by Steven Gore
“You’ve got no proof—”
“And two, I’ve got an idea about Burch’s shooting and the Granger and Fitzhugh murders. My guess is that each one happened right after you focused the grand jury on them.”
“What are you saying?”
“You’ve got a leak.”
“That’s a dead end. We already checked it out.”
“By ‘we’ you mean that idiot Zink?”
“You underestimate the guy. He turned his career around with this case. He put the whole thing together from the ground up.”
“That’s a crock. The case was handed to him by an insider at SatTek, Katie Palan. She gave you Matson, then Matson gave you everything else. All Zink did was take notes.”
“Who?”
“Katie Palan.”
“Oh yeah, the woman who sent the letter.”
“That’s how it happened. And she’s dead, too.”
“I heard somebody at SatTek died in a traffic accident. Was that her?”
“That’s her. But it wasn’t an accident.”
“Not again.” Peterson adopted an exasperated tone, and seemed to enjoy it. “You sound normal for a while, then you start babbling like a conspiracy lunatic.”
“We’ll see.”
“What do you mean, we’ll see?”
“We’ll see who’s got a better grasp on reality.”
“Don’t kid yourself, pal. Burch is going down as sure as the sun sets in the west.”
“The sun doesn’t set. The earth rotates.”
“Same difference.”
“Nope. It makes all the difference in the world.”
Gage hung up and called Burch.
“Any news from Geneva?”
“Matson hasn’t tried to move the KTMG Limited money again. He must still think the account’s frozen.”
“Will your banker friend hang tough?”
“I think so.”
“I want you to give him a code phrase. If Matson calls and says ‘looking glass,’ your friend should do what he says. Get ahold of him as soon as the bank opens.”
Gage then called Matson.
“This is Mr. Green.”
“Thank God you called. They froze my money and I—”
“Not over the phone.”
“But—”
“Not…over…the phone.”
“When can we meet?”
“At 3 P.M. The café where we first met.”
When Gage walked into the South San Francisco café, Matson was sitting in the same booth, staring toward the door and pushing his napkin back and forth on the Formica table. Gage walked across Matson’s field of vision as he approached.
Matson flinched when Gage sat down. “Where’d you come from?”
Gage jerked his thumb toward the entrance.
“You startled me.”
“Tough day?”
“The worst.”
“I called my people in Geneva,” Gage said, settling back into the role of Mr. Green.
Matson sat up like a puppy waiting for a treat, hands on the edge of the table.
“What did they say?”
“The Swiss have what they call an investigating magistrate,” Gage said. “He made Nauru freeze the account.”
“Why?”
“Did you try to move too much money at once?”
“I…I don’t think so. I did exactly what you said. A little at a time.”
“Where’d the money come from?”
Matson sat back, then spread his hands. “I can’t tell you.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I mean I know, but I can’t say.”
“Why not?”
“Because the guy who sent me some of it wouldn’t be happy.”
Gage adopted a stern expression and aimed a forefinger at Matson. “At the moment you need to worry about keeping me happy. You wanted to see me because you needed me to do something for you. Right?”
Matson swallowed, then nodded.
“And I’m not going to be working in the dark on this, understand?”
Matson glanced toward the door, and his voice rose. “But who’s gonna protect me?”
“How much you got in the account? If you got enough money, you can buy all the protection you need.”
Matson looked around the restaurant, then leaned in and whispered, “About twenty million.”
Gage rolled his eyes. “That’s idiotic. Why’d you put that much in one account?”
“It’s the only one I had.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you needed more accounts?”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“What else weren’t you thinking about?”
Matson shrugged.
Gage leaned back in his seat, then folded his arms across his chest. “What do you expect me to do?”
“I don’t know. I just need my money.”
“How much are you willing to pay?”
Matson fiddled with his spoon, then said, “Five percent.”
Gage laughed. “You want me to stick out my neck for five percent and I don’t even know where the money came from? And worse, I don’t even know if it really belongs to you.”
“Okay.” Matson drummed his fingers on the table, biting his lower lip. “How about ten percent?”
Gage shook his head. “You’re still not thinking. Thirty percent. First and last offer.”
“Six million dollars! To make a call? A helluva Christmas gift.”
Gage shook his head again, seemingly disgusted.
“It ain’t a gift. Six million buys you my ability to make that call. It also means I’m putting myself in the middle of something I don’t have a clue about and I’ll need to watch my back forever because you won’t tell me what I need to look out for.”
“What about me?”
Gage lowered his arms and leaned over the table. “I’ll give you a bodyguard for a week. He’ll help you set up security for after that.”
“Starting when?”
Gage looked at his watch. “Two hours from now.”
“And how much will that little service cost?”
“Not a dime.”
“But how will you unfreeze the money?”
“I know somebody who can get to the magistrate.”
Matson drew back. “What do you mean?”
Gage smiled. “Nobody’s gonna hurt the guy. We’ll just appeal to his sense of justice.”
Matson exhaled. “When can you do all this?”
“At 9 A.M. Geneva time.”
“That quick?”
