Last Chance to Die

28



Kate was the last to arrive at the director’s office. “Good morning,” Bob Lasker said. “It looks like everyone is still standing. Nice work, people.” Nodding at Kate, he said, “I thought Steve might be coming with you.”

“I think he didn’t want to turn down another of your job offers. And you know how he likes to be thanked.”

“He hasn’t gone back to Chicago already, has he?”

“He promised me he wouldn’t, but . . .” She shrugged her shoulders.

“I can’t figure out what drives him.”

“I’m sure hearing that would make him very happy, sir.”

The director laughed. “Okay, let’s get down to business.” He turned to Bursaw. “Luke, let’s start with you. Do you have any aspirations to come to headquarters?”

“Me? Coming to this building every day? I’m sorry, sir, but I enjoy bad-mouthing management far too much to give it up.”

“I guess that answers the question of why Steve trusts you. Just remember you have a Get Out of Jail Free card should you need one.”

“I’m sure you won’t have to hold on to it for very long.”

“And, Kate, you’ll go back to your old job as deputy AD simply because of the amount of paperwork that has piled up in your absence. I wouldn’t give that to my worst enemy.”

“Nothing would make me happier.”

“So do we have any loose ends we need to tend to?” No one said anything. “No. Then I’ve got one more item of interest. Bill Langston has been reassigned as AD in charge of training at Quantico. Effective immediately, I am appointing John Kalix to the position of assistant director of counterintelligence. I’m concerned about how the Russians manipulated the Bureau and almost destroyed the reputation of a deputy assistant director. John was involved, sometimes to the point of great personal danger, in the entire investigation and because of that is more equipped, I feel, to prevent it from happening again. ”

Kalix’s face was expressionless. Apparently the director had told him of the promotion previously. Kate recalled Kalix’s comment that Langston had ordered an end to the investigation into whom the Russian handler Gulin had met with at the antique mall. If it had been pursued more thoroughly, Rellick probably would not have been able to do so much intelligence damage, and there would have been no need to frame Kate. She smiled. “Congratulations, John.” But she couldn’t help wondering if Kalix had been the one to tell the director about Langston’s misstep. She decided it didn’t really matter. He had helped her escape custody, cleared her through his contacts, and actually saved Vail’s life in the process. Even if he had dimed out his boss, she had to give him a pass.

“Okay,” the director said, “everybody get out of here and go back to work.”

Kate opened the door to her office. The piles of mail and reports completely covered her desk. She stepped around behind it and started prioritizing the stacks. After an hour she could see that it was going to take at least a week of twelve- to fourteen-hour days to catch up. But suddenly there seemed to be a greater priority—to find out what Vail was doing. She locked the door and headed for the garage.

She let herself into the Sixteenth Street off-site and found Vail lying on the couch staring up at the wall. There seemed to be even more paper covering it than she remembered. Vail looked over at her absentmindedly and then back at the wall without saying anything. He hadn’t shaved and appeared to not have slept. “I thought you might be sleeping,” she said.

“I found a spy we missed.”

“What?”

Vail got up. “I’m starving. Do you want something?” He went into the kitchen and took some cold cuts out of the refrigerator for a sandwich.

“No.” She followed him. “Who did we miss?”

Without answering her, he started to make the sandwich, and although he wouldn’t look at her, she could see a small smirk on his face. She slapped his arm. “Come on, Vail.”

He put the sandwich on a paper plate and walked into the workroom. On the table was a digital recorder. He pushed the Play button and took a bite of his sandwich.

“Hello, it’s me—you know, Preston. I’ve got those infrared facial-recognition schematics you wanted, but the price has gone up. This time I want a hundred thousand dollars in cash, just for me. I’ve been getting the short end while taking all the chances. So this will keep it, you know, level and true. You’ve got my number.”

“Notice anything about that?” Vail asked. There was a knock downstairs. Kate didn’t answer, so he pressed Play again. “I’ll get the door.”

It was Bursaw. “Next time you’re going to skip a meeting, how about letting me know? I don’t enjoy being that close to the director.”

“He’s an honorable man.”

“He’s still the boss. My personnel file has many unanswered questions in it that I don’t need someone at that level looking at.”

“Come on, Kate’s upstairs.”

When they walked into the workroom, Kate was a little animated and said, “I think I know what you’re talking about, Steve. Hi, Luke.”

