by Steven James
I flipped open my laptop. “I’m not sure yet how all this is connected, but has everyone had a chance to review the files Margaret sent about the ELF station?”
Jake and Natasha nodded, but Lien-hua shook her head. “The ELF station?”
I filled her in and when I was done, Natasha took the floor and mentioned that she’d pulled prints from the light switch in the study of the Pickron home. “In addition to Ardis’s and Donnie’s, I found one set of unidentifiable prints. I sent them to the Lab to see if they can dig anything up, do a more integrated AFIS search. The only prints in the laundry room were of family members.”
She consulted her notes. “I spent some time yesterday going through Donnie Pickron’s computer and reviewing his deleted files. Whoever accessed the computer wasn’t just looking up deployment records, but also searched through schematics of Ohio Class subs.”
“Schematics?” Lien-hua said skeptically. “Those are available to the public?”
“Not in their entirety,” she explained. “Obviously, there are restricted areas that weren’t detailed, but the basic design of the submarines apparently isn’t any secret. I mean, just watch the movie The Hunt for Red October or Crimson Tide. But there was more on his computer than there should have been.”
I typed a few thoughts onto my computer.
(1) Above top secret clearance.
(2) One-way communication.
(3) Deployment routes.
(4) Schematics.
(5) First-strike orders.
“Track with me for a second,” I said. “The deployment patterns for the subs would certainly have changed since the eighties as world powers and threat assessments have changed over time, but those subs are still in use. I’m guessing they would still have the capability to receive and decode ELF signals.”
“If they were still able to be sent,” Jake added.
“Yes,” I acknowledged. “If they were. So maybe whoever was searching through these files wasn’t just looking at where the subs were deployed but also—”
“How they were designed,” Jake interrupted impatiently. “Yes. We’ve established that.”
I was getting tired of his attitude and was about to tell him so when Lien-hua leaned forward. “What are you thinking, Pat?”
“By knowing the most likely targets and the routes the subs traveled in relation to those targets years ago, it might be possible to extrapolate, at least generally, where the subs would be deployed today, taking into consideration the location of countries that currently pose a threat to national security.”
“It’s worth a look,” Lien-hua said.
I turned to Natasha. “As soon as we’re done I want you to follow up on those schematics.”
“I can also ask the DoD about any recent chatter regarding US subs.”
“Good.”
A thought. “Go ahead and see if their data analysts can review the most likely targets of the late eighties and early nineties and compare those to today’s threats. Maybe it’s possible to come up with an algorithm that might anticipate the current deployment routes. If the Defense Department’s number crunchers can do it, someone else might have been able to as well.”
“You think we’re looking at an attack on one of the subs?” she asked.
Not an attack on one, I thought, an attack from one.
“I’m not sure, but Donnie Pickron is a Navy information warfare officer, and if he’s still alive and he’s gone rogue, I don’t want him sending any messages to our subs. Any messages at all.”
“Or if he hasn’t gone rogue,” Lien-hua said, “but is being held by someone, forced to work for them.”
Silence spread through the room.
Natasha nodded slowly, jotted a note to herself on the legal pad in front of her.
I told them about what I’d discovered last night on the Routine Orbital Satellite Database and my theory about the shots through the Pickrons’ living room window being intended to obscure the view into the house. “We’re looking for a hacker, or a team of hackers, with the ability to access some of the DoD’s most sensitive information.”
For nearly an hour and a half we tackled various aspects of the case, each of us offering our analysis, input, findings.
Sean still had my cell, so at 11:00, as we were wrapping things up, I borrowed Lien-hua’s phone and called Angela Knight in Cybercrime to see what she’d uncovered about Alexei Chekov. She informed me that she’d had to pass the project along to a woman on her team and hadn’t heard back yet.
“This is a priority,” I said.
“Everything we’re working on is a priority.” She didn’t sound argumentative, just exhausted. “I’ll follow up with Alyssa, let you know.”
“Thanks.”
End call.
I’ve never been one to put much stock in profiling, an ongoing point of contention between Lien-hua and me, but now I had two of the NCAVC’s most experienced profilers sitting here with me and I knew that despite my reluctance to trust profiles it would’ve been negligent of me not to tap into their expertise.
“All right,” I said. “Jake, I want you to fill in Lien-hua with regard to the profiles you’ve been working up for both the Reiser case and the Pickron family’s killer.”
“You think they’re related?”
“I’m not sure how they would be, but I want all the puzzle pieces on the table before we dive headfirst into fitting them together. Talk through what you have on Basque as well. Broad strokes, see if anything overlaps. I know we’re limited on time.”
He looked like he was going to object but remained silent.
“There’s plenty to do,” I said. “I have an idea on how to solve the mystery of how a Ski-Doo 800 XL could travel on a straight course a hundred meters without a rider. Also, I’m going to try to find a way for us to visit the ELF site so we can see if there’s anything there that might lead us to Donnie Pickron or Alexei Chekov. Let’s break, get back together at noon, and see where we’re at.”
