Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 10 - Midnight Come Again

by Midnight Come Again(lit)

  "It has to be there," Casanare said stubbornly. "We got a list of potential buyers out of the Anchorage data base, all of them involved in some way with white supremacist groups in Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Texas. The Aryan Nation, for crissake, is probably waiting delivery on this stuff as we speak. You think they're going to stop with the Oke bomb?"

  "Will you shut up and listen to me for just one minute!"

  First Sergeant Jim Chopin in full voice was enough to splinter wood.

  Casanare mastered his anger and said to Carroll, "What the hell, we can listen. Doesn't mean we can't grab her up after."

  Kate heard him and sat up straight in her chair.

  "Thank you," Jim said with awful politeness. "Kate's found some information that I think you'll be interested in. It concerns--"

  "Oh I'm sure we'll be interested in anything Ms. Shugak has to say,"

  Casanare said silkily, "but if you don't mind, first I'd like to read her her rights." He smiled at Kate. It was a very attractive smile, and she decided that if she had a choice, he got to put on the cuffs. She took comfort in the weight of Mutt's shoulder, pressed against her knee.

  Mutt had taken it as a matter of course that she had been invited to this interservice conference, and no one had thought to gainsay her.

  The best--maybe the only--way to deal with Feds on a roll was to ignore them.

  Jim didn't have that luxury. "It's a money-laundering operation."

  "What?"

  "They're not smuggling anything into the country except money. They're running a con through the fishing industry, money in from an overseas business run through the Kosygin's account in a local bank to a stateside outfit."

  There was dead silence. Jim looked at Carrou, looked at Casanare. "It's true. I'm betting that goddamn zirconium never came within five thousand miles of the Alaskan coastline. Stealing it was probably part of the operation; hell, selling it was probably how they bankrolled it. But this part--what they're doing here in Bering right now--is about money.

  It is not about weapons smuggling, and it's not about terrorism. It is about money."

  "That's not all," Kate said.

  "Oh, she speaks," Carroll said.

  Zarr was sitting behind her desk and so far had had little to say. At this, she stirred. "Agent Carroll, let's tone it down a little, shall we? You seem to have some suspicions about Ms. Shugak's doings in this matter. You should know that she has a reputation with the law enforcement community in this state, a good one." Whereas I met you two yo-yos only last week, her tone implied.

  It was a warning, however gently voiced, and Carroll wasn't so angry that she didn't hear it. She subsided, reluctantly.

  Zarr said, "Ms. Shugak? You had something to say?"

  "Thank you," Kate said.

  She was being excruciatingly polite. Jim wondered just how hard she'd been hit.

  "I went to the library yesterday." She closed her eyes for a moment. "Or was it the day before?" She sighed and opened her eyes again. "I can't remember." "How unusual," Carroll said, shooting Jim a vicious glance.

  Zarr cleared her throat. "You went to the library."

  "Yes," Kate said, "and I looked some things up. Some background information."

  "What about?"

  "Who, not what. Christopher Overmore and Michael Sullivan."

  Zarr's eyebrows disappeared into her hair.

  "Who's Sullivan?" Jim said.

  "The owner of the local bank. Overmore you know."

  "Yeah, yeah, the senator from this district, running for U.S. senator.

  What's he got to do with anything?"

  "I can't prove it, yet, but I think he's Sullivan's partner in the bank, or one of them."

  "So what?"

  "So Overmore used to be a banker, a bad one. He came this close to going to jail for fraud seven years ago."

  Jim was furious. "Why the hell didn't you tell me this before?"

  She looked away, an uncommon thing for Kate Shugak to do. "I must have forgotten." I ran you off, he remembered just in time, and shut his mouth.

  Zarr said slowly, "You'd better know what you're talking about here.

  Overmore's a big name in these parts."

  Kate thought about shrugging but didn't have the strength. "Look it up for yourself. It was in all the papers. How long have you been posted here?"

  "Three years."

  "Has no one ever talked about it? Twenty-three million dollars went missing, mostly from Native associations. You'd think people would never stop talking about something like that. How the hell did he get elected senator?" "Before my time," Zarr said, adding, "He's brought a lot of bacon home.

  State and federal funding for sewer systems for villages in the district, funding from the FHA for low-cost housing funneled through the regional corporation, federal funding for the local hospital, things like that."

  "Yes, well, this concern for local affairs is all very well," Casanare said briskly, "but in the meantime, we've got some highly toxic, very dangerous contraband to track down, and--"

  "Sure you do," Jim said, "just not here. Get a warrant, get six of them, deputize every citizen of this town and storm on board the Kosygin. You won't find anything. And there is no point in waiting for a buyer to show up when there is no buyer."

  "So you say."

  "So I say." Jim pointed a finger at Kate. "You poked your nose into Overmore's business. Somebody saw you in the library, didn't they? Who?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, we did," Casanare offered. "Or we saw her come out of it.

