by Steve Richer
“I have it,” Castro said from his workstation which he shared with a young female FBI agent.
“What do you have aside from impeccable hair, Andy?”
“Meranga Imports, it seems to be a shell company. It is incorporated in Luxembourg.”
“And?” Rogan asked as he hurried to him.
“And nothing. But this is ominous, yes?”
“Sure but ominous doesn’t put people in handcuffs. Keep digging.”
Because of that small country’s secrecy laws, it was a haven for money launderers and tax evaders. Clearly, Meranga Imports was probably who had hired the mercenaries for the Crystal Goose hit but it was otherwise a dead end.
Rogan left Castro to his work and he promised to ask the Colombian government to help looking into Meranga Imports since official channels and pressure could only help their cause. Meanwhile, Rogan went downstairs to his rental car and drove away.
He would go to Hargrove’s apartment and do some hands-on investigation. It was his last hope of finding anything to point him in the right direction.
As he waited on the red light on Spring Street, he called Shiloh. It came as a shock that he missed her so much and the prospect of talking to her was a ray of sunshine in his day. She picked up on the third ring.
“Rogan, dear!”
“Miss me?”
“Not at the moment but I’m sure I’ll get there eventually.”
“You always have to ruin the moment, don’t you? And here I was going to have some very original phone sex with you.”
“Then by all means…”
He chuckled and he heard her do the same.
“Still in New York, sweetheart?”
“Yes, about to go to a meeting actually. And no, I will not bring you hot dogs in my luggage.”
“I thought you loved me!”
“There are several degrees of love, Rogan.”
He laughed again. His twisted sense of humor was contagious, it seemed. He told her a little bit about where he was and how his investigation was fast heading into a wall.
“It’s so frustrating,” he said. “Shiloh, you wouldn’t have any tricks up your sleeve about how to dig into front companies?”
“I’m afraid if there was a trick, they wouldn’t do much good as front companies, now would they?”
“I guess you’re right. It’s just that I can feel it, you know. This company in Luxembourg, Meranga Imports? I know they’re behind everything but I can’t find out who they are.”
“Did you say Meranga Imports? Can you spell it for me?”
He did. “Why, does it ring any bells?”
“I know this particular outfit very well.”
At that, Rogan pulled to the curb. It was right in front of a fire hydrant but he didn’t care.
“Talk to me, babe.”
“Meranga Imports is owned and operated by the British government and I’ve dealt with it a few times during the course of my brief espionage career. It’s a front company for MI6 covert operations.”
Chapter 21
Rogan was still reeling from the information as he drove northwest to the Ballard neighborhood. As information came in, the pieces of the puzzle started to fit together but the image wasn’t much clearer. In fact, everything looked hazy.
Assassins, military equipment, and now British intelligence?
What if all of this was being muddled together on purpose? What if hitmen were actually counting on this convoluted scheme to hide who was actually behind everything?
It would take several stiff drinks to make sense of this, Rogan decided. And maybe a plate of fresh pappardelle with chorizo and asparagus in a cream sauce. Good food led to good ideas, that was his motto.
The GPS on his phone said he had reached his destination half a mile before he got there. But it didn’t matter, he saw a smattering of police cars and unmarked sedans parked in front of a low-rise condominium complex.
He parked next to what he thought were the FBI cars and a uniformed Seattle police officer did a token attempt to keep him behind the yellow tape before Rogan flashed his badge.
He saw the parking garage door was open and he went to it. Crime scene personnel, half of which wearing white Tyvek suits from head to toe, were processing a red Camaro. Rogan approached someone in a dark blue FBI windbreaker. He had briefly met her at headquarters earlier.
“Nadine something, right?”
She was somewhat annoyed that he didn’t know her full name and yet impressed that he remembered half of it.
“Nadine Shoemaker.”
“At least I got the initials right,” he said with a roguish smile that never failed to win over people. “What do we have? Please tell me you found a written confession in the glove box with a detailed map containing the location of Hargrove’s secret lair.”
“No such luck, I’m afraid, sir. The glove box had the car manual and insurance information. In the trunk we found a tire iron and an old Nike hoodie. Now they’re combing for hairs and fibers, the usual.”
“And inside the condo?”
She smiled. Her teeth were pretty much all crooked but it was a nice, sincere smile.
“It’s much better.”
“Better how? Better like Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick?”
“Come, I’ll show you.”
They left the garage just as a fine drizzle started to fall from the sky. They entered the complex and went up the stairs to the third floor.
“Any surveillance cameras?” Rogan asked.
“No, none that we could see. There’s a doughnut shop across the street and we can check their feed as a last resort. Maybe they have an angle on this place.”
Rogan nodded though he knew it was useless. Reaching the third floor, a crime scene technician stopped them long enough to verify that they were authorized to be here. Then Shoemaker and he were given white booties to cover their shoes as to not contaminate the scene.
