Vision Impossible

  I turned and smiled at Dutch. “But you’re her soul mate, Richard. Didn’t you know that?”

  Dutch rolled his eyes. “Do you think she’ll be back?”

  I shrugged. “Probably.”

  “We’ll find her,” Frost assured us. “And we’ll make sure she gets the message. Anyway, the important thing here is that CSIS knows you’re not Des Vries’s regular girlfriend, Cooper—they’ve already run you through their facial-recognition software.”

  My eyes widened.

  “You haven’t come up in their system, which makes them extra curious about your identity. I’ve told them only that you work for us, but that’s not going to satisfy them for long. I have a feeling they’ll be trying to figure out who you are the whole time you’re here. They’ll be searching for any information they can find, and they’ll dip their fingers into any medical records, driver’s license, passport info, et cetera, if they can, so you can’t end up at a doctor’s office or the hospital, and you can’t file any police reports or get a ticket, okay?”

  “We get it, Frost,” Dutch said. “Low profiles and no paper trails.”

  A short silence fell on us until I asked, “Did the CSIS have any theories about who might have killed Kozahkov?”

  Frost eyed me. “No. And I didn’t share with them that you’d gotten a good look at him either.”

  That got my attention. “But I didn’t see him.”

  It was Frost’s turn to look surprised. “Then what tipped you off before the shooting started?”

  I sighed. My first day of actually being a spy and I was already tired of this. I tapped my temple. “My radar gave me a warning.”

  Frost seemed to take that in. “You seriously didn’t see anyone? Maybe someone walking suspiciously up to their car before they got in and came at us?”

  “Nope.”

  Frost drummed his fingers on the table, probably reevaluating his estimation of me.

  Dutch took the opportunity to speak next. “Whoever it was, he was a pro. Any theories on who might’ve ordered the hit?”

  Frost’s fingers stopped drumming, but he continued to stare at me with scrutiny. I tried not to squirm. “Viktor Kozahkov had a list of enemies a mile long, including a few members of his own family. He was deep inside the Chechen Mafia and made enough waves to be forced to leave the homeland in a hurry. It was a foregone conclusion when we looked into his history that he was living on borrowed time. The important question is not who killed him, but did he know who stole the drone? Or even, did he have a hand in the operation and, by extension, was killed because of it?”

  Dutch shook his head. “He didn’t take it,” he said firmly.

  I frowned. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes,” Dutch said. “Granted, he was still pretty out of it by the time I got here. . . .” Looking at me, Dutch asked, “By the way, Edgar, what’d you do to him? The guy could barely talk.”

  I gave him a sly smile and pulled my stun gun out of my blazer pocket. “I hit him with about a thousand volts of stop-groping-me-you-Russian-pig.”

  Dutch grinned. “Glad to know you can take care of yourself.”

  “Why do you think he didn’t steal the drone?” Frost asked, his tone impatient.

  “Kozahkov told me that he’d just scored a major deal. He said he’d made a connection to a newcomer who’d acquired some cutting-edge technology from the Americans and he stood to make a killing on it when he took the newcomer to Boklovich,” Dutch said.

  “The drone thief!” I whispered. “That’s why I kept getting a sideways connection to Kozahkov. He really didn’t steal the drone!” For the record, I seriously love it when I’m right.

  “Did he tell you who this newcomer was?” Frost asked anxiously.

  Dutch shook his head. “He wouldn’t even give me a hint, and when I got pushy about it, I could tell he started to get suspicious, so I had to back off. He wanted to know why I was so curious, and I told him, point-blank, that I knew what the new guy was offering, and I also knew it was defective. I told him I had the real McCoy and just like the newcomer, I needed his help getting it to Boklovich’s auction.”

  “What’d Viktor say to that?” I asked.

  “He got real interested real fast. I told him that I’d acquired the original software code, which meant no one would have to bother with the reverse engineering. I also told him that the other guy didn’t even know his product was defective, and that the device in question wouldn’t work past a few demonstrations. If Viktor wanted to risk selling a defective product to someone, then he could have at it.”

