by Jack Slater
With the task done, he installed two more bugs in the room to cover all dead spots. One would probably have sufficed, but the devices were cheap – relatively speaking – and returning to install more was by contrast an expensive risk to needlessly incur.
The bugs themselves consumed extremely low levels of power, but all technological leaps come with trade-offs, and in this case low power meant short range. Because the house was brick, it would be even shorter. But there was a fix for that, too.
Trapp scanned the living room as he extracted a needlepoint drill from his belt. Unlike the outside, the building’s interior walls were for the most part just plasterboard. He found a suitable spot behind the television and drilled a small hole into it. The drill produced only a tiny amount of dust, and a symbiotic vacuum within it meant that only a couple of flakes fell to the ground.
The mothership device was a combination receiver and burst transmitter, not much thicker than a strip of metal wire, with its own built-in battery as well as the ability to absorb waste power from nearby electrical wiring, of which there was plenty. It would suck up power all day long, compress all the files it received, then transmit them to another relay outside the house at random times. Unless someone was scanning for bugs all day long, the chances of such a transmission being detected were minimal.
He finished the installation, painted the installation hole with a brush not much bigger than a toothpick, then pulled back a little to check that the shades matched. They did. Unless someone really went looking, the addition was almost invisible to the naked eye.
All done.
He clicked his microphone three times to communicate this fact to his partner. She replied with one, which meant that she wasn’t quite done wiring the upstairs. Trapp bent to vacuum the scattering of dust from the floor and started hooking the device back to his belt when he was finished.
The scrape of shoes at the front door warned him a second before the sound of a woman’s voice calling out for Leo Conway’s wife.
“Rita?”
The woman fell silent for a couple of seconds, waiting, then pulled out a second time. “Rita – you guys in there? Leo?”
Trapp froze the second he heard her voice, leaving his hand still half-extended, in the process of returning his tools to his belt. They were so damn close to being done. Who the hell was this? And why couldn’t she have waited just a couple of minutes longer?
The doorbell rang a couple of times, its first rendition truncated halfway through by a second, which the woman at least had the decency to allow to fully play out. Trapp moved only his eyes, scanning the room to confirm what he already knew – that if he needed to escape, the backyard was his only option. But that meant crossing about ten feet of old flooring that would provide as much warning to an attentive listener that there was an intruder as any security alarm.
So a simple question lingered in Trapp’s mind: was Rita’s houseguest as innocent as she seemed, or was someone else coming to pay her husband a visit?
And if it was the latter – were they here alone?
“I brought you some food. I heard about what happened to Leo, so awful,” the woman called out for half the neighborhood to hear. Trapp suspected that that part wasn’t accidental. “I’ll leave it out here, okay? It’s Katie. Call me.”
Trapp held his breath as he waited for the woman’s footsteps to disappear. His hand was still in the exact same place as it had been when she’d first started talking.
“Looks like Rita Conway is on her way back home,” Ikeda said through the radio, startling Trapp half to death. “You have about twenty minutes.”
He still didn’t move, instead waiting another couple of minutes until he was absolutely certain that the unwanted visitor was definitely gone. Kelly appeared to come to the same conclusion about the same time, descending the stairs and emerging into the living room. He shot her a thumbs-up, which she reciprocated with a sharp nod of her head.
Trapp brushed the button of his mic but didn’t start transmitting until they reemerged into the Conways’ backyard. “We’re done. Out.”
“Where the heck do you think he’s going?” Ikeda muttered, genuinely surprised by Leo Conway’s route. He was heading right into the heart of DC.
“Beats me,” Pope replied, glancing at her in the mirror. “We sure he didn’t make plans?”
“None we know of,” she replied, following Leo Conway’s progress on the map. “Hold up, I think he’s stopping.”
“Want me to get closer?”
“A little bit. He must’ve come all this way for a reason.”
They both fell silent for a few seconds as Pope guided the Toyota through a set of traffic lights, closing the distance between their vehicle and Conway’s to just 20 or 30 yards. Close enough to get eyes on without exposing themselves to too much risk of being noticed.
The indicator light on his car was blinking, and Ikeda squinted, noticing a familiar blue sign. “Looks like –”
“Parking garage,” Pope said at about the same time.
“Okay,” Ikeda said, grabbing a purse from beside her and shouldering it. “Take me half a block further, then let me out.”
Pope did as he was instructed without comment. Neither of them visibly looked to the side as they passed Conway’s car turning into the entrance of an underground parking garage beneath a mid-budget DC hotel. Twenty seconds later, Ikeda climbed out of the Prius, then retrieved her cell phone from her purse as the car pulled away from the sidewalk.
She fiddled with it for a couple of seconds, turning it on and tapping with aimless purpose at the screen before returning the device to the purse. To anyone watching, it would have looked like she was leaving a rating for her driver.
“Can you hear me?” Pope said into her ear.
She clicked the transmit button hidden in her sleeve twice to confirm that he was coming through nice and clear.
“Signal hasn’t moved. Which either means he’s fiddling around down there, or he’s left his phone in the car for a reason.”
