“Mr. Severin … .” He stopped.
“I know. It’s a tight spot, isn’t it? You’re probably finding it a little harder to breathe. Feeling that weird tingle in your legs, like you need to sit down. So now we come to that proverbial question: What is your life and freedom worth? What are my broken arm and concussion worth? What is Wallace’s ruined hair worth? I’ve put a lot of thought into this, Ben. I’m not greedy. I was raised Lutheran. I think $200,000 is entirely fair and reasonable. Two hundred thousand would make me very happy. And for you, this whole mess goes away.”
More silence.
“You’re close to saying yes, aren’t you? But you have your doubts. You might be thinking to yourself, hey, this guy is full of shit. Does he really know anything? What are the chances? Did he actually find the three bodies I buried under the compost heap back on that lonely country road a few kilometers northeast of Yinzhen? Did he actually recover some of the Winchester Super X .32 ACP bullets from the skulls of my victims, and that one brass shell casing I couldn’t find? Did he then get hold of a slug from the Fairfax County gun range where I got my nonresident concealed carry permit last year? Did he then have an old police lab buddy compare the bullets’ striations, land and groove impressions, and other rifling characteristics? And did it turn out the bullets were fired by the same gun? And did the interpreter, Yu Lin, and the other Fang—Fang Hou—see that I was alone in the van when I passed them as they sat in their car on the shoulder, waiting for me on that fateful night? So many questions, right? And so much at stake.” Severin took a breath, letting Holloman chew on what he’d just heard. “So, what does your gut tell you, Ben?”
Severin could hear Holloman breathing through his nose on the other end of the line. “Mr. Severin, what you’re trying to do is called extortion. That’s a felony. A real felony. Not some trumped up bull like what you’re pushing on me.”
“I’m not going to argue with you, Ben. I know you’re good for the cash, though you probably won’t be able to liquidate assets until banking hours tomorrow. But as I said, I’m a reasonable man. So here’s the deal. At 4 p.m. tomorrow, you’ll meet me at the front door of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, bearing in mind that there will be lots of people and probably a handful of police officers there. You’ll bring the money in a paper grocery bag. In fact, why don’t you go ahead and double-bag it. You’ll hand it off to me as though you’re giving an old friend—a bachelor friend who can’t cook—leftover pot roast that your nonexistent wife made a little extra of. If you don’t do that, Ben, then tomorrow evening I’ll give a copy of everything I have to the D.C. Bar Association, the D.C. Police, the State Department, the FBI, Kristin Powell’s family, and the Chinese Embassy. See you tomorrow.”
Severin hung up. Then he and Zhang watched as Holloman continued to hold the phone to his ear for several moments, looking perplexed. Finally, he set the phone down on a coffee table and sat back down on the couch.
“He sat back down!” Zhang said in disbelief. “Damn. He isn’t the killer, is he?”
“I can still see the word ‘mute’ on the TV screen.”
“Huh?”
“The sound on the TV is still off. Keep watching.”
A few seconds later, Holloman sprang to his feet and disappeared down his hallway. And barely five minutes after that, his front door opened and he emerged wearing a heavy overcoat and toting a roller board suitcase. When he got to the sidewalk, he gave the western direction of his street a long stare. Then the eastern direction. There were no pedestrians. He gave each car a thorough look. Severin wasn’t worried, knowing Holloman would never be able to see them through their tinted windshield and in the deep shadow of the chestnut tree at this distance. Then Holloman took off down the sidewalk at a fast pace, disappearing around the corner as he turned south on 30th Street.
“What should we do?” Zhang asked.
“I’m going to follow him on foot. You stay with the car. I’ll call you. Then you keep me on speaker phone and follow in the car, but always out of sight. I’ll tell you when it’s safe to turn each corner.”
Severin hopped out of the car and took off after Holloman, dialing Zhang as he did so. He kept a discreet distance, using parked vehicles and trees for cover, following Holloman down the block. Holloman looked over his shoulder about every five seconds.