  “His reaction to that?” Frost wanted to know.

  “He had no problem with it,” Dutch said, shaking his head ruefully.

  “I’m beginning to see why someone would have wanted this guy dead,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Dutch agreed. “Just like we hoped, Viktor wanted to use the new information to his advantage. He was willing to set me up with Boklovich and help arrange an auction. I knew he was thinking of pitting the copy of the software against Intuit to drive up the price.”

  “Which was exactly what we wanted to happen,” Frost growled, his frustration written all over his face because now that Viktor was dead, so was our access to Boklovich. “Do you know if he’d already introduced the thief to Boklovich?”

  Dutch shook his head. “I’m not sure, but I got the feeling that he hadn’t had a chance to contact Vasilii yet. He seemed eager to leave the penthouse and I did see him starting a text message when he and his two bodyguards got into the elevator. Maybe the text was to Boklovich?”

  Frost pulled out his cell phone and placed a call. After putting the phone to his ear, he said, “It’s Frost. See if the Canadian authorities recovered Kozahkov’s cell phone tonight, and if they did, steal it from their evidence room. We need to know the number to the last outgoing text on that phone.” There was a long pause on Frost’s side, then, “Shit, Jack. Just shit!” Frost then punched his thumb hard on the end button and pocketed the cell. “Kozahkov’s phone was found in over a dozen pieces and the SIM card had a bullet hole through it.

  “We’ll try to tap into the Canadian phone logs to figure out the number,” Frost continued bitterly, “but that’s a process that’ll take days. Maybe even weeks.”

  Something occurred to me then and I turned to Dutch. “Did Kozahkov explain to you why he switched meeting places from the strip club downtown to here?”

  I was not at all unhappy when my fiancé blushed slightly. He knew I knew about the strip club. “Sorry, Abs,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “Honey,” I told him, “I don’t care who you look at as long as it’s me you come home to.”

  Frost cleared his throat loudly and looked pointedly at us. “Can we please focus here?”

  I scowled, but Dutch got back to the point. “I asked him why he’d shown up here and he said that he’d gotten a text that I was changing the venue.”

  “Who sent him the message?” I wondered, and both of us turned to look at Frost, who merely muttered, “Shit!” again.

  “It had to have been the assassin,” I said into the silence that followed. My intuition was telling me I was on to something there.

  Dutch looked at me again. “Kozahkov didn’t give you any hint when he got here as to who told him the meeting place had changed?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. He was way more interested in groping me than making small talk. I should have stuck around to recharge the stun gun and zapped him for another round.”

  “Yeah, well, he was ready to kill you if he ever laid eyes on you again, so I’m glad you weren’t here when I got home.”

  “How’d he let you off the hook for Cooper using the stun gun on him?” Frost asked.

  Dutch shrugged. “I played it cool. I told him if he cornered the new girl in the back bedroom against her will—he had it coming. A guy like Viktor could appreciate that he’d been outmaneuvered, although I’m positive he would’ve shot h
er on sight, which is why I’m not sorry he’s dead. If he’d gotten me in with Boklovich, I could never have taken Abby with me to the auction. Without her sixth sense, there’s no way to scope out who has the drone before the bidding begins.”

  “So, getting back to Kozahkov’s murder,” I said, feeling like my brain was a mixture of too much information competing with too many intuitive signals. “You really think it was the hit man who made the call and not the drone thief? I mean, if word is getting out that the drone is defective, maybe the drone thief called Viktor to change the venue and throw everyone off. Maybe he then killed Viktor after he saw he was talking to you.”

  Dutch considered that. “I don’t think we can rule anything out. If it was an assassin from Chechnya finally catching up with Kozahkov, or if it was our drone thief suspicious of Viktor meeting with me, it almost doesn’t matter because our access to both the thief and Boklovich are now cut off.”

  “So we’re at a dead end?” I asked.

  Dutch stroked my hand. “I might be able to find another angle by sifting through Des Vries’s files. His computer is pretty clean, and I’m digging through his e-mail, but the guy was careful. He didn’t exactly leave a Rolodex of possible contacts with access to Boklovich.”