  Followed by one of her Russian buddies." "What?" Kate said fuzzily, but they were all looking at Casanare now.

  He reddened, and went on a little belligerently, "We went in afterward and tried to find out what you were up to, but we couldn't flash our badges and the librarian wouldn't play. She started reciting the First Amendment, so we left before she started singing

  "My Country ' of Thee" and citing the United States versus Kramer Books."

  "Good for Heidi," Kate said with a sloppy smile.

  "She was looking up Overmore and Sullivan," Jim said. "Someone must have overheard her asking for help, naming the names, and got scared." He looked at Casanare.

  "Glukhov," Casanare said slowly, and looked at Kate sitting slumped down in the chair. She looked dazed and maybe even a little drunk.

  "You're not buying into this, are you, Al?" Carroll demanded.

  "Looking up Overmore is what nearly got her killed," Jim insisted.

  This earned Kate a long, skeptical stare from Carroll. "So she says."

  Jim rose and strode over to yank open Kate's collar. "I don't think she tried to strangle herself. Do you?"

  The bruises were going purple at a fine rate, a nice setting for the roped scar bisecting them. Zarr was the only one who stared openly;

  Carroll and Casanare looked briefly and then away. "Could be a falling out between thieves," Carroll said. "It's happened before. Right here in town, four, five days ago now, wasn't it?"

  "There's something else," Jim said, adding in an undertone, "I'm sorry, Kate." He turned to face the FBI agents. "A woman was killed day before yesterday, a local woman named Alice Chevak." Zarr sat up. "What do you know about that?"

  "She was the head teller at Alaska First Bank of Bering. She and Kate went to school together in Fairbanks. Kate asked her to look up those accounts." Jim nodded at the papers spread haphazardly across Zarr's desk, where Casanare had tossed them contemptuously. "She died twenty-four hours later." "Coincidence," Carroll said, but she was sounding less sure of herself.

  , Jim held up one finger. "Alexei Burianovich." He held up another.

  "Me."

  He held up a third. "Alice Chevak." He held up a fourth. "Kate Shugak.

  Four murders or attempted murders--yeah, yeah, you think Kate's lying, fine. There's an easy way to prove her story--we'll drive out that damn road and find the body." He looked at Zarr. "You got somebody who can cover the p
ost while you're gone?"

  Zarr shook her head. "The sergeant's on a murder case up in Owl Village.

  The two other troopers are in St. Paul on a drug bust."

  "That's it? You're understaffed."

  "Tell me about it." She cast Casanare and Carroll an unfriendly glance.

  "I've got two cases hanging fire myself. And Chevak." He followed her glance. "They are laundering money," he said.

  "They're helping fanatics build bombs," Carroll snapped.

  Jim went very still. "Sorry? I thought this zirconium stuff--wait a minute. What else was stolen out of the military base in Russia?"

  Casanare tried bluster as a way out of Carroll's blunder. "Zirconium is an essential rare metal in the production of--"

  "You miserable sons of bitches," Jim said. Carroll and Casanare didn't precisely cower before his immense wrath, although Casanare did stealthily feel for the butt of his sidearm. "What are you really looking for, U-235? Plutonium? Did you know about this?" he shot at Zarr.

  Pale-faced, she shook her head.

  "You know what? I'm tired of trying to tell you people anything. You know your own business best. Fine. Meantime, I've got a friend who's hurt. I'm taking her home and putting her to bed."

  "I hear that's what you do best," Carroll flashed.

  Zarr stared stolidly at the opposite wall and said nothing, although a faint color crept up her neck.

  Kate looked fuzzily at Jim and said with what sounded like genuine surprise, "We're friends?"

  "Shugak, just stand up and start walking, okay?" "Okay," she said obediently, and they left, single file, Jim, Kate and Mutt, who bared her teeth at Casanare, just for practice.

  The door closed behind them. Carroll and Casanare stared at each other.

  "I don't know what the hell is going on here," Casanare said, "but whatever it is, it's starting to fall apart."

  "It's the plutonium, Al, it has to be. We know Ivanov took it, and he's right here in Bering Goddamn Alaska. The plutonium hasn't surfaced anywhere else, and we would have heard by now if it had. Ivanov, Kamyanka, whatever the hell he's calling himself nowadays, he's into weapons and parts for making weapons. He's not into money, he's never been into money." She was almost pleading.

  "He's had a pretty long run," Casanare said slowly. "Maybe now he's into retirement. This would be a way."

  They sat in silence for a few tense moments. "All right then," Carroll said, "let's get a warrant and search the Kosygin"

  "What for?"

  "Whatever we can find."

  "Okay," Casanare said, "and we're getting the warrant on--what grounds, exactly?"

