by Ty Patterson
‘So, how?’ Meghan asked.
‘I don’t …’ Zeb trailed off, his eyes widening as they landed on Angie.
‘Hey!’ she protested when he snatched the ever-present handbag hanging off her shoulder.
He dumped its contents on the floor and crouched. Lipstick, breath fresheners, makeup kit, a pen, a diary, a wallet. He riffled through the last item and went through all the cards it was carrying.
No tracking device in the bag.
He fingered its soft leather sides. Smooth. Nothing uneven.
He felt its bottom. It was thick and stiff. Some kind of board around which the leather had been stitched.
His knife appeared and, to Angie’s accompanying yell, he slashed the bag’s bottom and yanked out the flooring board.
Turned it over, and there it was.
He held it up for the others to see. A shiny disc neatly embedded in the board.
‘What’s that?’ Konstantin breathed, fascinated.
‘A GPS tracker. That’s how they knew where she was at any time. The bag was the only item I didn’t search. My mistake.’
‘How did it get there?’
‘I never go anywhere without my bag,’ Angie said. ‘I don’t know how that device —’
‘This isn’t your bag.’ Meghan cut her off. ‘This is a duplicate. Someone switched your bag with it. I bet you leave yours unattended for periods of time. At restaurants. With friends, who might get distracted … many such times. Beth and I, we used to do the same.’
Until we joined the Agency.
‘Switched? You know how much the original cost?’ Angie demanded.
‘We were just beginning to like you,’ Meghan told her coldly, at which the daughter flushed.
‘Is that how they knew where I was?’ she asked softly.
‘Yeah. Besides, they had you followed for a while and knew your routine.’
‘Won’t they know I am here?’ she asked fearfully.
‘They,’ Meghan pointed to the living room, ‘are dead.’
‘You said some mastermind could be behind this,’ Angie replied heatedly.
‘Yes. But whoever that is will not attack now. Not when this place is bristling with cops.’
A loud sound silenced them. Zeb smashing the device with a hammer he had found in the kitchen.
‘You need anything else from us?’ he asked Pizaka and Chang.
‘No.’ Pizaka put on his shades and straightened his tie. There were media trucks outside, reporters and camera people. It was time for his show to begin.
‘In that case,’ Zeb caught Angie’s elbow and led her through the rear exit and out of the house.
Beth and Meghan regrouped in their office later in the day, after a brief nap.
There were no more updates from Chang on the night’s events. The second shooter was not in the system, and no one had come forward to identify him.
He had nothing for them on the parking lot and Times Square attacks.
Beth set Werner to look into Terrence Kloops while Meghan made them coffee. As the aroma of Jamaican Blue Mountain filled the room, the sisters went to a concealed safe in a wall and brought out an array of tools. A miniature cell tower that looked like a roof-mounted TV antenna. Grips, gloves, wire cutters, surveillance devices, gear that would delight a cat burglar.
‘Pizaka will have a stroke if he knows what we’re planning,’ Beth smirked as she loaded the tools in a backpack.
‘Uh-huh,’ Meghan replied distractedly.
‘What’s on your mind?’
‘Hidalgo said something about a network.’
‘I remember. He said no one had come across anyone more dangerous than Nikolai.’
‘Perhaps we should talk to this network.’
‘I like how you think, sis.’
‘You’ll like this idea as well, then,’ Meghan said with a smirk. ‘Fancy calling Andropov?’
‘Why?’
‘Interpol came back. The men in the parking lot. They were Russian criminals. They came into the country a week before the attack.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Grigor Andropov ran a secretive outfit in Moscow that was similar to the Agency. Zeb and he were good friends, and on meeting the sisters, Andropov had become yet another member of their fan club.
He was an inch taller than Zeb, in his late fifties, but he looked a decade younger. He was lean, had short, dark hair that had started to grey, and his green eyes were smiling when the sisters brought him up on a video call.
‘Zeb is working you hard, no? Come to Moscow. I’ll work for you.’
‘It’s too cold there, Grigor. Besides, Zeb works for us,’ Beth chuckled. ‘He just doesn’t know it.’
In reality, while Zeb was the lead operative of the Agency, there was no hierarchy. The team worked as a single unit, a family.
‘You didn’t call me to just to talk,’ Andropov said when they had finished with the pleasantries. ‘Is this related to Angie Konstantin?’
‘Dang it,’ Beth fumed in mock anger. ‘How did you know about that?’
‘There’s enough media coverage about the attacks on her. In the latest one, there was a mention of two women PIs. No names were mentioned, but …’
‘Yeah, we’re involved,’ Beth admitted, ‘which is why we called.’
She broke down the entire timeline for him and waited while he turned it over in his mind.
‘Nikolai? That’s all Hidalgo gave you?’
‘Yeah. There was the number he called from, but that’s a dead-end. A burner phone, probably,’ she grimaced, knowing where he was coming from. There would be thousands of Nikolais in Russia.
‘His name doesn’t ring a bell,’ Andropov replied, ‘but that only means he is so good he hasn’t crossed my radar. You want me to ask around?’