  “What if we tried to call someone close to Kozahkov?” I asked. “Maybe someone in his camp knows Boklovich and can hook us up?”

  Frost and Dutch shook their heads. “Viktor was killed outside Des Vries’s condo, Cooper,” Frost said. “They’re likely to hold Des Vries responsible.”

  “Should we be worried about payback?” I asked.

  “We should be worried about everything,” he said grumpily. “We’ll make sure, however, to send cash to one of our guys embedded in Chechnya posing as a hit man and leak that the payment was for the Kozahkov hit to make it look like one of the markers on Kozahkov’s head has been paid in full. That’ll buy us some time should Viktor’s people think about pinning his murder on Des Vries.”

  And then a thought seemed to occur to him and he said, “Let me also talk to the Mossad and see if they’d be willing to share the contact list on Des Vries’s cell phone. There might be a few local names there we can try.”

  My radar broke through the haze of exhaustion with a suggestion. “How’s the investigation into the pilot coming?” I asked Frost.

  At this he almost brightened. “We think we have our first solid lead,” he said. “The pilot was seeing someone, and we think she was someone with a connection to Kozahkov.”

  Frost had my full attention. “Tell us,” I encouraged.

  “Phone records for the pilot indicate several calls a few weeks ago to a number registered to a Chechen national with ties to both Canada and the U.S.”

  “Whoa!” I said. “Bingo, right?”

  Frost nodded. “Maybe,” he said. “We’re having a hard time locating the girl, though.”

  “What’s her background?”

  “Oksana Fedotova is a twenty-three-year-old girl from Chechnya who came to Canada as a mail-order bride. She never went through with the marriage, though, and about six weeks after she arrived, she ditched the poor guy who paid for her to come here. She then got involved with the son of one of the major Mafia players in Ottawa, where Kozahkov used to live before he came to Toronto. These Mafia guys all swim in the same pool, so we think there could be a connection.”

  “How’d Fedotova end up meeting the pilot?” Dutch asked.

  “She got caught up in a drug sting when her boyfriend was nabbed by the Canadian authorities for selling massive quantities of meth. While Oksana was awaiting trial, she jumped bail and somehow managed to sneak into the States.

  “We traced her to an escort service in Vegas, which is where we believe she met our pilot. He was stationed at the airbase nearby, and a credit card receipt shows he purchased some company back in March.”

  “And now you can’t find the girl?” I asked, an uneasy feeling creeping over me.

  Frost shook his head. “Nope. Her apartment’s been abandoned and she hasn’t paid May’s rent. None of her neighbors have seen or heard from her in a while.”

  “Did you put a BOLO out for her car?” Dutch asked.

  “Yep, and so far we’ve got a big fat nothing,” Frost told him, clearly frustrated that the woman was proving so elusive.

  I could understand his frustration. My radar was suggesting that the whole thing was suspicious and that the pilot’s call girl definitely had something to do with the missing drone. “Have you thought about interrogating the old boyfriend?” I asked. “I mean, you said yourself these Chechen boys all stick together. Maybe he knows what she was up to or maybe he was the one who orchestrated it?”

  “He’s dead,” Frost told me. “Died in a prison fight about a year ago.”

  “Crap,” I said, out of both energy and ideas.

  “Was Oksana smart enough to pull this off on her own?” Dutch asked.

  Frost shook his head. “I doubt it. She’s a twenty-three-year-old girl with an eighth-grade education. I can’t imagine she would have the sophistication to pull off something this big.”

  Still, my intuition was insisting there was a thread there to follow. “Keep digging, Agent Frost. There’s something there.”

  I stifled a yawn then and looked wearily at the clock. It was well after one. “Come on,” Dutch said, helping me up out of the chair. “Let’s get you to bed, hot stuff.”

  I nodded dully and followed after him without a backward glance at Frost. I’m pretty sure he didn’t mind or even notice my failure to wish him a good night.

