Emma laughed with delight. “Nailed it. And him.”
“If you’re finished with the lame comedy routine,” Harrow said, “we’ll go aboard the Solstice, get comfortable, and talk.”
“No,” Mac and Emma said as one.
“This fly ain’t strolling into no spidery parlor,” she added.
“We could be overheard out here,” Harrow said impatiently.
“If you’re worried about somebody lurking on that little islet over there with a parabolic microphone, forget it,” Mac said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “The sound of the cascade trumps any listening device.”
Harrow put his fists on his hips, bringing the shoulder harness into full display as he got in Mac’s face.
The shadow wearing a wind jacket and an Uzi drifted closer.
“Listen, ass clown,” Harrow said, “I don’t have time for this. I don’t even have time to beat the truth out of you.”
“Good job you brought a team,” Emma said. “Mac would mop the dock with you and you know it.”
“Think of the splinters,” Mac said, shaking his head.
“Mmm, I am.”
“Before you do a grenade imitation,” Mac said to Harrow, “understand that we’re not going anywhere with you and you’re not going anywhere with us. And the dude in the dive suit isn’t going to plant any cute device on the dinghy, or we’re going to whistle up a seaplane to fly us out of here and leave you with your thumb up your ass and your balls swinging in the breeze. Are you hearing me?”
Harrow glanced reflexively toward the Zodiac. He could just make out the black hood of the diver who had slipped into the water. With a muffled curse, Harrow pulled a hair-thin mic out from behind his ear.
“Abort dive,” he said in a clipped voice.
A disembodied voice replied, “Say again.”
“Abort.”
Emma watched as the diver came up out of the water and rolled back into the Zodiac with a casual display of strength and coordination.
“I’ve got you outgunned,” Harrow said to Mac.
Emma smiled. “We have Blackbird. You don’t.”
60
DAY FIVE
NORTH OF DISCOVERY PASSAGE
4:01 P.M.
Let’s cut the bullshit,” Harrow finally said. “We need to get a locator on Blackbird.”
“Not going to happen,” Emma said.
“Joe Faroe assured me that St. Kilda would cooperate,” Harrow said with an icy kind of neutrality. “He knows they can’t afford the kind of trouble I can cause.”
Emma met his eyes calmly. “Is it as big as the trouble that would come down on you if the sovereign nation of Canada discovered the CIA was running a covert op in its territorial waters?”
“We’re not running an op,” Harrow said.
“Exactly,” she said crisply. “You were running an op of some sort, maybe along with the FBI, and then things jumped the border. So now you’re relying on a private proxy, St. Kilda Consulting, to get the job done.”
“You have no need to know,” Harrow said.
“Think of it as a need to survive,” Mac said.
“Mac and I have our asses on the firing line,” Emma said. “If we get caught with whatever prize everybody is chasing, we might convince the Canadians we were good guys investigating an international smuggling operation. Might.”
“But the odds are that we’ll draw a long prison sentence,” Mac said. “That probably would depend on what goods we were caught with.”
“So tell me, Tim, what we’re going to go to jail for,” Emma said.
“You want me to believe you don’t know what you’ll be smuggling?” Harrow laughed without humor. “Not going to happen.”
“Mules don’t have to know what’s on their backs,” she shot back. “What difference does it make? They’re just dumb muscle.”
Harrow stared at them.
“Right,” Emma said. She turned to Mac. “About that seaplane.”
“You really don’t know what’s going on?” Harrow asked in disbelief.
“Now you’ve got it,” Mac said.
“Bloody, buggering hell,” Harrow said in disgust, proving that he was an internationalist when it came to language. “This is a three-star cluster. What do you know?”
“You first,” Emma said.
Harrow hesitated, then shrugged. “I was told that there was an old op, one that began years back, before the present administration.”
“Sweet,” Mac said under his breath. “Feasible deniability, all present and accounted for. Public theater in an off-Broadway opening, soon to be in D.C.”
