Final Target

by Steven Gore

  Gage thought for a moment.

  “For guys like Matson, greed can be both their strength and their weakness. We just need to find a way to turn it from one to the other.”

  CHAPTER 39

  When Gage walked into his office the next morning carrying two cups of coffee, he found Alex Z asleep, slumped in a chair across from his desk. A ramen noodle fragment was stuck to his gray T-shirt and his right sleeve was smudged with chocolate, as though he’d wiped his mouth while staring at his monitor.

  Alex Z shook himself awake, then rubbed his red, dark-ringed eyes with his palms.

  “Were you up all night?” Gage asked, handing him a cup.

  Alex Z stretched, then looked at his watch. “I guess not quite all of it. I came in to drop off something about fifteen minutes ago, but I guess I’m the one that dropped off.”

  “You awake enough to show me how to get into the financial data?”

  Alex Z reached down and picked up a folder from the floor and handed it to Gage. “I wrote it out.” He pushed his scraggly hair away from his face, then took a sip of coffee. “I ran a few searches just to test them out, and the results kept me awake. They didn’t match my understanding of how the scam worked. I got sort of panicky and wanted to figure it out before you came in.”

  Gage sat down behind his desk. “What didn’t make sense?”

  “I thought all of the SatTek sales outside the U.S. were bogus and only the domestic ones were real. But then I looked at the product descriptions and discovered that SatTek sold millions of dollars of DVLAs, ERDLVAs and LNAs that weren’t controlled under the ECCNs.”

  Gage smiled. “Could you translate that into English?”

  Alex Z’s face reddened. “Sorry, boss. I had to learn a new language to figure this stuff out. That just means they sold sound and video detection devices overseas that didn’t need government approval. Low-power ones. Under 10.5 gigahertz. Like the kind used in electronic testing equipment.”

  “Why do you think they’re real sales?”

  “Because the accounting system shows a lot of small orders, mostly between thirty and eight hundred thousand dollars, some a little higher. It also shows partial payments. Odd numbers. The fake payments were big round ones. One million even, two million even. Like those from the dummy Asian companies. The ones that look authentic were in amounts like $246,231 and $513,952.”

  Alex Z struggled to stay focused, like a marathoner approaching the finish line.

  “And I found another thing. They assigned internal purchase order numbers and used them to track the manufacturing, from ordering parts to the final shipping cost. So they knew exactly how much each device cost to build. But the fake sales didn’t track all the way through.”

  Gage nodded slowly, trying to visualize the product flow through SatTek.

  Alex Z faded for a moment, then blinked. “And this is interesting. It looks like the fake orders were all for the same kind of device. All digital video amplifiers with the same model number.”

  “Is that what SatTek dumped in the storage rooms in China and Vietnam?”

  “You got it, boss. Every single one. I can’t find any real buyers in Asia, only in the U.S. and the European Union. England, France, and Germany.”

  Alex Z’s mind drifted away as he finished the sentence. He stared blankly at Gage.

  “I think you need to get a nap,” Gage said.

  “What? What did you want?” Alex Z blinked again and shook his head. “No problem. What country?”

  “I said nap, you should get a nap.”

  “Oh. I thought you said map.”

  Gage came around the desk as Alex Z heaved himself to his feet. “How about I’ll take a look at what you downloaded, while you take a n-a-p.”

  While Alex Z slogged off to sleep, Gage worked his way through the SatTek files, troubled by the offshore sales. He located a copy of the hard drive of the workstation used in the sales office, then found the correspondence directory, organized by country.

  One stood out. A company in Ukraine, not a member of the European Union, had tried to buy twenty 18-gigahertz, military-grade video amplifiers. The application to export the devices to TeleTron Ukraina had been handled by a SatTek employee named Katie Palan.

  The denial notice was blunt:

  This application is rejected pursuant to the Arms Export Control Act of 2000. The Bureau of Industry and Security, in consultation with the Department of Defense, has concluded that this export would be detrimental to the national security interests of the United States.