Rogan put on latex gloves as they went into the apartment. It was a two-bedroom built in the last 10 years which meant it wasn’t too spacious. However, there wasn’t much furniture that he could see. A low table for the flatscreen TV and Xbox, a black leather couch, and a matching Barcalounger.
Beyond that was an IKEA table with four chairs. The kitchen had see-through cupboards and there didn’t seem to be much dinnerware. The walls were bare. This was a single man’s apartment. Half a dozen technicians in white coveralls were dusting for fingerprints and taking pictures.
“What do we know about our little buddy aside from his deficient sense of style?”
“The lease is under his name, paid 12 months in advance with postdated checks. Same with condo fees. The owner, administrator, and all the neighbors say he’s a good tenant. There’s a party once in a while but he doesn’t go crazy with the loud music.”
Rogan sniffed and there was a faint odor of marijuana lingering in the air. Weed and cheese puffs. He was rather certain it wasn’t coming from Shoemaker.
“What else?”
“He doesn’t have much,” Shoemaker said as they went past the kitchen, down the hall, and entered the master bedroom.
Again, it was spartan with a queen-size bed and two nightstands. There was a simple light fixture on the ceiling and it didn’t go with the style of the bed. Rogan figured it had been already there when Hargrove had moved in.
A technician was in the closet going through the man’s wardrobe. Rogan came closer. Jeans, some cargo pants and shorts, a lot of gym clothes.
“Have someone go through his credit card records. There are no barbells or anything, is there?”
“No.”
“Then he must have a gym membership. Look into it, we might run into some of his acquaintances.”
“Got it.”
She pulled out her phone and made a call. At the same time, Rogan left the room.
“Hey,” a technician called. “I’ve got something!”
Rogan followed the voice down the hall to the second be
droom. It was a makeshift office with a cheap desk, a computer, and dirty laundry piled up in the corner. The computer was probably what Shoemaker had been excited about before down in the garage. But the focal point was the closet where the technician was kneeling.
“What do you have?”
“False panel in the back of the closet. Found this.”
He retrieved a gym bag. It was already unzipped and it was filled with money. It wasn’t organized in neat bank stacks but rather in bundles held together by rubber bands.
“Well hello there! Did you count it?”
“Just found it. But this thing’s heavy.”
Shoemaker joined them and whistled. Rogan turned to her.
“Help him count.”
He then went to the laptop on the desk and switched it on. It didn’t take long for it to boot. Normally, he would have had the computer bagged and taken back to the office to be inspected by the cyber squad, but Rogan was in a hurry. And he was bored.
At first glance, the laptop seemed new. There were no out of the ordinary software aside from what came already installed upon purchase. He figured this was a backup. Hargrove must’ve had his main computer with him on the fishing boat before it sank to the bottom of the ocean.
He clicked the web browser and checked out the e-mail account. It was password-protected, it would have to wait. Then he went to the history. Cheerleaders, sexy nurses, big beautiful women sucking black cock. His search history was littered with porn.
“Agent Bricks?”
“Yeah?” he said, looking toward Shoemaker.
“Looks like there’s at least $150,000 in here. I mean, I’d like to do a more detailed count but that looks about right.”
Rogan nodded thoughtfully. This was a big job indeed. With so much money here he decided it must have been half the payment of his delivery. No one would pay the entire sum up front. This had to be half, maybe even a third of the total amount.
He turned back to the computer. Even though his eyes had been rightly focusing on the pornography search history – something that was present in probably 95% of all computers he’d ever investigated – he found other stuff.
There were searches to real estate websites. There was a page for a listing in Panama that Hargrove had visited several times. It was a house on a two-acre piece of land outside of Almirante. The asking price was $249,000.
This jived with the amount of money in the closet and what was likely more to come. Hargrove was going to do one last score, a big one, and then he was moving out of the country.
So what was this contraband?
Shoemaker got back to her feet and went to him. “Anything interesting in there?”
“You mean aside from gangbang videos?”
She leaned forward next to him and squinted before pulling out reading glasses. She then pointed at the screen.
“What’s that?”
Rogan clicked and he was taken to a website about the handling of hazardous material.
“That doesn’t bode well,” he said. He glanced around instinctively as if he was standing in a level four hot zone. “Has anyone done a chemical check on the place?”
Shoemaker was caught off guard but then composed herself. “We found some latex gloves in the kitchen but so far there aren’t any evidence that any chemicals have been used here. You think he was making a bomb?”
Rogan didn’t reply. He scanned the browsing history some more until he found webpages titled How to Safely Transport Biohazard Components and Understanding Viruses.
“Jesus Christ…”
“What does it mean?” Shoemaker asked.
“It means some people are about to get overtime pay for this.” Rogan straightened up and pulled out his phone. He called Castro. “Andy, new development. Have everyone focus their search on biotech companies for any missing material.”
He explained a little further about this situation and then hung up. A local company certainly had technology missing and Hargrove was shipping it out. But why was this company not reporting it?
