Last Chance to Die

16



The three unit and section chiefs were already seated in the director’s conference room when Vail walked in. Kate was getting coffee from a side table. Vail went over and poured himself a cup.

“You look like you didn’t get much sleep,” she said.

“I was out celebrating not killing Dellasanti.”

“With any luck there are a couple spies left so you can get your batting average back up.”

Langston hurried into the room followed by John Kalix, who was carrying a stack of files. “We’re in the director’s conference room because he wanted to attend this meeting, but at the last moment he was called before a congressional oversight committee.”

Vail leaned close to Kate. “Hopefully that isn’t about us.”

“The good thing is, you’ll probably be fired and back in Chicago by the time Congress gets the final body count.”

“You really are a silver-lining kind of girl, aren’t you?”

Langston sat down at the head of the table. “As if our latest spy getting killed wasn’t bad enough, the lab was unable to find anything to give us a clue as to the identity of the next one.”

The section chief, Tony Battly, said, “Maybe there are no more. Calculus said the last one would be an intelligence agent. I suppose someone in the State Department could be considered in intelligence.”

Somebody said, “Apparently you haven’t spent much time around the State Department.”

“Or maybe he instructed his relative at the Chicago bank to get us the name after the payments for the first three are deposited,” Mark Brogdon said. “Bill, you’ve had me pay the first two—should I wire another quarter of a million for this one and see what happens?”

Langston said, “We’ve already sent them half a million dollars. That seems like we’d be throwing more money away.”

“I know, but on the off chance that the relative can help us, I think we should consider it. The money’s already been earmarked for this.”

Vail said, “If you send them a quarter of a million and Dellasanti was the intelligence agent, maybe they would somehow let us know we owe them another quarter of a million. Then we’d be sure he was the big fish and be through with this.”

Langston said, “You’re right. Besides, it’s not like the money’s coming out of my pocket. Make the payment, Mark.” Nervously, the assistant director straightened his tie. “Anything else, Steve?”

“Mind if I see the reports?”

“Sure, you may.” Langston pushed them down to him. “What exactly are you looking for?”

“Kate, tell them,” he said as he started scanning the reports.

“Anomalies,” she answered in an amused tone.

As Vail continued to read, flipping past boilerplate pages, everyone sat quietly and wondered if he would find something that they’d all missed. The lab had recovered a small piece of a circuit used in remote-control devices. That meant that Dellasanti had not killed himself, and neither had Calculus. It had to be the Russians waiting until the last possible second before disposing of a potentially embarrassing double agent, something they had now done twice before. “I’m not going to find anything in the lab reports,” Vail said. “Those guys are too thorough. Was there anything left from the package?”

Kate thought Vail’s tone was a little too civil. He had to be hiding something.

“The one with the dark blue cover has photographs of everything,” Kalix said.

Vail started through the pictures. “What’s this one?” He held it up to Kalix.

“It’s some sort of sleeve. A packet of money was inside it and intact. The lab is doing more testing on it. It’s some kind of material that is virtually indestructible. The best guess is that it might be from the days of the diplomatic pouch, to protect documents.”

“Our diplomats or theirs?”

“At this point we have no idea.”

Vail went back to the photos. “Let me have a couple of minutes.”

A clerk came in with a tray of fresh coffee. The others got up and poured themselves a cup. Kate brought one to Vail and set it next to him. Focused on the photographs, he didn’t seem to notice. The men stood around saying little, occasionally glancing over at Vail, trying to see which photographs he was looking at.

Inside the protective sleeve had been two bundles of banded fifty-dollar bills. Finally Vail closed the file. Without a word, everyone sat down. “Bill, can I see the money?”

Langston nodded to Kalix, who went to the nearest phone. “Did you find something?”

“Not really. That’s why I’d like to see the actual items.” He picked up his coffee and took a swallow. “Thanks, Kate.”

Ten minutes later a woman in a gray lab smock walked in with a cardboard box, and Langston told her to give it to Vail. Each bundle of fifties was in a clear plastic envelope. They all had the same purple tinge to them after being fumed for fingerprints. Vail lifted each stack out carefully, examining both sides before setting it down. Finally he picked up one of the bundles and riffled through it. He opened the file and checked the photos of the bills, trying to make out the serial numbers. “Here’s a question I hope someone can answer: Are these bills in their original order? You know, before they were fumed.” He looked from face to face, but no one replied. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

Finally Kalix said, “Wait. There were lists made of the bills.” He picked up another folder and flipped through it. “Yes, here they are. I assume they’re listed in order.”

Vail examined the list. “Very good. If you’re right.”

“What is it, Vail?” Langston asked.