  Gage wasn’t surprised. There was no way the U.S. would allow the export of military-grade devices to Ukraine; their next stop would’ve been Iran or Syria. Since Ukraine no longer had any enemies, its defense industry now existed solely to generate hard currency for a struggling economy.

  He ran an Internet search on TeleTron Ukraina and found the congressional testimony of the director of the Bureau of Industry and Security:

  Chairperson: Do you find that dual-use devices are redirected from civilian to military uses?

  Director: Repeatedly. And it’s for that reason that we investigate who the real end users of technology are likely to be. For example, we recently discovered that a company named TeleTron Ukraina was merely a front for the Yuzhmash Defense Production Plant in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. This plant conducted most of the research for various Ukrainian radar and missile targeting systems. Additionally, I would point out that the president of Ukraine, the former head of the Yuzhmash Plant, personally approved the sale of a hundred-million-dollar Kolchuga radar system to Iraq in violation of the arms embargo.

  Chairperson: Do you know what front company they’re using now?

  Director: I’m sorry to say I don’t.

  Gage called Robert Milsberg.

  “You know how I can contact Katie Palan?”

  “You can’t. She died in a car accident eighteen or nineteen months ago on her way to the company picnic.” Milsberg sighed. “She was really a sweet kid. The Highway Patrol figured a deer ran across the road—the area is lousy with them—and she swerved and tumbled down a ravine. It really devastated her parents. They blamed themselves.”

  “Why’d they think it was their fault?”

  “They fled Ukraine because they despised the corruption and violence, but figured if they’d stayed there, she’d still be alive.”

  “The name Katie Palan doesn’t sound Ukrainian.”

  “Ekaterina. Palan was her ex-husband’s name. In addition to her native language, she spoke Russian, German, and a little French, so she was involved in most of the European sales.”

  After hanging up, Gage sent an e-mail to Alex Z for him to retrieve when he awoke:

  “Z: Get me the names of every Ukrainian company that shows up in SatTek records. Market research. Purchase orders. Sales. E-mails. Everything.”

  Alex Z answered immediately:

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  “What happened to the nap?”

  “Couldn’t sleep—it must have been the sound of your mind working that kept me awake.”

  CHAPTER 40

  When Gage and his interpreter, Pavel, were invited into the one-bedroom San Jose apartment of Katie Palan’s parents, Gage felt as if he’d been warped back a generation earlier and thousands of miles to rural Ukraine. The living room contained a heavily embroidered couch and matching chairs, a two-door pinewood cabinet painted in vibrant green and red, three flat-weave rugs, and half a dozen egg-shaped Russian Orthodox icons.

  Katie’s father, Tolenko Palchinsky, a balding, stocky man still wearing his BIG Security Company uniform, answered the door. His wife, Olena, scurried up behind him, drying her hands on a flowery but threadbare full-length apron. Air wafting from the apartment was still thick with the aroma of beef and potatoes, herring and sour cream, and horseradish. It bore a scent of family and of coziness that couldn’t soften the strained faces of isolation that greeted Gage.

  Tears of a sailor d
aydreaming of home came to Tolenko’s eyes when Pavel introduced Gage and said in Ukrainian, “Ekaterina, we’re here about Ekaterina.”

  And after a long, uncertain moment, Tolenko glanced back at Olena and then invited them inside.

  “You know,” Tolenko said, after they’d sat down and Olena had brought out tea, “I was a mining engineer in Ukraine—”

  “No one wants to hear about Ukraine,” Olena interrupted. “Ukraine is dead.”

  Pavel, caught in the crossfire, cast Gage a weak look as he translated.

  “Ukraine is not yet dead,” Tolenko said, sullenly repeating the title of the national anthem. “As long as there’s corruption and gangster capitalism, it will live. When there’s nothing left to steal, then it will die.”

  “It’s dead for us,” Olena said.

  Gage knew it was a conversation they had before. Unlike Tolenko, Olena had apparently resolved that if you’re never going home, don’t look back.

  “Where are you from in Ukraine?” Gage asked.

  “Lugansk,” Tolenko answered, then glanced at Olena. “We agree about Lugansk. It’s dead. Rotting. Flooded coal mines, slag heaps, sickness.”

