Inside Man

by Jeff Abbott

  She stared straight ahead.

  “So,” I said, “if these clients were shipping bad stuff tonight from San Juan to Miami, how would I know? How would someone keep it out of the scanners, where an honest employee or customs official might report it if they saw something suspicious?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Drugs, diamonds, dirty cash, weapons. Those seemed the likely shipments, the goods that Rey Varela’s old buddies would be most interested in moving. I doubted their interests changed much over the years. But how? I got up and walked into the cargo section. Every package in here might be legitimate. Probably the illicit traffic being allowed by FastFlex was a very small part of their overall volume. It had gone on for a long while without being discovered.

  What they do changes the world, said Ricky.

  I studied the packages. Sender’s address, recipient’s address. Checkmarks for packaging, speed of delivery, credit card or other payment information. A tracking number that was twenty characters long, starting with a letter. Many packages seemed more like regular courier fare: from banks, law firms, wholesalers, and many individuals sending to other individuals. Other packages were bigger: human remains in a casket returning to the mainland, flowers, fish, coffee. Some packages hadn’t originated in Puerto Rico but had come on from elsewhere in the eastern Caribbean, countries along the northeastern coast of South America, such as Suriname and Guyana, and nations in western Africa, with Puerto Rico presumably a way station. There must be contracts with these governments for FastFlex to move the mail.

  I left the cargo bay and sat back down next to Cordelia. I said, “Zhanna is the weak point. The clients won’t accept her. Think. There has to be a reason. She knows the secret window they’re using. Maybe she messed it up.”

  “She’s done them wrong. She’s mishandled a job. She’s betrayed their trust. I don’t know, those are just guesses.”

  “Or she’s unstable.”

  “Zhanna’s only crazy like a fox.”

  “Is she? She is obsessed with your father. The way she talks about him…”

  Cori shrugged.

  “Kent. Tell me about him.”

  “He’s been with us forever. Papa hired him straight out of college. We took care of him after the crash. Smart, cool-headed.” She paused. “You know, being blinded—it would break a lot of people. You could almost see him square his shoulders, decide to forge ahead with his life. I admire him in many ways. And dating Zhanna is no picnic. I think she really does love him, though…” Her voice trailed off.

  The same crash, taking down Sergei and Kent. It had reduced one to a shell, a shadow in his own daughter’s life, and slowly elevated the other.

  “He and Zhanna seem an odd match to me.”

  Cori shrugged. “Zhanna’s all fire and temper and Kent is a calming influence. And he might do nothing but work if Zhanna couldn’t pry him out of the office now and then. She makes him have fun. They’re good for each other.” She had her head on my shoulder again.

  I closed my eyes to take a nap. She held my hand when I fell asleep, and she was still holding it when the landing in Miami jarred me awake.

  42

  LATE AFTERNOON IN Miami. We got off the plane. I watched the cargo being offloaded, onto conveyor belts, onto flatbeds. The domestic cargo seemed to head one way, the cargo to clear customs another. Workers with handheld scanners swarmed over the carts.

  “Take me into the facility,” I said to Cori. Maybe we could see how the secret window worked.

  We walked to the FastFlex warehouse and the guard nodded but didn’t open the door. “Miss Cordelia.”

  “I wanted to show my friend the facility.”

  His smile faded. “I’m sorry, miss. Your brother and your father called. Absolutely no visitors right now. FastFlex employees only. They insisted.”

  “No worries,” I said. “I’ll get to see it another time, maybe.”

  We walked away.

  “That…that has never happened,” she said.

  “They don’t want us in there.” I glanced back at the facility. I’ve broken into places before. But this was at the edge of a busy airport, running constantly, with armed guards and customs officials who took dim views of interfering with cargo operations. Knowing the secret window wouldn’t necessarily lead me to the clients. I’d have to think of another way.

  I held up Nesterov’s keys. “Remember, I have his parking ticket and his car key.”

  “Let’s search it,” she said.

  Nesterov was one of those people who helpfully wrote the lot number down on his ticket. We walked along the rows of cars, me pressing the Unlock and the Lock buttons and I saw the lights flash.

  The car, a new sedan, was pretty clean. The car registration address matched the driver’s license. He lived in Sunny Isles. Inside the glove compartment was a phone, a cheap one, a throwaway. I checked the call log. There were two numbers, both local. I showed them to Cori.

  “Do you recognize either of these?”

  “No.”

  I pressed the first one, held it up to Cori’s ear so she could hear as well.

  “Hello?” a man’s voice said. The voice was raspy, a low baritone. “Hello?”

  Cori closed her eyes, gestured for me to turn off the phone. I did.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Zhanna’s father. Sergei. But that’s not his home phone number.”

  “Maybe he has a throwaway phone too.”

  “Why?…Papa has taken such good care of him.”

  “Yes. He stole his family from him.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “It might have been like that to Sergei. What’s your relationship with him?”

  “He’s always been kind to me. I used to visit him a lot, with Zhanna, and then when he and Z didn’t get along so well, I’d go see him. Take him old movies to watch.”

  “He’s in touch with a man who tried to kidnap your father.”

