Laynie Portland, Spy Resurrected

by Vikki Kestell

  “Conflicting how?”

  “They dispute my eyewitness accounts. You see, the police insist that when their officers first arrived on scene, the fire truck was already putting out the blaze.”

  “I see.” Wolfe seemed unsurprised.

  Collier’s patience snapped. “If you ‘see,’ sir, then either I’m blind or you’re ‘seeing’ a lot more than I am.”

  “Only because I have more pieces of the puzzle than you have, Mr. Collier. Let me guess the rest of the police’s testimony. The dump truck—it was stolen, yes?”

  “The day before the accident. How did you know?”

  Wolfe chose not to answer the question. “Do you have anything further to tell me?”

  Collier huffed in frustration. “In point of fact, I do. I asked my contact on the police force to do me a personal favor—keep my investigation in mind should any strange, out-of-the-norm incidents crop up. My man on the force rang me this morning, right before I called you.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Yes, sir. Yesterday, four kids skipping school were exploring the old industrial area of Tbilisi. They wandered into an abandoned factory and were chasing each other around. You know, the usual games kids play. During their antics, a boy lifted a pile of cardboard, thinking to hide under it. Instead, he discovered the bodies of two women. They were both local, one elderly and one in her early twenties. They’d been shot. Close range, center mass.”

  “I’m interested in a local murder, because?”

  “I’m getting to it. In the corner with the bodies were two trash sacks. They were filled with empty and discarded bags of saline, soiled bandages, dirty washcloths, and hospital-type gowns. Nearby, the police found a hypodermic needle disposal container. The police say the drug residue in the sharps container appears to be a benzodiazepine—a particularly strong one with a long half-life.”

  Wolfe’s skin began to itch. “Earlier, you said this information was confusing. Why?”

  “Because, according to the police, the evidence suggests that someone was kept there. For days, possibly a week. Sedated.”

  “That’s it, then,” Wolfe said to himself.

  Collier gave up trying to understand Wolfe’s cryptic commentary. “One last thing, sir.”

  “Yes?”

  “The younger victim? When the coroner undressed her for autopsy, he discovered something. A hank of hair. Not ripped from the scalp, but evenly cut, around twelve or fourteen inches long. Blond hair.”

  A shudder ran down Wolfe’s back. “How long had the two women been dead?”

  “No more than twenty-four hours, possibly less.”

  Collier heard Wolfe whisper to himself. “She’s alive. As of yesterday, she was alive.”

  “Sir?”

  “My agent, Mr. Collier. This entire debacle has been a charade, an elaborate piece of misdirection. Someone wanted my agent and wanted her alive. He also wanted us to think her dead.”

  “But the body I shipped to you . . .”

  “Not her, Collier. Definitively. Not her.”

  Chapter 14

  LAYNIE WOKE TO THE growl of a truck laboring uphill. She was still in total darkness, the air stale and thick, but she could tell by the sway and jounce beneath her that she was on that truck.

  I’m moving. Being taken somewhere. Not a commercial truck. More like a pickup. Rough, winding terrain, moving uphill, so not within the city of Tbilisi—or any city for that matter.

  She wasn’t cold any longer. In fact, she felt overly warm. Fabric scratched her neck. She rubbed her chin across it.

  Wool. A blanket?

  She was less fuzzy-headed than the last time she’d woken. This time, she tried to put together who had taken her. And why.

  I’m weak, but maybe the drugs are wearing off.

  How long? How long have they had me? Is it day or night? What kind of surface am I lying on? What is this “thing” I’m in?

  The many questions crowding in only raised her anxiety, and her breath quickened.

  Stop that. Not helpful. Stay calm.

  Calling on the disciplines she’d learned in survival training, she attempted to calm herself. For a moment it worked—and then, it didn’t. Adrenaline, already triggered, coursed through her veins and induced panic. The panic insisted that she move, run, flee, but her limbs only twitched in response. Without consciously planning to, she tried to sit up. Her forehead slammed against a surface six or eight inches above her. Something hard and rough scraped her forehead.

  Wood. Unfinished wood.

  I’m in a box. They’ve put me in a box, nailed the lid down—and I can’t move, can’t get out. Wait. A coffin?

