Last Chance to Die

by Noah Boyd

  “The director told me. He thought it was as ridiculous as I did. If your theory is right, maybe the Russians were trying to make it look like she took her own life. She did think she was slipped something. And once that didn’t work, maybe an accidental death would work just as well. Like when we had to rappel off that building and the rope was rigged to look like we’d died trying to escape the fire. We’re sure the Russians orchestrated all that. But then they tried to kill just me when I went after Petriv.”

  “Maybe they thought she’d be with you,” Kalix said. “Up to that point, you two had been into everything together.”

  “So then the Russians went to Plan C, to provide proof that she is guilty of treason and get rid of her permanently. Which was their final, fail-safe plan all along. It’s hard to believe that the entire Calculus ruse was set up to protect somebody in the CIA who’s spying for the Russians,” Vail said. “But it’s the only thing that makes sense out of all this.” He went to the wall and started examining the charts.

  Kalix asked, “Do you think Calculus’s movements have something to do with it?”

  “I don’t know. But Calculus is the key to this, and thanks to these we know everywhere he went until he disappeared. Maybe they are the answer.”

  Kalix stepped up next to him and glanced at the maze of photos, charts, and notes covering the wall. “Do you want me to stay and help?”

  “No, why don’t you go get some sleep, and we’ll start fresh tomorrow. I’m going to go to bed myself. Call me first thing in the morning.” Vail smiled crookedly. “If you dare.”

  After Kalix left, Vail lay down on the couch and stared at the wall. It was too far away for him to read, but that was good, because he was starting to wonder if there were any larger patterns he was missing. He started to retrace Kalix’s theory through the different sections of the information on the wall, but then his burning eyelids slid shut.

  Vail felt someone tap him on the leg. “Steve.” He opened his eyes and was surprised to see Lucas Bursaw standing over him. “I know it’s late, but I saw your car outside and the lights on.”

  Vail checked his watch. “Late? It’s almost five A.M.”

  “The computer geeks finally finished that Volume Shadow Copy query you suggested. They found fourteen files on Sundra’s laptop that had been deleted in the thirty days before she disappeared.” Vail sat up, and Bursaw handed him a thick stack of pages with the contents of the files printed out.

  Vail let his thumb riffle through them. “That’s still a big haystack.”

  “I was up most of the night with it. There are five of them that look like she was working pretty hard.”

  “And the other nine?”

  “She found nothing illegal and closed them, giving her a reason to delete them.”

  Vail thought for a second. “So if she was still working on the other five, why delete them?”

  “That’s why I’m here. They were all wiped from the computer the day she disappeared.”

  “Sounds promising. Have you taken a look at them?”

  “Yeah, but there’s nothing that I can see. What do you say we check them out and see if we can get someone to flinch?”

  “Luke, I’ve got something to tell you. Kate’s been arrested.”

  “What!”

  Vail then proceeded to tell him everything, from being picked up at the hospital New Year’s Eve to his trip to Chicago to the shoot-out the day before.

  “Kate? A spy? Even the Bureau can’t be that stupid.”

  “You’re right, it’s the Justice Department. And they’re low-keying everything about it. She hasn’t been formally charged. I guess they’re hoping if she spends enough time locked up, she’ll tell all.”

  “Don’t they have to arraign her?”

  “Special provisions have been made. They can hold her for up to ten days before letting her see a judge.”

  “Whatever misguided thing you’re about to do, I’m in,” Bursaw said.

  “I appreciate it, Luke, but—”

  Abruptly Vail got up and walked away as though Bursaw wasn’t there. He went to the workroom wall and picked up a blue highlighter. He drew a streak through one of the entries, and then, after searching a few more seconds, he drew the blue slash through a second, then a third. He picked up the phone and dialed Kalix’s home number. “Get over here.”

  Vail hung up and said to no one in particular, “Why didn’t I see this before?”

  Kalix knocked on the front door, and Vail went down to let him in. “What is it?” he asked Vail.

  “I think I found something. Come on.”

  Once they were upstairs, Kalix noticed Bursaw. “Who’s this?”

  Vail introduced them. “Luke is at WFO, and he and I go back to Detroit. He’s been deputized and given the appropriate death threats.”

  Kalix shook Bursaw’s hand. “That’s good enough for me. . . .” The deputy assistant director’s voice trailed off with a trace of apprehension.

  Vail pointed at the newly highlighted entries on the wall. “On three different occasions, Calculus went to the exact same coordinates. A place that it doesn’t make sense for him to go even once.”

  Kalix studied them for a moment. “What is it?”

  Vail went over to the computer and moved the mouse, lighting up the monitor screen. The Bureau satellite was online. “Bryn Mawr Park. About a five-minute drive from . . .” Vail moved the cursor as it traced the map along Route 123 and then Chain Bridge Road.

  Kalix took a step closer to the screen. “ . . . CIA headquarters at Langley.”

  “And that means what?” Bursaw asked.

  Vail looked at Kalix and then at Bursaw. “I have no idea.”