He’s meeting someone, Ikeda thought. Someone he’s not supposed to.
It was almost impossible to run a successful surveillance operation with just two operatives, so Ikeda knew that if she was going to have any chance at pulling this off, she needed to keep her distance.
It wasn’t really Leo Conway that Ikeda was worried about. It was possible that he’d had some counter-surveillance training at some point, but she was willing to wager that it would have been no more rigorous than a PowerPoint presentation by a contractor at a DEA off-site day. He would probably be anxious, and cornered animals sometimes found they possessed a sixth sense for surveillance they never knew they had.
But no matter how good he might inadvertently prove, Ikeda wagered she was better.
Her worry centered more around the individual her target was here to meet, if that was what was happening here, rather than Conway himself. She was on alert for the tall blond man that Kelly had seen at the Whole Foods café several days earlier. Whoever he was, he had clearly scouted the location before meeting his source there. None of the security cameras had picked up anything more conclusive than an image of the back of his head.
But as far as she could tell, he wasn’t here.
“Wait,” Pope said. “Conway is coming up to street level now. Not far from where you’re standing.”
“Got it,” Ikeda murmured, momentarily making herself scarce. She watched as the target emerged from the parking garage. “He’s walking up 11th St., toward the corner of East.”
“It’s like he wants us to catch him,” Pope remarked over the radio.
Ikeda was careful to walk a few steps behind another – slightly plumper – woman, to obscure her from Conway’s view if he happened to turn. “Why do you say that?”
“He’s what – 150 yards from the Hoover building? It’s like he’s tempting fate.”
“Yeah,” Ikeda agreed, falling silent as Conway rounded the corner and headed ri
ght. He was, she reflected, doing nothing to dispel Pope’s suspicion. But these moments were the hardest in any surveillance operation, particularly one as undermanned as this. A corner was a perfect opportunity to make a tail, since the surveillance operative always had to take it on blind.
She held back just before East Street and waited until the rear window of a passing car briefly flashed an image of what she was about to face. Someone was walking toward her. A woman. Another figure walking away.
It was clear. She kept following.
“He looks antsy,” she reported.
“How so?”
“I don’t know. I just get that vibe. Something in the way he’s walking, it’s all jerky. Like he’s real tense.”
Conway was walking like someone had replaced the soles of his shoes with lead instead of leather. Ikeda hung back to avoid being spotted, pretending to study the window of what she soon realized was a lingerie shop. Ikeda flushed, not really sure why, but continued to wait. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the jutting concrete structure of the Hoover building, the guard post on the corner and the blast barriers on the edge of the sidewalk.
He stopped at the pedestrian crossing, even though the man was green. The light flicked red, waited thirty seconds, and then went green all over again before he made it across. And even after that all he did was stop and stare.
“I’m not kidding, Nick,” she said softly, as a quizzical frown lifted from her forehead. “He’s looking at that front door like it’s a long-lost lover. I think he’s considering turning himself in.”
20
Leo Conway’s heart was still racing almost an hour later. He found an empty parking spot about 10 houses up from his own and killed the engine. His fingers ached as he pulled them away from the steering wheel and realized quite how hard he’d been gripping it.
He wiped his palms against his pants, then pulled the key from the ignition, pocketing it. In the center console of the car, his phone flashed with the notification of a message from his wife asking where he was.
“You should have just turned yourself in,” he moaned, half out loud, half in his head. He dropped his forehead to the steering wheel, hard enough that the horn let out a single, mournful chirp. He stayed there for a few long, ragged breaths, sucking oxygen greedily into his lungs as he tried to figure out which option would allow him to chart the furthest course from disaster.
The passenger door opened, and a figure climbed in and closed it behind him before Leo was really aware of what was happening. He was slow to react, numb with fear and worry. All he saw of the man was a flash of blond hair in the rear mirror.
A familiar voice filled the car, but not one that brought Leo any comfort. “What were you doing, Leo?”
“What –?” he squeaked. “What are you talking about?”
“I was watching you,” the man said without shame. “And I didn’t like what I saw.”
“And what was that?” Leo said with surprising vigor, turning his head and eyeing his contact, a man he knew only as Ethan, for the first time. “You people almost killed me!”
Ethan seemed entirely unaffected by Leo’s rage, which only made it worse. He found that he was gripping the steering wheel again, white-knuckled, contemplating punching this man right in the face.
And what good would that do?
Perhaps sensing what Leo was thinking, his visitor smiled. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. Both men knew there would be only one outcome if their tussle turned physical.
Finally, his handler spoke. “You are a hero, Leo. Rita must have told you that. You survived the cartels. For the rest of your life, you’ll always have that anecdote in your locker. If you’re smart, you’ll build a hell of a political career out of this.”
“What career?” Leo snarled, gesturing wildly down the street, at his house, at his whole life. “I’m done. It’s over. They didn’t get me today, but they will. It’s only a matter of time. And then I lose all this. Shit, what happens when Rita finds out? Her dad’s a pastor, dammit. You think she’s going to bring the kids to visit me in prison? No chance.”
