Last Chance to Die

34



The next morning Kate picked up an order of steak and eggs from a nearby restaurant and let herself into the former observation post on Sixteenth Street. The night before, she had driven Vail back there and couldn’t help noticing that his skin was gray from a lack of circulation, and every once in a while, out of the corner of her eye, she would notice his hands shaking. Again he refused medical treatment when she dropped him off. She offered to stay the night in case he needed anything, and when he didn’t use the opportunity to suggest the ultimate act of warming, she knew that the cold had taken more out of him than he was admitting. At that point she thought about insisting they go to the hospital but caught herself at the last moment, remembering who she was dealing with. So this morning, instead of going to the office, she thought she should check in on him.

She found him still sleeping and went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. After pouring herself a cup, she went back into the workroom. Methodically, she scanned the walls to see if Vail had added anything. It didn’t appear so.

She pulled over the desk chair and sat down to look at the graffiti-like displays that documented what they had done. As she sipped her coffee, she realized for the first time that the maze of documents, maps, and handwritten notes seemed to be almost an art form. Most of the writing was Vail’s, and, like him, it was enigmatic yet somehow aesthetic. With all its charted paths and irregular branches, it was more of a two-dimensional sculpture than the record of an investigation. She took another swallow of coffee.

“Hi.”

She spun around. Vail was in a T-shirt and pants. His color had returned. “I brought you”—she looked at her watch—“brunch. In the kitchen. It should still be warm.”

“What is it?”

“Something very Chicago. Pure, slow death to go.”

She got up and followed him into the kitchen. He got a fork and opened the Styrofoam container. “Steak and eggs. Whatever you’re feeling guilty about, I accept your apology.”

“Please, no more thank-yous. You’re making me blush,” she said. “And on the way here, I got a call from the director of the FBI.”

“How is he?”

“Unhappy. He wanted to know why we haven’t been keeping him or anyone else up on the investigative minutiae, like dead double agents and the shooting of suspects.”

“You didn’t mention my name, did you?”

“Believe it or not, of the million or so names that have worn a Bureau badge, yours was the only one that came up. He said he wanted to see you as soon as you had time.”

Vail laughed. “I’ve been fired twice—or is it three times?—from this job, but this will be the first time by the director.”

“I wouldn’t start working on your exit speech just yet. He doesn’t like being blindsided, but he probably figures he’s not getting his money’s worth out of you unless he is.”

“You can’t bawl me out and bring me steak. It’s very confusing. And as you know, I’ve been sick lately.”

Kate watched as Vail ate ravenously. “Then I’ll wait until you get your appetite back.” She got up and poured him a cup of coffee. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any more epiphanies.”

“Actually, I did receive a call from the two A.M. messenger.”

He had explained his “messenger” allusion to her once before. Sometimes if he went to sleep with some unresolved problem on his mind, around 2 A.M., probably when his body was about to shift into one of its REM cycles, it woke him up with some sort of answer, probably trying to jettison the psychological baggage of the unresolved mystery to ensure a more recuperative sleep cycle. “And what was the message?”

Vail cut off a large chunk of steak. “As you know, the messenger frequently screws with me, so see how this sounds. It starts with the two air force sergeants. One disappeared and one turned spy. Why did one disappear?”

“If we’re right about everything, it was because he didn’t want to commit treason,” she said.

“Correct. So the Lithuanians recruited someone else from the same project. They must have heard about the technology and decided they needed a piece of it to sell to the Russians, no matter how hard it was to get. Do you know where I’m going with this?”

“The missing guy in Las Vegas, Gaston. You think he disappeared because he refused the Lithuanians. And if you’re right, they may have recruited someone in his place. There could still be an active mole at—where did he work?—Matrix-Linx International?”

“Yes. And if there is, and we can figure out who it is, maybe we can use him to get to Zogas,” Vail said.

“So how do we find him?”

Vail pushed away the food container. “Unfortunately, the messenger is very lazy. He only leaves me one item at a time.”

They got up and took their coffee into the workroom. As though they expected the answer to have been visibly written in their absence, they both searched the wall in silence. Finally Vail said, “I’m going to shower. You figure it out.”

A half hour later, Vail reappeared dressed in a suit and tie. “Any luck?”

Her only response was to hand him a printout of a Bureau background investigation.