He was still examining the money. “The bills are nonsequential, which is the way spies are supposed to be paid. Did anyone consider the way they’re arranged in the stacks? Like taking the first digit from the top ten bills? If this is what Calculus intended, I don’t know which stack would be the coded stack. Maybe it’s the last ten bills in one of the stacks. Get ahold of whoever made the list and ask him if any of the bills were upside down or backward. If that is the code Calculus used, it’s going to take more work to untangle, which isn’t surprising, since his clues seem to get more complicated as they go along. That’s the only thing I can see. But if there was a clue, maybe it was on the documents.” He looked around the table and was surprised that no one seemed to realize that the Russians had put the package together and that as a result there would be no clues. But Vail wanted them to be kept busy. He had seen something in the photographs.

Langston said to Kalix, “Get somebody up here from Cryptanalysis.” Then he turned to the group. “We’re starting to get calls from the media regarding the bombing at the park yesterday. Once again, refer them to Public Affairs. It’s only a matter of time until they start putting together the other deaths with this one. Let’s hope we’ll be done by then and we can let them know what we’ve accomplished. If no one has anything else, that’s it.”

Kate said to Vail, “Speaking of the media, I heard an interesting item on the radio this morning. Seems two FBI agents caught a serial murderer last night and dropped him off at the locals. Know anything about that?”

He smiled. “I don’t know, I don’t have a radio.”

“It was you.”

“Actually, it was Luke. But unfortunately it had nothing to do with his missing analyst.”

“And where are you off to now?”

“I don’t know. I’ll find something to do. There are a lot of computer records I need to look through for Luke.”

“That’s twice in the last ten seconds you’ve said ‘I don’t know,’ which isn’t a commonly used Steve Vail line. You’ve figured out something, haven’t you?”

“You think I’m keeping something from Luke?”

Kate lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m talking about this.” She pointed to the material on the table.

“I just gave you and the rest of the brain trust the only lead I could think of. As a tactic, your accusing me of not being forthcoming is getting a little old.”

“That’s because it’s usually true.”

“Listen, I’ve given you people everything in this case, and what did I get for my trouble? I got cut out.”

“ ‘You people’? Cutting you out wasn’t my doing.”

“I didn’t hear you objecting. I know we’re not happening, but you were supposed to protect our interests and get me first crack at the evidence. So when do I see it? When the guys who the director supposedly can’t trust with the investigation are done pawing over it. Do you think if they do find anything in those bills, I’m going to get a call? It’s a different year, but these are the same people who ran me out of the Bureau five years ago. They’ll always be the people who cripple this organization.” Vail stared at her as if making some judgment. “You want to know where I’m going—I’m going to pack.”

Kate wanted to say something, but she knew he was right, not only about who ran the FBI but also about her not standing up for him. Vail was the reason they’d accomplished what they had. He was the one who had survived two attempts to kill him. Against his wishes, he had agreed to work on the case. And in return he only wanted to conduct the investigation his own way. Which was exactly why he had been brought in. Until completed, he believed the challenge belonged only to him.

Suddenly she was overwhelmed with the perverse hope that with Vail gone they wouldn’t find the last spy, if there was one. Without Vail they might never identify him. She wanted them to fail, all of them, herself included.

Vail told himself to slow down as he drove back to the off-site. He had not been as upset with Kate as he had pretended. Although he was disappointed that he wasn’t allowed to be involved in Dellasanti’s arrest or get first look at what had been recovered, he knew that inevitably men like Langston couldn’t live with someone else being perceived as the point man. Vail had warned everyone that it would happen, even though they assured him that this time it wouldn’t.

He knew that what had happened to Dellasanti wasn’t Langston’s fault, but right now the investigation had been brought to a halt. Vail had no choice but to proceed by himself. He’d given Langston and the others the serial-number possibility because he knew that the combinations would be infinite and would keep them busy while he checked out what he’d seen in the photos.

He parked outside the off-site and went upstairs. He needed to recheck Calculus’s movements the day he’d originally planted Dellasanti’s package in the park. After putting it under the bridge, he had walked around the area for a couple of minutes, not something spies do. The longer you’re there, the greater your chances of being connected to whatever you left behind. Get in fast, get out faster.

He turned on the computer and went to the wall with a pencil and paper. All the coordinates and times at the park varied little as Calculus moved around those few minutes after being at the bridge. Then Vail went back to the computer and linked onto the Bureau satellite. After zooming down into the park, he carefully manipulated the mouse until he could see Calculus’s exact path that day. Did it indicate that he’d hidden something else? Something, even under torture, he hadn’t told the Russians about? It would be a way for a dying man to get even with them. Retracing the movements once more on the computer, Vail memorized the terrain Calculus had moved through.

It was a little over an hour’s drive to the park in Maryland in the early-afternoon traffic. He parked in the same lot where James Dellasanti had been killed the day before. At the entrance to a footpath, he saw small traces of blood where the body had lain on the ground. He looked around and decided there were a number of different locations from which the bomb could have been detonated.

