“I thought you might play that card,” Eva said. She pulled a cellphone out of her pocket and addressed Mick. “One call to my associate and you may change your mind. You think I don’t know about the little cabin in the woods, in Big Bear? The one where you’ve stashed your wife and girls?”
My view of Mick was from the side, so I couldn’t see his face, but I could see his usually steady gun arm start to shake, just slightly. I was positive he was freaking out, or raging, or a combination of the two.
He stabbed his piece at her again. “How do I know you haven’t already sent someone?”
“You don’t. But I have no intention of harming your family, just like I have no intention of hurting Simon. Your girls served my purpose, which was to set you after Stanley and Chase. I don’t need the girls anymore, unless you don’t comply. Now drop that weapon and kick it over here.”
Mick shook his head. “You drop the phone first.”
I picked up the rifle and put the scope on Eva. She took a second to think about Mick’s proposal.
“That’s fair,” she said. She dropped the cell to her right side and kicked it, but not very far. She could get back to it if she had to.
I focused on Mick. His whole body quivered. Everything in him wanted a shot at Eva. Eventually, though, he dropped the weapon and kicked it toward her.
“How could you?” he said. “You’re the chairman of an inter-agency spy operation dedicated to protecting the American people. Yet you’ve kidnapped young girls and threatened my wife and sent me to kill the governor’s son, and my best friend. Did you really think I would do it?”
Eva pointed her gun in Mick’s direction. “None of this was originally supposed to include you or Stanley. My father and I had it all figured out, the perfect revenge for what Chase did to him. Only Chase was to suffer and die, nobody else. My father’s associate, a hitman who also specialized in abduction, arrived from Italy a week ago. He was going to abduct Simon, then lure Chase to this warehouse with the promise of getting his son back. But only if Chase came alone. We were going to send a video of Simon in that shipping container where Stanley is right now. When Chase arrived, and determined nobody was waiting to ambush him, he would’ve rushed in and opened that shipping container. Except Simon wouldn’t have been inside. On the tablet would’ve been a ten second video message from my father telling Chase he never should’ve messed with him. Then, from a safe distance, my father’s associate would’ve blown Chase up, along with this warehouse. Chase would’ve died never knowing if he son was safe or not. Of course, we had no intention of harming an innocent child, so we would’ve returned Simon safely to his mother.”
“What happened then?” Mick asked. “What the hell changed?”
She waved the gun at Mick, then up at me. “Here are the rules of engagement, gentlemen: You make a move toward me, Agent Cranston, and you’re dead. I won’t hesitate to shoot you. And, Gary, if you take a shot at my legs or feet or some other body part, I’ll kill your son in a heartbeat. Then I’ll lock you two in here and raze this warehouse to the ground.”
She tucked the gun into her pocket, pulled out a small device and held it up. “Semtex is in all four corners of this building. One push on this detonator and the warehouse will be consumed in thirty seconds. Look above you, Gary, if you don’t believe me.”
I didn’t want to look up, but I did anyway. It took a few seconds to spot the Semtex. The material was stuck in the corner of the warehouse, between two adjoining pieces of wood. Since the wood was faded and grey, the Semtex was hard to see.
I grabbed the edge of the shelf and tried to crush the wood and metal frame together. I’d walked right into her trap, like a complete rookie, like a total idiot.
“Why are you doing all this?” Mick snapped. “Who are you?”
I focused the scope on Eva. She put the detonator away and pulled her gun back out. She didn’t answer right away, so I did.
“She’s Eva Russo, Mick. The daughter of Giovanni Russo.”
Mick slightly turned my direction. “How could the daughter of that monster be employed in our government? How could we let that happen?”
“The feds didn’t know she was his daughter,” I said. “She kept her mother’s last name.”
Eva whipped the pistol toward me and fired. The gun roared and the bullet splintered through the wooden planks behind me.
“Shut your mouth, Gary. You don’t get to tell my story. This is my moment. Neither of you have any idea of who my father truly is.”
I shifted back on the shelving unit. Eva was dying to reveal her story. The fact that she sacrificed a bullet to stop me from talking was proof. We had to keep her talking until she made a mistake.
Mick prodded her on. “Then tell me your story, Eva. Tell me about your father. I want to know.”
Mick and I had fallen into the classic good cop/bad cop routine, which was the only strategy we had. Good cop/bad cop kept a suspect on an emotional roller coaster, and suspects tended to make mistakes when they were being emotionally jerked around.
“You two are like everyone else,” she said. “Judging someone from what you’ve seen in the media. You have no idea.”
I scoffed. “Remember I investigated your father, Eva, and met him face to face. I know firsthand what a scumbag he—”
“Shut it,” she said. “The feds approached him for help. They approached him.” She stabbed her gun my direction. “They needed a place to house those criminals who served their time, and my father was willing to work with them. But they screwed him over, which was the second time the feds had done that.”
“Screwed him over?” I laughed. “Unbelievable. Your father manipulated them, lied to them, threatened Clint Clemens and his family, endangered innocent children, and was ultimately responsible for a child being molested. It’s the other way around, Eva, that’s for sure.”
