“Okay,” Duffy groaned, the disappointment obvious in his voice. “The picture you gave us shows about seventy-five percent of his face and for the most part he’s in the shadows so it is difficult to get a firm identification.”
“How about an un-firm one?”
“That I just got,” Ed answered. “We have a semi-retired agent in DC who used to work the Russia beat. He thinks the guy could be a Russian by the name of Anatoly Khrutov. That’s the good news.”
“And the bad?”
“He’s a nasty guy. Ex-KGB with some ties to Putin from back in the good old days. After the Cold War ended, he became something of a shadowy fixer in Russia. He puts people with people and gets paid for it.”
“Puts people with people?” Mac asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
“For example, he helps foreign businessmen get connected with the right ministers in the government. You need a drilling permit, he can help shepherd it through the bureaucracy. You want to open a business? He knew who could help you get the right permissions. He’s said to know where everyone’s skeletons are buried so he can apply leverage to get done what he wants done. He wasn’t cheap either, very expensive.”
“Was?” Mac said. “Is he out of the game now?”
“Right, at least that’s what our people thought,” Duffy replied. “He’s been dormant for a number of years. These days, his nest is so feathered he’s thought to be largely retired, but if this is him, it looks as if the bear came out of hibernation.”
“For one last big score,” Mac answered.
“Maybe,” Ed answered. “The odd thing is he typically sticks to his home turf, Mac. When he was active, he didn’t often venture outside of Russia and when he did, he kept close to home, eastern Europe mostly. It was rare he ever even went into western Europe, let alone come to the States.”
Mac gave what Duffy said some thought, took a sip of his coffee and an idea came to him. “Ed, do we know who from the United States used Khrutov in Russia?”
“I don’t off hand, but I can look into that, Mac. Why?”
“If it was rare he ever left his home turf, then he wouldn’t have done it for just anyone. It had to be someone special, someone he’d done work with before, probably more than once.”
“That’s a good thought,” Duffy replied agreeably. “I’ll get back to my contacts in DC and see what I can find.”
“Good. Keep on this Russian and let me know if you find anything, and listen, I really appreciate your help on this.”
“Are you kidding, Mac? A case like this? It’s fun to be in the ballgame, man. I’m on this.”
That brought a smile to Mac’s face. This was a hell of a case.
He made another call.
“Yeah,” the voice growled.
“You leave me hanging and now I’m left to investigate with this ex-FBI chick. Some partner you are.”
“Two things. First, fuck you. Second, at least she’s easier on the eyes than me,” Lich replied and Mac howled in laughter. His partner sounded fine although he reported he was very sore and very pissed off. “You find the bastards behind this yet?”
“We’re getting closer. This case is crazy. Get this …” Mac spent five minutes giving his partner the rundown of the day’s events from Checketts, to Darwin Ring and DataPoint, Ginger Bloom and the chase, and then finishing with the locker.
His partner had one piece of advice. “Watch your back, Mac.”
“I always do,” McRyan answered as Wire pulled back into the parking lot with Dixon and Sally. “Listen. I gotta go. I’ll buzz you tomorrow.”
Mac hung up and Sally came walking quickly to him and gave him a hug and a kiss. “Glad to see you in one piece,” she whispered in his ear, a touch of worry in her voice.
“I’m good. Wire and I were just spectators with a front row seat on that car chase.”
“Uh huh,” was his girlfriend’s skeptical and knowing reply. “The whole calling the move a ‘Bullitt’ was a nice touch by the way. Stealing from my favorite cop movie? Really?”
“Wire talks too much.”
“Mac, which one is Special Agent Berman?” the Judge asked, bailing Mac out for now.
Mac pointed to a stout woman with short brown hair wearing a black trench coat.
“Watch this,” Wire said with a knowing look.
Dixon approached Berman and extended his hand. Berman recognized Dixon and smiled when he introduced himself. They chatted for a minute and then the two of them walked away from the storage locker to have some privacy and engaged in a discussion for nearly five minutes. It looked like an agreeable conversation. Then Berman received a phone call. The call lasted a couple of minutes and then Berman spoke for about a minute and then the two of them shook hands and Dixon came walking back to the group.
