Edge

by Jeffery Deaver

  Zero . . .

  "The only assignment with a residual actor was my last one. In the deli. He was a friend of the deli owners we targeted. He was a minor player. A liaison and runner basically. . . . He was cleared years ago."

  "Tell me about him anyway."

  "The couple were collecting and selling nuclear arms intelligence. This man put them in contact with a few government contractors and people in helpful positions, academics. He delivered some files and software to them. That was it. When they were zeroed he panicked and went completely straight, gave us names. We monitored him for years. Then took him off the list."

  "Name?"

  "That I can't do, Corte."

  "Surveillance on him yesterday and today?"

  "Yes. Nothing puts him together with Loving."

  I considered what she'd told me. I considered the dwindling leads in the case that might reveal the primary who'd hired Henry Loving. Alone, I stepped into the back, enclosed porch of the house, gesturing Tony Barr and Lyle Ahmad to join me.

  "We have a situation."

  I gave them the news about Joanne. I explained that she was what in our organization would be called point control officer, running a small tactical team. In her case, though, she wasn't protecting lives but eliminating them.

  Lyle Ahmad took the news as unemotionally as I would have expected, as if I'd told him the stock market had dropped a few points or a baseball team score was tied in the third. The reaction of Freddy's FBI agent was different. Tony Barr's face flashed with anger. "She didn't tell us?" he whispered. He was undoubtedly used to suspects who regularly lied. But this deception was from somebody he was risking his life to protect.

  This meeting, though, wasn't to debate the sin of our principal; it was to consider how the new information affected our protection strategy. I said, "She's positive she isn't the target. But I think for the time being we have to assume she is and that the primary who hired Loving could be funded with big money and has the support of significant foreign interests." I reminded the two men about the helicopter at Carter's house near the Potomac.

  Ahmad said, "So it's possible they could use a chopper for a tactical assault, not just extraction."

  "Wouldn't be surprised," I told him.

  Barr said, "We should liaise with local air traffic control."

  "Good idea, and shift to sixty percent outside patrol. And look up, a lot. Lyle, run the perimeter now."

  He punched the door code and stepped outside.

  Barr and I returned. Joanne was in the living room, looking into the hallway toward the closed bedroom door.

  "The director of your group," I said. "The same one you worked for back then?"

  "Yes."

  "I want to talk to him."

  She gave a resigned nod. She understood it was useless to argue. Which it was.

  We walked into the den. She took her own phone from her purse. She set it on my desk and hit SPEAKER then a speed-dial button. Although today's scrambled phones no longer sound like a fax machine, I imagined I heard a clatter as there was a click, and a voice rose from the black box in front of us. "This is Williams."

  "It's me," Joanne said. There was a momentary pause while, presumably, some electronics verified that this was her voice. "On speaker."

  "On speaker," Williams grumbled. "That says a lot."

  Meaning that we'd figured it all out.

  "Yessir."

  I identified myself and explained that I was in charge of the protection detail for the Kesslers.

  Williams of the elusive first name said, "I know who you are. I figured it was just a matter of time. Somebody's been tickling our servers."

  I was certainly angry at the withholding of the information about her prior career but I recalled my mantra about defining goals and coming up with efficient solutions. There might be a time for recrimination but the task now was to keep the Kesslers safe and to find the primary who had hired Loving. So I said, "I need all the details on this man who was involved in Joanne's last case."

  A pause on the other end, which might have been a reaction to my request. Or it might have arisen because the woman in question wasn't Joanne to him but Lily Hawthorne.

  "There is absolutely no shred of evidence that he's involved. Or anybody else that Joanne came in contact with. We've been monitoring the situation from the beginning."

  "Even so, I want the name."

  "I can't do that."

  I said firmly, "I hope you understand that I have a job to do. Part of that is assessing threats on my own. I can't just take your word for it."

  "Part of my job is keeping matters like this very, very private."

  "I know that," I said slowly.

  And let my threat register and spread. Public announcements can often be a very effective edge.

