Last Chance to Die

32



Unsure where it would take them—and not sure she cared—Kate touched her lips lightly to Vail’s.

Suddenly the door downstairs opened. She drew her head back and, with her voice unintentionally throaty, said, “That’s Luke.”

“Luke who?”

She put her head on his chest. “I wish I could remember.”

She started to move away, and Vail pulled her hand to his mouth, nipping the skin at the back of it. “What idiot gave him a key?”

As soon as Bursaw walked in, he sensed he’d interrupted something. “I . . . uh, forgot something in the car,” he offered diplomatically. “I’ll be right back.”

“That’s all right, Luke. We were just finishing an argument,” Kate said playfully.

Bursaw noticed the new handwriting on the wall and went over to it. “Is there one answer to all five questions?”

“We think the LCS is doing contract recruitment of sources for the Russians. Using blackmail when they can.”

Bursaw reread the questions and Vail’s terse, cryptic answers. After a minute he said, “Impressive. Logically, it does answer all the questions.”

Vail turned to Kate. “We must be right. Philosophers take a death oath to never agree with any definitive conclusion.”

Bursaw said, “I guess the challenge is proving it?”

“That’s what we were trying to figure out.”

“Do you think Sundra was approached?” Bursaw asked.

“Hard to say, but my guess would be that they found out she was making inquiries about Longmeadow. Somewhere it leaked out. Maybe, like us, she picked up on all the calls to car washes and started making inquires into Zogas’s businesses and he got wind of it. We may never know now. If they approached her, maybe she was offered money to shut her up. It wouldn’t have been hard for them to find out how much debt she was in. If they offered her something and she refused, their only option left would be to make her disappear, along with her computer files.”

Bursaw turned around, and the anger he was trying to suppress was obvious. “So she was just doing her job.”

“Her problem was that she was doing more than her job. Don’t worry, Luke, we’re going to settle this, I promise. But right now we all need to be cool.”

Bursaw took a few seconds and then nodded. “I’m okay.” He opened his briefcase and removed a stack of papers. “I had those plates run and got only a couple of hits.” He smiled more calmly now. “But I had an idea. The few plates that came back to them all listed the club’s address, so I had this gal I know at DMV security run an offline search for all vehicles registered at that address for the last three years.” He handed Vail a sheet of paper. “Everyone from Alex Zogas on down. Eight altogether.”

Vail scanned the list. There was Algis Barkus, who’d had the cuts around his eyes at the club, and one other that Vail found very interesting. “Jonas Sakis.” Vail turned the list so Kate could see it. “The guy who tried to kill me in Chicago.”

She said, “Then two of them are probably the guys you and John shot in Annandale.”

“Which would mean we’re down to five.”

“So what do we do now? Sit on the club?” Bursaw asked. “We don’t have a home address for any of them.”

“They’ll be looking for us there. No, I was thinking that my car needed washing.” Bursaw looked at him questioningly. “Zogas owns car washes. His machines have money in them. You don’t think a good businessman would leave them full overnight, do you?”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Let me change into some surveillance clothes,” Vail said. “Kate, you want to come along?”

“Surveillance? You mean me watching you sleep? As enjoyable as that would be, it’ll be slightly less boring if I get back to the office and put another dent in that paperwork. You’ll call me if you get anything?”

“Only if there’s going to be shooting involved.”

Alex Zogas had been brooding since the FBI left, and he hadn’t said a dozen words. The other four men knew not to say anything when he was like that. At the moment he was playing chess against Algis Barkus, and Barkus could tell by his distracted play that Zogas was planning something. Although he’d told the agents that all the men of the Lithuanian Chess Society were chess masters, only Zogas was, and right now Barkus was playing him even. It was part of Zogas’s planning process. There was something about the discipline of the game that he used to unravel and reassemble the most complicated problems. Finally he shifted in his seat, redirecting his concentration to the board, and almost immediately made a brazen move, straightening up and smiling confidently. Whatever the problem was, it had been solved, and Zogas was now less than a handful of moves from checkmate.