  Dutch and I were out of the condo early the next morning. I could have gone for a few more hours of sleep, but duty called and I was the schmuck who answered. “Dutch, can we at least stop for coffee?” I asked grouchily, slumped in the passenger seat while he navigated the morning rush-hour traffic.

  “There’s a coffee place right next to the office building,” he told me. “And you have to start calling me Rick, or, better yet, Mr. Des Vries.”

  I frowned moodily. “I’ll call you anything you want for a damn cup of coffee.”

  Dutch slanted a look my way, no doubt irritated that I now owed a quarter to the swear jar. Still, he put on his turn signal and pulled into the parking lot of a Tim Hortons. After putting the car into park, Dutch looked at me expectantly.

  “I’ll take a large coffee with extra milk, two sugars, and a glazed doughnut,” I told him happily.

  He scratched his goatee. “Tell that to the guy inside, Abs. Remember, we’re in character, and you work for me. So bring me back a tall black coffee and a blueberry muffin.”

  I took a deep breath, knowing he was right, then plastered a big ol’ smile on my face, saluted, and said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Des Vries, sir!”

  The line inside was long, but the smell of the coffee and doughnuts was soothing enough to make me wait patiently. After purchasing our breakfasts, I balanced the two coffees in one hand, and the bag of goodies in the other, and headed back out to the car.

  Once I was in the parking lot, however, I stopped dead in my tracks. Dutch was out of the car with his back pressed against the door and he was surrounded by three tough-looking thugs. One of them must have felt me staring at him, because he turned his head toward me and glared.

  If I had been just a pedestrian noticing something odd in the parking lot, I might have ducked my chin and proceeded straight to my car, but I wasn’t and that was my fiancé they were threatening. So I stood there for a few beats, wondering what to do. The guy glaring at me got even angrier, and he pulled aside his coat to show me the metal butt of a nickel-plated gun tucked up next to him.

  It was unnecessary. I knew he was dangerous, so I continued to stand there and stare. Dutch did not once look in my direction, although I’m sure he knew I was there. I could see the tense set of his shoulders and feel the ether between us crackle with warning.

  I really wanted to try to help him, but I had no idea how, so I just stood th
ere, bearing witness, waiting for an idea to come to me, and that’s when the guy glaring at me crooked his finger and motioned for me to come close.

  Hesitating only for a second to adjust the coffee and the bag of pastries, I moved in their direction. “Good morning,” I said when I got near. “Mr. Des Vries, I’ve brought you your breakfast.”

  Dutch did not look at me. Instead, he snapped, “Go back inside and wait for me there.”

  “Who’s this?” one of the men asked, eyeing me from head to toe.

  “I’m Mr. Des Vries’s assistant,” I said, all nice and friendly-like. “And I am so sorry to interrupt, sir, but you have a very busy morning with several appointments lined up. Would you like me to call and reschedule them all?”

  “Appointments?” said the guy in front of Dutch. He was a man of average height with greasy blond hair, a long scar from the corner of his mouth to his ear, and two different-colored eyes—one brown, one green. “Who’re you meeting with, Des Vries?”

  “Oh, several people,” I said, setting the bag of doughnuts and Dutch’s coffee on the top of the car and playing with the lid on my coffee. My fingers were shaking and I was trying to keep it together long enough to help him.

  “Like who?”

  “Ms. Carter!” Dutch snapped. “If you would like to keep your job, then I would suggest you return to the restaurant, and wait for me there.”

  Dutch had adopted the slight foreign accent again, I noticed. “Certainly, Mr. Des Vries,” I told him. “But let me just give you your coffee first.”

  I set my coffee and the lid quickly on top of the car and got his down, flicking the top off with my thumb before moving to offer it to him. Just as I started to extend my hand, however, I changed directions and flung it into the face of the guy with the gun, who reeled backward, clutching his hands to his face.

  The other two whirled to face me and I grabbed the other cup of hot liquid, throwing it at the guy closest to me. It hit him square in the chest and he stepped backward and made a hissing noise.