“He’s turning east onto N Street,” Severin said.
“M?”
“N, as in Nincompoop. You can turn onto 30th now.”
“That’s a big 10-4, good buddy.”
“Stay close. We need to be ready in case this numb nut hops a cab.”
Severin followed Holloman east on N Street, south on 29th, east on Olive, and south on 28th, realizing as he did so that Holloman was, like someone in a spy movie, probably taking a zig-zagging route in an attempt to either pick up on or ditch any tails—probably also the reason he didn’t just hail a cab close to home. Continuing his odd route through Georgetown, he made his way across Rock Creek and onto Pennsylvania Avenue, finally turning south once more, this time onto 24th.
“He might be making for the Foggy Bottom metro station. If he is, I’ll probably lose my cell signal when I follow him in. If you lose me, just park close by and wait.”
“Copy that.”
As Severin predicted, Holloman crossed the street and disappeared down the tunnel entrance to the Foggy Bottom Metro station. Severin waited on a group of five young men wearing backpacks—probably students at nearby George Washington University—and then followed them onto the escalator, using the gathered cluster of them for concealment. Emerging onto the platform, he caught sight of Holloman standing at the far end, looking back toward the entrance. He looked tense. Afraid. His jaw was clenched. He was taking furtive looks at each of the people around him. Severin ducked behind a raised advertising structure, waited, and watched. A Blue Line train came roaring into the station, the breeze from its wake blasting Severin as it passed. Severin made ready to jump aboard. But Holloman didn’t get on. He was waiting for either an Orange or Silver Line train in the direction of Vienna or Reston, Virginia. When an Orange Line train finally arrived seven minutes later, Holloman boarded the last car. Severin hopped aboard four cars away and took a seat right by the door. The doors slid shut, and the train zipped away, into the deep tunnel under the Potomac River and into Virginia. They headed west, stopping at numerous stations in Arlington. As soon as the tracks emerged from underground, Severin called Zhang and told him to race out to Dulles Airport and then more-or-less patrol the western half of the main terminal ticketing area, walking back and forth, watching for Holloman. When Severin got there, if he lost site of Holloman, then he’d do the same in the eastern half.
At each metro station stop, Severin stuck his head out of the open doors to watch for Holloman getting off the train. It wasn’t until they reached the West Falls Church station that he finally got off. Exiting the station, he hopped in a cab. Severin followed suit. “You see that green cab that’s pulling out?” he asked his obese driver. “Well, I’ve always wanted to say this. Follow that car.” Holloman’s cab made its way onto Virginia State Route 267—the Dulles Access Road—and sped west, with Severin’s cab in pursuit.
Just over 20 minutes later, Severin watched as Holloman’s cab pulled to the curb at the main terminal of Dulles Airport. As he followed Holloman into the ticketing area, he phoned Zhang, learning he was still five minutes away. Holloman went straight to a ticketing agent via an airline’s preferred frequent-flier queue and began a conversation that lasted several minutes. Severin lurked close by, doing his best to stay concealed behind other people who stood in line. Holloman finally handed over a credit card and passport. The ticketing agent then printed out and stuck a baggage tag to the handle of Holloman’s suitcase as Holloman put away his passport, credit card, and wallet. And in the brief moment that the suitcase sat exposed, waiting to be put on the luggage conveyor belt, Severin took the opportunity to make a quick, close pass�
�briefly tempted to give Holloman a wedgie as he walked behind him—and spied the three-letter code for the final destination airport printed on the luggage tag: KSA.
As Severin walked away, he punched the code into the search engine on his smart-phone. KSA was the code for Kosrea International Airport, in the Federated States of Micronesia.
“Don’t park. Just pick me up on the departures curb,” he told Zhang on the phone a minute later.
“Shouldn’t we try to stop him?”
“To do what with? You going to make a citizen’s arrest, Gomer Pyle?”
