Critical Mass

by Steve Martini

  “Maybe they’ve made a purchase,” said the CIA.

  “Is there evidence of state involvement in this shipment on the Isvania?“ asked Bowlyn.

  “Not so far,” said the Navy officer. “But we’re still looking.”

  Bowlyn took a deep sigh.

  “It gets a little worse,” said the CIA.

  “What do you mean?” Bowlyn looked at him.

  “Some of the encrypted transmissions between Sverdlovsk and Vladivostok have been decoded. A name has popped up.”

  “What name?”

  “A forged waybill for a shipment of machine parts out of Vladivostok, shipped by a Russian company called Blue Star Enterprises. The trawler Isvania left Vladivostok four days before the communiqués started flying back and forth.”

  “Wonderful,” said Bowlyn.

  “The CEO of Blue Star Enterprises is Viktor Kolikoff.”

  Bowlyn’s gaze suddenly went cold as steel. He said nothing but sat there looking at the CIA deputy director. This went beyond mere security clearances. They would have to clear the room before the discussion went any further.

  THIRTEEN

  LAKE UNION, SEATTLE, WA

  Joselyn winced just a little as the emergency medical technician maneuvered his forceps and plucked another wooden splinter from her forearm. In reflex, she had shielded her face from the force of the blast. The plane’s explosion had shattered a piece of wooden railing, showering her with small splinters.

  Thankfully the front edge of the blast had put her down flat on her back on the dock, so that most of the flying shrapnel and bits of debris from Belden’s plane sailed past, embedding themselves in the wall of the wooden boathouse behind her.

  “I hope you know you were very lucky.” The EMT didn’t look at her as he continued his work.

  “Lucky. Right.”

  “Hang on. I’ve got a couple more here.” He gripped another splinter with the forceps and plucked it like a feather from a bird.

  “Ow.”

  “Relax. Just a few more.” The EMT held up the splinter. It was half the size of a toothpick. “I can leave ‘em and let them fester. You won’t like it much.”

  Joselyn’s arm looked like it had been peppered by a porcupine. “Go ahead. Just be a little more careful.”

  “Maybe we can talk while he works.” McCally wasn’t happy. He had arrived at the dock just forty-five minutes after the explosion. Now he was standing outside the back of the open ambulance with an FBI agent in a blue windbreaker, the letters stenciled across his back, and another guy in jeans, running shoes, and a dark sweatshirt with a hood.

  “Tell me,” said Joselyn. “How did you guys get here so fast?”

  “We had your client under surveillance.” The guy in the windbreaker spoke before McCally could keep him quiet.

  “Thank you, Mr. Larkin,” said McCally. “Why don’t you go over there and look for pieces of Mr. Belden before the seagulls find them all.”

  The guy accepted the rebuke, looked down at the dock, but didn’t move. Joselyn assumed that the other one in the sweatshirt was a federal agent as well. He was mostly bald and well built, like an athlete, with darting eyes that didn’t settle on anything for very long. He had the wary look of some of the criminal clients she had represented down in California.

  “You mean you had my client under surveillance the entire time he was under subpoena to appear before the grand jury?”

  “Never mind that,” said McCally. “You saw him get on the plane, is that right?”

  “I already told the police what I saw. You can get whatever information you need from them.” Joselyn had identified Belden as being on the plane. As far as she knew he was alone.

  “We’d rather get it from you. We’ve already talked to the police,” said McCally. “According to them, you flew down in the plane with him. Why weren’t you on it for the return trip?”

  “You sound like you’re upset that I wasn’t.”

  McCally said nothing. He looked at her waiting for an answer.

  “It so happens he didn’t tell me he was leaving the courthouse. When I discovered he was missing, I knew he had to come back here. I took a taxi and got here just as he was pulling away from the dock. You can find the cab driver if you don’t believe me.”

  “We’ll do that,” said McCally. “Why would your client come all this way, fly down here, go to the courthouse, and then without talking to you, without any explanation, run?”

  “Maybe he just got cold feet,” she said.

  “Hmm.” His expression indicated he didn’t buy it.

  “Where did he get the plane?”

  “How do I know?”

  “You were his lawyer.”

  “I suppose he bought it.”

  “No,” said McCally. “He didn’t. We got a list of his assets. There’s no plane.”

  “You seem to know more about him than I do. If you were watching him so closely, how did he get himself blown up?”

  McCally looked at the other guy in the sweatshirt. It seemed neither of them had an answer for this.

  “Why, if you’d focused so much attention on my client, didn’t you send him a target letter?”

  “You’re not here to ask the questions,” said McCally, “but to answer them.”

  “Oh, am I? I was under the impression I was here to receive medical attention. If you had him under surveillance, we had a right to a target letter.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” said McCally.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means maybe yes, maybe no,” said the agent in the sweatshirt.

  “Does the name Harold McAvoy mean anything to you?” McCally changed the subject.

  She thought for a second. “No.”

  “Or James Regal?”