Harrow ignored him. “We didn’t want to use drugs to pay our secret allies, or arms, because there was a huge political downside if the press found out. And when the presidency changes hands, so do secrets. For our covert allies, any diamonds that aren’t Russian goods are automatically suspect on the market.”
“How could anyone know the difference?” Mac asked.
“Russian diamonds have a very faint green tinge,” Emma said. “Not enough to be noticed by anyone but a real expert.”
“Our allies didn’t want to be carrying bales of American money around in satchels, either,” Harrow said, “so we sent them some embryonic currency.”
“What—” Mac began.
“You gave them printing plates?” Emma cut in, startled.
Harrow nodded. “They were old. Not good for more than a few hundred passes before they would be too worn to use.”
Emma waited, listening very carefully to what Harrow said. Or more important, what he didn’t say.
He stopped talking.
“Who were your dollar allies?” Mac asked.
“Georgia. The Ukraine. A few of the ‘-istan’ governments.”
“So you were bankrolling insurrections,” Emma said.
“Can we help it if a few old printing plates go missing?” Harrow asked, shrugging. “It was years ago. Shit happens.”
“Fascinating and all that,” Emma said, “but what does it have to do with Blackbird?”
“The op went south. Russia got hold of the plates and began minting new hundreds. A lot of them.”
“Where did they get the good paper to go with the plates?” Mac asked.
“Same place they get truckloads of blank passports,” Harrow said. “They hijacked what they needed. Now they’re trying to smuggle tens of millions into the U.S. to leverage some financial deal that will at best break a few hedge funds and at worst drag the economy into another Great Recession. If that happens, the party that doesn’t believe in war anywhere will be in control, which would please the hell out of our enemies.”
“Our economy eats billions and looks around for a real meal,” Mac said. “What good is a few million?”
“Spoken like a true warrior,” Harrow said. “You flunked advanced economic manipulation, didn’t you? A few hundred million can be a lot of leverage, but I don’t have time to explain calculus to a kindergartener. All I want is Blackbird. Here. Now.”
Mac and Emma looked at each other.
“Keep talking,” Emma said. “I’m having trouble envisioning a multimillion-dollar yacht being used to smuggle currency.”
“Abkhazia,” Harrow said in a clipped voice.
“Suspicious tribes, clans, and gangs,” Mac said. “Fallout of the FSU. Criminal Central for Middle Europe. Specialty, counterfeiting. Pounds, euros, dollars, whatever sells. And they’re good at what they do. Very good. They damn near put Lithuania’s economy under. It’s war without firing a shot.”
Harrow studied Mac, then nodded. “Your file didn’t mention that you spent time there.”
“Spent time where,” Mac said without inflection.
Harrow nodded again. “Warlords, mafiya chieftains, and the bitter ends of corrupt bureaucracies all got together to act like governments and get rich fleecing the peaceful, stoic, or stupid. No matter how you look at it, Russia ‘taxes’ or runs most of the various criminal
enterprises within the Russian Federation.”
“Crime is where the money is,” Emma said.
“Exactly,” Harrow said. “Our best estimate is that the Russians either have taken over or are in a power struggle with the Middle Europeans over the hundred million dollars that is somehow connected to Blackbird. This isn’t the first load they’ve run into the U.S.,” he admitted. “It’s just the first one we’ve found out about in time to do something.”
“A hundred million bucks at a crack,” Mac said. “Even in hundred-dollar bills, that’s a big pile of green.”
“A million C-notes,” Emma said, doing the math in her head. “That’s a hundred thousand bundles of a hundred bills each.”
Mac smiled slowly at her, then said to Harrow, “I’ve been all over Blackbird looking for your damn bugs. I didn’t see a good place to hide that much paper.”
“Fuel tank,” Harrow said.
“Those bills are going to stink of diesel,” Mac said. “Hard to pass skunky bills.”
“Not if you build a sealed trap to hide the money inside the tanks,” Harrow said.