  Williams sighed. "His name is Aslan Zagaev. He is a Chechnyan Muslim. Naturalized as part of the plea deal."

  "You've been monitoring him. Where is he?"

  "At the moment? At home in Alexandria."

  "What're his details?"

  "Owns a half dozen carpet stores. A restaurant. My people have been through everything, Corte. I mean everything. Com profiles, banking accounts, travel records, corporate holdings, investments, family, brother and sisters, associates. Nothing. He's absolutely clean."

  "Chechnyan Muslim. Does he go to the Middle East?"

  "Yes. On business to buy rugs. But we don't have GPS around his neck. The folks he was dealing with here, the couple in the deli? They were Pakistani, not Arabs. And recently? No phone calls in the past two weeks. Routine at his office hasn't been affected, best as we can tell. Christ, Corte, we're taking this seriously. We know what we're doing."

  I asked, "Could he be deep cover, a sleeper?"

  Williams asked, "After six years? They don't really work that way." He said this with some authority. "Besides, sleepers don't volunteer at the Georgetown Islamic Youth Center. Or go near anyplace with the I word in it. He'd be at Presbyterian bake sales."

  "You have no other actors it could be?"

  "That's right."

  Presumably because they were dead.

  I said, "I want the names of your security man and analyst on Zagaev."

  "Corte, what could Lily . . . what could Joanne possibly know that he'd have any interest in, after all these years?"

  The answer seemed obvious to me. "She knows where to find you, doesn't she?"

  Chapter 47

  AFTER WE DISCONNECTED, Joanne stood for a long moment looking toward the hallway that led to the closed bedroom door behind which her husband undoubtedly was fuming.

  She took several steps down the hall and then stopped and returned to the couch.

  I called Williams's case analyst. The director had given him the okay to talk to me--about the Joanne Kessler security matter only, of course, not about the Sickle part--and I got addresses and phone numbers and corporate information about Aslan Zagaev and his businesses. He told me that neither he or the security officer Williams had ordered into the field on Saturday morning had found anything linking Zagaev to Loving, confirming what Joanne and Williams had stated.

  I thought, Well, obviously he's not going to be making incriminating calls from those phones. Did they even think about prepaid mobiles? There were limits as to how much digging Williams's people could do, sure, but these were basic elements of tradecraft.

  I disconnected, called Claire duBois and explained the situation to her. "Drop everything and start running background on Zagaev," I told her. "I want everything."

  "Shoe size to what's on his TiVo," she said.

  "Family, employees, family of his employees, travel records. Concentrate on the past couple of days, then go on from there. Any connection to Loving, anything that could be a connection to Loving."

  I then asked her to transfer me to Aaron Ellis. I briefed him and he coughed a surprised laugh. "Joanne?"

  "Seems so. At least Ryan's cases haven't led us anywhere. There's one ac
tor still around from her past. We're going to follow up on it."

  "But Westerfield called, all excited about some D.C. police scandal. He was saying you thought that that was why Ryan was targeted. Some senior official in the department or city hall hired Loving."

  "I'd just as soon he kept thinking that, Aaron."

  Silence for a moment. "Corte . . . you mean the police scandal's fake too?"

  "Not fake. It was a valid theory."

  "Was."

  "Correct."

  "But by the time you suggested to Westerfield it was a possibility, you knew it wasn't?"

  "Aaron, just try to keep him off me for a while."

  "I'll do the best I can."

  Finally, I called and briefed Freddy about Joanne's deception.

  The jokey facade was gone. "Why the fuck didn't the bitch tell us? She didn't have an inkling this whole tidal wave of crap might have something to do with the fact she was an assassin?"

  "I don't think they like to use that word."

  "I care?"

  "This Williams--"

  "Just for the record," Freddy grunted, "he's not as clever as he thinks he is. Or would like to be. A bunch of us know about him and his Sickle band of brothers . . . and sisters, I guess. We thought it was more dirty tricks. But, when you think about it, shooting somebody in the head is about as dirty as it gets. How're you handling it?"