  “No.”

  “What about Liam Walker?” This time it was the agent in the sweatshirt asking.

  “What is this, twenty questions?”

  “Just answer.”

  “I’ve never heard of any of them.”

  The agent and McCally looked at each other. They moved a couple of steps away and whispered to each other so that Joselyn couldn’t hear.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” she demanded.

  McCally looked at her as if it was against his better judgment. She heard the agent speaking to him. “It’s not likely we’re gonna be getting any answers from her client. She’s the next best thing.”

  McCally thought for a second, then finally caved in.

  “The three names are aliases,” he told her. “Just like the name Dean Belden.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “These are all names used by your client in various countries where he’s worked over the last two years. He has at one time or another possessed passports under each of them.”

  “Belden wasn’t his name?”

  “No.”

  “And electronics wasn’t his business,” added the man in the sweatshirt.

  “What was his business?”

  “He was a kind of specialist,” said McCally.

  “You might say transportation is his main field,” said the agent. “Though he’s done other things over the course of his career. Usually whenever he showed up, people started dying.”

  Joselyn listened but didn’t say a word.

  “He hired himself out to various clients. Businesses, sometimes governments, groups out of power who wanted back in. As far as we know, this is the first time he’s ever worked in this country.”

  “You’re telling me he was a hired assassin?”

  “Nothing so modest,” said the agent. “Mr. Belden, or whatever name he was using on a given day, dealt in group discounts. Why murder one person when you can do a few hundred, maybe a few thousand.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “The Kurds in northern Iraq. Your client provided some of the services.”

  “And some villages in Croatia,” added McCally. “He didn’t use
bullets or guns. No explosions. It was all very neat, except for the bloated bodies in the streets.”

  “His specialty,” said the agent, “was moving dangerous cargos. As far as we know to date, he’d confined himself to chemical weapons. What we’re worried about is that he may have been branching out.”

  “That’s enough,” said McCally.

  Joselyn guessed they were now getting into areas that might compromise the grand jury investigation.

  “You still want to know why we didn’t send him a target letter?” asked McCally.

  “Given the outcome, it looks like we saved the taxpayers the cost of a first-class stamp,” said the agent.

  “I suppose you had me under surveillance as well?” said Joselyn.

  McCally didn’t respond, but from the look on the other guy’s face he didn’t have to.

  “You still haven’t explained how, if you were watching him so closely, somebody was able to get to his plane with explosives.”

  “Did they?”

  “I’d say so.” Joselyn looked at the scattered pieces of debris out on the water.

  “And who might they be?” said McCally. “These other people who got to his plane?”

  “How would I know?”

  “You worked with him.”

  “I was his lawyer.”

  “Fine,” said the agent. “And now he’s dead, so you won’t mind telling us whatever it is you know about his business dealings?”

  “I don’t know anything except what Belden told me. And according to you, that is probably all a lie.”

  “Humor us,” said McCally.

  Joselyn looked at the two of them but didn’t say a word.

  “Maybe you’d like to lawyer up?” said the agent. “Want us to read you your rights. Get you a lawyer.”

  “Let me get this straight. Am I under arrest?”

  “No,” said McCally. “Not for the moment anyway.”

  “Good. Then what I have to say is going to be very short and to the point. I don’t know a thing about any of the activities you’ve mentioned. I don’t know if Belden was his name or what he did for a living. All I know is what he told me, and if the two of you are telling me the truth … ” She looked at them as if perhaps she had some doubts. “Then the information he gave me was a crock.”

  “And what was that?” said McCally.

  “That he wanted to set up a business on the island. Something about electronics and switches. He wanted me to form the corporation for this business. That’s all I know.”

  “And you didn’t ask him anything else?”

  “What else was there?”

  “How did he pay you?”

  “By check. Drawn on a personal account.”

  “Did you ask him where he came from?”

  “He told me somewhere near Seattle. Kent, I think. But if what you tell me is true, then he probably lied about that as well.”

  The two men looked at each other, but from their expressions Joselyn could tell that what she’d told them was no help.

  “Why did he pick you to do his legal work?” asked McCally.

  “He told me it was a referral. A local banker.”

  “What was the banker’s name?”

  “I can’t remember. I might have written it down somewhere.”

  “We’ll need the name.”

  “I’ll look when I get back to my office.”

  “How much did he pay you?” asked McCally.

  Joselyn wasn’t anxious to answer, but she knew they could access her bank records with a subpoena. “A ten-thousand-dollar retainer for the business work. Another five thousand for accompanying him down here for the grand jury thing.”

  The agent rolled his eyes. “Is that normal?”

  “Dream on,” McCally answered for her. “And this didn’t give you some clue that Belden might have problems? When did he call you on the grand jury subpoena?” He asked another question before she could answer.

  “Late last week.”

  “And what did he tell you?”

  She told them about Max Sperling, though by now Joselyn was convinced that Belden had fabricated that as well.

