“Foreign?”
“I pegged him for a Brit. Nice accent, good manners.”
“Anything else?” Osborne asked.
Debbie shook her head, but then brightened a little. “Something on GMA got to him, ’cause I was bringing him another pot of hot water and a tea bag, when he looked up and told me that he wanted his bill.”
“Did you hear what the announcer was saying?”
“No. He was listening on an earbud.”
“Thanks,” Osborne said.
* * *
OUTSIDE THEY climbed into Osborne’s Saturn SUV. “It’s how he monitored Basin Power’s control center, and probably the Stark County Sheriff’s dispatch frequency,” he told Ashley.
“So he waits here until he finds out that the lineman is on site, and boogies out. But you pretty well know something like that had to have happened. He had to have holed up somewhere. What’s next?”
“We head east. He probably stayed the night somewhere between here and Bismarck.”
“That’s a hundred miles. Lots of motels between here and there.”
“I’m guessing Bismarck or Mandan, he would have figured that it was less likely someone might remember him in the busier places.”
They got out on the interstate and Osborne had just passed an old pickup truck doing fifty in the left lane, when Deb Rausch called his cell phone.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Just left Dickinson on ninety-four,” Osborne said. He switched the phone to speaker so Ashley could hear. “Do you have something for me already?”
“He came in on a Delta flight from LaGuardia at eleven-oh-five Friday morning under the name Thomas Parks, British passport. He picked up a Chevy Impala from Hertz under the Parks name using a platinum American Express card.”
“Someone recognize the photo?”
“No need, because we’re pretty sure it’s him. In the first place the British passport was a fake—no such number exists. And second of all the Amex card was listed to a fictitious business in the Channel Islands, which so far as we’ve been able to tell this morning is nothing but an accommodations address.”
“Someone had to pay the bills.”
“Never been used before,” Rausch said. “But it gets better. The Chevy was rented for Parks from a New York branch of the business—North Sea Petroleum—which does not exist. And Friday afternoon the owner/manager of a self-storage facility about seven miles away from the airport was found beaten to death in a locked bay that had been rented three days earlier by North Sea Petroleum under the Parks name.”
It wasn’t adding up in Osborne’s mind. “Sounds too sloppy for Makarov. From what I remember in Afghanistan he had the reputation of being precise. And everything he did in Dickinson and afterwards was neat. No loose ends.”
“So maybe the Russian Mafia he used as his support group was sloppy,” Rausch said. “But I’d just about bet the farm that Parks is your man. You said he was not very big, slightly built, maybe under six feet.”
“I towered over him, and most of the other Spetsnaz guys.”
“Well the owner/manager—a guy by the name of Donald Toivo—was a former professional wrestler, six-eleven, three-hundred-plus pounds. One of his employees who found the body said Toivo was just as quick on his feet as he was mean. And the Hertz agent remembered him because of his cute British accent. But you said he was Russian.”
“Russians learn British English,” Osborne said. “Where’s Toivo’s body now?”
“Minneapolis City Hospital morgue until somebody claims it.”
“How about the storage bay?”
“Our people are on the way over to dust it for prints. But the city cops were all over the place. Lead detective said that except for the body it was empty.”
“Have your people hold off for a bit,” Osborne said. “And don’t let anyone claim Toivo’s body until we get there. I’m going to turn around and go back to the Dickinson airport and rent a light plane. Should be able to make it to you by early afternoon.”
“Nothing for you to do here, Nate.”
“I want to take a look at the storage unit, and talk to the person who found the body, maybe talk to some other people who knew him; family, if he has any. Then I might claim the body.”
“You’re going to do what?” Rausch demanded.
“Claim the body. I’m going to tell anybody who’ll listen that I need to take a closer look at the wire he was wearing, and I’m going to make an official request to Interpol for records linking Yuri Makarov to the murders there in Minneapolis and out here.”
“We’re going to do that as a matter of course.”
“Go ahead,” Osborne said. “But I’m going to stick my nose into your investigation.”
“As you wish,” Rausch said and it was obvious from her tone that she was dubious. “I’ll send a jet for you, it’ll be a lot faster that way, and have a car waiting for you at the airport. But I suggest that you drop Ms. Borden off.”
“Nope, she has to tag along because she’s going to write a series of stories linking Makarov to me in Afghanistan and to the attacks on the Initiative, and at least to the Venezuelan intelligence service.”
“The Bureau will have no comment for now, unless I get orders to the contrary,” Rausch said. “Nor did we ever have this conversation.”
“Fair enough,” Osborne said. “See you in a couple of hours.”
He found a median crossing marked OFFICIAL VEHICLES ONLY, and took it.
Ashley held her silence until they were headed back to Dickinson. “If you’re serious about giving me the go-ahead to file some stories, you’ll have to get my dad’s okay.”
“I am serious, and I’ll get your dad’s green light, but in the end it’ll be your decision.”
“Come on, Nate, that’s a no-brainer,” Ashley said, and she was excited.
“This guy’s good, and if he decides to come after us it could get dicey.”
She was suddenly serious. “I’ve been there before, remember?”