The footbridge where the package of evidence had been secreted was about a quarter of a mile in, about a five-minute walk along the winding path. Included in the pictures he had seen that morning was a shot of the exact spot where the plastic-wrapped material had been picked up. It was an all-metal bridge, cleverly constructed almost entirely of two-inch-square steel tubes. About twenty feet long, it sat less than two feet above a small brook, which was dry this time of year.

He stepped down into the streambed and tried to re-create the angle at which the photographer had taken the picture. What had caught his attention was a small mark on one of the five steel tubes that ran under the bridge’s flooring pieces as supports. At least he thought it was a mark. It was hard to tell in the photograph; it looked like an elongated checkmark or a single-barb arrow, pointing down. He had seen similar ink markings in engineering drawings, and since Calculus was a trained engineer, it could have been made by him. With each clue left for the FBI, subtlety had become the Russian agent’s signature. And the mark had been the same medium blue as Vail had encountered twice before on items left by Calculus.

There it was. He moved closer. It was an abbreviated arrow drawn in blue marker, its line thin and barely noticeable. But pointing to what? There was only about a foot between the sloping stream bank underneath it and the supporting steel tube. Reaching under it, he probed it with his fingers but couldn’t feel anything. He checked the arrow again and wondered if it meant that something was buried in the streambed directly below.

The ground was mostly sand and stone, now stiffened by winter temperatures. Any attempt to dig it up would have been difficult to disguise, and to his eye the streambed appeared undisturbed. He looked more closely at the arrow. The square tubing had rounded corners, and the arrow was drawn completely on the side except for the point, which wrapped slightly underneath the tube. Vail got down on his back and shimmied under the bridge. Drawn in the same blue ink on the underside of the tube were two concentric circles inside an oval, a simple rendering of an eyeball.

Vail stood up and took off his topcoat, brushing the back of it while he thought. After a few moments, he decided he had no idea what Calculus had intended. Maybe it was one of those instances of being too close to something to accurately assess it.

Walking back fifty feet along the bank of the small stream, he examined the structure. The steel tubes supporting the walkway were completely hollow, and from that distance he could actually see light coming through the one with the arrow drawn on it.

That was it.

He hurried back to the bridge and squatted down so he could look through the marked tube. The only thing directly in his line of sight, thirty yards on the other side, was a sign marking the path in case of snowfall. Because its purpose was seasonal, it was set in a concrete-filled rubber tire that allowed it to be taken away and stored during warmer weather. Apparently Calculus had moved it so it could be sighted through the steel tube.

Walking over to the sign, Vail tipped it over. The base was hollow. He reached up under it and could feel a small plastic-wrapped object taped to the inside. He pulled it out and opened it. It was a computer flash drive, a device about the size of a thumb that was capable of storing a large amount of digital information. Its shell was plastic and on the back side, handwritten in Cyrillic, was the word . If Vail remembered his college Russian correctly, it meant “the end.” Apparently this was the last spy that Calculus was going to lead them to.



Vail put the device in his pocket, along with the plastic it had been wrapped in, and headed for his car.

As he came off the footpath into the parking lot, he was stunned to see Langston and Kalix standing next to their car. There were four other cars in the lot, each with a lone driver—FBI surveillance.

Vail couldn’t believe that he’d been followed and hadn’t noticed. He scanned the sky looking for a Bureau airplane. There didn’t appear to be any, at least not any longer. After his three years as an agent in Detroit, he had always been surveillance-conscious. Even when he returned to the everyday existence of a bricklayer, he couldn’t help being vigilant. But, more important, he wondered what had made them follow him. He’d given them a plausible distraction, which apparently they hadn’t bitten on. Had he underestimated them? Then he thought of Kate. She was probably the only one capable of figuring out what he was up to. She had even accused him of it after the meeting. But it was hard for him to believe that she would have given him up.

Without a word, Vail walked over to Langston and handed him the flash drive. “And whatever it was wrapped in,” the assistant director demanded.

Vail pulled the section of plastic out of his coat pocket and gave it to him. “I guess I underestimated you,” Vail said. It was a statement of apparent surrender carefully designed to judge Langston’s reaction, to see if following him had been his idea or someone else’s.

“One of arrogance’s consequences,” Langston said, his response giving no clues.

Vail smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Then it would appear that my work here is done.” He took off his Glock and handed it to Kalix, along with his credentials. “As always, working with management has been a delight.”

“The real question is not whether you underestimated us but whether you overrated yourself,” Langston said. “Please be out of the off-site by noon tomorrow.”

Vail watched the two men get into their car and speed out of the lot. The four surveillance vehicles fell into line behind them and within seconds were gone.