by Noah Boyd
A hundred yards farther down the curving road, Bursaw hit the brakes. They were at the beach of a small lake. At one end of the sand was a dock with a ladder leading down into the water, presumably for getting on and off small boats. “Where did they go?” Bursaw asked.
“We must have missed some turnoff, but I didn’t see anything other than an overgrown path.”
“Think this is where the bodies wound up?”
“If it is, then why aren’t they down here?” Vail said. “You’d better go back.”
It took Bursaw a couple of passes before he could completely turn the car around. He still hadn’t switched his headlights back on, but he drove a little faster in case the two men from the LCS had used the maneuver to lose them. He came around the curve and almost hit Barkus’s car before slamming to a stop. “What the—”
Bursaw’s unfinished question was answered by automatic fire that ricocheted off the front of the Bureau car. In the muzzle flashes, Vail could see that the men were wearing night-vision goggles. After the first burst, the two gunmen ran from behind the car and into the woods to get some flanking fire into the vehicle from a vantage point where they wouldn’t have to fire through the engine block. Both agents saw where they were going and scrambled out of the passenger-side door. “Do you think they made the surveillance?” Vail asked.
“I’d go ask them if I spoke Lithuanian.” Another burst of fire raked the car, taking out the driver’s-side windows.
“I don’t suppose you have anything useful in the trunk, like a SWAT team.”
“Just a shotgun.”
“Did you see the goggles? They’re thermal-imaging.”
Bursaw waited a moment for some explanation as to how that was going to help them and then said, “What a fun fact, Mr. Science.”
“As soon as they figure out that we only have handguns, they’re going to fire and maneuver until they can get around our car, and we’ll be sharing a three-body condo with Longmeadow. Go back by the trunk. As soon as you hear them firing at me, look and see where it’s coming from. Then start firing in that direction. Take your time, empty a clip—but slowly. As soon as you finish, I’ll take off. Those goggles have a very narrow field of vision. I’ll fire at them, and they’ll see only me, but they’ll think we’re still together. Then get under the car toward the front. With the engine still running, there’ll be a billowing heat signature down there, and they won’t be able to distinguish you from the car. They’ll chase after me, thinking we’re together. Once they do, take the shotgun out and get down to the water as fast as possible.”
Vail took off his jacket and pulled off his black sweatshirt, putting the coat back on against the freezing cold. He took out his pocketknife and cut two slits into the shirt.
“You’re going down to the water?”
“Something like that. Once you hear gunfire down there, or me yelling . . . well, you can figure it out from there. Just remember, I’ll be the guy without the goggles.”
“There’s no place to hide down there.”
“Sure there is,” Vail said. “You ready?”
Bursaw moved to the back of the car. “Ready.”
Vail stood up, and almost immediately automatic-weapons fire raked the opposite side of the car as he ducked down again. Bursaw leaned across the trunk and fired in a slow rhythm.
As soon as he finished, Vail took off, firing a couple of shots to attract the two gunmen’s attention. Bursaw scrambled under the car and waited, his handgun reloaded and ready.
When Vail reached the beach, he ran out onto the pier. At the end, by the ladder, he carefully placed his Glock at the edge. Then, without hesitation, he jumped down, breaking through the thin layer of ice covering the lake. Using the ladder to keep himself under, he held his breath in the freezing water that bit into his skin like hot needles. He held a finger to his carotid artery and timed his heart rate. If he and Bursaw were going to get out of there alive, he was going to have to induce the initial stages of hypothermia to lower his body’s heat signature. After the run, his heart rate was at fifty-two. After a minute and a half, it had dropped to forty.
He raised his head out of the water and listened. He could hear the two men yelling to each other, working their way through the woods toward the beach. He lowered his head back into the water and waited.
When his heart rate hit thirty-six, he began to shiver uncontrollably, another sure sign of hypothermia. He started feeling light-headed and knew he was on his way to losing consciousness.
Slowly, so the dripping water couldn’t be heard, he climbed the ladder, picked up his automatic, and shoved it in the back of his waistband. Then he crawled onto the dock, placing the black shirt over his head and positioning it so he could see through the slits he had cut. He lay still with his hands underneath him and waited for his clothing to freeze. He was shivering violently.
Less than a minute later, Barkus and Mindera stepped onto the beach searching for the agents, looking as much at the woods behind them as in the direction of the water.
The two men were speaking Lithuanian and sounded as though they were both now on the sand. Vail closed his eyes and put his head down so they wouldn’t be able to detect the heat coming through the eye slits in his shirt.
Hopefully Bursaw had survived, but Vail couldn’t depend on that. Then he heard one of their voices coming closer, almost as if it were aimed at him. Vail knew that besides the narrow field of vision of the thermal goggles, they had one other disadvantage: everything that didn’t give off heat appeared green and lumped together, almost completely indistinguishable. Vail was depending on that one shortcoming, but he quickly became less confident when he felt one of his pursuer’s step onto the rickety pier and heard him yell something to the other man in Lithuanian that had the unmistakable tone of discovery in it.
