by Steven Gore
Tears formed in her eyes as she looked up again. “I’m really no different than him. A self-deceiving little rat. You must think I’m pathetic.”
“No, not at all.” Gage was tempted to wipe away the tears, but held back, fearing that she’d seek salvation in him, rather than in herself. “You do the right thing when it affects others. You just seem to get lost when you try to create a world you can be happy in.”
“But what am I supposed to do?”
“I can’t tell you how to live. All anybody can do is try to think about what they’re doing, and not lie to themselves. Beyond that, I have no other answer.”
CHAPTER 76
Special Agent Zink was waiting near the customs scanners when Gage and Alla walked from passport control in the international terminal of the San Francisco Airport late the next afternoon.
“Don’t say anything,” Gage told her, “except your name. You can show him your passport and the copy of the letter if he asks. Nothing else.”
Confusion, verging on panic, flashed in her eyes. “But aren’t you required to talk to the police here?”
“No. Name, passport, letter. That’s all.”
Gage and Alla handed their customs declarations to a uniformed agent, who directed them to the green line and toward the exit. Zink stationed himself in their path as they approached the automatic doors.
Zink pulled his shoulders back. “I need to talk to your friend, Gage.”
“Sorry, we’re late for an appointment.” Gage took Alla’s arm and stepped to Zink’s left. “Why don’t you give me a call next week, I’ll see if I can fit you in.”
Zink moved over to block them. “You’re forcing me to pull rank.”
“Pull rank? I’m not in your chain of command, and neither is she.”
“She can talk to me now,” Zink said, “or I’ll subpoena her to the grand jury.”
“Do what you gotta do.”
“You’re verging on obstruction, Gage.”
Gage held out his hands as if waiting to be cuffed. “Take your best shot.”
Zink reddened. “In time.” He looked at Alla, then back at Gage. “Where’s she staying?”
“It’s on her arrival card, go take a look.”
Gage fixed Zink in place with a forearm in front of his chest, then signaled Alla to precede him to the exit.
“You don’t like that guy,” Alla said as they emerged into the arrivals hall.
“He’s a lousy investigator and a snake. He got into the FBI during the height of the cocaine epidemic. Back then they took anybody who knew what crack looked like. Now they’re stuck with him. Even worse, he’s badged his way out of a DUI and a prostitution arrest.”
“What’s badged?”
“It means he used his badge, used his position as a federal agent to talk his way out of being arrested.”
“And he was a prostitute, too?” Alla asked, drawing back and grinning.
“No, not a prostitute. A john.”
“Are you still speaking English?”
“A john is a customer. A DUI is driving under the influence.”
“Of what?”
“No one knows. As I said, he badged his way out, both times claiming he was undercover. Ever since he’s been trying to prove to the Bureau that he’s a real cop. For him, Jack Burch is just a statistic he needs to get back on the promotion trail.”
Gage hailed a taxi that took them on the forty-minute ride to the East Bay hills. The sun had set by the time it pulled into the driveway next to the redwood stairs rising up from his house.
As the cab door shut, Gage spotted Faith climbing the steps, now lined with tiny Christmas lights. She threw her arms around Gage, who flinched when her hands pressed against his wounds.
“I’m sorry, dear,” Faith said, unwrapping herself. “I got excited.”
Faith’s motherly look at Alla told Gage that she’d understood his e-mail describing both the courage Alla had shown and her need for a woman in whom to confide. Faith hugged her, then picked up her suitcase. “You must be very tired. All you’ve been through.”
“I’m fine, really. I rested in London.”
“Not like you’ll rest here.” Faith tilted her head toward the stairs. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
Faith led Alla through the house to a lower-level bedroom. Alla walked directly from the door to the corner windows facing the bay.
“Is that San Francisco?” she asked, wide-eyed at the floor-to-ceiling view that extended from Mount Tamalpias in the north to the airport in the south. The first bit of evening fog was easing its way through the Golden Gate, but had yet to mute the twinkling lights of the city or the sapphire blue of the bay. “It’s like a postcard.”
“It’s real and it’s yours as long as you can stay with us. You can freshen up down the hallway, then come back up.”
Gage was sitting at the kitchen table when Faith walked in. She took a bottle of Budweiser out of the refrigerator and handed it to him. “From Professor Blanchard. He said you’d understand.”
Gage twisted off the top and took a sip. “Sweetheart of a guy.”
“He feels indebted to you,” Faith said, sitting down.
“It’s the other way around.”
“That’s not how he looks at it. He spent his whole career worrying that his research was being used to make weapons that would end up in the hands of the wrong people. He feels like you gave him a chance to use his knowledge for good.”
“Well, he did good. I couldn’t have gotten this far without him. I just don’t know whether it was enough.”
Faith reached over and rested her hand on Gage’s forearm. “You look beat.”
“A little jet lag, it’ll be gone tomorrow.”
“You think you can force Peterson to indict Matson for the devices?”
“Based on what? Alla can’t get up on the stand. Whoever killed Granger and the Fitzhughs will go after her if she does.”
“What about you?”
“Testify about watching Matson from a distance? It was a silent movie without subtitles-and it would be just as dangerous for Alla because I’d have to expose her role.” Gage looked across the bay toward the Federal Building, but his eyes fell on the clock tower at the foot of Market Street. “I’ve got nothing to delay the indictment.”
“How soon do you think it will be?”
“A day or two. Milsberg left a message that Zink said he’s the second-to-the-last grand jury witness, and they want him in tomorrow. At 10 A. M.”
CHAPTER 77
Peterson called seconds after Gage sat down in his office the next morning.
“Hey, hotshot. I heard you’ve been traveling again.”
Gage didn’t rise to the aggression rumbling under Peterson’s jocular banter.
“A little bit.”
“I also heard Matson’s girlfriend is in town.”
“Ex.”
“Ex?”
“Yup.”
“How’d you do it?”
“I went over to London a couple of days ago and asked her to come. He shouldn’t have left her alone in that big flat.”
“What’s she gonna say?”
“That Matson told her Burch didn’t know what was going on.”
Peterson laughed. “That’s bullshit. Matson told Zink he didn’t let her in on anything. Why would he? He says she was just a plaything and he dangled a green card in front of her nose to keep her around.”
“Then you can add lying to a federal agent to his charge sheet.”
“Yeah, right. If she was such a hot witness, you’d have run the visa through me.”
“Two reasons. One, you’d feed her to the civil lawyers-”
“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 go
t 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 cafe where we first met.”
When Gage walked into the South San Francisco cafe, 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?” Matson’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?”