  “Is that where you worked?”

  “As if they listened to me.” Tolenko jammed his fist into his chest, then pointed at a phantom. “They just dug tunnels. Tunnels and tunnels and tunnels. The government didn’t care if miners died as long as they got the coal out before the tunnels collapsed.” Tolenko spoke quickly, almost too quickly for Pavel to keep up. “They only hired engineers so there would be someone to blame.”

  Tolenko gritted his teeth and shook his head, a sign of the fury that boiled within, that drove him to flee with bitterness as the lasting taste of home.

  “Tell me about Ekaterina.”

  “Ekaterina…she…” The grief in Tolenko’s heart choked off his voice.

  “She was everything to us,” Olena said. “So kind. So smart. She studied economics and English at Kiev University and enrolled in business administration courses as soon as she got here.” The pride in her voice shone even through Pavel’s even-voiced translation. “She was taking classes in asset analysis. She wanted to work at one of the big investment firms, specializing in Central Europe.”

  “Did she sponsor you to the U.S.?”

  Olena nodded. “She married an American she worked with in the trade section of the U.S. embassy in Kiev. We came after they divorced. He was a good boy but he wanted adventure and travel, Ekaterina wanted predictability. She’d lived her whole life in uncertainty. We all did.”

  “Where’s her husband?”

  “He’s been posted to St. Petersburg for the last two years. He came to San Jose for Ekaterina’s funeral.”

  “Was he here when Ekaterina was killed?”

  Tolenko’s eyes locked on Gage. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m wondering if Ekaterina’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  “I know it wasn’t her husband,” Olena said quickly, her voice edgy. “I called him in Russia an hour after the police came.”

  “But you’ve thought about this, haven’t you?” Gage asked Olena.

  She turned toward her husband and answered, “Yes.” She then looked down at her tightly gripped hands. “Every day.”

  “Have you tried to find out?”

  “How?” She looked up, face red, voice rising. “From whom? We’re two foreigners who speak little English. When you don’t speak good English, you’re treated like a child. And when you’re a parent and you say your child was murdered and the police won’t listen, people think you’re crazy. At the bakery where I work, they think I’m paranoid—at best. So I don’t talk about it anymore.”

  Gage leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, trying to look smaller, less threatening. “What do you think happened?”

  Tolenko cut in again. “You haven’t explained why you want to know.”

  Olena squirmed, on the verge of not caring who Gage was and why he was asking, just wanting to blurt out the story to anyone who would listen.

  Gage turned his head toward Tolenko. “I think SatTek was involved in illegal activities and your daughter may have figured it out.”

  Olena nodded vigorously, then opened her mouth to speak. Tolenko held up his palm toward her.

  “What illegal activities?” Tolenko asked.

  “Something involving a company called TeleTron Ukraina.”

  Tolenko’s palm failed to hold back Olena’s defense of her daughter. “But she didn’t know until afterwards. Please believe us, she didn’t know.”

  “That’s what I thought. But did she have proof?”

  Olena looked at her husband as if to say that Gage was the only person who would ever listen to them. It was Tolenko’s turn to nod.

  She hurried from the living room, returning less than a minute later gripping a soiled SatTek envelope, an English-Ukrainian dictionary, and a laptop computer. She sat down, pulled out the papers, then began to search through the dictionary. She looked up at Pavel. An embarrassed smile came over her face. She didn’t need the book now. Pavel was a walking dictionary. She handed the papers to Gage, who slowly thumbed through them.

  “I tried to translate the sheets,” Olena said. “But they didn’t make sense. A word here and word there. Too technical.” She wrung her hands, eyes searching Gage’s face, then Pavel’s. “Please tell me what they say. Please.”

  Gage finally reached out and took her hands in his. “They say that Olena Palchinsky isn’t paranoid.”

  Gage called Alex Z as he was driving away.

  “I checked everywhere,” Alex Z said. “There were no sales of exactly twenty Model STV–18 video amplifiers after August last year. There were sales of twenty Model STV–04s to a company called Kiev Industries. The 04 means that it was 4 gigahertz. It didn’t need U.S. government approval since 04s are low power and don’t have military applications—”

  “But you couldn’t find any resource planning records showing that twenty STV–04s were ever manufactured for Kiev Industries.”

