“I got a feeling about that place. We now know that all six members of the Sleeping Dogs are alive. They were identified by a bunch of people after a brawl at a redneck bar in Carolina. Working with local cops and some military, we scoured the area. Found what was probably their base camp, but no sign of them. They just disappeared.” He winked at Antonelli. “Even more interesting, someone in our Charlotte office heard a rumor about a Ranger unit. Seems they were engaged in a combat simulation and got their heads handed to them by some super secret über elite outfit.”
“Yeah, you think it was Whelan’s bunch? Could they be holed up in that lodge?”
Christie leaned forward and placed his elbows on his desk. “Why not? Levell and McCoy frequent the place. They created those guys.”
“So?” Antonelli said. “You can’t do a fuckin’ thing about it. Orders from on high.” He smiled.
Christie shook his head in frustration. “I just don’t get it, Lou. I was ordered to back off that place by both the EAD for National Security and the EAD for CCRS. And those guys never agree on anything.”
Antonelli shrugged his shoulders.
Christie sighed and sat back in his chair. “Just between you and me, I’ve been keeping an eye on the place—strictly under the radar. So what did you want to tell me about Levell?”
“Well, it seems he was involved in a shooting and may have been abducted.”
Christie fixed his eyes on Antonelli’s. “Details,” he said.
“He and his driver and a guy we think was hired muscle were in a car that was forced off the road near that hunting lodge.”
“Casualties?”
“The muscle caught a round in the head. The driver got winged pretty bad. May not make it.”
“Levell?”
“MIA.”
“Do we know why?”
“Negative.”
“Do we know who?”
“Nope.”
“For Christ’s sake, Lou, what do we know?” Christie was getting hot. He’d been in charge of this operation for more than half a year, and felt he had barely made any progress. His frustration level was off the charts. And then there were those orders from higher up the bureaucratic chain of command that had severely limited the parameters of the investigation.
“From the damage to Levell’s Escalade, Forensics says something big, like a truck, must have forced it off the road.”
“Any leads?”
“We found a stolen dump truck abandoned a couple miles down the road. It had paint chips on it that initial tests indicate came from Levell’s vehicle.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing so far. There are no houses or business establishments nearby, and, as yet, no one has come forward who might have been in the area when it happened.”
“Does Forensics have anything of value yet?”
“They think the perps may have been Russians or Eastern Europeans.”
Christie’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “How could they know that?”
Antonelli shrugged. “Coupla’ things. Judging from the number of bullet casings, the perps were using fully automatic weapons. The bullet casings are bottlenecked seven point six-two by twenty-five millimeter. At first, Forensics thought they may have come from an old Mauser C96 or a knockoff like the PASAM used by the Brazilians or the Type 80 machine pistol the ChiComs like. But when they dug some slugs out of surrounding trees they turned out to be from Tokarev cartridges. They’re a match for the ones the medics dug out of Levell’s driver. The interesting thing is they’re copper-coated. That type of ammo is banned by federal law ‘cause it’s capable of penetrating armor. Still used in the Eastern Bloc, though.”
“So what are you saying, Lou?”
The other man shifted in his chair and crossed his legs. “Forensics thinks it’s likely the weapon or weapons were Russian-made PP-Nineteen Bizons. With the end of the cold war and the breakup of the Soviet Union, a lot of those weapons found their way into the hands of the criminal element in the Ukraine. Many of those guys found work as enforcers for the Russian mob. Some of them are known to be in the States.”
Christie leaned back in his chair, rubbing his tender stomach. “So, is the evidence telling us that Levell got sideways with the Russian mob and they kidnapped him?”
Antonelli shrugged again. “Doesn’t add up to me. What would a guy like Levell, who’s got a few bucks plus a helluva government pension, be doing with the Ruskies?”
“Gambling debts, prostitution, drugs?” Christie said. “Maybe he got uptight for cash and borrowed from them, then didn’t pay it back in full or on time.” He shook his head, hoping to stir up something that would connect the dots.
“Look,” Antonelli said. “I gotta go. I’m taking the little woman to dinner at a fancy place tonight to celebrate moving into the new house.”
“That’s nice. Enjoy yourselves,” Christie said as he watched Antonelli walk out the door. First a very expensive house and now a pricy dinner. Something about that bothered him. Was it simple envy? Guilt that he wasn’t providing something similar for his family? Or something more?
He should be heading home, too. Maybe Deborah was pissed—maybe that’s why she wasn’t answering the phone? Reaching into his desk, he withdrew a fresh bottle of cherry flavored antacid Ultimate Strength liquid. He shook it vigorously for a few moments, then uncapped it and swallowed a large gulp. After replacing the bottle in the drawer, he again called each family member’s cell phone and the landline at home. As before, all he got were voicemails. He looked at his watch. It was almost seven o’clock. Something definitely wasn’t right.
Just after he had replaced the receiver following the final call, his assistant, Charlotte, buzzed him. “Mitch, there’s a gentleman on the line who says he has information that will interest you.”
“Did he give his name?”
“He said it was Smith.”
