“I can’t tell you.”
He snorted. “You can’t tell me?”
“Yep.”
He studied me curiously for a moment, then his eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You got something going on with our Russian hottie?”
“Of course not.”
He grimaced with faux-annoyance. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.” He turned serious. “What’s going on, Sean?”
“I really can’t tell you.”
Aparo got angry. “Hey, this is me you’re fucking talking to.”
“I can’t. Not now.”
“Not now? When then?”
I had to go. “Soon. Look, it’s better this way. For your sake.”
That really pissed him off. “You’re giving me deniability now? Seriously? Since when did I care about that bullshit?”
“It’s just for tonight,” I insisted. “Let me do this. If something comes out of it, you’ll be the first to know.”
As I reached the door, he asked, “This about Alex?”
I stopped. We hadn’t been partners for ten years for nothing. “I gotta go, man. Anything breaks, call me.”
“At least tell me where the hell you’re going?”
I kept my hand on the door handle, then I said, “DC.”
I heard him mutter, “Shit,” then I left the room.
***
IT WAS TIME FOR A BREAK. More important, it was the agreed-upon time for Koschey’s follow-up phone call.
He escorted Sokolov back to his familiar holding spot on the floor by the radiator and tied him to it. They’d made good progress in dismantling the gear from the inside of the van, but there was still a lot of work to be done.
Throughout, Koschey had gotten Sokolov to give him a running commentary about what he was doing, what each component was, how it all worked. Working alongside him, he gained a firm grasp of Sokolov’s ingenious invention. He’d also told Sokolov to divide it into two separate stacks instead of just one. Moving it to yet another vehicle, or packing it into crates, would be easier that way. It wouldn’t all need to be dismantled again.
He left Sokolov in the small office and stepped outside by the vehicles to make the call.
His Saudi contact took the call promptly, as he’d expected.
“Do you have an answer for me?” Koschey asked in Arabic.
“The answer is yes,” the man said, “provided you can guarantee that none of this will come back to our doorstep. You can guarantee it, yes?”
“Nothing will come out from my end because no one else is involved but me. But I can’t guarantee what slips out from your end.”
“Our end is secure.”
“Then there’s no problem. What about my package?”
“It should be with you within the hour. The other half will be paid on completion, as you proposed.”
Koschey smiled. The promise of a hundred million dollars tended to have that effect on most men. “Make sure it’s not delayed.”
“It’ll be there,” the man said. “Good luck.”
Koschey clicked off. Luck—he scoffed at the notion. He made his own luck.
He’d known the Saudi’s people would go for it. Not the government, of course. In his experience, governments were a waste of time. They made terrible partners. The decision-making process was slow and convoluted. Discussions and consultations had to be undertaken. Foreign pressures had to be taken into account. And decisions by committee were rarely unanimous, which meant there would be dissenters, and dissenters were prone to creating problems. To say nothing of leaks. Which, given how subservient the Saudis were to the Americans, would be immediate.
Fortunately, there were now people on the planet who made far better partners when it came to decisive action. Billionaires who were as wealthy, and as politically motivated, as any government. Oligarchs, oil sheikhs, media tycoons, and a varied collection of massively successful businessmen who held highly strung views about the world they lived in. Megalomaniacs with staggering riches had the means to fund their own initiatives and shape the world in their vision, whether by initiating advertising and PR campaigns to alter the course of elections, channeling weapons to opposition movements, or funding private armies of mercenaries to overthrow regimes. Bin Laden had been the most notorious of them all, but there were many others and they came in many guises. And Koschey had direct connections with several such players, in all corners of the globe, players whose agendas were as yet unfulfilled, players who could be tempted with the right offer. The kind of offer Koschey had made to his Saudi contact.
An offer that would cause huge problems for the Saudis’ archenemies—Iran—while giving Koschey the immense satisfaction of delivering a crushing blow to the Americans he loathed.
It was now time to make another phone call.
With another such offer.
This one would be to a Lebanese car dealer, in Beirut. A man who had a direct and secure pipeline into the upper echelons of Hezbollah, who in turn had a direct and secure pipeline to Tehran.
This man could take Koschey’s offer to the most radical elements among those in power there.
Koschey was about to make the biggest play of his life. But to do so, this call needed to be handled differently.
For this call, Koschey had to adjust some of the settings on his phone.
This was a call he needed certain people to hear.
He switched off the highest-level encryption, making it possible for his conversations with the car dealer to be picked up and deciphered by the NSA’s Echelon eavesdropping software. Not too easily, but possible. And highly likely, given the key words he was going to use in order to snare the attention of the server banks at Fort Meade. Then he added a layer of distortion to the outgoing segments of the call, giving his voice a new frequency range and ensuring it didn’t match any voice prints the Americans or anyone else had on record for him.
He also made sure his phone was set to record their conversation. Just in case the trail of evidence he was planting to implicate Hezbollah and their Iranian patrons wasn’t enough. Sometimes, more was more. Especially if you were trying to frame a foreign government for a major terrorist attack.
He made sure the settings were all in place. Then he made the call.