“I remember,” he said, and when he glanced over at her she was looking at him, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed, and he thought he’d never seen a more beautiful woman in his life. And he was afraid.
33
SEBIN COLONEL LUIS Delgado was waiting for Makarov’s Iberia Airlines flight from Madrid to touch down at Mexico City’s Benito Juarez International a few minutes before eleven in the morning. The two men did not greet each other after Makarov had made his way through passport control and customs, and headed with his single carry-on bag into the main terminal.
He’d not been advised by the Iranian to expect Delgado, so the colonel’s presence came as a surprise, and he didn’t care for the closeness of it. In fact, since he’d returned to Stockholm he’d been making his escape plans; the only problem he’d not solved in his mind was Ilke. What would he have to tell her to justify their picking up and leaving Sweden with less than a moment’s notice? And now, Delgado here lent an urgency to his planning.
He stopped at a newsstand and bought a bottle of Evian, before he turned around and went back to a waiting area at a gate where the next flight, this one to Rio de Janeiro, wasn’t due to depart for another two hours. Only a few people were seated, and Makarov went to a window and looked out at the aircraft coming and going on the apron. The mountains in the distance ringing the city were lost in a brown haze.
Delgado walked over and stood next to him. “I’m glad to see that you’ve accepted the assignment,” the Venezuelan intelligence officer said, keeping his voice conversational even though no one was in hearing range.
Makarov didn’t look at him. “Why are you here?”
“To make sure you came this far.”
“The money is in my account. I’ve accepted the assignment, I’ve read the file, I’ve made my excuses in Stockholm, and I’m en train.”
“There’ve been some developments since Stockholm that you needed to know,” Delgado said. “Osborne know
s your name.”
A little thrill of anticipation fluttered in Makarov’s gut. “How?”
“I don’t know. But it’s possible that he remembers you from Afghanistan. Apparently he has an old photograph of you.”
Makarov shook his head as he considered the possibility. His Spetsnaz record had been completely erased by Vasili Sumskoy for an appreciable amount of money all in U.S. hundreds within the year after Afghanistan. The only photos of him in the Makarov family albums were dated back to when he was just a kid. Since he’d gone AWOL from the service he’d never allowed any photographs of himself except when he was in a light disguise like now—black hair, contacts which darkened his eyes, and glasses—for his various passports and driving licenses, plus the little bit of plastic surgery to his nose and chin.
“That’s not possible,” he said. “There has to be another explanation.”
“Be that as it may, he managed to trace you under your Parks’ identification from LaGuardia to Minneapolis, and from there to a storage company where you killed the owner, then to a restaurant that caters to truckers outside Dickinson, and finally to Denver where you managed to disappear.”
Makarov was astounded, but a part of him that admired intelligence and especially tradecraft, was intrigued. He only vaguely remembered Osborne as a bright, capable officer, though something of an American rube, who he’d heard later lost part of a leg for his heroics and had won the Medal of Honor.
“How do you know this?” he asked.
“It’s on every police website in the country and even Interpol got your description this morning,” Delgado said. “It’s a wonder you got out of Europe.”
The situation was worse than he’d faced in Denver, but not as bad as some corners he’d been in. “I’ll need to go to ground here for a day or two, no longer, until I can change my appearance and arrange for new papers.”
“There’s no time for that,” Delgado said and he took a small manila envelope, about the size of a paperback novel, out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Makarov. “Get rid of your contacts and glasses. Can’t do much about your profile, but you can darken your skin with chemicals which will match your British Virgin Islands passport, under the name of Thomas van Houghton.”
“How do I know that I can trust this?”
“It’s to our benefit not to let you be taken. Besides, your Brighton Beach Russians are the ones who got you into this mess with Osborne. They rented the storage bay in your Parks name. Stupid, because they didn’t give a damn. They cut corners to save themselves some extra work.”
Makarov almost smiled even though he was bitter. The stupidity was all his. He’d never operated in the U.S. His work had almost always been confined to Europe and the U.K., so he had naturally used the Russian Mafia in the States. He decided that he wouldn’t be burned again.
“What else do you have for me?”
“You’re flying Aeromexico to Miami in one hour, your tickets are in the envelope. From there you connect to Atlanta, after which you’re on your own, because I don’t think you’ll trust anyone but yourself the closer you get to Osborne. North Dakota is a ridiculously underpopulated state. I suggest you don’t call any attention to yourself. The sheriff lives alone on a ranch he inherited from his parents. I’ve included a topographic map showing its location.”
“I suspect it’s a trap.”
“I suspect that you’re right,” Delgado said. “The point is with this new information, are you willing to continue? Eliminating Osborne is very important to us.”
“How important?”
“Name a price, Señor Makarov. But within reason.”
Makarov focused on the reflection in the window of the goings-on behind them. Steady streams of people, passengers as well as crew, moved along the broad passageway. An occasional cart to transport disabled people beeped past. A couple of airport security cops walked by, but they were not in a hurry. If Interpol had his Parks name and identification they would probably first concentrate their efforts in Europe. Osborne and the U.S. authorities would have already guessed he’d left the country.