“Sure,” Christie said with sarcasm. “Why not. Did he say what it was concerning?”
“He said it was related to the Harold Case investigation.”
“Okay, Charlotte, thanks. And,” he added, “go home. It’s late.” He recradled the receiver and sagged back in his chair, rubbing his reddening eyes. They stung from the strain of reading innumerable reports and bulletins, as well as from the hours of staring at the computer screen. In addition to his role as SSA of the snail-paced Case investigation, he also was involved in a number of other matters for the Bureau. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a good night’s sleep.
And where the hell was his family? Christie took in a deep breath, held it for a few moments. He released it slowly, as if trying to clear his mind by exhaling his growing concerns. He reached over, picked up the receiver and punched the button that was flashing at the base of the phone. “Christie,” he said.
“Agent Christie, you may remember me. We met awhile back,” said the man on the other end of the phone call.
There was something vaguely familiar about the voice. Christie struggled to connect it to a face. Fishing for clues, he said, “Refresh my memory.”
The voice on the other end said, “Back in January, we sat together on a flight from Atlanta to San Francisco.”
Christie’s eyes widened and he sat straight up in his seat. Now, he recognized the voice. “Whelan,” he said. A second later, he leaned forward and punched another button on the base of his phone. It began recording the call. It also sent a signal to Bureau staff members in a tech area two floors below to initiate a trace.
“I realize you have, or shortly will have, a trace on this call,” Whelan said, “so forgive me if I’m brief.”
“No,” Christie lied, hoping to buy time for the trace to succeed. “I’m on my phone in my office. I can’t put a trace on it from here.”
“Bullshit,” Whelan said.
“My assistant said you have information about the Harold Case investigation.”
“Not exactly. It’s about your family.”
“They’re fine and they’re going to stay fine. They’re in very good hands.”
“You son of a bitch. You miserable son of a bitch. Do you think you can use them as leverage on me?” He was on his feet now and practically screaming into the mouthpiece.
“No, but someone else was planning to do just that. We stopped it. And we captured the thugs who were sent to pull it off.”
“Where is my family?”
“Your family is in luxurious accommodations and being very well treated. After this, they may not want to return to their lives in suburbia. As for the two thugs, they’re dead.”
Christie paused for a second. “Listen to me Whelan. If any harm comes to anyone in my family, I swear by all that’s holy, I will find you and I will kill you.”
In a matter-of-fact tone, Whelan said, “Anything’s possible Agent Christie, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I was you.”
* * *
Whelan had been leaning against a decorative railing in Washington Harbour with his back to the Potomac River, watching the comings and goings of the people around him. He casually tossed the cell phone into the river, walked a short distance and climbed into an unmarked black SUV parked at the Thompson Boat Center next door. Larsen was behind the wheel. “Did you get through to him?” he said.
“Yeah, he got the message.”
As they pulled out of the boat center on Thirty-First Street Northwest, Whelan took off the ball cap, sunglasses and jacket he was wearing and put them in a brown paper bag. A moment later, as they drove across the bridge spanning Rock Creek, Larsen slowed the vehicle and Whelan handed the bag out the window to a man who appeared to be walking a dog. The man strolled to a car, placed the bag in the trunk, and drove away. In a few minutes Larsen and Whelan were on Interstate 95 on their way to the large country manor outside Fredericksburg, Virginia. After the ambush of Levell, General McCoy had advised them not to return to the lodge near Fairview Beach.
* * *
Within minutes after they left, local police, FBI agents and other law enforcement officials swarmed across the Washington Harbour development. After thirty minutes of searching the premises and questioning patrons and employees, the senior Bureau agent on the scene called Christie. “No sign of the guy you described, Mitch,” he said.
“Witnesses?”
“A couple of young women were headed into one of the bars here, the kind where Gen Y meets to hook up. They said they thought they saw a guy who might have been the one we’re looking for. He was using a cell phone.”
“They give you a description of the guy?”
“Yeah, they thought he had a nice build and was good-looking.”
“That’s it?” Christie’s voice had a ring of anger in it.
The agent squirmed a little. “They said he was wearing a ball cap, sunglasses, and a light jacket. Mind telling me what this is about?”
“Shit!” Christie said as he slammed the receiver back into its cradle. He turned and stared out his sliver of a window. Where were his loved ones, he wondered, and how could he get them back.
54 Richmond, Virginia
Just northwest of the jurisdictional limits of the City of Richmond, Virginia, between Interstate 64 and West Broad Street, was a sprawling industrial area. It was occupied by older warehouse space—Class C on a good day. The neighborhood had long since surrendered to grunge in the form of high vacancy rates, run-down structures with little to no maintenance, and streets filled with potholes and trash. The curbs and sidewalks were broken or nonexistent.
In the midst of this inhospitable and forlorn area, and surrounded by vacant industrial space in all directions, sat a single-story building isolated in the center of a weed-grown lot. It was entirely enclosed within a ten-foot-tall barbed wire fence rigged with sensors to detect attempts to scale or cut through it. A sagging gate divided the fence on the street side. It was mounted on small rubber wheels enabling it to be swung open to permit vehicular access.