“Is there someone called Bricks here?”
Rogan turned toward the Seattle PD officer standing in the doorway. “What did I win?”
“Sir, there’s someone downstairs who wants to see you. Says it’s a matter of life and death.”
Chapter 22
Lying came easy to Shiloh but she hated doing it to the man she loved. She had told him she was in New York but in fact she had just arrived in San Diego.
She was traveling on a second passport, one built around a false identity. In her day, she would never leave the house without at least three sets of fake paperwork. It was always an extra layer of protection to sever links between identities whenever she had to present papers.
Now that she was on her own, no longer in anyone’s employ, pickings were slim. Plus there was the fact that she hadn’t really expected to jump back into action when she’d left Anchorage. So she only had two passports on her, with matching credit cards.
She was driving along I-5, speeding away from the airport and going to the wealthy suburb of Carmel Valley.
She still couldn’t quite believe that she was on her way to kill a US Senator.
She turned on the music, avoided anything that sounded like talk radio, and settled on a hip-hop station. She bounced her head to a Rihanna hit and thought about the surreal conversation she’d had earlier today in Toronto.
In the expansive downtown penthouse, Ricardo Vazquez drank two cups of rich Turkish coffee before speaking.
“Tell me what is bloody going on,” Shiloh asked, her patience running out and her true emotions bubbling to the surface.
She hated the situation for exactly these two reasons. Killing she could do. It was something she had done many times before. But having her patience tested and revealing her true feelings was something she couldn’t abide.
She had made a career out of being impassive, adapting to any given situation without her real self being exposed. However, what Vazquez was talking about, having to kill a senator in order to protect Rogan, it was cutting too close to her.
“Mr. Vazquez…”
He swallowed, put the china cup down, and crossed his arms as he looked at Shiloh.
“Your lover, Rogan Bricks, he’s in danger.”
“From who? Why?”
“Patrick Stoll is the junior senator from California. He’s on the – let me read this correctly…” He pulled out a piece of paper and read off it. “The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights, and Federal Courts. He’s building a name for himself. He’s ambitious.”
“So? Not exactly a reason to kill someone.”
“He’s investigating Mr. Bricks.”
This unnerved Shiloh of course but she wasn’t overly concerned. “The FBI has already cleared him of any wrongdoing.”
“Even of his past?”
At that, Shiloh stayed silent.
“And even though I have been told your lover has since made amends, Senator Stoll’s ambition cannot be understated. He’s working with former FBI Director Thomas Hephner to build his case.”
“That’s nonsense! Hephner has no credibility. He’s a criminal, a member of the faction who attempted to have me killed, to defraud the government of billions of dollars! The moment his involvement is known the case will dissolve.”
Vazquez shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. Ambition coupled with great means, it’s a dangerous combination. They know everything about him. They know how he acquired his fortune illegally, letting a man burn alive in a plane wreckage to get suitcases of money. They know about laundering the money, escaping to Europe for years.”
“But…”
“Whatever you can think that Mr. Bricks has done wrong, they will make it look ten times worse.”
“Rogan is a hero,” Shiloh said, sitting on the edge of the couch and staring ahead defiantly.
“I know…”
“He has saved this country, h
e’s saved the world!”
“As I understand it, very few people know about his direct involvement. Discrediting him wouldn’t be difficult.”
Shiloh nodded, the man had a point. The public at large wasn’t aware of what Rogan had done, how much he was actually responsible for bringing down the faction.
“All right, let’s pretend for a moment that you’re correct, that Patrick Stoll is conspiring to take down Rogan. Why are you telling me this? Why did you pay $100,000 just to get me here to tell me this?”
Vazquez grinned and leaned back, crossing his legs. “I knew you were a smart woman.”
“Smart enough to never trust anyone’s word, including yours. So why am I really here?”
“You know, sometimes interests converge. Senator Stoll is also a member of the Finance Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure. He’s helping push a piece of legislation that could severely hurt my business in my native Spain.”
Shiloh was quiet for a moment. She rubbed her hands together while staring at them.
“So let me get this straight. A politician is making business difficult for you so you decide to put out a contract on him. A little medieval, don’t you think?”
“Of course, I mentioned killing him because given your line of work experience I figured it would be your first instinct. If you have other ways of making sure he stops working on the finance bill and your boyfriend’s investigation, then I leave it up to you. But understand that we are only days away from a showdown.”
Nodding Shiloh muttered, “I understand.”
There were several ways to keep someone from reaching their goal before thinking about outright assassination. There was blackmail, kidnapping, public discrediting. But if the mission was time sensitive, murder wasn’t to be ruled out.
“I’ll take care of it,” she said, her bones turning her into ice.
Yes, she thought. She would do it.
The sun was scorching yet she wasn’t using the air-conditioning. It wasn’t a British thing to do though it was becoming more common in the UK too. For her part, she liked the heat. She could tolerate it a lot more than cold, something of which there was far too much of in Alaska.