“So?” Sally asked.
“FBI Director Mitchell called while we were over there.”
“Convenient timing,” Mac remarked, sensing a setup, a good kind of setup.
“Perhaps,” the Judge replied with a wry smile. “In any event, we’re putting everything on a plane here and going to DC. The director wants to be briefed directly on this. If the briefing goes the way I hope it goes, the director, probably in eventual consultation with the attorney general, will order an immediate mass review of all DataPoint voting machines for this virus mentioned in the letter. While in transit to DC, the secretaries of state for Iowa, Wisconsin and Virginia are going to be put on alert.”
“Which is what you want, right?” Sally asked.
“It is,” the Judge answered and then looked to Mac and Wire. “I think you two have discovered what this is all about and have explained why all these people were killed, why our Sebastian was killed. Well done. Well done indeed.”
McRyan and Wire both nodded modestly. The magnitude of what their investigation uncovered suppressed any urge to express happiness. “Now you two have a plane to catch with the FBI,” the Judge added and led them walking back towards the Acadia. “And Mac?’
“Yes, Judge?”
“You’re going to give the briefing to the director as soon as you get to Washington.”
That stopped Mac in his tracks. The Judge looked back with a mischievous smile noting the suddenly nervous look on the otherwise unflappable detective’s face. He doubted McRyan was someone who was often put back on his heels.
Dixon walked back to Mac and put a hand on his shoulder. “Son, nobody knows this case better than you—nobody. Wire can’t give the briefing because she’s been working for me—you haven’t. She can’t be there, nor can I. The bureau is just getting up to speed on this and they don’t know the ‘ins and outs’ of it. All you have to do is run the case down from beginning to end. FBI Director Mitchell will likely ask you some very pointed questions. Give him direct answers, just like you always do.” Dixon patted him hard on the back. “You’ve got about three hours to prepare. No sweat.”
“Riiiiight,” Mac muttered as they walked to the car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“He’s alive. Everyone else is dead.”
Sunday morning, 3:32 a.m. The small FBI motorcade made its way through the now sleepy streets of Washington DC from Reagan National, with its destination being the Hoover Building.
Mac was alone now. Wire was not going to be in on the briefing of the FBI director. If the investigation, if that’s what it still was at this point, was going to end up going where Dixon wanted it to go, Mac would have to get it across the finish line.
On the flight to Washington, Mac and Wire walked through the case. Mac put together a PowerPoint on his computer, building from the outline on the whiteboard back in St. Paul. While they were doing that, the voting machine was tested in another part of the plane and the memory cards did exactly what Gabriel Martin explained they would. One of every twenty votes for Governor Thomson was rolled over to Vice President Wellesley’s column, so in Mac’s mind, they had solved what the whole cover-up was about, election fraud. He had h
is murderer, at least of Montgomery and McCormick and probably Stroudt as well. But someone let the killer off the leash and put the plan to manipulate the election results in motion and had been engineering the cover-up of its discovery. That someone looked to be Heath Connolly.
Wire and the Judge were absolutely convinced it was Connolly.
Mac wasn’t so sure.
After Mac, Wire, Dixon and Sally worked through the case timeline on the flight, Mac sat with the outline for a while. On his laptop he kept flipping through all the pictures of the Kentucky meeting and he kept stopping on one: Wire’s photo of the limousine, with the door open and a leg showing under the bottom of the door. Wire told him that as she took the photo, someone yelled out they had spotted Montgomery and Stroudt on the south side of the cabin. The person never got out of the limousine and it simply sped away.
Who was it?
Just another person with a small part to play in the whole process or was it someone more? One person knew and it was Heath Connolly.
The motorcade pulled in underneath the Hoover Building. As Mac got out of the Suburban, his phone beeped. It was a text from Duffy. Mac read it and mumbled a “shit.”