  Cori wiped her face. “Let’s try the second number.”

  I pressed it. It had been called several days before. I got a voice-mail greeting, in Spanish: “Hello, this is Carlos. Leave a number.”

  Carlos. Carlos Tellez, aka Coma Thug? The man I’d run over with Steve’s motorcycle.

  Never be surprised at a connection, the burnt man told me. That’s the whole point of going inside.

  He’d called the Colombian, the day of Steve’s death.

  “What do we do?” Cori asked.

  “I take you home so you can pack and we can get you out of here. Then I go to Nesterov’s house. Then we go together to see your friend Sergei.” Someone might have already been sent by the Varelas to check out Nesterov’s place. They had his address off his driver’s license. It could have been cleaned. But it was worth a try.

  “No,” Cori said. “I’m coming with you.”

  “Please go home and get packed. If I don’t get you out of here, your family’s going to freak. I need them believing I’ll do what I say.”

  “All right,” she said, finally. “I’ll check Kent’s computer at home, too, see if he has any more information about my charity there.”

  “At home? Kent and Zhanna live with you?”

  “I still live with Papa. After Eddie vanished…I didn’t like to leave him. Galo has the house next door. Zhanna has the house across the cul-de-sac. Kent moved in with her a few months back.”

  I remembered the three grand houses on the street, all facing the water. Rey kept his family very, very close. “Fine. When you’re done, meet me at the bar.”

  We left Nesterov’s car where it was. I pocketed his cell phone.

  I walked her to her car and she kissed me, once, quickly, chastely. I headed to my car and got in. I turned on the radio after I’d paid my ticket and heard the newscaster talk brightly about a family shooting down near Homestead and then mention that the suspect in the Steve Robles murder had awakened from his coma and, to quote the reporter, “was speaking with polic
e.”

  Coma Thug was in a coma no more.

  43

  MY TIME HAD run out. It was my moment of reckoning.

  All it would take would be for him to say, We didn’t steal that motorcycle; some guy followed us from the bar on it and he ran over me; he tried to kill me and the police would be knocking on my door, asking me questions as Sam Capra, not as Sam Chevalier.

  It might be best not to go back to the bar right now. Would the police question Paige or Mila if they found them there? I texted them both, asking if they were all right.

  Paige texted me back: I’m at the bar and we have customers. Living, breathing customers.

  I’ll come by soon, I answered.

  There was no response from Mila.

  Nesterov’s address led me to a house, a low, old ranch style close to Sunny Isles, in a relatively older neighborhood. I drove by. No cars in the driveway. It looked deserted. But if Nesterov worked for Marianne, she could have easily sent someone here to clean up after him, get rid of any evidence of their connection. No one else was missing Nesterov yet, as far as I knew. But there could be family members or a spouse or partner. I couldn’t barge into the house.

  So, knock on the door? No.

  I watched the house. The curtains were drawn. Not a lot of flowers in the beds; it was spare, a bachelor’s house.

  So I waited for a neighbor to finish puttering in his yard and then I drove over to the parallel street, in front of a house that seemed empty. I cut through the back and then jumped the fence into Nesterov’s backyard. A lonely grill sat on a concrete patio. A forgotten beer bottle on the table. I tried the back door.

  Unlocked.

  I tensed—someone else might be here—but I slipped inside. The décor was Spartan to the point of being ridiculous. A futon in a corner, a TV, a game console, and a card table with four folding chairs in the kitchen. It looked like temporary housing. He was an ex-cop here, presumably with a history, with connections. This looked like the home of someone who needed to run quickly.

  I went through the kitchen and the dining room. No sound. No sign of human presence. Down the hall to one bedroom and found a small bed, unmade, and a laptop sitting on it. The other bedroom was entirely empty, just a closet door ajar.

  I turned away and behind me I heard the closet open and when I turned back Mila leveled a gun at me.

  “You scared me,” I said.

  She didn’t lower the gun.

  “Um, making me nervous with the pointing of the weapon,” I said.

  “We need to have a talk, Sam. I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, we’re all quite sorry, Sam,” a male voice said, and a rangy figure stepped out from the closet. James Court, also known as Jimmy. Mila’s husband. The guy who seems to run all the secret jobs for the Round Table. I may have mentioned: We don’t get along. At all.

  I’d given Mila the address to investigate, and so she had. I just didn’t expect Jimmy here.

  “So, how are you?” Jimmy asked. He didn’t offer a hand.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Really? You look awful.”

  “I was in a fight.”

  “You’ve been very busy,” he said. I glanced at Mila, expecting her support. She stared me down.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I think we’ve been very generous to you, Sam,” Jimmy said. He was an Englishman, tall, lean, annoyingly handsome, dressed in dark slacks and a dark shirt. “We helped you recover your son. We gave you thirty-plus wonderful bars to run, as cover. We promised you interesting work that drew on your skill set.”

  I said nothing.

  “And yet you persist in taking on jobs that aren’t ours.” He gestured with his head and I walked backward, back down the hall and into Nesterov’s den.

