High Treason

by John Gilstrap

  “Oh, damn,” Boxers said. He wasn’t all that fond of small children, but he had a special hatred for those who abused them.

  “How old is he?” Jonathan asked.

  “Josef is thirteen,” Yelena said. “And a half.”

  Jonathan nodded as he considered the ramifications. At that age, kids were far from rational, but they were able to respond to commands and participate in their own rescue. That was a good thing.

  “Where were they kidnapped from?” Jonathan asked David.

  Yelena answered, “Vail. In Colorado. David has a home out there.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “They must be terrified. We have to get them back.”

  Easier said than done, Jonathan didn’t say. “First, we have to figure out where they are.” He looked to Wolverine. “Is this your op or is it mine?”

  “So far, I don’t have a vector into the case,” Irene said. “If this goes international, it all gets very complicated.”

  “We should call the police,” Yelena said. “They should be out looking for them.”

  “Did this Billy guy give any indication of how long ago the snatch went down?” Jonathan asked David.

  “We were waiting for him when he got back to his house at about one this morning,” David said. “And by then, it was already a done deal.”

  “And why didn’t they call the police?” Venice asked.

  David cleared his throat. “From what I could tell, the police are the last people that any of them want to talk to.”

  Jonathan faced the First Lady. “Mrs. Darmond, think. Does any of this make sense to you? Do you have any idea who would want to put you in this kind of jeopardy?”

  Yelena closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. With her eyes still closed, she said, “You seem to know about my past, Mr. Grave. If that is the case, then you know there are a great many people who would want to hurt me through my family.”

  “Does any one of them float to the top?”

  She waited long enough to answer that Jonathan thought she was formulating a lie. “Dmitri Boykin would be one,” she said.

  And just like that, it all came home. “I’m hearing that name a lot,” Jonathan said. “Do you want to tell us the rest of the story?”

  She closed her eyes again and seemed to transport herself to a different place. As she spoke, her cheek muscles tightened, creating a countenance of pain. “Back then,” she said. “Back before, when we were all dissidents, Dmitri was among the worst of the worst. While I wanted to bring down institutions, he wanted to kill people. He believed, I think, that the Soviet Union could be avenged through violence in America. I think he never grew past that.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Irene interrupted, “but that’s too easy. I don’t recall a mention of this Dmitri Boykin in any of your testimony.”

  Yelena’s eyes opened. “I might not have mentioned him,” she said.

  “Might?”

  “I did not mention him.”

  “But your deal with the government—”

  “I know what my deal was, Director Rivers. I signed it, remember? I gave you everyone else. Everyone else. But Dmitri was different. He was a crazy man. Capable of anything. And by then, I was a mother and I had greater concerns. I always worried that he would—”

  The words caught in her throat, and she dislodged them with a cough. “Come after my family.” She finished the sentence at barely a whisper.

  Irene leaned in closer to Yelena. “Mrs. Darmond, this is the time to be one hundred percent forthcoming. We cannot help you if you don’t give us all of the details.”

  “I don’t have details,” Yelena said. “It’s been too long. Your predecessors wanted me to turn on the co-conspirators I worked with, and I did that. Except for Dmitri. He was just too connected and too unpredictable. Even if he was in prison, he would have found a way to get even.”

  “Was this a negotiated arrangement?” Jonathan asked. “Did you make a deal with him that if you withheld his name he would give you a pass?”

  “I wish it had been that direct,” Yelena said. “I was young and stupid and scared. I thought that if I just didn’t mention him he wouldn’t come looking for me.”

  Venice asked, “Have you been in touch with him at all since then?”

  Yelena shook her head. “No. Of course, as the campaign kicked in, and I got more and more exposure on the news, I knew that he would see it and that there might be repercussions, but there was never a confrontation.”

  “Didn’t that surprise you?” Jonathan asked.