Gage nodded. “At 2 A.M. our time you call your banker and say, ‘Mr. Green will call with instructions. He has the looking glass.’”
“Looking glass?…I don’t get it.”
“You don’t need to get it. Just say exactly that—you need to write it down?”
“No. But…but what’ll happen to my money?”
“That depends on where you want it to end up.”
Matson shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“How about Costa Rica? Good place. You’ll fit in there. Lots of people speak English. But you’re gonna need a passport.”
Matson smiled, as if he finally had a correct answer. “I have one.”
“I’m thinking you don’t want the cops to figure out where you are. Right?”
“I thought of that already,” Matson said, his voice firm.
“If you use your passport, they can find you.”
“I’ve got a backup. Panama. I’ve got a Panamanian passport.” He smiled again. “And it’s real.”
“Good thinking. But if it’s in your name, they can still find you.”
“No. A friend of mine set it up. She has one, too. I used her name.”
“What’s that?”
“Tarasov.”
Gage raised an eyebrow. “Tarasov? You mean like the Russian maffiya guy?”
Matson’s eyes widened. He swallowed hard, then licked his lips. “What do you mean?” Mat
son’s voice rose to a squeak. “What Russian maffiya guy?”
“Well, he’s not really Russian. They just call all those guys Russian maffiya. He’s Ukrainian. Works out of Budapest. Got pushed out of Ukraine by a gangster named Gravilov. I don’t know if they ever made up. It’s hard to follow these things. You could look him up on the Internet.” Gage shrugged. “Of course, I could be wrong, Maybe she’s not related to him. There have to be lots of folks in the world named Tarasov.”
Gage paused, idly looking about the restaurant, letting Matson founder on the ragged shores of his imagination.
“I can’t remember what Tarasov’s first name is,” Gage finally said, scratching his head as if searching his memory. “No wait…it’s P-something. Pavel, Pavlo, Petro…”
Matson glanced toward the door, then mumbled to himself, “Petrovna…”
“Can’t be. Petrovna isn’t a man’s name. It’s what they call a woman’s patronymic. You know, from the father’s name.”
“Alla Petrovna Tarasova,” Matson whispered.
“What’d you say?”
Matson looked up. “I’m fucked. I’m really fucked.”
“What do you mean?”
Matson glanced at the door again. “I need a place to hide—now. Right now.”
“What kind of mess are you in?”
“I can’t say. I just can’t say.” Matson ground his hands together on the table. “You’ll get your money. Just don’t ask me.”
At 2:03 A.M. Gage’s cell phone rang as he was lying in bed next to Faith. It was Viz, Matson’s new bodyguard.
“Mr. Green. I’m with the guy. He made the call.”
At 2:04 Gage called Geneva.
“This is Mr. Green. I have the looking glass.”
Faith propped her head on an elbow.
“Yes, Mr. Green,” the banker answered.
“In two minutes you’ll receive an e-mail containing banking particulars. Transfer the entire KTMG Limited balance to that account except for ten thousand dollars to cover your fees.”
“Yes, Mr. Green.”
Gage flipped open his laptop on the bed table, sent the prewritten e-mail, then called Viz.
“Tell Matson you’ll be taking him north into the mountains for a few days, then to Costa Rica. I’ll give him the details when I get up there.”
Gage hung up and looked over at Faith, silhouetted against the moonlit sky.
“Mr. Green?” she said, giggling and reaching for him. “Whatever is my husband going to think?”
CHAPTER 78
Alex Z was sitting cross-legged on the landing in front of Gage’s office building when Gage walked up the stairs the next morning.
“You listen to the news on your drive in?” Alex Z said, standing up.
“No. Your new tracks. It was the first chance I had since Jack got shot. They’re brilliant, even to the ears of an old guy. I’m really proud of you.”
“Thanks.”
Alex Z swung open the door and held it for Gage.
“Why the special treatment?” Gage asked.
“You’ll see.”
Alex Z led Gage into the conference room, where he found Professor Blanchard sitting, his bleary eyes fixed on a corner television that displayed CNN coverage of an election-eve opposition demonstration in Kiev.
“Hey, Professor, what’re you doing here?”
Blanchard glanced toward Gage, then back at the television. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d catch up on Ukrainian politics.”
“Since last night.” Alex Z smiled and pointed at a cot in the corner. “He snores.”
“Your wife finally send you packing for insubordination?”
Blanchard jumped up, pointing at the television. “Here it is!”
“Explosions in Crimea” burst onto the screen, overlaying unfocused, jerky videophone images of a reporter standing against the earth-toned, minareted backdrop of Istanbul.
A shudder of relief passed through Gage as he dropped into a chair.
Then a voiceover: Turkish authorities reported that NATO satellites over the Black Sea indicate that three explosions occurred at the Ukrainian Crimean missile testing site approximately four hours ago.
Gage looked over at Blanchard, in awe of the old man with the power to reach into Central Europe and derail an arms-trafficking scheme from his little workshop in the Berkeley hills.