Everyone stood.
By now the Advil had kicked in, and although my ankle was still stiff, thankfully, it seemed like putting pressure on it wasn’t going to be as big a deal today as I’d thought it would be when I woke up.
Lien-hua’s phone rang.
At first I thought it might be Angela returning my call, but when Lien-hua answered it, she looked at me quizzically. “It’s for you.”
“Who is it?” I asked her.
She shook her head, held it out to me.
“I’ll bring it by your room when I’m done,” I said.
The three of them left and I spoke into the phone. “Hello?”
“I hope you’re feeling better, Agent Bowers.”
I recognized the faint Russian accent.
Alexei Chekov.
50
Quickly, I evaluated how to respond. From everything I’d seen, this man was a professional, and I doubted gimmicks and games would work with him. I decided on a direct approach: “Where’s the truck driver, Alexei?”
Chekov’s close, he has to be. How else would he know to call this phone just as we finished the meeting?
I looked out the window.
Nothing.
“I regret to tell you that he’s dead.”
My grip on the phone tightened. “I’m coming for you.”
Outside. Maybe he’s in the woods nearby.
Yanking on my coat, I headed for the front door.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I truly am sorry for what happened to both him and Ellory.”
It bothered me that Chekov really did sound remorseful. I wanted him to be completely evil, fundamentally different from the rest of us, not a combination of mixed motives, of good and bad. It would have made things so much easier.
Outside now, I carefully studied the windswept landscape. Saw no one. Only the wrath of the storm.
“I have a proposal to make,” he said.
Keep him on the line. Keep this conversation goi
ng.
“What proposal is that?” The livid wind cut through my jeans. I used the building to shield me as much as possible as I passed around the corner and scanned the other side of the parking lot. Nothing.
“I would like you to help me find some people. The ones who killed the Pickrons.”
“Good idea. Let’s meet. Have a little chat.”
He pressed on. “In return for my help, you have something that I need.”
First he asks for your help, now he’s promising his?
It didn’t follow, but for the moment I decided to play along. “What do I have that you need?”
“Resources,” he answered vaguely.
I returned to the front of the building but stayed outside to keep the conversation private. “You’re in no position to ask me for anything, Alexei. You killed two people yesterday—or was it three? Did you abduct someone else from the restaurant parking lot where you abandoned the truck?”
A small silence. “I’ll be letting her go. I have no reason to hurt her.”
Sharp anger flared again.
He said “her,” that helps, we can—
“I think you owe me, Agent Bowers. If I hadn’t called 911, you’d be dead.”
“I’d only be dead because you threw Ellory in the river. I was just trying—”
“To save him. Yes. I know. I was impressed. That’s why I called emergency services for you. But now I’m making you an offer. If you help me stop these people you can save Kayla’s life.”
“Kayla?”
“The woman I took from the restaurant.”
“You just told me you’d let her go, that you had no reason to hurt her. Don’t play me, Alexei. What do you really want here?”
“I don’t kill children. And I don’t kill women.”
“But now you’re threatening to kill Kayla.”
He was quiet.
He’s conflicted. It’s not about the Pickrons or Kayla.
“Prove she’s alive. Let me talk to her.”
After a tight silence I heard a woman gasp, then cry out for help, her voice shrill, desperate. “Help me! He’s—” Then the sounds became muffled, and I pictured him gagging her.
“Oh, I am going to find you, Alexei, and I’m going to—”
“You left your laptop inside. Check your email.”
How is he watching me?!
Promptly returning to the room beside the lobby, I flipped out my laptop and clicked to the secure FBI email server, opened my account, and found a message from Alexei Chekov, identified by name. This guy was unbelievable.
As I opened the file I wondered if he’d sent me pictures of Kayla, but it turned out to be photos of four people I’d never seen.
“Who are they?”
“Members of a group called Eco-Tech.”
“Eco-Tech?” That was the group that had lobbied to have the information about the SSBN sub routes released through the Freedom of Information Act. “People from Eco-Tech are involved in this? How do you know?”
“I met with them. They’re working on a project with someone using the code name Valkyrie. I don’t know who it is, but I want to find out. I have an access code and a phone number I haven’t been able to trace.”
He gave the number to me, and the code Queen 27:21:9. I typed them into a Word doc. “You told me you’d kill Kayla unless I helped you. What are you proposing? Just trace this phone number? Is that what you meant by resources?”
“Help me find Ardis and Lizzie’s killers. Just you. If anyone else comes with you, I’ll disappear and Kayla Tatum will die.”
Of course I wanted to find the killers, but why he would want to find them was a myster—
They turned him in, Pat, remember? The anonymous call.
“When we find them I will need to deal with them appropriately. That’s part of the deal.”
“Appropriately?” I said.
“Yes.”
“I won’t let you kill them, Alexei. I bring them in. That’s the only way.”
A pause. “I’ll tell you what: if you get to them first and find a way to stop me, then you deserve to win.”
A game?
Is this all a game to him?