  “I was right to do that in San Francisco,” I said, keeping my voice even, “and I’m right about it here.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “Let’s not even get into whether you should be chasing after your friend’s killers.” I glanced again at Mila and her expression didn’t change. Jimmy went on: “You are using a CIA cover for this job. You didn’t even ask the Round Table to create an operational identity for you.”

  “You might have said no.”

  “We might have said yes, given that it was connected to Rey Varela, a man many people around the world are interested in. But you made a deal with your old friend at the CIA, and I wonder what you promised him in return.”

  There was no point in lying. Although, for one moment, I was sorely tempted. “I promised him any useful intelligence I found.”

  “And you were going to give us, your actual employers, what?” Jimmy said softly.

  “Are you going to stand up for me?” I said to Mila.

  “That’s not my job, Sam,” she said softly.

  “I suppose not,” I said. She was right. “I would have given you the same intelligence, Jimmy. I wasn’t going to shut the Round Table out of anything I learned.”

  “Let’s cut to the chase, Sam. Are you spying on the Round Table for the CIA?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Yet you ask them for a cover identity. Who exactly do you work for?”

  “Is this a turf war?” I asked. “Are you serious?”

  “You’re going to give the CIA nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “I made a promise.”

  “You made a promise to us as well, and over the past few months you have not kept it.”

  “Jimmy, how have I broken it?”

  “You were to work only for us. Not for yourself, not for the CIA.”

  “You’re like a person who thinks it’s unfair an off-duty cop makes an arrest when he sees a crime happening,” I said.

  “You are not a cop, Sam. You are an employee, and I think you’d better start acting like it.”

  “What exactly is it,” I said, “you don’t want the CIA to know?”

  “You certainly are not going to tell them anything about the Varelas or what happened in San Juan. I will feed you some information to appease your friend.”

  And it would somehow benefit Jimmy, I thought. “I’m not lying to him. I gave him my word. He went to huge risks to let me use the Chevalier name. He could lose his career over it.”

  “That’s stupid of him, then.”

  “That’s loyalty. I don’t think you know much about it.”

  “Sam,” Mila said.

  “If you don’t like me, fire me. Take back the bars,” I said. But I was scared he might. I didn’t want to lose the bars. I loved owning them. I loved running them. They were my ticket to the world. And what would I do if I wasn’t a spy anymore? I wanted a normal life, I kept telling myself, a life with my son. But I can never see myself sitting at a desk. Or working at a computer or on a phone all day, or whiling away hours in meetings. I wasn’t qualified for anything except being a knife in the shadows. It’s very limiting.

  “Maybe we will fire you,” he said, “if you can’t take orders.”

  “What are my orders, then? Mila told me to investigate the Varelas further, and I did just that.”

  Mila was silent.

  “This Paige woman Mila says helped you, this librarian. Does she know about the Round Table?” Jimmy asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “She simply thinks, what? You’re a vigilante?”

  “I swear, Paige knows nothing.” I took a step toward him. “Are you threatening her?”

  “Of course not.” Jimmy’s voice was silken. “I’m not the bad guy here, Sam. None of us are.”

  “Why don’t you want the CIA to know what I know about the Varelas?” Then a feeling hit me, a shock of coldness deep in my gut. It couldn’t be. “Oh, no. No. Is Rey Varela part of the Round Table?”

  What did I know about them? I’d been told the Table was a league of corporate leaders and other interested parties who wanted to do good for the world, beyond the limits of the law, to handle enemies that that governments could not. They had been brought together
years ago by the CIA but had walked away from the agency’s control, secretly to pursue their own path.

  “No, I swear to you, he’s not,” Jimmy said.

  I said nothing. I didn’t know if I could believe Jimmy on anything.

  “But knowing what we know now, we’re curious about him. About what else, who else, he could lead us to.”

  I looked at Mila. “I just heard on the radio that the man I ran over with Steve’s motorcycle has regained consciousness.”

  “Can he identify you?” Mila asked.

  “If he spotted me as having followed him from the bar. The police know I live above the bar. I would be the only suspect.”

  “Sam,” Jimmy said, very softly, “did he see you when you drove at him?”

  “I had on a helmet.”

  “Your prints are on the bike?”

  “It was my friend’s bike. I could say he let me ride it the day before.”

  Mila wandered toward the front of the house. She often got quiet when Jimmy went on these tirades. It was so unlike her. But he’d saved her from a million-dollar bounty on her head, he’d brought her into the Round Table, her loyalty to him blinded her. So I thought.

  “The whole idea of the bars as safe houses,” Jimmy said, “is that they remain safe. Which means you don’t call attention to them. You don’t call attention to yourself. The police look at you, they look at your business. It’s very inconvenient.”

  “I guess you have to decide if what I’ve learned about the Varelas is worth it.”

  “You’ve learned more than what you told Mila?”

  I smiled.

  “Someone’s here,” Mila said. “Just parked out front.”

  “Out the back,” Jimmy said. “We’re not risking discovery here.”

  He was the boss, so we obeyed. We went out into the backyard and behind a small tool shed that was nestled in the back corner, the three of us huddled close together.

  “Did you find anything inside?” I whispered to Jimmy.

  “Later,” he whispered back, in a tone of deep annoyance.