  Kalix said, “It means we’re one step closer to . . . What time of the day were these three contacts?”

  Vail picked up a file and started making notes. When he finished, he handed Kalix a slip of paper. “At 10:03 A.M., 1:42 P.M., and 10:48 A.M.”

  Kalix turned around and smiled at them.

  “What?” Vail asked.

  “All three are during working hours. Have you ever been to Langley?”

  “No.”

  “You can’t get in or out without swiping your ID.”

  “So the CIA will have a record of people leaving headquarters on those dates, around those times. That’s great, but I doubt they’ll be willing to share that with us.”

  “I have a good friend over there. We went to law school together. And he’s in Personnel.”

  Vail pushed the phone toward Kalix. He picked it up and dialed.

  After Kalix hung up, he said, “Maybe by this afternoon. He has to sneak around a little to do it. He’s going to call me at the office. As you probably heard, I had to promise him first notification if something comes up on one of theirs.” Kalix got up to leave.

  Vail asked, “Where are you going?”

  “Back to the office. I have a meeting I can’t miss. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.”

  After he left, Vail went back to the wall and started scanning it. Finally he turned to Bursaw and said, “Let’s get out of here for a while. What do you say we go cover some of those leads on Sundra?”

  “You sure you want to bother with that now?”

  “I need something to do. Let’s go make some people nervous.”

  For the next three hours, the two men fell into an old rhythm developed during three years of friendship and working together in Detroit. They complemented each other well, picking up on the familiar nuances of criminal behavior, which weren’t much different whether they were in D.C. or Michigan.

  The first stop was a Middle Eastern travel agency. Sundra’s file did not document why she was investigating them, but once Vail and Bursaw started interviewing the owner, they discovered that he had a large marijuana-growing operation in the building’s basement. They decided that someone had flagged the premises based on the inexplicable electrical consumption caused by the massive lighting system used.<
br />
  The next one turned out to be an identification mill operated out of a residence. The individual in charge of the operation provided forged driver’s licenses and car titles for a hundred dollars apiece. He had been arrested years before and received probation. When he told the two agents that his lawyer said he would probably be continued on probation if caught, Vail and Bursaw felt satisfied that he had nothing to gain from Sundra Boston’s disappearance.

  “Two down, three to go,” Vail said as they got back into the car. “Lucas Bursaw, tell us who our next contestant is?” Before Bursaw could answer, Vail’s cell phone rang. It was Kalix. Vail listened for a few seconds. “Okay, we’ll meet you there.”

  Bursaw said, “What’s up?”

  “We’re going to have to put this on hold. John has that list of CIA employees.”

  22

  When they got to the off-site, John Kalix was parked outside waiting for them. They went upstairs, and Kalix handed Vail the list of names, along with their photos.

  “Names and photos—you must have something on this guy.”

  “Actually, I do. Like I said, he and I went all the way back to law school. We were pretty close. We were out one night having a few cocktails, and he spotted a source of his in the bar. I guess he thought I’d be impressed, so he introduced me to the guy. The source was horrified that someone would see us, and he tried to leave. My friend caught him outside and started slapping him around. The asset made a stink, and I wound up lying about it to a couple of their internal grunts. He was absolved, and now he’s paying the bill.”

  Vail made a quick count. “Nine. That’s not bad. Have you run the names through indices?”

  “Personally searched them myself. Nothing.”

  “We have one advantage right now—surprise. If we confronted them, we’d lose that. Besides, from the moment these people decide to start spying, they’re constantly rehearsing their answers to any questions about their loyalty. Anybody have any ideas?”

  Kalix and Bursaw both shook their heads.

  “Sorry, boys, there appears only one thing we can do,” Vail said. “We’ve got to show the photos to Kate.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Kalix asked. “They won’t let anyone from the Bureau near her.”

  “John, this is where we separate the temporary help from the truly self-destructive.”

  Kalix laughed. “Talk about making something sound irresistible.”

  “Come on, how many FBI agents can say they helped a federal prisoner escape?”

  “If you mean without becoming a federal prisoner themselves, I’m going to guess zero.”

  Alfred Bevson, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, sat at his desk rereading a newspaper article regarding a shooting in Annandale the day before. The facts seemed deliberately vague, and that, coupled with the participants’ being two unnamed FBI agents and two suspected East European illegal immigrants, made him wonder if it had something to do with the Kate Bannon case. His secretary buzzed him. “Yes.”

  “There’s an attorney by the name of Karl Brickman on the line. He insists on talking to you.”

  “Just tell him I’m in a meeting and I’ll call him back.”

  “He said he was representing Kate Bannon.”

  “What?” Bevson swore under his breath. The FBI must have leaked her detention. “Okay, Claire, put him through.”

  Bevson knew that the Bureau was upset with him for cutting off their access to her, but by his own admission their director was too close to her to let the FBI stay actively involved. The last thing Bevson needed right now was more bad press. They’d been all over him recently on the issue of the escalating crime rate in the District, and there were rumors that the present administration was about to replace him because of it. The Bannon case was supposed to sweep all that into obscurity, and it probably would once its depth was reported to the world.