  Laynie felt the scream that boiled up in her chest. It scrabbled hard for her mouth but she was unable to open her jaws. The scream piled up in her throat instead, clogging, choking, and strangling her. She heard her muffled cries, but could not give voice to them. Could not part her teeth. She began to hyperventilate and gasped for air.

  Laynie, my daughter.

  She was trembling all over, choking and wheezing, when the calming words broke through her terror. She swallowed the fear stuck in her throat and whispered, “W-what?”

  Laynie, my daughter. I am here.

  Every muscle, bone, and tendon in her body melted. Liquefied. Her heart and lungs unclenched, and she could breathe again.

  Laynie knew the source of her peace. “Thank you, my Jesus.”

  A while later, she felt her right index finger tingle and itch. Unconsciously, her thumb scratched it.

  I can feel my fingers?

  She arched her back and stretched a little.

  Ohhh! So very stiff. Feels good to stretch—Wait. I arched my back? Maybe I can move other parts of my body.

  Laynie concentrated. Her bound hands lifted a couple of inches. She rested, then tried again. She managed to raise her hands higher.

  I want to feel that ceiling over me. I want to know if it is nailed down.

  She kept at it, lifting her hands every few minutes, resting when she needed to. She was so thirsty that her mouth felt like it was filled with glue and sand, but she kept at it.

  Then it happened. The back of her right hand encountered the boards above her. Straining, she twisted both hands and got her index finger on the rough surface. Yes, it was wood. An unfinished wooden lid. She used her shoulder muscles to shore up her weak arms and hands, to push on the lid. It creaked a little, one side looser than the other, but she couldn’t sustain the effort for long. Trembling with exhaustion, she let her hands fall.

  She didn’t remember drifting off.

  ARMED WITH THE IDENTITY of Wolfe’s mole—a lead that might prove to be the “big break” they so desperately needed, a lead that would bust open every dead end including Bella’s location—the team threw themselves into their work.

  They ate at their workstations while delving into Rosenberg’s life. Richard prepared hot meals for the team and conscripted two guards to lay them out in the bullpen. The team napped at their desks. Woke and kept working. They stopped only to stretch, use the restroom, or tank up on more coffee.

  Wolfe and Seraphim walked over from the house to check on their progress.

  Jaz, eyes on her monitor, and a great frown of concentration on her face, growled at them, “Go away. We’ll let you know . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence.

  The task force had been at it for close to two days when Jaz called the house. “Director Wolfe? The task force requests the pleasure of your presence in the bullpen. Seraphim, too.”

  “You have something?”

  Jaz laughed. “Something, sir? No. We have lots.”

  Vincent had logged their findings on the whiteboards. All Jaz and the team had to do was walk Wolfe and Seraphim through the bullet points.

  Before Jaz began, she asked Rusty, “You have Rosenberg’s present location?”

  “According to the last badge swipe, still in the director’s building. Last use of official email, fifteen minu
tes ago. Last use of office desk phone, three minutes ago.”

  “You hacked my building’s badge access log?” Wolfe asked.

  “And your department’s phones and your employees’ emails. You said spare no effort or expense. Leave no rock unturned.”

  Wolfe slowly nodded. “Well done.”

  “Thank you, sir. Brian? Please report to Seraphim and Director Wolfe what we’ve learned about Rosenberg’s communications.”

  Brian leaped to his feet and pointed to the relevant bullet points on the board. “As you already know, when we acquired Sherman’s burner, we hacked its call log and obtained the only number texted or called—Rosenberg’s burner. When we hacked Rosenberg’s call log, we found something interesting.

  “Rosenberg’s burner phone has been used to call Sherman and only Sherman—except in a single instance. Once and only once, it called this number.” Brian indicated a number on the board and waggled his brows with conspiratorial fervor.

  “We think that call was a mistake, an accident, but for us it was a happy accident. It gave us another number to excavate. Of course, we hacked the new number’s call log and found that all of its calls or texts were between a third number.”

  Wolfe stopped him. “Wait. You’re starting to lose me.”

  “Get in line,” Seraphim snorted. “I’m already in a muddle.”