  "Claire's doing homework." I debated. "I'll need some warrants. She'll get you the details. Who and where."

  "All right, will do." Then he asked, "What's Zagaev's game, you think?"

  "I don't know. Williams said sleepers don't work that way. But it works that way if it works."

  "Now, that's quotable, son."

  "Think about it. Williams cleared him five, six years ago. They drop surveillance. That leaves him free to hire Loving to snatch Joanne and get all kinds of information. That sounds like a pretty successful sleeper cell to me. He isn't exactly dripping guilt but it's all we've got."

  "That's my second fastest man theory."

  "The second . . . what?" I asked.

  "You know how fast you have to be to outrun a bear, Corte?"

  I was watching Joanne stare out the window. "How fast?"

  "Just a little faster than the guy with you." Freddy seemed to be waiting. When I didn't say anything he said, "I mean that Zagaev doesn't have to be a perfect suspect. He just has to be good enough."

  "I'll have Claire call you with what she's learned."

  Chapter 48

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER Claire duBois called with information about Aslan Zagaev. This was perhaps a new record for her.

  "I sent Freddy everything," she explained. "He's getting the warrants now."

  "Good. Brief me."

  "He was born outside of Grozny, came over here to study at American University when he was twenty-two. He did postgrad work at MIT and came back to the D.C. area. He started to spend some time at a radical mosque in our hometown, Alexandria. He broke with them--he wasn't religious enough, apparently--but what he was good at was being an entrepreneur. With his science background and connections he made on Embassy Row and among government contractors, he found there was a market--selling trade secrets."

  "Why'd he get off with a plea?"

  "The crime was industrial espionage. What he did was illegal, yes, but very clever. Technically he didn't steal anything that was directly against national security. The Pakistani couple that Joanne and her partner took out? They were consolidators. They assembled information from Zagaev and others into something more useful. I mean, something useful in the dangerous sense. I've learned a lot about nuclear fuel rods. And centrifuges. Enrichment is fascinating."

  All in twenty minutes.

  Before she could start the physics lecture, though, I asked, "So Zagaev cooperated and went on to live the American dream life?"

  "He got married, had a couple of kids and didn't have anything to do with his old life."

  A lot of that going around nowadays, I reflected, looking at Joanne.

  "But for the last few years he seemed to become more religious, though the mosque he and his family go to now is moderate. He seems to lead a fairly secular life. He owns some carpet stores and a restaurant. His kids are in a good private school. He has been taking a few more trips overseas, Turkey a lot. The rugs, I guess. Saudi and Jordan."

  "Any watchlists?"

  "No, none of ours and none in the U.K., Pakistani, India, Jordanian, Saudi or Israeli databases."

  On the surface, yes, innocent. But I still liked my idea of a deep sleeper cell.

  DuBois continued with the rest of the information she knew I would want. She rattled off details about gun registrations (none, because he'd pled to a felony years ago and could not own firearms), state criminal convictions (none), traffic stops (one, crossing the white line prematurely to make a right turn), incriminating posts on social networking sites (none), cars, mortgages, medical records, unusual consumer product purchases, travel records and information about his rug operation and the restaurant.

  I knew Williams's people had given him a pass, but I still wasn't convinced he was clean.

  I disconnected. Joanne looked at me. She'd overheard everything. "You think it's Zagaev?"

  "I don't know. We're looking."

  "He seemed so inconsequential. I can't see it."

  I sat in an armchair; the smell of ancient upholstery rose.

  After a moment she said, "Thank you."

  I lifted an eyebrow.

  "About Maree. You didn't have to go after her. That wasn't your job."

  "It was, yes. It's not efficient to have your principals separated. Too much of a risk."

  She looked at me knowingly. "It was sure a risk to her, right?"

  My voice lowered, though I knew Maree couldn't hear. "She ran to the cliff by the river. But I don't think she was going to jump."

  "But you couldn't tell."

  "No, I couldn't tell. She's vulnerable. But not hopelessly lost."

  "Not like me."