Emma didn’t know about fuel tank dimensions, but she did know about stacks of currency. She’d used a few suitcases of payoff money in her time.
“So,” she said, “the Agency says Blackbird is the mule of choice for a currency-smuggling gig.”
“That’s what we believe,” Harrow said. “Dollars may not be as sexy as diamonds, but they’re a hell of a lot more convertible into sheer leverage in the marketplace.”
Mac didn’t know what Harrow or the CIA really believed, but he knew that counterfeiting was the story they were passing out.
“Considering that you provided the plates for the counterfeiters to work with,” Emma said, “discovery would be seriously embarrassing for some high-up people. Career fatalities all over the place.”
Harrow let out a long breath. “I told them you would understand.”
“Where’s the handover supposed to take place?” Mac asked. His voice was like his face, neither understanding nor skeptical.
“We’re not sure,” Harrow said. “We have information that the goods are coming off a container ship onto a fishing boat off the Pacific Coast somewhere between Port Hardy and Prince Rupert. The fishing boat will come south and make the transfer to Blackbird at their leisure, somewhere in a quiet cove. God knows the Inside Passage is full of deserted places.”
“Can’t argue that,” Mac said. “Especially after summer.”
“When is it supposed to go down?” Emma asked.
“In the next few days,” Harrow said.
“Was Tommy yours?” Mac asked, his voice as unreadable as his face.
“Tommy?” Harrow looked confused.
“The dead man on the rez,” Mac said.
“Oh. He was the Bureau’s. That’s why they were unusually territorial about the case. I looked at the file. Nobody owned Tommy but the last person to put crank or a bottle in his hands.”
“Lucky for you Tommy died,” Emma said. “It gave you a ticket aboard Blackbird.”
Mac had been thinking the same thing.
“Maybe,” Harrow said, shrugging. He narrowed his eyes at Emma. “Tommy was whacked by someone, but it wasn’t the Agency or the Bureau. We would have been happier with him in place.”
“Huh,” Mac said, a word as neutral as his expression.
“But we’re in place now,” Emma said. “What if we don’t want to play nice with you?”
“Even if St. Kilda Consulting wiggles out by playing the rogue-agent card, you and your ex-hotshot captain become international fugitives with serious money on your heads. Award paid on proof of death.” Harrow shrugged. “Doubt if you’d last real long.”
It wasn’t a threat.
It was a fact.
“Where is Blackbird?” Harrow asked again.
“You don’t trust us to play nice?” she asked.
“I don’t trust anyone.”
“Especially not the man in the mirror,” Mac said very softly.
She didn’t argue.
“We need a locator and a data recorder aboard,” Harrow said, “and we’re going to get them. Cooperate or I throw you to the bounty hunters.”
“Who killed Tommy?” Mac asked flatly.
“I told you. I don’t know. Why do you care?”
“Collateral damage pisses me off.”
“Throw a fit on your own time. Are you in or out?” Mac looked at Emma.
They exchanged a long silence.
Then she turned to Harrow and said, “In.”
61
DAY FIVE
VANCOUVER ISLAND
4:15 P.M.
Taras Demidov divided his attention between his cell phone screen and Lina Fredric.
Both required watching. His two coordinates were no longer closing with one another, which was making his boss crazier than usual. He had kept making and countering his own orders, until finally Demidov quit following them. He was waiting for two like orders in a row.
As for the woman, Lina was restless, wanting to go back to her safe little life. Demidov didn’t understand the desire. The grave was safe. Life was for taking risks. Lina had become too soft for anything but death.
Demidov’s boss might be crazy, but he didn’t have a soft impulse in his body.
“Don’t worry, little bird,” Demidov said to her. “This will all be done in a day or two. You’ll be taking fat fishermen out on the water again, and I’ll be another name you’ve forgotten.”
Her expression said everything she was too frightened to voice.
“Why would I kill you?” he asked practically. “You could be of use again. A smart man plans ahead.”