***
SHIN HADN’T MOVED FOR HOURS.
He was still there, curled up on a bench in Astoria Park, hungry, thirsty, scared, muttering to himself and eyeing everyone suspiciously. The schoolkids and the health freaks running around the track, the carefree dilettantes on the tennis courts, the chess players and the bums. They were all threats.
After last night, everyone was a threat.
After last night, his whole world had changed.
He still couldn’t make sense of what he’d witnessed out in Brighton Beach. Even with his extensive knowledge, even with his perceptive and analytical mind, he still couldn’t process it. Even worse was the shoot-out. Watching his friends die. And knowing that all the sinister forces of the world had to want this thing and would do anything to get their hands on it.
How he’d made it this far, he didn’t know. He couldn’t justify or rationalize it. Jonny and Bon hadn’t made it, and they were the pros. They had the street chops he never possessed, they were the cool cats, the survivors. And yet they were gone and he was still here.
What to do from here on, though, was another matter.
He hadn’t dared go home to Nikki. Sure, she had to be worried sick about him. But she was probably more angry than worried. She was already royally pissed off at him for going out to meet Jonny like that in the middle of the night. Nothing good could possibly come out of that kind of meeting, she’d told him. Jonny was nothing but trouble, they both agreed, and Shin had made her a promise, after all. A promise to drop a life that he knew wasn’t made for him.
She was right, of course. And he couldn’t face her. Not now. Not like this. Not when he didn’t know who might be waiting for him there, watching their place, ready to pounce.
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All the sinister forces of the world had to want this thing, he reminded himself.
He didn’t dare go to the chop shop either. He couldn’t confront the others. By now, they had to know that Jonny and Bon were dead, and given the contempt they felt for him, something they’d never been shy about, there was no point in him going there. Hell, they might even suspect him of having sold their buddies out. No, the chop shop was out of bounds. Besides, it was the obvious place for any agents to be lying in wait for him.
He had to keep his head down until things settled—if they ever did. Wait and watch from the sidelines, and hope that at some point he’d be able to resume his less-than-charmed life and act like last night had never happened.
One thing kept preying on his mind, though. The bad guy. The gaejasik who’d shot Jonny and Ae-Cha.
Shin knew where he was. Where he was last night, at any rate. But it seemed to be his hideout, his safe house. His lair. And Shin knew he might be the only one to possess that information.
Information that could lead to the man’s capture.
He’d been debating it all day, and had yet to reach a conclusion. He wanted to call it in, but at the same time, he didn’t want to get involved any more than he already was. An anonymous tip—surely, there was no harm in that. But with all the sophisticated tracking technology, nothing could be taken for granted anymore, and the last thing he needed was for them to figure out who he was and find him.
Better to keep your mouth shut, he told himself.
Then Ae-Cha’s smiling face assailed his mind’s eye, Ae-Cha whom he’d had a crush on from the moment he’d first met her when he was twelve, Ae-Cha who’d never taken notice of him but whom he still fancied nevertheless, and he wasn’t so sure of keeping silent anymore.
55
I landed at Reagan and was in a cab less than ten minutes later.
Since wheels-up, Ivan, or Koschey or whoever he really was, had receded out of my system, and my thoughts had zeroed in on Corrigan. I didn’t know how this thing with Kirby would play out. Either way, there were still several burning hoops to jump through, but the hairs on the back of my neck told me that I was about to be closer to him than I had been at any point since Corliss blew his own brains out.
I pulled out my phone and started reviewing what Kurt had sent me, and as the Washington Monument drifted into view, the leviathan himself called.
“Konnichiwa. Thursday night is poker night.”
Not exactly what I needed to know. “Well, good luck then.”
“No, not my poker night, man. His poker night. You seriously think I play poker? Even the online version is for losers. Why flush virtual money on blackjack when you can spend it on proficiency points for your Blood Knight?”
I had to stay calm and remind myself he was coming through for me. “So that’s Kirby’s alibi?”
“That’s what I reckon. On three of the last fifteen Thursdays, he’s charged cigars to the shared credit card. On five, he’s charged a crate of beer.”
“They take turns.”
“Exactly. Just four dudes drinking the undrinkable and smoking the unsmokable.”
I glanced at my watch. We were good. “What about his companion? Anything on her?”
“She’s a mystery. Hotel doesn’t have enough cameras to track guests to and from each room, and they only keep CCTV footage for a week at a time. Kirby arrived on his own last week. Same with leaving. They’re very careful.”
I chewed on his info for a moment. “All right. Stay put. I’m going to try and borrow her purse or her cell phone, like we discussed.”
“Sure thing, dude. I’m not going anywhere. Not in Newark, anyway.” He laughed like a high school kid. “Oh, and by the way. The guy has taste. She’s a 36E with medium-sized thongs. The dream combo, assuming there’s no silicone in there.”
I had to get him and Aparo together. They’d have a blast. Then again, I’m not sure the women of New York would ever forgive me.
My phone buzzed. I had another call coming in.
From Federal Plaza.
At least it wasn’t from Aparo’s cell, but it still sent a jolt of alarm through me.