It was Zogas’s fourth move that caused Barkus to tip his king over in surrender. Zogas got up and went to the office. The men could hear him typing on the computer. A couple minutes later, he came back and gave Barkus a slip of paper with an address on it. “Nine o’clock. Meet me there.” Zogas nodded at a second man playing chess, Bernard Mindera, to go with him. Short and powerfully built, Mindera seemed pleased to be chosen and started picking up his chess pieces from the board.

It was after 8 P.M., and the temperature had fallen well below freezing. Vail and Bursaw sat parked at a discreet distance from one of Alex Zogas’s Sunshine car washes. “Man, I can’t believe that in the dead of winter so many people stand out in the cold to wash their cars,” Bursaw said.

“It does seem like a license to steal.”

A silver Lincoln pulled in and parked in an out-of-the-way spot that precluded the possibility of its being there for a wash. The two agents watched the well-dressed man get out and tug up the collar on his topcoat. “That’s Zogas,” Vail said.

There were three washing bays, and they watched as Zogas emptied each of the machines of the day’s receipts and put them into a canvas bag. “I had my doubts,” Bursaw said, “but you were right about him not wanting to leave the money overnight.”

Zogas got back into his car and waited for a break in the traffic. Vail said, “I assume you can follow him without getting made.”

“Although I should never bet against you when food is at stake, dinner says I can.”

“Why do I get the feeling that my supper tonight is going to be at some drive-through?”

The Lincoln pulled into traffic heading north.

“Any idea where he might be going, Steve?”

“I’m just hoping he leads us to where he lives. We have no background on this guy at all. With a residence we can get a phone number and all kinds of other information.”

They followed him to a second Sunshine Car Wash, and Bursaw, once again, set up down the street.

After a third car wash, Zogas drove to a bank and parked in the lot. He sat in the car for a while before Bursaw said, “Looks like he’s counting money and filling out a deposit slip.”

“I do believe we have found where he does his banking. Those records should be interesting.”

Finally Zogas got out of his car and walked over to the night depository, using a key to open it. On the way back, he checked his wristwatch. “Looks like he’s got something scheduled. It’s after eight thirty, kind of late. Maybe it’s spy stuff,” Bursaw said.

“Wouldn’t that be nice?”

The Lincoln pulled back into traffic, and Bursaw waited for a couple of cars to get between them before easing into the same lane. “He’s driving too slow. Think he’s early for an appointment?”

They had been traveling southeast for almost twenty minutes when they reached Temple Hills. Zogas parked outside a large apartment complex. The two agents watched as he turned off the ignition and dialed his cell phone. “What do you think, Steve?”

“I have no idea. We’ve just got to stay with him.” They could see him dialing a second number now. After a minute he hung up, started his car, and made a U-turn. Vail and Bursaw looked at each other questioningly. Bursaw turned the Bureau car around and maintained his distance behind the Lincoln again. They followed him for almost a half hour to an upscale neighborhood in Capitol Heights, where he pulled into a three-car garage and then closed the door. Vail made a note of the address.

“So now we know his bank and home address. Not a bad night’s work,” Bursaw said.

But Vail didn’t answer. Bursaw glanced at him. He was sitting with his head back and his eyes closed. Finally Vail said, “Why did he go to Temple Hills to make a couple of phone calls?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to call from his home because he’s worried about us getting a fix on what cell tower he was running off of. You know these people always think we have more capabilities than we do.”

“Maybe,” Vail said. He took out a map book of the greater D.C. area. After studying it for a few seconds, he said, “Do you know what’s less than two miles from where he stopped in Temple Springs? Andrews Air Force Base. Where does Longmeadow live?”

Bursaw reached into the backseat and retrieved his briefcase. He shuffled through the papers and pulled out Longmeadow’s information. “His current address is in Camp Springs, Virginia.”

Vail looked back at the map. “It’s adjacent to the base, less than two miles from where Zogas made the calls. They’re going to kill Longmeadow.”