  She considered the question. “No, not really.” She paused to reconsider. “Well, yes and no. I knew that he would be aware of the fact that he had a pressure point against me and by extension against my husband, but I also thought he would see that as his free pass for the rest of his life. Which it could have been.”

  “You let a murderer go,” Boxers summarized, “so that you could feel safe.”

  Yelena seemed ready to do battle for just an instant, and then she calmed herself. “Do you have children, Mr. . . .” she clearly had forgotten his name.

  “None that I know of,” Boxers replied. “But if I did, I’d be sure to set a good example.”

  “What you’d do is protect them,” Yelena said. “And you’d do it at any cost.”

  Her answer could not have been a more perfect way to disarm the Big Guy.

  Yelena went to a place in her head that did not include anyone in the room. In the accompanying silence, Jonathan felt his anger swell.

  “Yelena,” he said, deliberately reverting to the name she didn’t like, “you’ve been deceitful tonight, and I don’t appreciate it.”

  She looked offended.

  Jonathan leaned in close to the First Lady. It was a gesture designed to make her pull back. She responded just as she was supposed to. “You just finished walking us through this song and dance,” Jonathan said, “about a gray-haired man who met with Douglas Winters and happened to turn out to be Dmitri Boykin. And through that entire story, you knew that this guy had a vendetta against you and your family. If David and Becky here had not come forward with the fact of their kidnapping, you would have kept that to yourself.”

  Yelena’s eyes had a hard time finding a spot to settle on as she worked through the accusation. “It’s not like that,” she said. “You don’t understand—”

  “I understand that you’re a woman of many secrets, ma’am, and that when you live with secret upon secret, life becomes extraordinarily complicated. But that’s never an excuse to lie to the people who may very well be the only allies you have left in the world.”

  Yelena made a waving motion with both hands. “I didn’t think—”

  Jonathan turned to Irene. “Okay, Wolverine, what are our options?”

  Irene took a deep breath and looked to the newcomers. “David, is it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Did this Billy person say anything to you about a ransom, or conditions for release?”

  David cleared his throat. “I actually asked that,” he said. “Or essentially that. Billy didn’t know.”

  That made perfect sense to Jonathan. “Their demand is to be left alone,” he said. “And the First Lady’s family is the leverage to make that happen. That means that this Dmitri guy doesn’t know that you’re not in the White House, ma’am.”

  Yelena scowled.

  “If he thought you were on the run, as you are, he wouldn’t assume that the president’s chief of staff would have any sway in this. Winters couldn’t talk to someone who wasn’t there.”

  Jonathan asked Irene, “Can’t you put HRT on this?” The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team.

  “Where would I put them?” she asked. “We can check out the family’s residence in Vail. I guess we should do that anyway, but there’s really not much doubt what we’re going to find.”

  “And there’s the fact of the law enforcement connection,” Paul Boersky said, his first statement of the evening. “The whole reason we bro
ught Scorpion into this in the first place was the fear that we couldn’t trust our own to keep things secret.”

  “I think that horse has left the barn, hasn’t it?” Venice asked.

  “Not necessarily,” Jonathan said. “It’s your call, Wolfie—my job is already done—but if the control of information is the endgame here, I’m thinking it might be a mistake to involve the real authorities too soon. They leak. You and I both know that.”

  “The whole world knows that,” Boxers said. “Our enemies all count on it.”

  Irene rubbed her eyes, then looked at Yelena. “Ma’am, how much of this do you imagine that the president knows?”

  Yelena shook her head slowly. “Tony and I have literally not spoken in two months. Not even hello in the morning. I have no idea what he knows.”

  “Is he close to your son?” Venice asked.

  “Oh, good heavens, no. They hate each other.” After the words were out, Yelena retreated. “By that, though, I don’t mean to imply that he would consider hurting them.”

  “Good heavens no,” Boxers mocked.

  “You know,” Irene said, “I think it speaks volumes that my cell phone has not been going crazy with reports of the kidnapping. Especially given that the White House knows.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Jonathan asked.