But Osborne had set a trap by so openly sending up the hue and cry. The ex-Marine was taunting him to come back. The question was: Why? It had to be more than a simple sheriff’s need to solve a crime that hadn’t even happened in his county.
Taking out a high-tension line and causing the death of the repairman sent out to fix it, had made no sense in the first place, and it made even less sense now.
“The price depends, of course, on the importance to you. Explain it to me, please, because at this point the assignment you’ve offered me seems to have more at stake than you’ve let on.”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Of course I do. It’s become a high-risk assignment. Money aside, I need to know why I should take this risk.”
“Be careful what you ask for, because knowing a thing can make you more enemies than you want or need.”
Makarov held his silence. Two minutes, and he would go to ground somewhere here in Mexico City until he could arrange for Ilke to send him a sealed package that he kept in a wall safe at their home. She’d never asked him what it contained, or why it was so important to do exactly as she was told if and when the time ever came. She was in love, her husband was involved with international business deals, and she had to suspect that a time might come when a deal went somehow bad and he needed whatever was in the package.
And if and when the time ever came, he’d always known that he would have to kill her. He could not leave any loose ends behind.
“As you wish,” Delgado said, and he told Makarov what was at stake and what was going to happen in less than forty-eight hours, and then what would happen after that.
It was all Makarov could do not to throw his head back and laugh out loud, for the sheer brilliance, and stupidity of the thing.
“One million euros,” he said.
“We’ve already agreed on that amount.”
“In addition,” Makarov said, looking directly into the Venezuelan’s eyes.
Delgado didn’t flinch. “Done,” he said.
34
DEB RAUSCH MET the Gulfstream bringing Osborne and Ashley from Dickinson a few minutes after noon. She had an Escalade SUV and driver waiting to take them wherever they wanted to go.
“We can go out to the self-storage business where Toivo’s body was found, but there’s nothing there,” she told them.
“As long as my name’s on the police wire I don’t need to see it,” Osborne said.
“At the head of the list. If Makarov has access, which I suspect a man in his profession would, he knows that you’re looking for him, by name.”
“Good,” Osborne said. He and Ashley had had time to go back to his house outside Medora to pack a few things before they’d met the jet at Dickinson. They tossed the bags in the back of the Caddy and got in, Ashley riding shotgun and Osborne in back with Deb.
“Are you going to keep me in the dark?” the Minneapolis SAC asked.
“No, but first I’m going to need a phone number for the desk supervisor at the Sioux Falls Control Center who dispatched the lineman.”
“I’m not going to ask where you heard about that,” Deb said. “I’m not even allowed to go near him. Our Cyber Security people at headquarters are on it.”
“Is he under suspicion for causing the accident?”
“His name’s been mentioned.”
“I want the number.”
They had not moved from their parking spot in front of the General Aviation Terminal. Rausch got out of the car and walked a few paces away as she called someone on her phone. Osborne watched her.
“Why do we need to talk to him?” Ashley asked.
“He was on the front line, and if this was the work of a hacker he’d know about it.”
Rausch seemed animated, and she glanced back at the car, but then turned away. A minute later she took out a notebook and wrote something down, then brok
e the connection and came back to the Caddy.
“They’re not very happy.”
“Who?”
“They,” Rausch said pointedly, and she gave Osborne the phone number. “His name is Stuart Wyman. It’s his home phone, he’s been suspended.”
Osborne called and Wyman answered on the first ring. “Yes.”
“Mr. Wyman, I’m Nate Osborne, the Billings County sheriff. I’d like to ask you a question.”
“You’re out of your jurisdiction,” Wyman said. “Don’t bother me again.”
“Gerry Kasmir was a personal friend of mine, and I’d like very much to find out who killed him, your lineman, and the young rancher and his wife.”
“The FBI has already been here.”
“It was the work of a computer hacker, we’re pretty sure about that. But I want your opinion.”
“You’re goddamned right it was a hacker. Some sick son of a bitch somewhere in Amsterdam. And I told that to the FBI, too, along with a lot of other things.”
“Like?”
“It’s not over. This is just the start.”
“Do you think it has anything to do with the virus that was planted in every control center along the grid?” Osborne asked.
“We know it does.”
“Who’s we?”
Wyman hesitated. “I don’t think I should say anything else.”
“Was it you who figured out about the hacker?” Osborne asked. “It’s important to me to know how you did it.”
“What the hell does a county sheriff have to do with this thing? Tell me that.”
“I was caught in the middle of the attack on the Initiative over the holidays. So I’m personally involved. I know the guy who shot out the insulator and told the hacker just when to re-energize the line.”
“When Tony was up in his bucket. Unprotected.”
“Yeah. And the guy knows who I am and will probably come looking for me to settle an old score. I need your help.”
“Toby Lundgren,” Wyman said.
“Who’s that?”
“A friend. He’s the main analyst at our computer center up in Hibbing, Minnesota. I called him as soon as I was suspended and he found out that the accident was the work of a computer hacker in Amsterdam you talked about.”
Gridlock Page 16