Since the accidental shooting down of a Russian airliner a few years ago, NATO monitors all Ukrainian missile tests. Seventy-eight passengers and crew members died in that incident. As in the case of the airplane disaster, Ukrainian authorities are denying the NATO claim. NATO is expected to release satellite images of the explosions later this evening.
“How’d you do it?” Gage asked.
Blanchard glanced over. “You wanted a Trojan horse, you got one. I made the missiles think they arrived at their targets before they left the ground.” He grinned. “And I disguised the flaw by planting a program that invaded their server. When they tested the guidance software, the results screen always displayed SatTek’s most successful performance data.”
Gage imagined the devastation on the launch pads, concerned not about Gravilov and Hadeon Alexandervich, but about the Ukrainian hourly workers who made their living pushing brooms around the missile site. “You think anybody was hurt?”
“Not unless they were riding it. They’re all supposed to be in bunkers.”
“Can they fix the other devices?”
“No. Given how close this is to the shipment date, that wasn’t a test, but a demonstration. Making these missiles was just a cookie-cutter job. And once the software is embedded in the hardware, that’s it. Finito. Burned in is burned in.”
Gage smiled. “Hadeon Alexandervich must be pissed.”
“Who?” Blanchard asked.
“The president’s son. This was his deal. His and Gravilov’s.” Gage paused, thinking about what the Middle Eastern buyers would do next. “I should’ve said their customer—probably Iran—will be pissed. Hadeon Alexandervich is about to wet his pants. It’s a big mistake to annoy the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence.” The rest of the future snapped into focus. “My guess is that they’ll go after Hadeon Alexandervich, and Hadeon Alexandervich’s father will send State Security after Gravilov.”
“I thought Gravilov was the president’s roof,” Alex Z said.
“Looks like the roof just fell in.”
“What about Matson, can’t he buy his way out?” Alex Z asked.
Gage looked at his watch. The banking day in Geneva was over and the KTMG account was empty. “Nope.”
CHAPTER 79
At 3 P.M. Gage turned off the main highway onto a two lane gray-top that quickly dwindled to one, then became dirt and gravel for the last six miles toward Hat Creek in Northern California. The four-hour drive took Gage from sea level wetlands, then north along the Sacramento River, and finally east through scrub oak to pines and redwoods at forty-five hundred feet.
As Gage drove into the clearing, he saw Viz rocking in a chair on the front porch of the small, weathered wood cabin, a pump-action shotgun across his lap. His worn black Stetson rested low on his forehead and his eyes stared toward the river flowing almost silently fifty yards away. His head rotated to the right at the sound of Gage’s car rolling toward him. He stood up, waiting for Gage to park near an outbuilding, then walked down the steps to meet him.
Viz pointed at the semiautomatic in Gage’s shoulder holster. “I didn’t even know you owned one that big.”
“Spike loaned it to me for the occasion.” Gage looked around. “Where’s our little pal?”
“By the river.” Viz pretended to flinch. “Bark at him and I think he’ll start crying. He jumps every time a twig breaks. He thinks he went down there to watch the water, but he really just wants to hide from unexpected noises in the roar of the rapids. The only thing that’s keeping him together is the idea of Costa Rica.”
“Has he seen the news?”
“It’s time to fix it.”
Gage walked down the pine-treed hill toward the meadow bordering the stream. He saw Matson, wearing a blue parka and slacks, sitting on a fallen tree, mechanically tossing pebbles into the whitewater rapids below him. Gage’s footfalls disappeared into the sounds of the river as he approached from behind.
“Matson!” Gage yelled at twice the decibels necessary to pierce through the roar.
Matson cringed, then peeked back over his shoulder. At the sight of Gage, his body slumped and he exhaled through puffed cheeks.
Gage jerked his thumb toward the cabin, then turned away and marched back. Matson, breathless, caught up at the stairs. They climbed the steps together and walked into the house. Gage pointed at a couch that faced the television off to the left and the fireplace directly in front. He then walked past the dining table to the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room.
Matson hung his parka on the coatrack, then sat down on the edge of the couch, arms on his thighs, fingers interlinked. Gage measured out coarse ground coffee from a Folgers tin, filled the coffeemaker with water, and punched the switch. He then returned and took a seat in a matching recliner.
“This place okay?” Gage asked, looking over.
“Yeah. But it’s boring. No TV. Nothing.”
Matson’s eyes were sunken and bloodshot, his breathing still heavy from the hike up from the river.
“That’s getting fixed.”
“Did you get my money out?”
“No problem. I’ll give you the bank info once it gets all the way to Costa Rica.”
Matson nodded. “Thanks.” The word came out like a sigh.
Viz entered through the back door. “I think I solved the TV problem.” He set the shotgun in the gun cabinet along the wall to the left of the fireplace, then walked to the kitchen.
Gage grabbed the remote from the coffee table and turned on the television. He skimmed the channels until he found CNN, and then set it down. The U.S. secretary of state was commenting on the opposition victory in the Ukrainian elections.
“How long do I need to stay here?” Matson asked, peering at Gage.
“Not long. You got anything you need to take care of? You won’t be coming back for a while.”