  “I’m suggesting nothing,” Irene said. “I’m merely observing. And at this point, my observations are leading me to believe that Scorpion is correct. It may well be too early to involve official Washington in any of this.”

  Yelena’s face became a mask of disbelief. “But what about my family?”

  “We’ll get them back for you,” Jonathan said.

  “There’s the words I’ve been dreading,” Boxers grumbled.

  “How?” Yelena and others asked in unison.

  Jonathan smiled as he looked at Venice. “Let me get back to you on the specifics,” he said. “After we do a little research.”

  Venice groaned. When Jonathan said we he actually meant she.

  Venice held up a finger, as if to point to the lightbulb that had appeared over her head. She looked to Irene. “Do you remember that Yelena’s group had a sleeper cell in Canada?” she asked.

  Irene scowled, scanning her memory. Then she saw the same lightbulb. “Toronto?”

  “Ottawa. Yelena? Mrs. Darmond? Does this ring any bells?”

  The First Lady’s eyes grew large, as if she were considering a new detail for the first time. “Yes,” she said. “Back then, it was easy to be anti-American if you were from Canada.”

  “Is that where this Dmitri guy comes from?” Jonathan asked.

  “No,” Yelena said. “But it would not be unreasonable for him to know about it. Personally, I have no idea if that cell even exists anymore.”

  “Which means that you have no idea that it went away, either,” Boxers observed.

  Yelena conceded the point with a combined shrug and nod.

  Venice stood abruptly, startling Jonathan. “You all stay here,” she said. “It shouldn’t take more than an hour to decide if we have a reliable lead or if we’re dead in the water.”

  “What does that mean?” Jonathan asked.

  Venice’s eyes flashed. “It means that I’m going to go do what I do best.”

  They all watched as Venice left the room. When she was gone, Jonathan said to the group, “More times than not, it’s worth waiting around for the answer.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It actually took Venice less than thirty minutes, but in that time, Jonathan had managed to fall asleep. The Lagavulin had a part in that, but so did the absence of sleep in the past thirty-six hours.

  “I’ve got it!” Venice announced, blasting into the office without warning. “Leonard Shaw,” she said. “Does that name mean anything to you?” She didn’t address the question to anyone in particular, but Jonathan assumed it was for Yelena.

  No one said anything.

  “Alexei Petrov,” Venice said, and Yelena’s face lit up.

  “You know him,” Jonathan said, observing the obvious.

  “Alexei,” she said. “Yes, he was a sweet boy. What does that have to do with Leonard . . . who?”

  “Shaw,” Venice said. “Leonard Shaw. He prefers to go by Len. That’s Petrov’s new name. He’s a Canadian now.”

  More recognition on Yelena’s features. “He was a Canadian then.” She chuckled at something that passed through her mind. “A socialist to his soul, he never fully understood what to do with his feelings. He has changed his name?”

  “So it seems,” Venice said. “Quite some time ago.”

  Jonathan raised his hand, partly to poke fun, but mostly to give Venice a chance to shine. “Dare we ask how you determined this?” he asked. Not everyone understood how thoroughly she terrorized electrons with her computer skills, and he thought a showcase was important for her credibility.

  Venice explained. “After I scanned through the various drawings we pulled off the data retrieved from Banks, I briefly scanned what you sent me from Vasily and Pyotr. I remembered a reference to Ottawa, which didn’t mean anything to me until David mentioned an international connection. I just worked backward until I found an e-mail about a visit to go see Len Shaw.”

  As she paused for a breath, Jonathan said, “This is the part that I always like. Wait till you see how she connected the dots.” He said this in full confidence, having no idea how she in fact connected the dots.

  Venice continued, “I matched Len Shaw with Ottawa, and of course that didn’t mean anything to me. So then I threw in the list of names from Mrs. Darmond’s participation with the FBI way back when, and I found a record that showed that Alexei Petrov had changed his name to Len Shaw.”