“What?” Agent Berman asked.
“Nothing,” Mac answered, wanting to digest this latest update. Mac was escorted through security and to an elevator that took them up to FBI Director Thomas Mitchell’s office. The director was in his office in the early a.m. casually dressed in khakis, a blue cardigan and white button down collar dress shirt. He looked the part of the senior lawman, however; tall, forceful, with salt and pepper hair cropped tightly to his head and perceptive eyes.
Agent Berman introduced Mac.
“Detective, your father was Simon McRyan, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mitchell gave a small smile, “He and I worked together a few times many many years ago. As good a police detective as I ever ran across.”
“Thank you for saying that, Director.”
“I also chatted with Charlie Flanagan about an hour ago.”
“At two in the morning, sir?”
“Yeah, the chief wasn’t too happy about that until he realized it was me calling. He’s an old friend. I asked him to give it to me straight about you.”
Mac winced a little, uncertain.
“You needn’t worry, Detective. He said if I thought Simon McRyan was good, wait until I meet his son.”
Mac smiled, just a little, relieved. “The chief is very kind, sir, and perhaps not always objective when it comes to me.”
“I know Charlie Flanagan, Detective,” Mitchell answered seriously. “He doesn’t bullshit and he said neither do you. So I’m very interested to hear what you have to say. I don’t have a good handle on what this is all about. Judge Dixon, another man I trust, gave me his version of events. But he is not objective in this matter. He has an agenda. My agents from Milwaukee and my people in the Civil Rights Division are telling me we’ve got a serious election fraud issue here. I am told the one person who can explain how it is we got to this point is you.”
“I can give you the big picture, sir,” Mac answered.
“Let’s have it.”
Mac looked over to the director’s conference table. “May I?”
Mitchell nodded and followed Mac to the conference table. Two agents also set the DataPoint Voting Machine, silver briefcase, memory cards and letter on the conference table as well. Mac opened up his laptop and sat down. Mitchell took a seat next to him and Special Agent Berman took another open chair.
“Mac, let’s put this up on the big screen,” Mitchell replied as he hit a button under the conference table and two panels on the wall slid open to reveal a large flat screen. The director pushed another button and a small console rose from the center of the table. An assistant appeared instantly with a cord for Mac to plug his laptop into the director’s audio visual system. Mac hit F8 and the image from his computer screen appeared on the screen.
“Shoot,” Mitchell said to Mac.
“This case started on Wednesday night with a meeting at this cabin, which belongs to Raymond Hitch, a businessman from Kentucky. The cabin is on Lake Barkley, which is located outside the city of Cadiz in northwest Kentucky.” Mac flipped to a picture from the meeting. “At this meeting were four people of special interest.” He worked left to right across the photo, “The first man, somewhat heavyset, is Peter Checketts, the owner and president of DataPoint Electronics, a technology company in Milwaukee that manufactures, among other things, electronic paperless voting machines. The second man back here in the shadows we think is a man named Anatoly Khrutov, an ex-KGB agent who since the end of the Cold War has been something of a fixer in Russia. To the right of Khrutov, standing behind this silver metal briefcase, is a man we’ve identified as Viktor Domitrovich, a Ukrainian citizen and reputed computer hacker. The last man is Heath Connolly, the manager of Vice President Wellesley’s campaign.”
“How were you able to identify Domitrovich and in particular this Mr. Khrutov?” Mitchell asked.
“With the assistance of the FBI, sir,” Mac replied. “Special Agent Duffy with the bureau’s Twin Cities office provided assistance on this front working with people here in DC. Domitrovich is well known to the cyber crimes people of the bureau. We think this is Khrutov.”
“Think?”
“This is the best picture we have and here is a bureau photo. The two men look alike and a retired FBI agent who worked Russia for the bureau for a number of years is pretty certain that is him. Duffy said 90% it’s Khrutov.” Mac handed Mitchell a hard copy of the picture of Khrutov and flipped to a new picture.