  “And you accepted all of this at face value?” said McCally.

  “Why wouldn’t I? A client comes to my door, tells me he needs legal services… ”

  “And pays you fifteen grand,” said the agent. “Don’t forget that.”

  “What other records do you have?” said McCally.

  “Wait a second,” said Joselyn. “You think I’m going to turn over client records just like that?”

  “Your client is dead,” said McCally.

  “I’m not sure the privilege died with him.”

  “We can debate the point in front of a federal judge,” said the prosecutor. “Or perhaps the grand jury.”

  “I’m not under arrest, just under suspicion, is that it?”

  “You could cooperate,” said the agent.

  “I have. I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Maybe Belden just liked lawyers who wore skirts,” said the agent.

  “For most men it beats the alternative,” said Joselyn. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” said the agent. “Did the two of you get it on?”

  “Ask your people with the field glasses,” she told him.

  “They say no.”

  Now she was getting angry. “There you go,” she told him.

  “You are aware,” said McCally, “that attorney-client privilege does not apply if you are in any way involved in furtherance of your client’s illegal activities?”

  “Why would I be worried about that? I’ve got the best alibi in the world. Just ask Peeping Tom there.”

  “Hey. I can’t vouch for your every minute.” The agent was the kind of in-your-face civil servant that gives government a bad name.

  “I see, just the bathroom and the bedroom,” said Joselyn.

  “Enough,” said McCally. He gave the agent a stern look and the guy backed off.

  “Then there’s nothing else you’re going to tell us?”

  “There’s nothing else I can tell you,” said Joselyn. “I represented the corporation Belden Electronics. While Mr. Belden or whatever his name was may be dead, the corporation that he formed is not. My obligations as a lawyer run to that corporation.”

  “We’ve checked the listing of corporate officers,” said McCally. They already knew about the corporation.

  “It shows Belden’s name, yours, and a woman named Samantha Hawthorne. Who is she?”

  “It’s a usual practice,” said Joselyn. For purposes of formation, lawyers often listed themselves and their employees as corporate officers. Samantha, her landlady, had agreed to be listed. “She and I were to be substituted out for other officers at the first meeting of shareholders.”

  “I take it that never happened?”

  “No.”

  “Were there any other shareholders besides Belden?” This was something McCally couldn’t get from public records, but he could subpoena it from her files.

  “Not that I know of.”

  Before they could ask another question, another agent wearing a dark blue windbreaker, the letters ATF stenciled on the front and back, came up to McCally from behind, whispered in his ear, then handed him something. Joselyn couldn’t see what it was, something small enough to be concealed in his closed hand.

  McCally talked to the agent in street clothes. The three men took a few steps back so they could confer in private and not be heard. The EMT started to go to work on Joselyn with his forceps again.

  “I think I’ll keep ‘em, as souvenirs,” she said. Before the guy could get a grip, she rolled down the sleeve of her blouse. It was torn and spotted with blood.

  The FBI agent in the blue windbreaker was the only one standing close enough for idle conversation. His two colleagues were locked in some mortal disagreement. She could see the one in the sweatshirt waving his arms intensely. He was losing the argument with McC
ally. Joselyn guessed that the agent wanted to take her into custody.

  “So tell me. How long have you guys been following Mr. Belden?”

  The agent in the windbreaker just looked at her, smiled, and said: “Right. Like I’m gonna tell you.”

  McCally walked back toward them.

  “Are you finished with me?” Joselyn asked.

  “One more question,” he said. “What do you know about this?” He opened the palm of his hand. In it was a small piece of white plastic about an inch square. It looked like a tiny white picture frame with what appeared to be off-colored gray paper in the center.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Agents found it floating in the water out there. You’ve never seen it before?”

  “No.” Joselyn didn’t recognize it until McCally put it up against the lapel of his suit coat, like a badge. Then suddenly it clicked. She’d seen them on the white coats of lab technicians in hospitals, people who worked in radiology.

  “It’s called a dosimeter,” said McCally. “It registers doses of radiation, to make sure that people who come into contact with it don’t absorb too much. Why would your client have one?”

  “I don’t know.”

  McCally looked at her like maybe he didn’t believe her.

  “A word of caution,” said the prosecutor. “Do you have any idea as to why your client was killed?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “If I had to guess,” said McCally, “it’s because we got a line on him. These are people who live in the shadows. Your client Belden, whatever his name was, and his associates are people who live under rocks and slither out at night. When we subpoenaed him, he was suddenly caught in the headlights. His friends saw him as a threat, a weak link.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Perhaps more than you think. Maybe you’re telling us the truth. Maybe you don’t know anything about your client’s activities. On the other hand, it’s not what you know, but what they think you know that could get you killed.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that if they’d put the bomb on that plane for your flight down from the islands, we wouldn’t be standing here talking now.”

  It was something Joselyn hadn’t thought about, until McCally said it.

  “I’m telling you that if you know something, now’s not the time to keep it to yourself.”