  I said nothing; what was there to say? It was my task to keep my principals' physical incarnations alive and theirs to protect their own souls and hearts.

  "You know what my biggest mistake was, Corte? Thinking I could have it all. Doing what I did for Williams and then dropping the job cold, like it had never existed, and going for a family." A nod toward the bedroom. "When I started running the teams, I thought a normal life was out of the question." A sigh. "A while ago, one of my jobs went bad. I was shot. Pretty seriously."

  "Showed up as the car crash in the official documents."

  Joanne no longer seemed surprised at what I knew or surmised. "Plastic surgery on the entrance wound so it looked like I'd been cut by a piece of wreckage." A shallow smile. "They think of everything." Then her mouth straightened. "But that was it for me having children."

  "I see. I'm sorry."

  A shake of her head, surely reflecting dismay at what Ryan's reaction would be to this news. "After it happened, and I was in therapy, I didn't care. It was like getting shot was a sign that I was meant to keep going with Sickle. But then I met Ryan and his daughter. I realized what I'd missed. So I went for it. But it was stupid. I should never've gone with the organization in the first place or I should've stayed and never gotten married, tried to be a wife and mother." A weak smile. "I'm surprised I lasted six years before I got busted. You can't have both lives, Corte. You know that too. The difference is you're honest about it. You didn't even try."

  I found myself looking down, involuntarily. Joanne added, "Or maybe you did try and it didn't work out either. . . . I'm sorry. That was out of line."

  I gave no reaction. I was relieved when my phone buzzed. "I have to take this."

  "Sure."

  I rose, stepped away and hit ANSWER. "Freddy? What do you have?"

  "Something good, Corte. The bear theory worked out. You were right. Listen to this. About fifteen minutes ago we had a SIG-INT hit on a mobile regi
stered to the brother of somebody who works for Annandale Carpet--Zagaev's company. Our boxes ran a voice print analysis of both callers. We had Zagaev's voice on tape from way back when and it registered positive, which we expected. But what we didn't expect was that the fellow he was chatting away with was a guy you might've heard of. Henry Loving."

  I froze, hunched over the desk.

  "We ran it through three computers and tested the sample against four snippets from Loving in the past. There's no doubt it's him."

  "What'd they say?"

  "It was typical code. Zagaev asked how was the delivery coming. Loving said, 'There've been a few delays. The job site in Loudoun, White's Ferry, was closed down. That deal fell through.'"

  Trying to kidnap Amanda, they meant.

  "Zagaev said he'd told Loving he didn't want to pursue that part of the job in the first place. Loving said it didn't matter now anyway; he'd given up on it. Then he said he was working hard to find some other options in Virginia. They would talk again in a few hours. He might want to pick up what they'd talked about before. Just to be safe."

  "Any triangulation at all?"

  "No, happened too fast. They both took their batteries out when they were through talking. But we've got Zagaev's GPS, and five minutes after he hung up, he started driving. We've got people headed in his direction."

  "He's going to pick up something," I mused. "What?"

  "We'll find out."

  I considered this information. "Okay, so he's given up trying for Amanda as his edge."

  Joanne turned toward me at this.

  I continued to Freddy, "But what does he mean by 'other options' in Virginia?"

  "Maybe that Loving and his partner are going after friends or relatives of Joanne. That could be it. Maybe he's looking for the sister right now, Maree. He might not know she's with you. I'll let you know when we get a visual."

  We disconnected.

  I said to Joanne, "It's Zagaev. He's been talking to Loving. Positive voice prints."

  A brief flash of dismay in her face, recognition of the confirmation that she was in fact responsible for what had happened. Yet then her eyes grew hopeful; the corollary of Zagaev's guilt, of course, was that we had a solid lead. "Whereabouts?"

  "Freddy's putting surveillance in place. SIG-INT and on the ground. For now we wait."

  Her laugh was colored with cynicism and perhaps a bit of sorrow. "Waiting. I've done my share of that in this business. I suppose it's the same for you. . . . And you mentioned Amanda?"