“And you’re a very smart man,” she said, her voice empty.
“I live. Others died.” He shrugged. “That is smart enough, yes?”
His cell phone chimed softly.
A text message appeared on the screen: TARGET ON MOVE. INTERCEPT TOMORROW. NEW COORDINATES TO FOLLOW.
62
DAY FIVE
NORTH OF DISCOVERY PASSAGE
5:11 P.M.
It took Harrow an hour to cover each bullet point that had been passed down the chain of command to him. In that time, Mac remembered all over again why he didn’t miss bureaucracies. The sheen of impatience in Emma’s eyes told him that she felt the same way.
Finally the repetition of the obvious irritated even Harrow. He waved them off and stalked back toward Summer Solstice.
Silently Mac untied the dinghy and stepped aboard. He was carrying a waterproof, spun-metal case that was no bigger than his palm. Inside, nested in foam, were several impressive bugs.
Harrow reluctantly had agreed that Mac could put them in place. The fact that everyone hadn’t scrambled for the Zodiac when Emma and Mac left told him that at least one of the bugs was already live. Probably all of them were.
“Firewall it,” Mac said.
Emma gunned the inflatable away from the dock. In seconds they were flying, little more than the engine’s prop in the water.
“They’ll catch up,” she said over the engine. “That Zodiac they have goes like stink.”
“Make ’em work for it.”
The meter on the chart plotter’s electronic screen quickly climbed to thirty knots.
“You’re really pissed,” Emma said, reading Mac better than either of them expected.
“I thought Harrow or one of his hires pulled the trigger on Tommy.”
“Doubt it,” Emma said. “Tommy made a better puppet than we do.”
“Yeah. Damn it.”
“This fast enough for you?” she asked.
All Mac said was, “Why didn’t you question Harrow about any Russian involvement? The SR-1 Vektor isn’t something everyone uses. Other guns are more available, cheaper, and more reliable—unless you know how to tape the safety in the off position.”
“One, Harrow wouldn’t have told us. Two, the dumber he thinks we are,
the more room we’ll have to maneuver.”
“They’ll throw us away faster than a used condom.”
“You think?” she asked sarcastically.
She swerved the dinghy around some rocks, instinctively using a gentle touch at high speed.
“Did you believe Harrow?” Mac asked.
Emma thought for a moment. “He’s a gamer by nature and training. He could have told the truth, but only if he thinks we’ll believe it’s a lie.”
“I hate spooks.”
“Me included?”
“You’re an ex-spook. Hate has nothing to do with how I feel about you.”
In that moment, Emma did something she’d never been able to do in the past. She took Mac at his word.
“Same goes,” she said. “Tim is different. If he doesn’t think he has better cards than you do, he won’t play the game.”
“What about you?” Mac asked, looking over his shoulder.
The Zodiac was behind them, hauling at least three passengers at high speed.
“I like to keep paranoids like Tim comfortable,” Emma said. “That’s when he gets sloppy.”
“How did he get sloppy with you?”
“By banging one of his office staff on the side, but only after he was convinced that I trusted him completely. He forgot that I had access to his expense accounts and travel vouchers, as well as hers. The second time they spent a weekend in adjoining rooms at the same hotel, I went to confront Tim on the subject. He was busy at the time.”
“Polishing his desk.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Harrow’s an idiot to screw around on a woman like you.”
“Thanks.” She smiled widely. “In truth, he didn’t get nearly as much out of me in bed as you did. And vice versa.”
Mac ran his knuckles lightly over her cheekbone. “It was really good. Especially the vice versa.”
They skipped along through tidal races and down channels, retracing their earlier track. This time she didn’t see any other boats.
The whirlpool was gone, too.
Mac glanced over his shoulder several times. The dinghy and the Zodiac were both blazing over the water, but Harrow’s boat had more muscle. It was slowly closing in. No surprise there. The Agency could afford to play with really expensive toys, both human and machine.
Death Echo Page 26