‘Yeah, and there’s something else. Those six men who attacked us in her building’s basement? They are Russian. Interpol sent us the details.’
‘Share them with me. I can check out who hired them.’
‘There will be cut-outs,’ Meghan warned.
‘Of course, but the underground world isn’t large. I can find someone who can be persuaded to talk,’ Andropov replied.
Despite the tense relationship between Russia and the U.S., Zeb and Andropov regularly pooled intel and assisted each other on cases. National security mattered, but so did global safety.
Beth emailed the Russian the identities of the six hitters and then brought up security camera footage at JFK.
Werner had face-recognition software built in, and it took a mere few minutes to scan through the huge dataset to identify the Russians. They traveled in a group, making no attempt to conceal their faces.
The footage ended when they exited the airport’s concourse.
‘No one met them,’ she said in disappointment.
‘Not that we could see,’ Meghan corrected her. ‘Try checking street cameras.’
‘That hasn’t been very successful. And it would take a long time.’
‘We have time.’
Beth gave Werner new instructions and opened Hidalgo’s folder.
‘He’s got shell companies and accounts all over the place.’
‘Standard operating procedure,’ Meghan grunted over her shoulder. ‘Did you check the money trail?’
‘Yes. Werner’s referenced the payments received five years back. We have to assume a lot was paid in cash. There are two payments.’ She tapped the screen. ‘One came from a bank in Bermuda, the other from a Russian one.’
‘Would Nikolai be that obvious?’
‘If he’s got an ego, yeah.’
‘You’re looking into them?’
‘Yes.’ She looked at her sister in irritation. ‘Did you find anything about Kloops? It looks like I’m the only one doing some work.’
‘Oh, ye of little faith,’ Meghan replied smugly, as she turned her screen around to face Beth. ‘You want to know who he dated?’
‘No.’ Her sister
thumped her desk. ‘Anything on why he suddenly turned killer?’
‘No,’ Meghan admitted. ‘His financials are complex and will take some time to unravel. He has accounts all over the world and moves money regularly. So far, Werner hasn’t found anything suspicious. He was a gun nut. A collection in his house, assault rifles and the like.’
‘What about his —’
‘We’ve hacked into his emails and phone records. No red flag there, either. There’s one thing, however.’
‘What?’
‘He was a gamer. Bought a ton of them regularly. Those violent, shoot-em-up ones.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ Beth said in disgust.
‘He was also part of a gaming community.’
‘Again, means nothing.’
‘This was underground.’
Beth swiveled her chair and rocked back, her eyes closed. ‘You mean in the darknet.’
Websites in the darknet weren’t accessible to Jane or Joe Public. Not unless they had the links, and even then, there were hoops to jump through.
These were invariably illegal sites that criminals operated for their businesses. Payments were made with cryptocurrency and were virtually untraceable.
‘For all his security, he saved the link and his password in a draft email.’
Meghan typed in the url and logged into the site. A pop-up appeared and asked a series of verification questions that she answered.
‘You’ve done your homework,’ Beth acknowledged.
‘I always do.’
And then the pop-up turned on her machine’s camera.
She shut down the site before the video could load and steepled her fingers. ‘I haven’t got past that security check.’
Beth’s silence didn’t last long. She leaned forward, her fingers flashing over her keyboard.
‘What —’
She held a finger up imperiously to silence her sister and continued working.
An hour later, she settled back.
‘Now, bring that site up on my machine.’
Meghan brought the link up and ran through the verification steps.
Beth brushed her hands away when the pop-up loaded the camera and pressed a key.
‘What are you doing?’ Meghan cried, ducking and pushing her away when their images appeared on the screen.
‘Relax,’ Beth wheeled her chair back to her machine.
Meghan’s protest died when the gaming site loaded. ‘What did you do?’
‘I spliced a video together from Kloops’ public appearances. Inserted our office backdrop …’ she raised her right palm, high-fived her sister and turned back to the site.
‘There’s nothing here,’ she muttered in disgust after studying it for a while and navigating through the menu. ‘It’s like an auction-based shoot-’em-up game. The players bid for taking down targets, all of them make-believe. The price depends on the value of the target. It goes up when players bid for the same target, and who bids the most, wins.’
‘What has that got to do with Angie?’
‘Nothing.’ She went to a discussion forum where players talked about the game and boasted about their kills.
‘Why’s it underground, in that case?’
‘Because it’s violent? I’ll need to study it some more. Don’t we have to get somewhere?’
Meghan straightened when she glanced at her watch.
‘Let’s go.’
It was time to bug Hidalgo’s bar.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was dark by the time they reached the Blue River. The driveway was packed, and a stream of revelers was entering the joint when they arrived.
The sisters were dressed in jeans and hoodies, beneath which they wore black skin suits. Their backpacks in the rear seat, their weapons on their bodies.
Meghan drove around Westchester Avenue and headed to the quieter street. The restaurant had long since closed, a dim light at its front illuminating a wall-mounted menu.