“Consider me overinformed and underbriefed,” I told him. “I’ll let you get back to your lovely Pandaren. Sayonara till later.”
I swapped calls, and breathed out. It was Wrightson, from the computer analysis and response team, and he didn’t sound urgent.
“I’ve looked at your pictures,” he told me, referring to the shots I sent him of the electrical junk pile we found at Sokolov’s garage. “It’s nothing weapons-grade, if that’s what you’re worried about. It actually looks like your guy’s into some high-end microwave technology. He’s got strip line, cavity and dielectric resonators in there, transistors, low-power diodes.”
None of that meant anything to me. “What’s it all used for?”
“I’d say he’s been tinkering with some kind of microwave transmission device. Some of these circuits you’d find in any cell-phone tower, but others are more specialized.”
This wasn’t in line with what I’d been thinking. “I thought cell-phone towers were huge?”
“Not at all. They’re tall, but that’s to get the best transmission. The components themselves aren’t that big.”
I don’t know where the question came from, but I asked, “Small enough to fit in the back of a van?”
“Sure. Everything in microwave tech is small because the wavelengths themselves are so short, and that includes everything from consumer Wi-Fi to satellite comms. Microwave tech doesn’t use your standard electronic circuitry—what electrical engineers call ‘lumped-element’ circuitry. It uses distributed circuits that are generally pretty minute.”
I focused on the part where he said it could fit in a van. I still didn’t see why Sokolov would do that. “Anything else you can think of?”
“I couldn’t say for sure,” he said, “but it looks like he was trying to increase the range and penetration of his signal through multiple resonator clusters.”
“What sort of range are we talking about?”
“Depends on the power supply and how the resonators were laid out. Anything from ten to a thousand yards would be my guess.”
I’d been hoping for something else. This was all sending me on a tangent that didn’t make sense.
“Sorry I can’t be any more help,” Wrightson concluded. “Let me know if you find the kit. I’d love to see what he’s been up to.”
I was angling for the same thing.
***
THE TRAFFIC WAS RUNNING smoothly and it wasn’t long before we were crossing over the Potomac and hitting Georgetown.
You’d never know from the view that you were leaving Virginia and entering the nation’s capital. The parkland along both sides of the river and the low skyline always looked more to me like a Midwestern town than the part of the city that housed the seat of government. I asked the driver to drop me off at the corner of M and Thomas Jefferson so I could cover the last couple hundred yards on foot. I needed to know who Kirby was seeing before I confronted him, and that meant being there when she arrived. It also meant attracting as little attention as possible. Since I wasn’t carrying an iPad or a Kindle, I had no choice but to fall back on doing this old-style and use a newspaper, the classic cover for discreet surveillance. I bought a copy of the Washington Times from a vending machine, then I walked the single block to the hotel.
At around twenty minutes to eight, I entered the hotel and took a quick look around. The lobby had a tony, classic elegance. Plush velvet sofas. Richly veined woods and chrome. Several hundred dollars’ worth of fresh flowers. And darkness. A lot of darkness. The whole place screamed “Not for Kids,” which was just as well, seeing as what Kirby and his companion used the place for.
There was a small niche by the entrance for the concierge. A couple of guests were clearly putting his local knowledge to the test. At the other end of the lobby were two separate desks
and armchairs in lieu of the traditional reception counter. Much more personal. The desk on the right was empty. A overly primped receptionist sat behind the other one, typing away at his computer’s keyboard.
I sat in a leather armchair with a perfect view of the hotel’s entrance and hoped that nothing had made Kirby alter his weekly routine tonight. I opened the newspaper and affected the casual air of someone waiting to meet a hotel guest.
About ten minutes later, Kirby walked in.
He went straight past me and across to reception. He was carrying a small gift bag from Biagio. The lady was clearly more than partial to chocolate.
He checked in with the minimum amount of fuss and was already on the way to the elevator before I had finished folding my newspaper.
The second the elevator doors had closed I walked over to the reception desk. There were no other guests there. Some situations called for an FBI badge, but others called for dead presidents. Given why I was here, this was definitely one of the latter. I pulled out a hundred and slid it across the desk.
“Stan Kirby. Just checked in. What room is he in?”
The clerk glanced at the bill somewhat haughtily, then looked up at me. “Sir, I can’t—”
“Sure you can,” I interjected while peeling off another hundred. I held both bills cupped discreetly against the desk.
He gave me an uneasy squint. “You a private detective?”
“Something like that.”
He considered it for a moment, then adjusted his immaculately trimmed eyebrow with a finely manicured finger and said, “The guy pays me fifty every week to ensure discretion. That adds up over time. You’ll need to go considerably higher.”
I leaned in. “I’ll let you in on something. That streak—it’s over. So you might as well take this and hang on to it until your next gravy train pulls in.”
The clerk thought about this. Maybe this was Kirby’s last Thursday. I clearly knew about the affair. Why else would I be there?
He reached over and, grudgingly, took the cash.
“Four fourteen,” he mumbled.
I gave him a smile. “Good call.”