  “I’m sorry.” He nodded respectfully. “We anticipated that explaining our progress might prove confusing, so we’ve labeled the phones and Vincent has created this flowchart as a visual. Let me step you through our logic.”

  He slowed and added, “Think of this process as a daisy chain. When we found a new phone number, we mined that phone’s contacts—which has provided us with more numbers and more contacts. A chain.”

  Wolfe and Seraphim nodded.

  “Go on,” Wolfe said.

  “In the same way patient zero is the starting point in an outbreak, we’ve designated Sherman’s phone as Burner Zero—our starting point—and we’ll call Rosenberg’s phone Burner One. Understand that our traitor is careful. Never stores a number on the phone to be redialed. Always erases the call log. Used Burner One to communicate exclusively with one person, only Sherman—until two weeks ago.”

  “That’s when Burner One accidentally called another number?”

  “Exactly. How did that happen? Couldn’t have been a ‘pocket dial,’ an accidental redial, because he erased his call logs after every call to Sherman.”

  “So . . .”

  “So we believe that Rosenberg uses two separate burner phones, Burner One to communicate exclusively with Sherman, and Burner Two to communicate with the people holding Sherman’s family—the kidnappers. Rosenberg must have mixed up the two phones, accidentally dialing the kidnappers from Burner One instead of from Burner Two.”

  Brian grinned at Wolfe and Seraphim. “This is where it gets fun. When Rosenberg accidentally called the kidnappers from Burner One instead of from Burner Two, it gave us the kidnappers’ phone—we’ve labeled it Burner Three—and once we had Burner Three’s number, we were able to hack its call records. The only phone Burner Three has ever called is Burner Two.”

  “I think I’m with you,” Wolfe said, “but how did you know Burner Two belonged to Rosenberg?”

  “Good question, sir, and the answer is deductive. With the exception of the unintentional call from Burner One, Burner Three has only ever called or been called from one number—the phone we’ve labeled Burner Two. Burner Two has to belong to Rosenberg because there’s no other possibility.”

  “Then you hacked what you believe is Rosenberg’s second phone, this Burner Two?”

  Brian was positively vibrating. “You better believe it.”

  “And found?”

  “The mother lode, sir.”

  Jaz interrupted. “Excuse me, Director and Seraphim. We’ve arrived at a junction. Before we go further, I’d like Gwyneth and Soraya to report.”

  “What? This is just getting good. I’d rather hear the rest of what Brian has to say.”

  “For the sake of continuity, please bear with us.”

  Wolfe’s frown told the team he didn’t like having “the mother lode” yanked out from under him. With a grudging shrug, he said, “It’s your show.”

  “Thank you. Gwyneth?”

  Gwyneth went to the board and gestured to a series of bullets. “Soraya and I were tasked with doing a deep dive on Rosenberg’s financials. We looked for inconsistencies and deviations from the norm. To make a long story short, we found a second checking account.

  “The account in itself was an oddity worth our scrutiny, but its activity was more so—an initial payment to an attorney of just less than five thousand dollars, then three payments over the following three months to the same attorney, each payment exactly three thousand dollars. Also, the attorney was the only payee from this account. This was exactly the kind of loose thread we were looking for.

  “When we, er, browsed the attorney’s bank records, we found payments of the same amounts, each minus five hundred dollars—the attorney’s fees, we think—designated to a rental management firm. When we hacked the rental management firm, we found that the payment from the attorney had been applied to the lease on a house—a house whose address places it across the DC-Maryland border, north of New Hampshire Avenue Northeast.”

  “Where Jaz last triangulated Burner One,” Wolfe finished for her.

  Jaz replaced Gwyneth at the board. “That’s right, sir.”

  “Are you saying we have the kidnappers’ location?”

  “That’s what we’re saying, sir.”

  “What? Why didn’t you lead with that? We can have HRT rolling inside twenty minutes.”

  “We didn’t lead with that information because we can also tell you that, unlike Burner One, Burner Two, Rosenberg’s second phone, was not used exclusively to call the kidnappers. It has also been used to call or take calls from a satellite phone purchased in Azerbaijan—a phone used only in Chechnya and Dagestan, Russia.”