“We aren’t getting on the flight with him? We aren’t even calling the cops?”
“Would they arrest him based on his response to our faux blackmail scheme, or would they arrest us instead? No, we have everything we need. Thorvaldsson will be satisfied.”
“So it’s Miller Time.”
“You drink Miller?”
“No.”
*****
As Severin sat down in the car next to Zhang, he took a deep breath as though he’d just crossed the finish line of a footrace. “Well,” he said. “Our adventure wasn’t entirely unoriginal now, was it?”
“It had its original moments. Speaking of which, what are you going to call your memoir about all of this?”
“How about Sorghum Wars?”
“Too much like Star Wars.”
“Raiders of the Lost Sorghum?”
“Better.”
“But if I go to all the trouble of writing a manuscript, will it sell?” Severin asked.
“Definitely. The story really captures the zeitgeist.”
“What’s a zeitgeist? An abominable snow beast from a Nazi children’s story?”
“The defining spirit of our times, sir. Think about it. Xenophobia. Sinophobia. Globalizationophobia. Biggovernmentconspiracyophobia.”
“That’s a lot of phobias.”
“Phobias sell. The Big Six publishing houses will be all over it. It’ll be a best seller.”
“I’m sure.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“The tag on his suitcase bore the code for Kosrae International Airport, in Micronesia—a nation of small and very remote tropical islands just north of the Equator in the Western Pacific,” Severin said as he sat in a massive leather chair back in the great room of Orin Thorvaldsson’s house on Lopez Island, sipping another double Pappy Van Winkle bourbon. There was no roaring fire this time. The fireplace was dark and cold, as was the room.
“Micronesia?”
“No extradition treaty.”
“Ah.”
Thorvaldsson sat scanning a single sheet of paper Severin had handed to him. A summary page for his report.
“Given that he ran for it after I bluffed him, and considering all of the other evidence, I believe we can safely conclude that Holloman killed your niece in Shandong Province, China. I’m sure you’ll want to recover her remains. There are contact numbers at the bottom of the page for the appropriate officials at both the U.S. State Department and the Embassy of China in D.C.”
Quite suddenly, Thorvaldsson seemed to shrink before Severin’s eyes. He didn’t look like the confident, powerful, and possibly ruthless international trade magnate he had seemed at their last meeting. Now he looked mortal. Almost weak. And sad. “Thank you,” he muttered.
Severin was tempted to ask him whether he’d indeed been using his beloved niece as a pawn to find out what his competition was up to, or to ensure their downfall via the application of high tariffs at the hands of the Commerce Department. But it would have served no useful purpose. And Severin figured he already knew the heartbreaking answer.
*****
Scant minutes after Severin left Thorvaldsson’s estate on Lopez Island, Thorvaldsson retreated to a corner of his basement where he had an enclosed, two-position shooting range set up in a long, narrow room of cinderblock walls. There, he put on ear and eye protection, then opened a locker and took out four preloaded weapons. A Sig Sauer .45 pistol, a Remington 870 shotgun loaded with buckshot, a Belgian FN FAL battle rifle, and an H&K MP5 submachine gun—Kristin’s old favorite. He spent the next few minutes firing each at a paper human silhouette target downrange until the target was nothing more than a wide ring of paper surrounded by confetti.
After putting the guns away, Thorvaldsson crossed to the opposite corner of his basement where the foundation abutted solid bedrock. There, he punched the keys of a 10-digit electronic cypher lock and opened a heavy metal door to a 6-by-10 strong room. To a casual observer, it would have appeared to contain nothing more than a table, desk lamp, chair, and antiquated laptop computer. But it also contained a concealed coupling wire connecting the laptop to the base of a large antenna embedded in concrete in the corner of the room—an antenna that protruded up through the floors of the house to an array disguised as a tin chimney on the roof.