  “Jeez, boss, how’d you know?”

  Gage glanced down at Katie’s file and her laptop resting on the seat next to him. A graceful hand had made checkmarks next to the STV–04 serial numbers.

  “Katie Palan figured out that serial numbers on the 18s and 4s were the same,” Gage said. “SatTek must’ve sent the same 18-gigahertz devices back to Ukraine, pretending that they were the 4s.”

  “No shit!” Alex Z voice rose, hitting a pitch somewhere between incredulity and outrage. “Isn’t that like treason or something? You know what those are used for? Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, like on Cobra helicopters and Predator drones. And Ukraine will sell them to anybody. Man, wasn’t Matson making enough money off the stock scam?”

  CHAPTER 41

  Let me get this straight,” Peterson said, his sarcasm reverberating through the phone line the following morning. “You knew you were going to lose on the facts of what Burch did, so you decided to take a shot at impeaching Matson instead? I thought you had more self-respect than that.”

  “You don’t know what the facts are, only what Matson is telling you.”

  Peterson laughed. “If that’s what Granger—may he rest in hell—planned to trade for a ticket out of jail, he was sadly mistaken. SatTek self-disclosed.”

  Gage caught his breath. He felt as if he’d been sneaking through a forest toward an enemy, only to get caught in an ambush. He looked down at Katie Palan’s notes, bewildered by why she’d bothered to track it—unless…Unless she was the first to discover it.

  “When did they turn themselves in?”

  “Right after it happened. Somebody in the shipping department ran to Matson after he realized that the orders had been mixed up and they’d sent 18s to Ukraine instead of 4s. Matson scurried over to Hackett, who shot off a fax to the Bureau of Industry and Security. It was referred to the FBI and Zink got assigned. He speaks Russian and a little Ukrainian from wh
en he worked in the Eurasian Organized Crime Group. Since he’d looked into the SatTek shipment, he stayed with it after the stock fraud tip came in.

  “We know that we can’t stop other countries from building missiles, but we sure as hell need to stop them from getting the technology that would allow them to make the kinds of surgical strikes we can. You remember the Varese case? Hackett sure did. Varese got fourteen years in the pen for just one of those devices. Twenty would’ve gotten Matson life plus a hundred. Hackett sent him over to Ukraine to retrieve them. Matson was a nervous little puppy. He knew the whole U.S. government would’ve landed on his back if one of his video amplifiers was found in an Iranian missile.”

  Gage heard the creak of Peterson’s chair as he slowly rocked back and forth. He imagined Peterson’s expression of self-satisfaction, as if he were standing over a prone quarterback in the end zone.

  “Nice try with the arms-trafficking angle, Gage. But it’s not going to get you anywhere. Look, I know Burch is your friend. And there’s something to be said for loyalty. But there’s also such a thing as being loyal to a fault—and I think that’s just where you’ve gone.”

  Peterson stopped rocking.

  “I know about you risking your life pulling him out of the Smith River. It was a helluva thing. But look—man to man—he’s in too deep this time. Way too deep. And there’s no way you’re going to pull him out.”

  “What’s wrong, boss?” Alex Z asked, walking into Gage’s office.

  Gage looked at his watch. He hadn’t realized that he’d spent the five minutes since he hung up staring out at the bay. He swiveled his chair toward Alex Z.

  “Peterson was a step ahead of us on the Ukraine angle,” Gage said. “He knew all about it.”

  Alex Z dropped into a chair and slid three folders across the desk.

  “What are these?” Gage asked.

  “Good news and bad news. From the look on your face, I better start with the good news.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I spent the day looking through the records that Mr. Burch’s law firm sent over. They show that Mr. Burch billed from 1:35 P.M. until exactly 2 P.M. for a meeting with Matson. The call from his line to that stockbroker Kovalenko was from 2:04 until 2:09. But Mr. Burch started billing his next meeting at 2:05. Unless Mr. Burch was cheating, he couldn’t have made the call.”