  She stopped, clearly assuming that she’d explained everything. Recognizing the blank stares for what they were, she said, “Come on, how could that be a coincidence? I looked him up, and I found that he’s become quite the real estate investor.”

  “Investor?” Irene prompted.

  “Investor,” Venice confirmed. “He’s assembled quite a few properties over the years, all of them in the greater Ottawa area.”

  “Relevance?” Jonathan said.

  “International,” Venice said. “I don’t know why, but I guess I assume that if they’re going to take high-profile hostages, they’re going to stay contiguous to the United States. I didn’t find any Mexican references.”

  Thank God for that, Jonathan didn’t say. He’d spent enough time south of the border, thank you very much.

  “How about it, Yelena?” Jonathan asked. “Is this the connection we’re looking for?”

  Yelena looked to Irene. “Is Alexei with Dmitri now? I could see that happening.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Irene said. “This is Venice’s show. I have no idea where she’s going.”

  “Why could you see it happening?” Jonathan asked. He suspected that Venice had already divined all the answers, but sometimes it’s best to absorb other stakeholders into a problem to embrace the obvious on their own.

  “You need to remember when we were together,” Yelena said. “We all thought that for the Soviet Union to thrive, the United States had to die. I don’t know to this day if that was true. As it turns out, the Soviet Union is gone and the United States is still here.”

  “Congregation say halleluiah and amen,” Boxers said.

  Yelena continued as if she hadn’t heard. “Alexei, as I recall, believed that everything the USA did was wrong. Everything. His family had Vietnam deserters living in their home. It was that kind of a house. Right around the time I was arrested, he fled back to Canada, knowing that no one would prosecute him there. I had no idea that he changed his name, though.”

  Jonathan asked, “Do you think he is capable of kidnapping?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “He was all about loyalty back then. Loyalty and action. If he felt that I betrayed him, maybe he could be moved to kidnap.”

  “I don’t want to
put too fine a point on this,” Boxers said, “but didn’t you in fact betray him? Didn’t you betray all of your friends when you turned government witness?” He winked at Irene. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

  Irene acknowledged his wink with a smirk. For Boxers, there was no greater crime than turning your back on a friend.

  Venice brought the conversation back on track. “If it’s even remotely possible that he would participate in such a thing,” she said, “I think that he’s where you all need to focus your attention.”

  They all waited for her to answer her own riddle.

  When the answer didn’t come in a few seconds, Jonathan primed the pump. “Why is that?” he asked.

  “Because one of the properties he owns is an abandoned prison,” she said. A smile bloomed on her face as she took in the shocked looks.

  “Yes, a prison,” she clarified. “Saint Stephen’s Reformatory. On Saint Stephen’s Island in the middle of the Ottawa River. It used to be Canada’s own little Alcatraz. According to the zoning applications, he’s planning to turn it into a hotel.”

  “What a romantic getaway,” Boxers said.

  Venice ignored him. Again. “But I can’t find any records that he’s followed through on the plan.”

  “I don’t get it,” Irene said. “Are you suggesting that he bought that property with the idea of kidnapping Mrs. Darmond’s children?”

  “No,” Venice said. “I’m suggesting that he bought the property to fund whatever he’s interested in funding. The fact that it’s still a prison merely plays into his hand. Think about it. It’s in the middle of a river, accessible from a single bridge. If I were going to run a summer camp for would-be terrorists, I could think of worse places. A great place to make a last stand, if it came to that.”

  Jonathan felt a chill at the realization that they might be dealing with a fortress. The room fell quiet as everyone thought through what they’d been told.

  “It makes too much sense to dismiss it,” Jonathan said, breaking the silence. “But how do we confirm it?” His eyes drilled Irene. “Do you have influence over the satellite taskers?”

  “Not without making all of this official,” she said.