Suddenly there was an explosion from the edge of the woods. A single booming shotgun blast was fired in the direction of the voices. And another. Both the Lithuanians wheeled and fired at the large tree where Bursaw was taking cover. Vail got to his feet and, still almost paralyzed with the cold, squeezed his handgun tighter than he ever had before. He fired three rounds at the man closest to him, some fifteen feet away. The body thudded lifelessly onto the pier.
Vail hurried to him, ripped off the goggles, and put them on. He could see that the second man, thinking Vail’s shots were his partner’s, was moving quickly toward the tree that protected Bursaw. As he moved to within a few feet of the tree, Vail dropped to one knee, held his breath, and emptied his magazine, aiming as best he could with his hands and body shaking furiously. The Lithuanian went down, and Vail stood up, ramming another magazine from his belt into the pistol, not knowing if the time in the water would prevent the rounds from firing. He started running at the fallen gunman, ready to fire again.
As Vail got to him, he called to Bursaw. “Luke, you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re both down.” The second man was dead and on his back. Vail rolled him over. Of the ten rounds Vail had fired at him, only one had hit him, in the middle of the back, apparently finding a vital organ.
Bursaw walked up, and Vail handed him the other set of goggles. He put them on and looked at the body. “You hit him only once? I imagine that’s about average for a bricklayer.”
For the first time, Bursaw noticed that Vail was wet and that his clothes were frozen. “You went in the water? Come on, we’ve got to get you to the car.”
The Bureau car was still running, and Bursaw turned up the heater as high as it would go. “Take those clothes off.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I do find you attractive, but . . .” Bursaw helped him pull his jacket off in the confined space. While Vail finished undressing, Bursaw called WFO and told them to get some agents out there.
When he was finished, he got out of the car and took a flashlight from the trunk. He headed back to the beach and five minutes later returned with a set of clothes. “One of the dead guys?” Vail
asked.
“Quit complaining, you dress like a communist anyway.”
Vail pulled on the clothes and could feel a wet spot on the back of the shirt where the blood of the second man he’d shot was now ice cold.
It was almost an hour and a half before agents from the Richmond office arrived. Fifteen minutes later Kate drove up. She smiled at Vail, a mixture of sarcasm and relief. “I thought you were going to call me if there was shooting. And now I find out there was shooting and swimming.”
Vail looked over at Bursaw. “Snitch. And you still owe me dinner.”
Kate said, “I assume that’s Longmeadow’s remains in the trunk of their car.”
“We’re not sure,” Bursaw said. “They’re still processing the trunk. No ID, and with whatever they wrapped around his head, we can’t even see what he looks like.”
“Okay, let’s go take a peek,” Vail said.
“You’re going to a hospital,” Kate said.
Vail gave her a look that said there wasn’t even going to be a discussion about it. He got out of the warm car, shivering slightly, and went back to Barkus’s trunk. The heavy canvas bag containing the body had been opened up, revealing that the victim’s head had been wrapped in some sort of plastic material. Vail felt a corner of it between his fingers. He smiled in appreciation. “It’s bitchathane. Roofing material. They put it at the edge of roofs, six feet or so up, to prevent ice-dam leaks. You can put nails through it and it seals right up. When you get it off the master sergeant here, you’ll probably find gunshot wounds to the head. They wrapped it around him and then shot him. That way there was no blood, skull, or brains leaking out at the scene. Pretty ingenious.”
Kate said, “Do you think this is their dumping ground?”
“Thanks to Lucas Bumperlock here, they knew we were on them, so I don’t know if they were about to lead us to proof of past misdeeds or not. They’ve been very careful about getting rid of evidence. Sometimes even before it becomes evidence, like Longmeadow here.”
“It’s still worth searching the lake. You never know,” Kate said.
“I suppose so, but even if there are bodies here, it’ll only take us back to these two. Maybe we’ve gotten as even with them as we’re going to get.”
Kate said, “Luke said it looked like Zogas was supervising the whole thing back at Longmeadow’s apartment.”
“We’d have to get his phone records and find out who he actually called. Maybe something could be made out of it.”
“It’s certainly not airtight,” she said. “And with all the moles gone, there’s no corroboration, so is that it?”
“Let me thaw my brain out and see if there isn’t something else we can do.”
“I still think you should get checked out at the hospital.”
Vail leaned in close and whispered, “I just need something warm and exciting to get my heart rate up.”
“I think I could arrange that.” She smiled back seductively. “NASCAR is running in Florida this weekend.”
34
The next morning Kate picked up an order of steak and eggs from a nearby restaurant and let herself into the former observation post on Sixteenth Street. The night before, she had driven Vail back there and couldn’t help noticing that his skin was gray from a lack of circulation, and every once in a while, out of the corner of her eye, she would notice his hands shaking. Again he refused medical treatment when she dropped him off. She offered to stay the night in case he needed anything, and when he didn’t use the opportunity to suggest the ultimate act of warming, she knew that the cold had taken more out of him than he was admitting. At that point she thought about insisting they go to the hospital but caught herself at the last moment, remembering who she was dealing with. So this morning, instead of going to the office, she thought she should check in on him.