This guy wasn’t like any killer I’d ever dealt with before. It didn’t frighten me, but it did fine-tune my focus. Actually, that felt kind of good. “You know that when this is over I’m sending you to prison.”
“I’m experienced at eluding investigators.”
“I’m not your typical investigator.”
A small pause. “I’ll text you with the time and location where we’ll meet. You can have the Bureau look for Valkyrie, but don’t tell your on-site team we’ve spoken. I’ll know if you do.”
How?
How is he watching!
“Agent Bowers, though I do not believe in killing women, I will take Kayla Tatum’s life if I need to. While I am a man of conviction, I am also a man of resolve.”
Before I could reply, he ended the call. A power play.
I pocketed the phone and went directly to my room. After doing a back trace on the call and failing to find either his number or GPS location, I turned to my word processing program. I tend to be pretty good with details, and I typed up the conversation. Even if I didn’t get it word-for-word, I was confident that I was close.
Then I googled Kayla Tatum’s name and found 3,780,000 hits. Only one of the women near the top of the list lived in Wisconsin. I started with her, and after locating her cell number I put a call through to her. When she didn’t answer I left a message for her to call me immediately.
Taking Alexei’s warning to heart, I bypassed telling my team here what was going on but contacted HQ and asked a desk jockey buddy of mine named Barry Callaway to pursue any relevant leads concerning women named Kayla Tatum. “I can’t tell you any more than that, I’m sorry. Trust me on this one.”
“Got it.”
Alexei had already proven that he was good at flying under our GPS radar, but it wouldn’t hurt to check. “Go ahead and track the GPS on their cell phones and, where possible, their cars,” I said. “See if any of the women are in this part of the Midwest.”
“I’ll let you know what I find out.”
We hung up and I forwarded the email with the attached photos, as well as both the access code and phone number that Alexei had given me, to Angela Knight, then gave her a quick call and asked her to see if she could trace the location from which the email had been sent and what she could dig up on Eco-Tech.
She surprised me by telling me she was familiar with them. “They’re on one of our watch lists. Small-scale hackers, but they’re flagrant. They like to be in the spotlight.”
“I need your team to see what connections they might have with Alexei Chekov.” I decided for the moment not to mention that we’d spoken on the phone. “Also, have Alyssa send me whatever we have on him as soon as possible. Any cases in which he’s suspected of involvement with a crime or a terrorist act. And also any links to someone using the code name Valkyrie.”
Environmentalists protested the ELF base.
Now Eco-Tech is in the area.
After the call, I went online and after a couple of searches found just the site I was looking for—one that would help me follow up on the unswerving Ski-Doo tracks to the water. I posted my offer and then went back to the transcript of my conversation with Alexei and scrutinized it for clues as to his whereabouts that I might have missed earlier.
Alexei had confessed to killing the truck driver, Bobby Clarke. Normally, local law enforcement would notify surviving family members, but false confessions aren’t uncommon and it might have been a gambit, so, for the time being I made sure Tait put it off until the body was found.
It struck me that this whole thing just didn’t jibe.
While I did believe Alexei had a woman with him, if he was going to kill her, why all the talk about not killing women and children?
I couldn’t shake the thought that I was being play
ed.
Still, whatever his motives—revenge, clearing his name, protecting the innocent, or all of the above—it didn’t really matter. I had an opportunity here to catch him, to save a woman’s life, and, potentially, to find the people who’d killed Lizzie and Ardis Pickron.
But of course there was also the matter of the call and the email themselves. Somehow Alexei had found out both my confidential email address and Lien-hua’s personal cell number, and had apparently known that I was with her and that our meeting was just finishing when he called. He even knew I had my laptop with me.
I wondered if he’d somehow planted a bug in the motel. If so, he would’ve had to enter the building.
I called the front desk and found out they didn’t use security cameras. “No real reason to,” the guy at the front counter said. “People up here, we trust each other.” I gave a quick description of Alexei to him; he didn’t remember seeing anyone who fit that description.
Maybe Alexei . . .
Unless—
He would need a place to keep a victim.
Oh.
I hurried to Natasha and Lien-hua’s room. When Natasha opened the door, I found Jake and Lien-hua with her, bent over their computers. “We need to search this motel.” I was speaking just loud enough to be heard. “It’s possible Alexei Chekov might be here in the building.”
When Kayla refused to quit squirming and trying to cry out beneath her gag, Alexei was forced to sedate her. He used a mild dose of Propotol so she would fully recover within a couple hours. Then, once she was unconscious, he removed the gag so that it wouldn’t restrict her breathing.
Finally, he surfed to an online map of the area and considered the best place to meet with Agent Bowers.
Cassandra received confirmation from Allighiero that he’d finished cleaning the sub and the USB device was in place.
Good.
She told Becker to gather the team. “We’ll meet downstairs in the old billiards room. I want to have a few words with them before we take down the landlines.”
He left, and she flipped open her laptop to review her notes.
Terry Manoji calculated the time in Bahrain and realized that if the sub had not set sail yet, it would within the hour.