Vail said to her, “Okay, fire away.”

Vail looked at Bursaw to see if he was curious. “Do I need to know?” he asked.

“It’s part of the Russian business. It’s something I’m going to have to take care of before we get back to Sundra.”

“I thought everyone was dead.”

“Apparently we missed one,” Vail said.

“And I assume, because I’m going to be given the SS blood oath again, that no one else is to know about whatever the new plot calls for.”

Kate said, “Don’t you think we owe it to John Kalix to cut him in on this? He’s an AD now.” Kate told Vail about the promotion that morning.

“Then we owe it to him to keep him out of it. He’s back to the rules. Let’s allow him to enjoy his promotion for a day or two before we make him sorry he accepted it. Luke, can you give us a hand?”

Bursaw shook his head. “Okay, but this time I want first shot at the insanity plea.”

Although Vail had given Bursaw the broad strokes of the Calculus investigation when he’d agreed to help with Kate, he hadn’t told him the specifics about how the double agents had been uncovered through the Ariadne thread left by the Russians. “The first clue was a series of dots and dashes etched into the side of the DVD that Calculus left for us. That led us to a phone in the Russian embassy and an access code. Here’s the message.” He played it again for Bursaw.

Then Vail said, “And now, since the deputy assistant director has apparently figured out where we went wrong, she’ll explain.”

She said, “Let me give you a brief rundown on how we found these moles. The first one, Charles Pollock, we were given his initials and, to simplify it, where he worked. From that we recovered a DVD that recorded him trading classified documents for cash. In each case that’s what we were supplied with, a way to identify the mole and physical evidence of his spying. And in each case there was a hidden or coded clue about how to find the next one. These are what we followed that led to recovering the phony evidence against me. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes.”

“So on the Pollock DVD, besides the payoff, the edge had, in Morse code, a telephone number. When we called the number, we got that message you just heard played. And, as you heard at the end of it, there was a touch-tone number being dialed. We assumed that it was another code to identify the caller named Preston who was talking about the infrared technology at the beginning of the recording. We broke down that code, and it led up to a bank box that belonged to Yanko Petriv, the NSA translator. Things were moving pretty fast right then, so we went after Petriv, thinking he was the one selling the facial-recognition schematics. But what we didn’t take the time to consider was that Petriv was born in Bulgaria and would probably have an accent, since he spoke Eastern European languages well enough to be a translator. The voice on the recording is definitely American, maybe upper Wisconsin or Minnesota. And he’s talking about some very classified technology. Not something a translator would have access to.”

Bursaw said, “Let me see if I got this right. The Preston recording is not this guy Petriv, but someone working in technology, selling it to the Russians.”

“Right.”

“That means that the recording is the evidence?”

“It’s not as prominent as the others, but that’s what it looks like. That’s part of the reason we skimmed over it and missed him.”

“So how are you supposed to identify him?”

“I don’t know. The whole thing was a sham so I’d wind up in prison and out of Rellick’s way. It didn’t have to be flawless. It just had to move us along the chain of spies until it got to me.”

Vail said, “For it to be convincing, there had to be enough information contained in the phone message for us to identify him. That’s the only possibility.”

“Play it again, Steve,” Bursaw said.

Vail started the recorder and set it down on the table between them. When it finished, Bursaw smiled. “Did you hear it?”

“Hear what?” Vail asked.

“ ‘Level and true.’ Did you notice how it’s emphasized slightly? Just like ‘Preston.’ ”

Vail played it again, and he and Kate listened more closely. “You’re right,” he said.

Bursaw went over to the desktop computer and queried “level and true.”

“ ‘The Air Force Song,’ ” he said. “Fourth verse, second line: ‘Keep the wings level and true.’ ”

“Our guy is in the air force,” Vail said. “That makes a lot more sense with the ‘infrared facial-recognition schematics.’ And who knows what else he has access to and is selling to the Russians right now? Someone with this kind of access could do a ton of damage.”

Kate said, “There’s a lot of air force personnel within a hundred miles.”

“Not with access to classified documents about cutting-edge technology,” Vail added.

“The Pentagon,” Bursaw said.

“That’s where I’d start.”

“But why did they make it so hard to recognize the clue?” Kate asked.

