being back on his old stomping ground. Not now. Too much to do.

  The ICC offices were in Squirrel Hill, one of the city’s classier neighborhoods. Patrese asked the car to wait, and went inside.

  Subpoenas tend to strike fear in all but those most hardened to the law. Patrese used this to his advantage: demanding to see whoever was in charge, like, now, threatening to crawl up the office’s collective ass with a microscope if he didn’t get full co-operation from each and every one of them, all that kind of stuff. He didn’t care who he saw, he said, as long as that person had access to the information he wanted.

  One of the admin staff was designated to help. Patrese didn’t catch his name. These two accounts, he said: killerinstinct32 and sequinedberg. Everything you have on them. Absolutely everything, immediately.

  New Haven, CT

  ‘If I don’t get out of here in the next five minutes,’ Inessa said, ‘Kwasi King won’t be the only crazy person you have to worry about.’

  ‘We’re not supposed to let you go out, ma’am,’ said one of the Bureau men.

  ‘I’m going stir crazy. You guys get twelve hours on, twelve hours off. I have to be here the whole time. I’m going for a run.’

  ‘We can’t let you do that, ma’am.’

  ‘Of course you can. Two of you come with me, the other two stay here in case he shows up.’

  ‘That’s not—’

  ‘That’s not negotiable, that’s what it is. What? You guys are all armed, and you don’t back yourselves to protect me? And don’t tell me you haven’t got running gear. You’ve got gym stuff, I’ve seen it in your bags.’

  ‘What if he’s watching this building and sees you leave?’

  ‘We’ve been sitting here a whole day now, and the most exciting thing that’s happened is that two of you guys broke wind simultaneously. If he’s watching right now, tough. He wants me that much, he’ll come back; or he’ll try someplace else, and you guys will nail him. I’m going to change, and I’m out of here in five. Lighthouse and back, with or without you.’

  Pittsburgh, PA

  It didn’t take the admin guy long. killerinstinct32 was registered to a company named Sicilian Dragon. An opening variation, the admin guy explained: one of the sharpest there was. To play the Sicilian Dragon well, you had to be a real badass.

  Ain’t that the truth, Patrese thought.

  Sicilian Dragon was registered in Gibraltar. An offshore account; to all intents and purposes untraceable, therefore. Getting the names and addresses of shareholders in offshore companies took months, sometimes years. Patrese might not even have hours.

  sequinedberg was also registered to a company in Gibraltar: Inlaid Organics.

  Patrese got it instantly, though he used a pen and paper just to be sure. Inlaid Organics and Sicilian Dragon were anagrams of each other.

  What about
IP addresses and computer IDs for those accounts? he asked.

  While the admin guy checked, Patrese rang the incident room and asked if any of the masks from Van Nuys had been sent to a company named Sicilian Dragon. Yes, came the answer: one to a New Haven PO box registered in that name.

  New Haven. Getting closer.

  The admin guy called up the IP and ID information. Ah, he said, this client was using proxy servers and concealment software to try and hide his IP addresses. But that doesn’t work with us, because ICC isn’t played through a web browser such as Explorer or Firefox. To play ICC, you need to download a piece of their own software – Dasher – which connects directly to their server.

  So it was easy to bypass these attempts at subterfuge, and … here we are.

  Both coming out of the same location.

  Patrese already knew that. But where?

  New Haven, the tech guy said. Can’t be any more specific than that without checking against the server records, and that’ll take some time.

  How long? Patrese asked.

  Could be hours.

  Patrese thought fast.

  Sicilian Dragon, Inlaid Organics. If you were a rich man who’d registered companies offshore, and you’d used those companies to hide your identity while you were on the run, what would you do with them? You wouldn’t just buy a special effects mask and a couple of subscriptions to an online chess site, would you?

  You’d use them to set up an entire alternate life. Car, house …

  ‘I need to use your computer,’ Patrese said.

  The admin guy stood up and gestured to his chair. Patrese nodded his thanks as he sat.

  Patrese called up the Connecticut Land Records and Deeds website, and entered ‘Sicilian Dragon’ in the search box.