“And what if it didn’t have to be that way?”
“Why should I trust you?” Leo said dumbly, suddenly drained of energy. “You could have killed me. You probably meant to.”
Ethan shrugged. “I won’t lie to you. It would have been neater if you disappeared. Everyone makes mistakes.”
“So why would you bother keeping me alive now? Why not just kill me and be done with it? No more loose ends. That’s what you want, right?”
“We certainly could.” Ethan nodded thoughtfully. “It would get messy, but it could certainly be arranged. A suicide, maybe.”
He fell silent, and Leo found himself waiting impatiently for him to continue, the uncomfortable weight of a sword of judgment dangling over his neck. When the burden became overpowering, he mumbled, “But?”
“But what?”
“You haven’t come here just to tell me you going to kill me,” Leo said desperately, mainly to convince himself that it was true. “So there must be one.”
“You see, it’s a question of priorities,” Ethan said at last. “Trade-offs. We would of course prefer that you were dead. But to remove you from the board now would both attract unwanted attention and require resources that can be better employed elsewhere. So it’s a trade-off between the value of keeping you alive and the cost of letting you die.”
“Don’t fucking sugarcoat it,” Leo spat, desperation momentarily overriding his fear.
“You’re a big boy. And you got yourself into this mess. So you’re going to have to dig yourself out.”
“And you’re here to sell me the shovel, right?” Leo replied in a tone of voice that wasn’t much removed from an animal’s whine.
But even as he spoke, his quick mind was turning. Perhaps he really did have an opportunity to keep himself not just alive, but free. And hell, if he played his cards right, then maybe not just free – but rich. Still, he had no illusions about the bargain he was making. If once, when this nightmare began, he’d thought that he was simply trading nuggets of low-value information as a way of bailing himself out of debt, and at no personal risk, those scales of innocence had been torn from his eyes.
These people had already tried to kill him once. They’d murdered his boss. His friend. And they would come after him again, he knew that just as well as night follows day. He swallowed hard as he realized that they might come after his family too.
“You see?” His handler smiled. “You’re a quick learner.”
“So what am I supposed to learn?” Leo asked. “They’ll put me on medical leave. What if I don’t have access to anything important? Hell, the cops might even want to talk to me again. I was there when it happened, you know?”
“I’m counting on it, Leo. You knew him well, the administrator – correct?”
Leo’s guts were ice as he nodded in reply. “You know this. Mark was a personal friend.”
And I killed him, he didn’t say. As surely as if I was holding the gun.
But that was in the past. It was a mistake. An awful, irreversible mistake. And surely Mark wouldn’t want to condemn his friend for making a little mistake, would he?
“Will they pull your security clearance?” the handler asked.
He considered the question before answering, “Maybe. But probably not. But unless I give them a reason to suspect –”
“Don’t,” the man ordered coldly, holding his gaze without blinking. “Remember what’s riding on this, Leo. It’s not just your life, you understand?”
Leo nodded, fear for his family’s safety freezing his vocal cords into uselessness. Not the kids. Surely they wouldn’t touch the kids? They were still human, after all.
“Good. The FBI will interview you, I have no doubt about that. I want to know everything they ask. Everything.”
“I can do that,” Leo gasped, driving a ragged, jerky breath into his lungs. “Is t
hat all?”
“Of course not. I want you to go into the office, whatever they tell you. Read everything that passes your desk. Make friends with whoever is running the investigation inside the DEA. And read everything that crosses their desk.”
“And what do I get out of this?” Leo snapped as the gravity of what he was now compelled to do hit him. He would be placing himself at great risk by doing this. The FBI was sure to wonder why he was asking so many questions. What would happen if they started digging?
If the cartel learned about your debt, how long will it take the Bureau?
“Isn’t your life enough? Your family’s safety?”
“No!” Leo yelled, slapping his hand against the dashboard with enough force that it stung. “I mean, yes, of course. But if I do what you are asking, then at some point they’ll work it out. And when they do, I need to be gone.”
“When you do what I’m asking,” the man growled.
“Sure, when,” Leo said desperately. “I’ll need money. Not much, maybe a couple of million. Enough to disappear somewhere cheap. And passports, for my wife and kids too.”
His handler considered the request for a few seconds, leaving Leo to stew. Finally, he gave a curt nod. “I think this will be acceptable.”
To who? Leo wondered. He sat there, not daring to speak.
“I will get your documents soon,” the man said. “The money you will receive when I am satisfied.”
“I need those passports,” Leo pressed. “Until I get them, I’m not doing anything.”
The man thought for a few seconds, as before, then nodded. He opened the car door a crack and spoke before leaving. “A fair trade. Better for both of us. I will speak to you soon.”
He closed the car door after him.
21
Fernando Carreon scrunched his face in between a pair of goose down pillows, willing the darkness to return. He’d forgotten to close the blinds the previous night, and the mid-morning sun now streaming through the master bedroom drilled through his eyelids despite his best efforts to shield them from it.