  Carroll looked at Zarr. "Is there a friendly judge in town?"

  The trooper shook her head. "A friendly magistrate," she offered.

  "Works for me."

  The magistrate proved to be an early riser. The three of them, backed up by six city policemen armed with shotguns, went on board the Kosygin at six a.m. Nobody was home.

  The staterooms were empty, save for a few scattered articles of clothing and the pinups on the walls. The coffee pot in the galley was warm, half-filled mugs left sitting on the table. The hold and all its individual compartments were empty, and the device Casanare directed in every direction remained silent, the needle on its gauge motionless.

  Two of the lifeboats were missing. the seventh sense develops that we may vibrate to a height

  --The Seventh Sense

  Jim and Kate got back to the hangar at five-thirty. The sun shone directly into their eyes, which was why they didn't see Baird's body until Kate tripped over it going into the office.

  She stared down at him stupidly. He was unconscious but alive if the blood trickling from his mouth was any indication. His right arm looked oddly bent at the elbow, and the knuckles of both hands were cut, bruised and beginning to swell. Otherwise there wasn't a mark on him.

  "Baird?" she said. She knelt down next to him. "Baird? Jacob?"

  About that time the deep, distinctive wah-wah-wah of the Here's engine sounded from the apron in front of the hangar door.

  She heard footsteps and looked up to see that Jim had retraced his steps from the bunkhouse, roll of gauze and alcohol in hand. He saw Baird on the floor and Kate kneeling next to him. He blinked and said, "I thought you were my only patient. What happened here?" "Go get your gun," she said in a low, urgent voice.

  "No," a voice drawled from the door into the hangar. "Don't."

  The slender blond man Kate had last seen on board the Kosygin, just before she was booted ashore, stood looking at them with the smile on his face that made him look like an archangel. Maybe an archangel named Lucifer, Kate decided now. He held a pistol, dangling negligently at his side, but it came up smartly enough when Jim dropped the alcohol and the gauze and took a step forward.

  Kate shot to her feet. "What do you want?"

  A warning rumbled out of Mutt's throat.

  The pistol swung toward Mutt.

  "Mutt! Stay!" To the man in the doorway she said quickly, "What do you want?"

  The pistol gestured toward the hangar. "The loan of your plane."

  "Go ahead," Kate said. "It's yours. Take it." Mutt heard the tension in Kate's voice and her growl increased in menace if not in volume. Kate's hand dropped to Mutt's ruff and knotted there.

  Kamyanka smiled again. He looked less beautiful this time. "And thirty seconds after we take off, you will be on the phone to your police. I don't think so."

  "They're already after you, Kamyanka," Jim said. "Or Ivanov, or whatever you're calling yourself lately."

  Kamyanka's smile vanished. "And you would be--"

  "First Sergeant James Chopin, of the Alaska State Troopers."

  On the floor Baird stirred. "They're here in Bering," Kate said loudly.

  "The FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Department of Justice, the state police, the local police, they're here in force and they're all looking for you. You haven't got a chance. Give it up now, and they might offer you the opportunity to turn states' evidence."

  "Right," Jim said, picking up on her cue, "they've been looking for someone to tell them what's going on with the Russian Mafia ever since it became a power. You could talk about it from the inside. You don't want to do anything that--" Baird reached up an arm, caught the near edge of the coffee table and shoved it forward into Kamyanka's shins with all the force at his command.

  It wasn't much, but it was enough to throw the Russian off balance. He flung out his arms to catch himself on the door frame, and Jim went past Kate in a scrambling dive that tumbled them both through the door and into the hangar. There was the sound of a shot, another, sounds Kate had not heard since the year before, sounds she was not sure she was prepared to hear ever again.

  Mutt crouched, preparing to leap after Jim. "No!" Kate said, terrified.

  "No, Mutt, stay!"

  Mutt barked back, long white canines snapping together with a sound eerily like the gunshots from the next room.

  Kate jumped back, startled and then angry. "I said stay, goddamn it!" she roared, her bruised throat forgotten, and raced into the hangar.

  Jim and Kamyanka were struggling for possession of the pistol. The ramp on the Here was down and there were people standing in the great maw of the plane, most of whom seemed vaguely familiar to her. Her eyes went to the window next to the left seat. It was open, and through it she could see Ziven, the Russian who had dismissed her as of no consequence upon discovering she was not a pilot. He hadn't bothered with headphones, as he probably had no intention of calling the tower for permission to taxi and take off, so Kate had an excellent view of the top of his head coming off when the pistol clutched between Jim and Kamyanka went off for the third time.

  One of the men on the ramp shouted and ran back into the plane, followed by several others. Everybody else ran toward the fight on the floor.

  Kate scrambled to Jim's aid but there were too many of them and not enough of her and she found herself cau
ght and held, helpless, as the rest of them swarmed over Jim.