“They were all hard to recognize. Remember how long the code on the edge of the DVD took, how we thought it was a dead end. This one was just a little too hard, a little too easy to step over. We were looking for codes. This one was audio. They probably figured better too hard than too easy. Too easy might have tipped us off. And if we did miss one, the next clue was provided. Which is what happened.”

“Okay,” Bursaw said, “what do we do now? There’s got to be twenty thousand people working at the Pentagon. It’s not like we can just walk in and start demanding answers.”

“You’re right, Luke, but there is someone who can,” Kate said.

“Who?” the two men asked at the same time.

“Tim Mallon.”

“The Reston PD chief?” Vail asked.

“I told you he worked nothing but applicant and security clearance cases for twenty-five years. He knows more people at the Pentagon than anyone in the Bureau. And I believe he owes you a favor or two.”

“Can you call him?”

Kate picked up the phone and dialed information.

While she was talking to Mallon, Vail said to Bursaw, “Have you had a chance to do any checking on the last two of Sundra’s files?”

“Actually, I’ve been going over her phone records again. Seeing if they matched anything we’ve run into yet.” Bursaw glanced over at Kate, who was still on the phone. “Not to change the subject, but I don’t suppose there’s any chance of you accepting the director’s offer.”

“Why?”

“Purely selfish reasons. Maybe it’s the philosopher in me, but I too like chaos.”

“I’m afraid it would create more problems than it would solve.”

“The worst thing that could happen is you’d get fired or quit. That’s hardly virgin territory for you.”

“Walking away doesn’t end all problems.”

“Is it Kate?”

“She is certainly part of the geometry.”

“Maybe if you were around here permanently, your problems would solve themselves.”

Vail laughed. “A man so understanding of the complexities of the fairer sex, how come you never got married?”

“Steve, you’ve just asked a question that contains its own answer.”

Kate finished her call. “Your luck’s holding, bricklayer. Tim’s downtown at a lunch meeting. He’s going to stop by in a half hour.”

“I’ll get cleaned up.”

When Vail reappeared freshly shaved and showered, Kate was introducing Tim Mallon to Bursaw. The two men shook hands, and then Mallon made his way over to Vail, offering his hand. “Steve, how are you?”

“I’m good. I haven’t been shot since New Year’s. How are those two boys?”

“The Walton boy is fine. Hardly broke stride. And Eddie Stanton is getting along with his parents. He’s seeing a therapist, too. They’re very optimistic.”

“I’m glad. Has Kate briefed you about what we need?”

“Just what she told me on the phone. That you needed to make a few, very discreet contacts at the Pentagon, specifically with the air force.”

“Tim, I’m going to tell you only the minimum you need to know. Not because you’re no longer with the Bureau, but because we’re not telling anyone else in the FBI about this, not even the director. I hope you won’t feel slighted.”

“I’m a little embarrassed to say I’m still eating free lunches off what you did. I don’t think it’s possible for me to feel anything but gratitude.”

Vail told him that they were working a counterintelligence matter and then played the Preston tape for him. “We believe that this man is a member of the air force working at the Pentagon. We need to identify him without him getting wind of it. We’re hoping you’ll be able to narrow it down by the information he mentioned on the tape. That technology has to be singular in nature. Of course, the fewer people at the Pentagon that you have to tell, the better.”

“Will I be able to play them the tape?”

“Yes, but again, the more people who hear it, the harder it’ll be to keep this under wraps.”

“Steve, I’ll do whatever you and Kate want, but I don’t know if I have a feel for all these nuances—who to tell, who to let listen. I can get to the right people, but who’s told what is a tough call.”

“I guess you’re right. Will it be a problem if Kate goes with you?”

“More of an asset, if you know what I mean.”

“Kate, do you see any problem going with him?”

“You don’t want to go?”

“People might not notice two FBI agents, but three could start speculation. Besides, I’ve got some things I have to get done with Luke.”

She took the digital recorder and put it in her purse. “I guess Tim and I can handle it. But before I go, I wanted to show you something in the kitchen.”

Vail followed her from the room, and when they were out of sight, she pushed him back against the refrigerator, pinning him with her body. “Allowing little Kate to run a lap all by herself. You’d better be careful, someone might think you’re letting your guard down.”

He put his arms around her and said, “We’ve been too busy to get you drunk, so I had to try something.”

She gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “Well, Silky, it just might be working.” She pushed off him and headed toward the living room.

He called after her. “Said the good-looking blonde as she headed for the safety of witnesses.”