The exterior of the building was faded red brick. It was topped by a flat, built up roof. A few small windows were set high on the walls. Two rutted tracks ran across the hard dirt surface from the gate to a tall, metal overhead door set into the front wall on the right of the building’s center. The only incongruity with other buildings in the area was the presence of four video surveillance cameras, one on each corner of the building.
The inside of the building was even less attractive than its exterior. The cracked, and in some areas buckled, concrete floor was stained with rust and a mix of industrial and automotive fluids. Except for a number of crates stacked in one of the corners, the space was mostly bare. There was a small, enclosed area that may once have been used as an office with a single bathroom next to it. Rusting round poles that showed the dents and scars of the building’s history supported bare metal beams. Rows of neon lights, most of which no longer worked, were attached to the beams. Loose wires dangled from the beams in several places. The interior walls, originally painted white, were filthy and peeling. The whole place smelled of sweat, stale air, cigarette smoke, and industrial fluids. It was here that Cliff Levell now found himself.
Levell had been brought to this place following the ambush that had taken the life of Paul Fontenot and left Rhee Kang-Dae in critical condition. In his lifetime, he had seen worse. Propofol had been used to knock him out following the ambush. When he regained consciousness, he was lying on the filthy floor of the old warehouse. His wheelchair was nearby, and with great effort he was able to drag himself into it. Being the old warrior that he was, he didn’t waste time in assessing his situation.
The place was furnished with only a rickety card table and two mismatched chairs, usually occupied by his guards, Ukrainians who rotated in pairs. There was a small refrigerator for the guards’ food and beverages. The crowning accessory was a ten-year old calendar hanging on the wall just outside the door to the office cubicle. It featured an amazingly busty blonde baring her all for the month of October.
When Levell needed to relieve himself, his only means was to urinate in an old can and pour it down a pipe embedded in the floor near a corner of the building. He took it to be an old plumbing fixture of some kind. For the more serious bodily function, the guards would drag him out of the wheelchair and toss him onto the toilet in the filthy bathroom. The guards also used the same toilet and never flushed it. It appeared not to have been cleaned in at least a decade. It disgusted Levell to use it, but he was reminded of an old adage – any port in a storm. The guards gave him old newspapers in lieu of toilet paper. There was no soap or other cleansing agent available to wash his hands.
He was given one meal a day – a small can of tuna in oil, which the guards would open for him. No utensils were provided, so he ate with his unwashed fingers. Liquids consisted of water from the sink in the bathroom, which was discolored by rust and reeking of sulfur. He was forced to sleep in his wheelchair. The guards occasionally would cuff him and curse him. They were bored and resented being used for this duty, which they considered beneath them. Levell never gave the guards the satisfaction of seeing him respond to the beatings. He liked to think of himself in the same terms as an old advertisement for Timex Watches – “takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’”.
Levell knew that propofol had less prolonged sedation and a faster recovery time than many other anesthetic agents. He assumed that he had been unconscious for a relatively short period of time following the abduction. Despite the dirt on the windows, he was able to keep track of daytime and nighttime and estimated that he had been in captivity for approximately forty-eight hours. He believed his current location was less than two hours from the site of the ambush. Even so, that covered an enormous area that stretched, at a minimum, from south of Petersburg, Virginia, to north
of Baltimore, and as far west as the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Given the nature of his activities, he knew a massive search by law enforcement officials would not be undertaken. And it simply was too large an area for the Society to be able to comb with any success, even with the considerable skills of Whelan and the others. He began to rue not having had a tracing device implanted somewhere in his body. On the other hand, he thought, it probably would have been discovered by his abductors and removed in a dangerous and painful way.
Late on the afternoon of his second day in captivity he received a visitor. Levell had been expecting someone higher up the ladder than the thugs who guarded him. He was surprised, however, by who the visitor turned out to be: a ghost from his CIA days, Kirill Federov.
The Russian had the two guards on duty yank Levell out of his wheelchair, drag him across the hard concrete floor, and slam him into one of the two chairs at the card table. The guards took up positions behind Levell. Federov, dressed in a well-tailored dark gray suit and immaculately shined black wingtips, sat in the other chair and studied Levell silently for several moments. When he spoke, his English was nearly perfect. “Mr. Levell, you and I have never met, but we have known of each other for sometime, yes?”
Levell nodded, never breaking his gaze from the Russian’s cold, blue eyes.
Federov smiled sardonically. “It is unfortunate, perhaps, that we shall no longer be able to continue our efforts as adversaries.”
“Don’t cash checks that haven’t been written, Federov.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that I’m not critical to our success against you and your comrades. I’m just one cog in a big machine that’s going to roll right over you. And sooner than you think.”
Federov arched one eyebrow in skepticism. “I think you do yourself an injustice. You are the heart and soul of this Society of Adam Smith, as you call yourselves. Without you, their leader, the others will stumble, unable to perform effectively. The weaker ones will disappear into the woodwork, trying to hide from their treasonous activities.”
Sleeping Dogs: The Awakening Page 28