  “And you think the satphone belongs to AGFA?”

  “Yes, we do, sir. It may belong to Rosenberg’s contact within AGFA or possibly someone in AGFA’s leadership. Either way, it’s the most promising lead we’ve had in a long time—because, sir, a satphone can be tracked by its radio emissions. It takes the right equipment and a trained technician, but the results are accurate to within yards of the phone’s transmission location.”

  Wolfe replied, “I can appropriate the equipment and technician from the FBI and put them on it.”

  Jaz followed up quickly. “Sir, a few minutes ago, I said we were at a junction, a crossroads, and we are. With the information we have, two distinct paths lie before us. On one path, we free Sherman’s family and take down Rosenberg, not necessarily in that order. But if we arrest Rosenberg, we may lose all hope of stopping the attacks or finding Bella.”

  Wolfe lifted his chin. “You’re suggesting that if we arrest Rosenberg, we might very well provoke AGFA, cause them to rethink or alter their plans—which would put us back to square one in our efforts to foil the attacks and find Bella.”

  He frowned and leaned back, thinking aloud. “Unfortunately, I see a more immediate problem. Sherman can’t keep up his pretense with Rosenberg for long. What if he spooks Rosenberg, who then flees the country? One wrong inflection, and we lose everything.”

  “Actually, sir, I’m saying let Rosenberg escape and lead us to Bella.”

  Seraphim stared at Jaz. “You can’t . . . You want us to risk Bella’s life—”

  Tobin, who had been a passive observer up to this point, interrupted. “Bella is already at risk—or she’s dead and we just don’t know it. The fact is, the longer victims of abduction are missing, the less likely it is they’ll be found alive. We’d be taking more of a risk if we continued to sit on our hands.”

  “We are not sitting—”

  “Sir,” Jaz jumped back in. “Something else Gwyneth and Soraya turned
up in Rosenberg’s financials? A one-way open-ended ticket under an alias from DC to Toronto, Toronto to Moscow, Moscow to Grozny. This information lets us anticipate Rosenberg’s next move, perhaps even provoke it. I’m suggesting that we provoke Rosenberg to bolt, flee the country, and lead us to AGFA’s headquarters. Perhaps to AGFA’s fentanyl lab. Perhaps to Bella.”

  “We can’t afford to lose Rosenberg—”

  “We won’t. Here’s why. First, Rosenberg doesn’t know that we know about Burner Two. Doesn’t know that we know Burner Two is used to communicate with AGFA. And Rosenberg isn’t likely to ditch the phone, but will continue to use it to reach out to AGFA, right? We need the FBI ready and waiting to track the satphone’s radio emissions the next time Burner Two calls AGFA’s satphone.”

  “I’ll take care of that.”

  “Thank you, sir. Second, I suggest you position a team of your best operatives in Grozny to await the arrival of Rosenberg’s flight. They then follow Rosenberg to AGFA’s base of operations. To Bella. Yes?”

  Wolfe studied his hands for a minute, looked to Seraphim. “What’s your opinion?”

  Seraphim thought for a moment. “They are right about several things—we’re running out of time all the way around. To free Sherman’s family. To stop the New Year’s Eve attacks. To find and save Bella. This is the best play we’ve had in a while.”

  “Actually, it’s the only play we’ve had since Bella left for Tbilisi,” Tobin pointed out. “She’s been missing eleven days now. Whatever we do, we need to do it now and do it smartly.”

  Seraphim asked Jaz, “Can you cut off the kidnappers’ phone so that it can’t receive calls?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Can you also send a text from the kidnappers’ burner to Rosenberg’s burner or make it look like the text came from the kidnappers’ burner?”

  “Spoof a call from Burner Three to Burner Two? Not a problem.”

  Seraphim turned back to Wolfe. “If we do this smartly, as Marshal Tobin suggested, if we send HRT to save Sherman’s family and then send a text from the kidnappers to spook Rosenberg into fleeing the country, we will save Sherman’s wife and son, and perhaps send Rosenberg running to AGFA. Either way, we can have eyes on Rosenberg and have our people prepped and in place, ready to follow.”