Last Chance to Die

by Noah Boyd

  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.

  17

  Once Vail reached the highway, he stayed in the right lane and drove at th
e posted speed limit, forcing cars to stream around him so he could lose himself in thought. He still couldn’t believe that he’d missed the surveillance. But being followed wasn’t the issue. He was using it to avoid thinking about the possibility that Kate had told Langston of his deception. Someone had figured out what he was doing, and the others in the room didn’t seem to possess the aptitude to get a read on him that easily. Kate knew how, given the slightest opportunity, he gladly sent bosses in the wrong direction. If it had been anyone but her, he would just have confronted the person, but he realized now that he was afraid what he might find out.

  As soon as he arrived at the off-site, Vail called the airline and made a reservation to Miami early the next morning. He still had his wreck-diving trip to look forward to. Not that he’d enjoy it now. But at least it would be warm and provide enough of a distraction that he wouldn’t dwell on how this had ended. He made himself a sandwich and ate only half of it. Fatigue burned his eyes, and his thoughts kept wandering off into meaningless directions when he tried to avoid thinking about her. Maybe if he slept for a while, the confusion would disappear.

  He lay down on the cot and forced his eyes closed. After a few minutes, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He got up and, to busy himself with mindless work, started packing. He should call Luke Bursaw and let him know that he was leaving, but he had no desire to talk to anyone. Once he got back to Chicago, he would call him and apologize for the abrupt departure. He felt bad about leaving the analyst case unresolved, but Bursaw was a tenacious investigator and in time would find the answer on his own. Vail pulled on his topcoat, picked up the car keys, and headed out the door. There was a bar less than four blocks away.

  It was a little after 2 A.M. when Vail woke up to someone pounding on the front door. He could still taste the Irish whiskey in his mouth, reminding him why the thumping was so irritating. When he finally opened the door, he was surprised to see John Kalix standing there.

  “What’s the matter?” Vail asked.

  “It’s Kate. She’s been arrested.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Steve, it’s true. That flash drive you recovered, it named the intelligence agent who Calculus promised. It was Kate.”

  Vail laughed without humor. “That’s absurd.”

  “That was my first reaction, too, but the evidence is overwhelming. There was a typed list of eight FBI-CIA joint investigations, along with their named targets. It had her thumbprint on it.”

  “Her actual thumbprint?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait a minute. You mean it was on a copy of the list.”

  “Well, yes. Actually, it was a digital copy of a photograph of the document.”

  “Then how can you have latents on something that is twice removed from an actual piece of evidence?”

  “You’re right, you can’t. But you could see that each of the pages had been fumed before being photographed. On one of them, you can see the smudge of a print on the lower-right-hand corner. The next page is a blowup of the print. It’s a ten-point match with Kate’s left thumb.”

  “I’d hardly consider that overwhelming.”

  “Steve, she spent two years as liaison with the CIA. There’s less than a handful of people who could have put that list together, and she’s one of them.”

  “Wait a minute. Could the examiner see the ridge detail in the latent on the copied document?” Vail asked.

  “No, the lab tried to enlarge and enhance it, but the digital quality wasn’t good enough. That’s probably why Calculus included the page with the blowup.”

  “If it really is Kate’s print, why didn’t he provide the actual documents?”

  “That was brought up. They thought that he probably wasn’t able to remove the documents, so he just photographed them.”

  “If he couldn’t remove them, then how did the page get fumed for prints?”

  “Before the Russians started recording the exchanges, they would sometimes fume documents so that if they could produce the mole’s latents on them, they’d have leverage if it ever became necessary.”

  “But there’s no way of knowing for sure that the latent was actually lifted off that document.”

  “I guess not. But there is other evidence.”

  “Like what?”

  “There are a couple of photos of her with a man named Nikolai Gulin, who is a known SVR intelligence officer.”

  “Any kid with a computer could do that. I suppose the quality of the photos, like the documents, precludes any definitive laboratory examinations.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You can’t believe any of this.”

  “I don’t know Kate that well, but it is hard to imagine. There is one more piece of evidence, though—one that’s impossible to ignore. Do you know what spy dust is?”

  “The ultraviolet powder that the Russians developed in the sixties or seventies.”