He read the subject’s name. “Raymond Ellis Radkay. Why him?”

“I checked Matrix-Linx International. Maurice Gaston had a top-secret clearance. So I figured the LCS would recruit only someone with an equal level of authorization. There were just four. One was the missing Maurice Gaston, leaving three. Another left the company before Gaston disappeared, and one was a female. Who, because of the chess club’s complete disregard for women, I would assume they would not lower themselves to recruit.”

“And that leaves Radkay,” Vail said. “Well, aren’t you the little overachiever so early in the day?”

“It makes you wonder if there aren’t more out there. Ones who were once useful but are no longer supplying information.”

“It’s possible, but we have no way of identifying them. Something occurred to me in the shower—other than you,” Vail said. “Maybe the LCS has found another use for their no-longer-productive spies. Do you remember those Disney stores that used to carry the old cartoon cels? I think it was the eighties when they started springing up.”

“Sure.”

“They were created because one of the bosses at Disney was checking out some storage space somewhere and found tens of thousands of them lying around deteriorating. Because he knew that Americans would collect anything, he instantly saw their potential. Each one was hand-drawn, a legitimate piece of original art. He opened the stores and literally turned debris into millions and millions of dollars.”

“What’s that have to do with the LCS?”

“I’m sure our little band of entrepreneurs were sitting around their chessboards trying to figure out how to protect the Russians’ favorite CIA agent from Kate Bannon when it occurred to them, ‘Hey, we’ve got all these inactive and low-production double agents just lying around collecting dust. Let’s figure out a way to turn them into money.’ ”

“So the LCS was getting paid by the Russians to frame me and getting us to pay them two hundred and fifty thousand dollars apiece for no-longer-useful spies.”

“Literally turning debris into a million dollars. At a quarter of a million dollars apiece, I think the LCS would have given up every one of their lesser moles. All they would have to do was make Ariadne’s thread a little longer. So there may not be as many as you would think,” Vail said.

“That makes sense.”

“What’s Matrix-Linx’s contract for?”

Kate took the report back and flipped through a couple of pages. “Ground weapon systems.”

“Our chess players would know that ground weapons systems would be attractive to the Russians. Maybe they heard about the technology and asked the LCS to go find someone to supply it. And let’s not forget that the LCS wanted someone at Matrix-Linx bad enough to travel out of state, where they’re not nearly as comfortable, and go after a guy who apparently wasn’t interested in spying.”

“In other words, when Gaston said no and was presumably killed, they knew they had to find someone else at the same company, and as soon as possible.”

“Okay, Radkay it is. But now we’ve got to prove it. Let’s start with his financials.”

Kate said, “But if, like you said, the LCS was actually paying these guys peanuts, what’s going to show up in his bank statements?”

“Assuming he is the mole, they didn’t have the same time and means to set him up with blackmail as they had with Gaston. Therefore the inducement was probably more money. At least initially. If so, maybe it’ll show in either his bank account or his lifestyle. You don’t commit treason out of the clear blue and say, ‘I’m just going to save the money for a rainy day.’ You start living for today.”

“And what if we don’t find anything?”

“One problem at a time. Can you strip the financial release forms out of Radkay’s report and ‘update’ them?”

Five minutes later Kate held up the altered informational release for Vail to see.

“An impressive forgery,” he said. “I think we’re ready to go.”

“Do you want to take your car?”

He looked at her as if the question had triggered something. He went to the wall and ran his fingers along the documents, stopping occasionally to read something in detail. “I’m an idiot.”

“What?”

“Every time we take my car, we run into the Lithuanians.”

“You think there’s a bug in your car?”

“Some sort of tracking device, yes. It would answer how they were beating us to the moles.”

“But how would they get it on the car?”

“It was probably easy. They knew we were going to trace Calculus’s movements, because that’s what they set us up to do. They could have done it any time we were out of the car. The ones they have now take seconds to attach.”

“I’ll get someone from Technical Services to sweep it.” She dialed a number and then asked for a technician. After a short conversation, she hung up. “He’s going to meet us at one of the surveillance off-sites.” Vail was still studying the wall. His eyes were narrowed in an unusual way. “What are you thinking about?”

“My father.”

“Your father?”

“Like him or not, he did teach me how to get even.”