Mick deflected. “The second time the feds had screwed him over? What do you mean, second?”
She turned to Mick and took a breath. “My father and his wife immigrated here when he was in his early twenties. And when he arrived in America, all he knew was the Italian way of life, the Mafia way—”
“And he made quite a name for himself,” I interrupted.
“Maybe too big of a name,” Eva said. “Because the feds made him the prime target in one of their investigative stings. They followed him, photographed him, bugged his house, harassed and threatened him, all in an attempt to extort information from him. The worst part was how they filled his wife’s mind with poison against him, which eventually destroyed their marriage, though they never did divorce. Fortunately, my father found love again.”
I put the rifle down and thought for a second. Pieces started to fall into place.
“With your mother, right?” I said. “Your mom was Ms. O’Connor, the illicit mistress, and you’re the illicit daughter. It all makes sense.”
“You’re quite the genius, Gary,” she said.
I prodded her some more. “Tell me, Evangeline, was it a one-night thing with your mother, or ongoing. Did Russo even care about her?”
She trained her gun on me, but didn’t fire. “You know, Gary, when I was plotting my revenge and entertained the idea of involving your son like this, I almost didn’t do it. I had second thoughts about involving an innocent child. But now I don’t; I made the right decision.”
“What about your mother?” Mick said, deflecting again. “Tell me about her.”
Eva shifted toward Mick, but didn’t lower the gun. “They were madly in love at one point. My father was trying to get out of the Mafia and become a legitimate businessman. He wanted to lead a normal life. The feds, however, insisted he stay in and become their informant. But my father was not, and never would be, a snitch. Never in a million years. In an attempt to extort him into service, the feds approached my mother and poisoned her against my father, just like they did with his wife. They showed her all this supposed evidence of people he murdered and maimed,
which they completely fabricated, by the way.”
“Fabricated?” I gave a short laugh. “Come on, Evangeline. They wouldn’t need to fabricate anything.”
She ignored me. “My father tried to undo it, but the damage was done. My mother broke off their relationship and fled to Baltimore. Wanted nothing to do with my father. What she didn’t know at the time, and wouldn’t find out for another two months, is that she was pregnant with me. My father didn’t find out about me until I was five years old. Once he found out, he relocated to the area so he could be near me.”
“To brainwash you, too” I said. “From an early age. To poison you against your own country.”
She shook her head at me. “Such a simplistic view, Gary. The type of view that comes from a delusional American who thinks the federal government is innocent and pure and could never engage in corruption.”
“I could say the same about you, Evangeline, about your simplistic and childish view of your father. Your crazy idea that he is basically a good man and has done nothing wrong, a poor victim of our horrible government and his unfortunate experiences.”
Eva scoffed. “The point is that he was trying to become a legitimate, stand-up businessman, but the feds kept dragging him down. They wouldn’t let him move on from his past. His past wasn’t his fault; he was born in Italy, into the Mafia. It was the only way of life he knew until he moved to America. And then America destroyed everything he loved, twice over. He was trying to do what was right.”
“So he used you as his weapon of revenge,” I said. “Is that it? Put you through the best schools and molded you in his image. Got you a government job so you could spy on and betray your own country.”
“I have my own mind. I make my own decisions. My father made sure I had an incredible education. He sent me to the best boarding school and college money could buy. Having the best education means I can think for myself. As I moved through the ranks in the intelligence community, I witnessed all kinds of government corruption. My father didn’t ‘brainwash’ anything into me. I saw the corruption first-hand.”
“You’re unbelievable. So you abused your position in the intelligence community and got into arms dealing, into dirty business with your dirty father. Everything Stanley found on your hard drive was true evidence of your involvement, wasn’t it? You sold secrets about arms deals to America’s enemies for payback, for what the government did to your father.”
She stabbed the gun at me. “This isn’t just about my father—”
“What evidence on the hard drive?” Mick said. “What are you talking about?”
I hadn’t given Mick all the details about Operation Crucible. “Stanley had—”
Eva fired a shot into the shipping container out of anger. I held my breath, hoping the kid didn’t get hit. A second later I heard Stanley scrambling around inside.
“I’ll kill the kid, Gary, if you don’t shut up. He’s the reason this has gotten more complicated. He’s certainly expendable. In fact, you’re all expendable.” She turned back to Mick. “The feds froze all my father’s assets and deported him back to Italy with just the clothes on his back. They didn’t honor the deal they promised, to let him keep the money he’d funneled offshore. And because of what Gary did to him, the humiliation has continued in his homeland. When he got home he was shunned by the Mafioso, couldn’t even show his face in the local village. He had to hide out in his own villa, and pretty much still does to this day.”
I was about to antagonize her more, but decided against it. For Stanley’s sake.
“My father,” she continued, “had a certain lifestyle he was accustomed to, but he had no way to make a living to support himself or even cover the expenses of his villa. So, yes, he and I went into business together. I have access to all the intel, and he has the foreign connections. It was a good match.”
Mick shook his head and held up his hands. “You didn’t have a problem selling out the country where you were born and raised?”
“You have a naïve understanding of arms trading, Agent Cranston.”
“How so?” he said.