“There may well have been a fifth person who was supposed to be at this meeting,” Mac put up the photo of the limousine with the back door open. “For reasons I will explain in a few minutes, this person never exited the vehicle and we don’t know who this was.”
“What time did this meeting take place?” the director asked.
“About 11:00 p.m., sir.”
“Was Hitch at his cabin?”
“No sir, he was not,” Mac answered. “He is traveling out of the country, on business in China. We were able to reach him and he said Connolly called him on Monday and wanted to use the cabin and Hitch said fine. Connolly’s apparently used it a few times before and Hitch thought nothing of it. He’s not due back in the United States until next week.”
Mitchell nodded. “So on Wednesday night, six days before the election, at 11:00 p.m. at night, the campaign manager for the vice president was meeting with the owner of a voting machine company, an ex-KGB agent and a computer hacker at an out-of-the-way cabin in Kentucky?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see.”
Mac had Mitchell’s full attention.
“Proceed, Detective.”
“These people were not alone at this meeting in Kentucky,” Mac flipped to a new picture. “The man on the left is Jason Stroudt and on the right is Adam Montgomery. These men are DC-based reporters who operate the political blog ‘The Congressional Page.’”
“I’ve heard of it,” Mitchell answered.
Mac flipped to an aerial photo of Hitch’s cabin. “Stroudt and Montgomery were also at this meeting, outside, perched in this grove of trees to the south of the cabin.”
“How do you know this?” Gates asked.
“Because of another person who was on scene outside the cabin,” Mac added a photo, “former FBI Special Agent Dara Wire.” Mac looked at Mitchell, whose eyebrows flared.
“How was it former Agent Wire was there?”
“For the past six months she’s been working for the Thomson campaign, largely watching and monitoring certain higher ups in the vice president’s campaign, with a specific focus on Heath Connolly,” Mac answered. “She tracked Connolly to this meeting. Ms. Wire had hoped to take in the meeting from the perch occupied by Stroudt and Montgomery. Instead she was forced to move to the north side of the cabin.”
“I assume
it was Wire who identified Stroudt and Montgomery as being at the meeting,” the director asked.
“Yes sir. She found their vehicle parked down the road, took down the license number and later verified that they had rented it.”
“Do we know what was discussed at this meeting?” Mitchell asked.
“I think it may be more along the lines of what was intended to be discussed. It doesn’t appear that the meeting got too far along before it broke up.”
“Why is that?”
“Stroudt and Montgomery were discovered and chased from the area. The chase included gun shots.”
“Gun shots?” Mitchell asked again with upraised eyebrows.
“Yes, sir. Ms. Wire reported shots being fired and given the events that have unfolded since this meeting, I think we can safely assume that was the case.”
“Was she in any danger during this time?” Mitchell asked with concern.
“No sir, as I mentioned, she was on the north side of the cabin, away from the action and she told me they never knew she was there.”
“Good,” Mitchell answered. “What’s next?”
“Following the discovery of Stroudt and Montgomery, the meeting was hastily ended and all the players made a mad dash from the scene into SUVs and limousines as you can see in this series of photos taken by Wire,” Mac explained. “Here you see Connolly and Checketts in particular being ushered into vehicles that Dara reports immediately sped away from the scene.”
“What’s next?”
“The next significant event happens the following day,” Mac displayed a picture of The Snelling and of Stroudt dead on the motel room floor. “I caught the case at this point when Mr. Stroudt’s dead body was found at The Snelling, a rather seedy motel in St. Paul.” Mac displayed a picture of Stroudt’s body at The Snelling. “As you can see, Mr. Stroudt’s throat was cut from ear to ear. His time of death was around 3:00 p.m.” Mac related the discovery by a pizza delivery man and the motel manager.
“So Stroudt was in Kentucky on Wednesday night and was killed in St. Paul by 3:00 p.m. on Thursday?” Mitchell asked. “How did he get there?”
Electing To Murder: A compelling crime thriller (McRyan Mystery Thriller Series Book) (McRyan Mystery Series Book 4) Page 28