She found him still sleeping and went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. After pouring herself a cup, she went back into the workroom. Methodically, she scanned the walls to see if Vail had added anything. It didn’t appear so.
She pulled over the desk chair and sat down to look at the graffiti-like displays that documented what they had done. As she sipped her coffee, she realized for the first time that the maze of documents, maps, and handwritten notes seemed to be almost an art form. Most of the writing was Vail’s, and, like him, it was enigmatic yet somehow aesthetic. With all its charted paths and irregular branches, it was more of a two-dimensional sculpture than the record of an investigation. She took another swallow of coffee.
“Hi.”
She spun around. Vail was in a T-shirt and pants. His color had returned. “I brought you”—she looked at her watch—“brunch. In the kitchen. It should still be warm.”
“What is it?”
“Something very Chicago. Pure, slow death to go.”
She got up and followed him into the kitchen. He got a fork and opened the Styrofoam container. “Steak and eggs. Whatever you’re feeling guilty about, I accept your apology.”
“Please, no more thank-yous. You’re making me blush,” she said. “And on the way here, I got a call from the director of the FBI.”
“How is he?”
“Unhappy. He wanted to know why we haven’t been keeping him or anyone else up on the investigative minutiae, like dead double agents and the shooting of suspects.”
“You didn’t mention my name, did you?”
“Believe it or not, of the million or so names that have worn a Bureau badge, yours was the only one that came up. He said he wanted to see you as soon as you had time.”
Vail laughed. “I’ve been fired twice—or is it three times?—from this job, but this will be the first time by the director.”
“I wouldn’t start working on your exit speech just yet. He doesn’t like being blindsided, but he probably figures he’s not getting his money’s worth out of you unless he is.”
“You can’t bawl me out and bring me steak. It’s very confusing. And as you know, I’ve been sick lately.”
Kate watched as Vail ate ravenously. “Then I’ll wait until you get your appetite back.” She got up and poured him a cup of coffee. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any more epiphanies.”
“Actually, I did receive a call from the two A.M. messenger.”
He had explained his “messenger” allusion to her once before. Sometimes if he went to sleep with some unresolved problem on his mind, around 2 A.M., probably when his body was about to shift into one of its REM cycles, it woke him up with some sort of answer, probably trying to jettison the psychological baggage of the unresolved mystery to ensure a more recuperative sleep cycle. “And what was the message?”
Vail cut off a large chunk of steak. “As you know, the messenger frequently screws with me, so see how this sounds. It starts with the two air force sergeants. One disappeared and one turned spy. Why did one disappear?”
“If we’re right about everything, it was because he didn’t want to commit treason,” she said.
“Correct. So the Lithuanians recruited someone else from the same project. They must have heard about the technology and decided they needed a piece of it to sell to the Russians, no matter how hard it was to get. Do you know where I’m going with this?”
“The missing guy in Las Vegas, Gaston. You think he disappeared because he refused the Lithuanians. And if you’re right, they may have recruited someone in his place. There could still be an active mole at—where did he work?—Matrix-Linx International?”
“Yes. And if there is, and we can figure out who it is, maybe we can use him to get to Zogas,” Vail said.
“So how do we find him?”
Vail pushed away the food container. “Unfortunately, the messenger is very lazy. He only leaves me one item at a time.”
They got up and took their coffee into the workroom. As though they expected the answer to have been visibly written in their absence, they both searched the wall in silence. Finally Vail said, “I’m going to shower. You f
igure it out.”
A half hour later, Vail reappeared dressed in a suit and tie. “Any luck?”
Her only response was to hand him a printout of a Bureau background investigation.
He read the subject’s name. “Raymond Ellis Radkay. Why him?”
“I checked Matrix-Linx International. Maurice Gaston had a top-secret clearance. So I figured the LCS would recruit only someone with an equal level of authorization. There were just four. One was the missing Maurice Gaston, leaving three. Another left the company before Gaston disappeared, and one was a female. Who, because of the chess club’s complete disregard for women, I would assume they would not lower themselves to recruit.”
“And that leaves Radkay,” Vail said. “Well, aren’t you the little overachiever so early in the day?”
“It makes you wonder if there aren’t more out there. Ones who were once useful but are no longer supplying information.”
“It’s possible, but we have no way of identifying them. Something occurred to me in the shower—other than you,” Vail said. “Maybe the LCS has found another use for their no-longer-productive spies. Do you remember those Disney stores that used to carry the old cartoon cels? I think it was the eighties when they started springing up.”
“Sure.”
“They were created because one of the bosses at Disney was checking out some storage space somewhere and found tens of thousands of them lying around deteriorating. Because he knew that Americans would collect anything, he instantly saw their potential. Each one was hand-drawn, a legitimate piece of original art. He opened the stores and literally turned debris into millions and millions of dollars.”
“What’s that have to do with the LCS?”
“I’m sure our little band of entrepreneurs were sitting around their chessboards trying to figure out how to protect the Russians’ favorite CIA agent from Kate Bannon when it occurred to them, ‘Hey, we’ve got all these inactive and low-production double agents just lying around collecting dust. Let’s figure out a way to turn them into money.’ ”