Eva thought for a second, then said, “Historically speaking, our government has funneled arms to many countries. And many of those countries have eventually become our enemies. America always arms the lesser of two evils in any foreign squabble, but those same arms our government donates or sells will end up being given or sold to anti-American groups or countries at some point. My father and I had no problem speeding up the process, so to speak.”
“And no problem benefiting from the betrayal,” I added.
Mick jumped in before Eva responded. “How did you do it; sell the arms, that is?”
She smiled. “It was easy because of my maximum-security-level clearance, and how good I am at digital eavesdropping. I’d find out locations and times for when our government was planning to deliver arms to our allies. I’d give that information to my father and one of his associates, and they’d broker a deal with certain groups. The groups would then intercept the arms. Those groups would pay a pretty penny for the information we were selling.”
“Those groups?” I said. “You can’t even say their names, can you? Is that how you justify this in your mind? Just convince yourself you’re selling information to some innocuous group and not a group like ISIS that beheads innocent civilians. Unbelievable.”
Eva trained her gun on the shipping container. “I wouldn’t expect either of you to understand, not with your nice, suburban, middle-class upbringings. I don’t need to justify anything to you two anyway.”
Mick redirected. “How did Stanley get involved in all this? Where did the kid come into play?”
Eva lowered the gun a little. “Stanley had hounded me for a job for almost a year. Naturally, I had to handle the situation delicately because of his father. The kid crossed a line, though, when he hacked my computer and found the arms evidence. I sent him death threats, and thought that was the end of everything. But Stanley wouldn’t let it go. What he probably didn’t tell you Gary is that he sent the CIA an anonymous email stating that he believed somebody within the SCS, most likely on the NSA side, had been selling arms secrets. In the email, he included a few incriminating lines from emails between me, my father, and my father’s associate, with the promise that more emails could be sent. So now I had a huge problem with Stanley, and with the CIA since they sent Gates to investigate. The kid had the original evidence and wasn’t scared to use it.”
She waved the gun in my general direction. “When the governor requested protection for Stanley because of my death threats, I saw the perfect opportunity to deal with him and Gary. I knew Stanley was book smart, but not very street smart. The kid was naïve and pretty gullible. So I sold him a grand story about how the arms evidence wasn’t real. About how I was field testing Gary for an SCS position. And the kid bought it. He was in way over his head.”
“Now I understand,” Mick said. “You promised Stanley a job if he planted the arms evidence he’d discovered on Chase’s computer, essentially framing him for your crimes.”
“It was brilliant,” Eva said, smiling. “The email evidence that Stanley had implicated three people, so I needed three people to frame. I knew the CIA wouldn’t rest until they figured out who was selling arms secrets. Three people needed to go down as traitors, and it certainly wasn’t going to be me, my father, and my father’s associate.”
I shook my head. “So it was me, Stanley, and Mick.”
“It was perfect,” Eva said. “Stanley had the hacking ability to break into secure government mainframes and steal arms information. The fact that I had evidence of him spying on the TV network made that assertion of Stanley completely plausible. Since Stanley’s email to the CIA mentioned that an insider was involved in selling secrets, quite possibly from the NSA side, I had to shift the investigation away from me.”
Mick stabbed his gun at Eva. “To me, obviously.”
She nodded. “Exactly. When the CIA got wind of
somebody selling arms secrets, they immediately confiscated the computers of every SCS member, including mine and yours, Agent Cranston.”
Mick clenched his fist. “I wondered what that was about.”
Eva looked at Mick and continued. “Fortunately, I’d wiped all incriminating evidence off my computer immediately after Stanley hacked my computer. And I knew the CIA wouldn’t find any direct evidence on your computer, but what if they found the evidence on your best friend’s computer?” She smiled, waving her gun toward my corner. “So the third person involved in possibly the biggest traitorous act in American history, and the man with all the incriminating evidence on his computer, is Mr. Garrison Chase. Who isn’t employed in the NSA or CIA and therefore not smart enough to wipe his computer clean.” She grinned. “It’s good practice telling this story; I’m going to have to do it again in a few hours.”
Everything in me wanted to take her out right then. But I had no shot.
She kept going. “So Stanley is the computer hacker and eavesdropper, the one who will be tied to my emails. The emails from my father and his associate will be linked to Cranston and Gary. Which makes sense since you guys are friends and were both involved with The Activity. So you’d be aware of seedy foreign groups to approach and broker deals with.”
She paused, probably to let it sink in, or just to gloat.
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. All I could think about was how beyond screwed I was. Eva had been meticulously plotting her revenge. She’d set me up as the fall guy for her traitorous actions, and it appeared she had an airtight case against me. I looked at Simon, strapped to Eva’s chest, and felt grief pour through me. What kind of life would Simon lead, with a dead traitor for a father?
Mick blasted on with questions, interrupting my thoughts. “So you bring me into this and implicate me in the story because you need a corrupt inside agent within the SCS. Did you really believe I would kill the governor’s son, my best friend, and also burn down his house? Why not use your father’s associate to do your dirty deeds? He’s your father’s paid hitman, right?”
The Greatest Good Page 28