  “Nobody’s supposed to know, but we use it, too. Three months ago one of our sources told us that we had a mole at Bureau headquarters, and the SVR officer who was handling him was this guy Gulin. We put him under intense surveillance for a couple of months, but he was very cagey. Almost every time he went out of the compound, he lost the teams following him. We did manage to get video and photos of him all over Virginia and Maryland, but nothing to prove he was spying. However, he liked this one restaurant, so we put an agent in there as a parking valet. Eventually he showed up and left his car with our man, who planted the dust on the passenger seat and on the carpeting. As you probably know, the purpose of the dust is to track who’s meeting with whom by identifying the minute particles being transferred from person to person, which in this case was from car to clothing. Every night for the next month, we swept the Counterintelligence section offices with a UV light, looking for traces of the dust to identify the double agent in our unit. Nothing. It never occurred to us that it was someone from a different division. Once we saw the pictures of Kate with Gulin, Langston got a search warrant. While all her clothes appeared to be dry-cleaned regularly, one pair of her shoes had the dust on them.”

  “She could have picked that up anywhere.”

  “The Bureau has taken the technology to the next level. We can now color-code it. For each operation we use a slightly different color. Hers matched up with the Gulin dusting.”

  “You know this is wrong. Let me talk to her, I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  “Think about it a minute. If she is being set up, that would mean the Russians gave up three assets to frame a woman who has nothing to do with counterintelligence. Why would they do that?”

  “This is so stupid it’s laughable.”

  “Steve, don’t get it in your mind that this is some comedy of errors that will eventually right itself. The Department of Justice is charging her with treason. They think they’ve got enough evidence right now to put her in prison for the rest of her life. And they’re going to do their damnedest to make sure they do.”

  Vail could feel Kalix’s words tightening around his heart like an iron fist. This wasn’t something he could just run out and fix. For the first time since he’d pinned on the FBI badge eight years ago, he felt the real fear of impending failure.

  He took a few seconds so the emotion of the moment could leave him. “Why are you here? You’re Langston’s man, and I would imagine his making this arrest has made him quite the hero, no matter who it hurts.”

  Kalix stared at Vail as he contemplated what he was about to reveal. After a few more moments, he said, “Your reputation is that of a man who can keep his mouth shut, and obviously you have no career aspirations. What I’m going to tell you would wreck my career if it went beyond you and me.” Kalix looked at Vail for agreement, and the expression on his face said that none was needed.

  “Will I do whatever I have to to become an assistant director someday? Yes,” Kalix said. “If it means kissing up to Langston or anyone else, so be it. That’s the only way it gets done an
ymore, but I figure once I’m an assistant director, I can do a lot of things right that are now being done wrong. However, my compromises do not mean that I don’t know right from wrong, and despite the evidence I just offered, I suspect that Kate is innocent. This is no small wrong. If you hear me agreeing with Langston that Kate is a spy, it’s just a means to an end. I have too much time invested, and I’ve accepted too much abuse, to give it all up now. But between you and me, I’ll do whatever I can behind the scenes to help you as long as you promise never to out me.”

  Vail wasn’t convinced that Kalix had been completely forthcoming about why he was there. “Does the director know about Kate?”

  “Yes.”

  The single syllable was delivered abruptly, as some sort of implied message. “Did he send you here?”

  “If I had to guess,” Kalix said, “I’d say he didn’t believe any of the charges either. Of course I’d just be guessing, because the director couldn’t get personally involved in a case with the ramifications that this one promises to carry. Especially with how much he likes Kate. You have to remember, however, that the Justice Department has got their teeth into this, so his hands are tied. They won’t even let us interview her, because she’s so high up in the Bureau.” Kalix opened the briefcase he was carrying and took out Vail’s gun and credentials, handing them to him. “I would also guess that if he had his way, Director Lasker would want you more than anyone to do something about this.”

  It was apparent that the director had sent Kalix unofficially to enlist Vail’s help.

  “John, I’m starting to think that Langston’s not the only one I’ve underestimated. It looks like you have more than one backup plan.”

  Kalix smiled. “I’ve built a career on letting people underestimate me. I am what I am.” He started to leave. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  As soon as the door locked shut, Vail sank down on the marble stair where he’d been standing. Thoughts were rushing through his head at blurred, indecipherable angles. He sat paralyzed, a prisoner of what he’d just been told. After a moment he leaned back, setting his head on the black stone tread above him, looking for the comfort of its hard, cold reality. He closed his eyes and searched his memory, trying to find the image of Kate’s face. At least her smile. Then he realized that more than anything he wanted to recall her laugh. Its slightly husky tone, its honest depth. But it wouldn’t come to him.