Thorvaldsson stepped in, switched on the desk lamp, and secured the door behind him before sitting down and powering up the computer. Situated, he reflected with some amazement on the fact that that alcoholic washout, Lars Severin, had come through for him, despite having started with little more than the pitiful State Department report and the Seattle address for the importer Sun Ocean Trading. Thorvaldsson had expected him to do little more than serve as bait that might bring more information to the surface.
Hiring Severin had been a bit of a desperate move, given the risk that the man would blunder, get caught by Xiu’s people, and be compelled to reveal that he was working for Thorvaldsson. But then again, it would have made little difference in the big picture. By now Xiu was well aware of the fact that Thorvaldsson and the rest of the trade cartel were out to get him, furious that he’d betrayed the cartel by disregarding their handshake import price-setting agreement and was now undercutting them with the help of that weasel attorney, Holloman. And if Severin had gotten himself arrested by the Chinese authorities, he wouldn’t have known enough to cause Thorvaldsson any trouble where it really mattered.
With regard to that, Thorvaldsson was also somewhat surprised that, at least as far as he knew, nobody along the way had connected enough dots to suspect that he was a facilitator of espionage. For in truth, in addition to being an international trade magnate, he assisted in the placement and oversight of intelligence agents in the Far East for the Defense Clandestine Service arm of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. And though it hardly mattered now, it brought Thorvaldsson a modicum of technical satisfaction and sense of absolution to know that nobody had exposed his niece or Bill Keen as the DIA spies that they were. Nobody had pierced their long-term cover as clean-handed Department of Commerce investigators whose work took them to China several times each year for the ostensible purpose of conducting antidumping investigations. What happened to them had nothing to do with the primary reason Thorvaldsson arranged to have them sent to Qingdao. And they probably hadn’t suffered.
The one thing Thorvaldsson still couldn’t wrap his head around was the fact that, despite all Kristin’s achievements, experience, and training, she had been, at heart, a fragile and emotionally needy little girl. One who’s self-esteem was so low that she could be lured into marriage by the self-serving attentions and strokes of a creep like Wesley Powell. Thorvaldsson knew that her childhood, under the roof of two hyper-overachieving type-A parents, hadn’t been all hugs and pats on the back. But had it been utterly devoid of unconditional love? Had it really been so difficult for her to overcome? Was the hole it left in her heart really that big? And how could she—a worldly, accomplished, and intelligent young woman—have believed a man like Wesley could fill it? He would never understand.
Taking a deep breath, Thorvaldsson leaned forward and typed out a brief, three-paragraph report, paraphrasing a portion of Severin’s own report, confirming that his niece and her colleague had not been arrested or liquidated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security. That their cover as Department of Commerce investigators, and their mission to obtain high-resolution side view photog
raphs of the Chinese Type 096 ballistic missile submarine, were never blown. That is, there was no exposure—no apparent risk of fallout from an intelligence operations perspective.
Additionally, Thorvaldsson thought without adding it to his report, no one—on either the Chinese or U.S. side of things—figured out that Kristin had also been positioned to gather information on how the double-crossing Mr. Xiu had been getting away with fraud that harmed the competitive positions of one of Thorvaldsson’s own subsidiary import firms. Indeed, the second secret component of Kristin’s mission was never known to anyone other than her and Thorvaldsson. Instead, Kristin and Bill had been murdered by an American attorney whose fraud they’d discovered in the course of their overt cover work as Commerce investigators. A soulless D.C. lawyer who must have taken them by surprise, shooting them from behind before they could react.
When Thorvaldsson finished, his eyes wet with tears, he clicked a button that automatically encrypted the message and sent it off in a flash radio transmission to the Jim Creek Naval Radio Station, 30 miles to the southeast. From there, the message would be instantaneously relayed by an extremely powerful VLF antenna, clear across the continent to a cubicle manned by a beached U.S. Navy commander in the Western Pacific Naval Operations section of Defense Intelligence Agency Headquarters in Washington, D.C. A week later, the classified file containing the records of the operation—with all of its names, stories, and lessons—would be closed, never to be opened again.
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