A delivery van rumbled to the rear of the Blue River, and workers hustled as they unloaded crates of drinks. She parked down the street, facing the back entrance of the bar.
‘We wait,’ she announced. She adjusted her seat, lowered its backrest and closed her eyes.
At three am, her eyes opened.
The city was quiet. It never slept, and there was still the muted growl of traffic from Westchester Avenue, but it was much quieter.
She pointed a thermal imager at the bar, which was lit from the interior. No humans present.
They probably leave the lights turned on.
She nudged Beth, who woke up immediately, brushed her eyes and stifled a yawn.
They removed their outer clothes and exited softly, making sure the SUV’s doors didn’t thunk shut loudly. No dome light appeared, because they never turned it on.
Beth brought out a device and ran around the perimeter of the bar. Shook her head when she returned. No motion sensors in the backyard.
They scaled the small wall and waited. No alarms rang, no lights turned on.
The backyard had a neatly maintained garden. Sprinklers turned on and off, watering the lawn. The dark windows at the back cut off most light from inside. But there was a couple of pale glows high up, which flickered.
Meghan held her hand up. Beth stopped. They studied the light for a moment.
TVs, the elder sister mouthed. On reaching the rear walls, they came across their first problem. Meghan had figured on climbing over the windows and getting to the roof. However, the glass was fitted with intrusion detection alarms.
No idea what make they are. Some of them go off if pressure is applied.
To her left, a wall separated the deli’s rear from the Blue River. No idea what’s over there. We’ll lose time if we check it out.
To her right, the sides of the bar curved around the corner. No windows, just a concrete surface. They could climb that surface, however it faced Westchester Avenue. Passing traffic would illuminate them.
What if we’re quick?
Beth shoulder-bumped her and went ahead, making the decision for her.
The wall was twenty feet high, not insurmountable.
The sisters tightened their backpacks, secured their Glocks in their shoulder holsters and climbed rapidly using suction grips.
They froze at the midway point when a car passed, its twin lights sweeping across the bar beneath them. They tensed, listening. The vehicle didn’t slow down. Its driver didn’t honk or shout out. They relaxed when its sound receded in the distance and resumed climbing.
The roof was flat and presented no obstruction to their landing.
They bent over double and ran towards their destination, the AC vent.
A loud clatter.
They froze and looked down. The younger twin had stepped on a stray piece of pipe.
Meghan frowned at her savagely and crept towards the side. No lights had come on. No heads peered out of any window.
Dumbass, she whispered, and they proceeded carefully to the vent, next to which was an old-fashioned TV antenna.
They had spotted it during their recon run when they visited the bar the first time. It’s not in use; the bar has cable. However, no one had bothered to remove the antenna.
They knelt and removed their backpacks.
Beth extracted the components of the cell tower and assembled it. Meghan removed fastenings and a battery pack from her bag.
They taped the tower to the antenna, secured it to the roof, and powered it up.
Meghan withdrew her screen and motioned at Beth, who made a call to the bar. The tower captured the call and displayed it on her screen.
The elder sister nodded and the two left the roof. They reached their SUV and put on their outer clothing again.
With one last glance at the antenna, Meghan drove out.
The tower would capture all incoming and outgoing calls across all bands. It would even snag encrypted calls. The military-grade device they were using wasn’
t available in any Best Buy or any online store. They’d significantly enhanced it, and only the NSA had comparable equipment.
‘If luck’s on our side,’ Meghan told her sister as she parked in their basement lot, ‘Nikolai will call.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nikolai didn’t call.
He knew about the report the PIs had filed with the cops. Making contact with Hidalgo would be pointless.
He knew of Kloops’ death, too. He couldn’t miss it. It was widely covered by the world’s media, all of them speculating on why the millionaire had turned killer. They interviewed his associates, his staff, some of his ex-girlfriends, but no one had any answer.
Nikolai also knew the NYPD were clueless. They hadn’t made any progress and were hoping for a stroke of luck.
Nikolai Khem believed in luck.
He was smart, sure. He was wealthy, immensely rich, but it was luck that Anatole Kharkov, Russia’s foremost arms dealer, had been his father.
Nikolai had inherited the business when his father died. His mother had long ago passed away, and while his father had taken a steady stream of mistresses, none had taken over the role of mother.
Nikolai also knew he was lucky because he had good looks. He didn’t have a pound of spare flesh on him — that wasn’t luck — but he had dark, thick hair that women loved to curl their fingers into, flashing dark eyes, and an easy smile. He had a chiseled chin and sharp jawbones and attracted female attention in any social gathering.
Nikolai was a gifted conversationalist. He could talk about just about any subject, and that came in handy when he was courting a woman. It was also a useful trait to have when making friends with politicians.
Anatole’s weapons business was restricted to Eastern Europe. Nikolai had expanded that. He sold weapons to Syria, to both Iraq and Iran. He made friends with disillusioned soldiers in the U.S. Army and got them to smuggle arms out.
Middle Eastern countries, African dictators, and South American governments were in his client list. He had a well-established supply chain and willing customers, as well as powerful friends in the Kremlin. The world was his oyster.