  If they fired him anyway, the important thing was having a soft place to land. If he could publicly manipulate his role in this treason case against an FBI higher-up, the big firms would be calling. Washington loved a good spy story, and there were firms that would hire him for no other reason than to hear the insider gossip. But all that would be diluted if the FBI was going to leak every detail of the case, as they usually did when it was to their advantage. For once he was going to beat them to the punch. But first he would have to put out another one of their well-placed brush fires. “This is Al Bevson, can I help you?”

  “Karl Brickman. I see from your online bio that you went to Georgetown Law, so I know you were taught the concept of due process. Apparently you think there’s some exception to the rule when it’s an FBI agent who’s been charged.”

  “I’m sorry, who is your client again?”

  “You want to know who my client is? Put on the six o’clock news tonight and you’ll find out. It won’t matter which network—they’ll all be carrying it.”

  “You told my secretary it’s a Kate Bannon.”

  “And you’ve had her in custody for three days without taking her before a judge or a magistrate. In civilized countries that’s called an abduction.”

  “Mr. Brickman, if we were holding someone as you have suggested and you went to the media, be advised you could be violating national security.”

  “If you consider what you’ve done to Kate Bannon as being in the best interests of national security, then it needs to be violated.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about the case.”

  “Apparently there’s a lot you don’t know about prosecutorial malfeasance. I’ve already contacted the assistant director at the FBI who has jurisdiction over this case, William Langston, and given him the same option I’m about to give you. If I don’t meet with my client within three hours, in three hours and one minute I start making calls to the media.”

  The door opened, and Bevson’s secretary came in and handed him a note.

  Assistant Director Langston, line 3. Urgent!

  “Mr. Brickman, can I call you back?”

  “No, you can’t. In exactly three hours, I’ll be at the FBI building. If I’m not immediately taken to see my client, you know where I’ll be going next.” The line went dead.

  Bevson punched the line-three button. “Al Bevson.”

  “Bill Langston. I’m the Counterterrorism AD. Did you get a call from a lawyer named Brickman?”

  “That’s who I was on the phone with. Who is he?”

  “I made a couple of calls after he threatened me. His practice is primarily criminal. A one-man firm, and he is not a media hound. I guess that’s why I’ve never heard of him, but the word is he’s the last guy you want to have coming at you.”

  “How the hell did he find out about Bannon?”

  “I was going to ask you. You’re the one who won’t let us near her, remember?”

  Bevson said, “Someone might think a call to a lawyer would be a good way to get even with us for that.”

  “It’s just as likely that someone from your side did it. You’re the one with all the lawyers. Maybe you should ask around and find out if any of your people know him personally.”

  Bevson knew that was true. These days, “leaking” was an act of self-indulgence. “It’s out there now, so it doesn’t matter. What do you think we should do about it?”

  “This cannot get to the media. Until we can secure some cooperation from Bannon or we can be sure no one else is involved, we’ve got to keep this buttoned up. Every time there’s the least hint of someone’s being identified, that person is murdered, and each time it’s arranged so it looks like the Bureau had a hand in it. How about this: Have a couple of marshals bring her over with one of your assistant prosecutors, and we’ll give her the full-court press one more time before Brickman shows up. He told me he was coming over at three o’clock. In fact, how soon can you get her here?”

  “I’m guessing an hour or so.”

  “Good, I’ll line up our best available inte
rviewers, and they can take a shot at her.”

  “Can my man sit in?”

  “The best interviews are done one-on-one, but if she breaks, your man can draft up the formal statement, and then you’ll be able to spin it any way you want.”

  “I don’t care who gets credit, I’m just—”

  “Please, Al, save it for the press conference. Just have them call my extension when they bring her in—2117.”

  Kate sat in her cell at the Correction Treatment Facility in southeast Washington. It was where all female prisoners arrested in the District of Columbia were housed. The cell had a window, but it had been covered over with sheet metal, which made the cement-block cubicle seem that much smaller. She had never experienced claustrophobia, but the moment they shut the door, she felt a sense of mild suffocation, as if the air were being secretly drawn out of the space, or at least the oxygen level was being manipulated to a level that would not allow logical thought.

  A concrete bed with a thin mattress, a seatless toilet, and four pale green walls were all she’d seen for the last three days, except for the matronly guard with a lifeless face who brought her meals twice a day.

  Kate was well aware that this sensory and social isolation had a purpose. It was to soften her up. But it wasn’t the austere surroundings that were having an effect. It was the three days. Three days without someone rushing to her cell, throwing open the door and telling her that a terrible mistake had been made, something she was waiting for even now.

  When arrested, she was confronted with the evidence: the photos, the prints, and the dust on her shoes. She had to admit that if she’d been on the other side of the table, she wouldn’t have been interested in listening to the unprovable denials that she presented in her defense.