The sound reverberated through the building, audible even over the whine of forklifts, drawing the stares of everybody inside. Just as fast all but one of the men returned to their work, the intended target dropping the pipette he was holding and walking in exaggerated strides toward the overlap that served as a door into the facility.
Sergey took his time walking to the far corner, allowing the man to remove his hood and goggles before sliding his breather down around his neck. He reached as if to shake Sergey’s hand as he approached, pulling back as he realized his body was still encased in white plastic.
“Mr. Blok, what a pleasant surprise,” the man said, offering a cracked-tooth smile that stretched across much of his face. His voice was a bit higher than expected, his chin and nose both pointed.
More than once Sergey had thought that if not for his undersized ears and thick fuzz of hair atop his head, he would have all the trappings of an elf.
“Anatoly,” Sergey said, leaning forward an inch or two at the waist in lieu of a handshake, “how are you, my friend?”
A hint of red appeared on Anatoly’s cheeks as he matched the pose and said, “I am well, Mr. Blok. Very, very well.”
“Good,” Sergey said, casting a glance around the room. “Things here also appear to be going very well.”
The words came out like a statement, but both men recognized that it was a question. Sergey’s management style was one predicated on delegation. Only if those selected seemed to be failing in their duties, as with his nephew, did he feel the need to insert himself.
In the seven years that Sergey and Dr. Anatoly Bishkin had been working together, there had been no such incident, no reason for a loss of trust. It was a fact acknowledged, but never spoken, by both sides.
If Sergey was stopping by, it was because he wanted a status report, not that he was snooping on his employee.
“It is,” Anatoly said, dipping his head for emphasis. “If you look over there—” he extended a stubby arm out toward the wooden crates on the far side of the room “—you can see a section cordoned off with red tape.”
Sergey took two small steps to move his body perpendicular to the enclosure beside him and peered down the bridge of his nose, loose skin collecting in a heap by his temples. “Yes?”
“That is the requested product for the first shipment.”
A long, soft whistle pushed itself out between Sergey’s lips. An optimistic expectation upon arrival was that the first shipment would be ready within a week, two at the most.
“And the rest of it there?” Sergey asked.
“That’s most of the second shipment,” Anatoly replied. “As you know, it can be stored for years if necessary.”
Sergey nodded, his smooth head rocking several inches forward and back. The gesture was in agreement with what Anatoly said and in recognition of the fine work being done.
“Very good, Doctor. Very, very good.”
“Thank you, sir,” Anatoly said, the red deepening across his cheeks.
Sergey shifted back toward the enclosure and gave it a once-over, running his gaze from the tracks hanging above to the plastic scraping against the floor just a few feet away. “Is there anything you need here? Anything we are running short on at the moment?”
Anatoly took in a deep breath, a bit of apprehension flooding from his features, the realization that the tough part was behind them. “No, sir. We’re doing well here, and have plenty of materials to keep going.”
“Good,” Sergey said. “This is good news, seeing you so far ahead of schedule. We’ve got one last hiccup that’s being worked out as we speak, and then we’ll be ready to start getting some of this out of your way.”
The oversized smile returned to Anatoly’s face. “You keep taking it away, we’ll keep making more, sir.”
A hint of a smile crept across Sergey’s features as well. His previous statement was meant as a bit of a curious challenge, wondering if Anatoly would inquire to the holdup he mentioned across the ocean. There was no doubt he had heard the statement, but the fact that he knew better than to ask spoke volumes of the man and their relationship.
“Well then,” Sergey said, “don’t let me keep you. Just stopped by to see how things were coming.”
“Thank you, sir. Anytime, sir,” Anatoly said, dipping his upper body into two quick bows, already backing away to return inside the plastic.
Sergey watched him go for just a moment before turning and heading toward the door. His coat was a misshapen black blob visible beyond the glass.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The oversized face of Mike Palinsky filled the back wall of the conference room, the section from his chest to the top of his head stretched almost five feet in height. It was difficult to tell if the ghostly pallor that seemed to encase his features was a result of the flat screen television he was on washing him out, or if he had just failed to see sunlight since leaving the unit a few years before.
Given his predilection to stay squirrelled away in the office when he worked here with us, I was prone to assume the latter.
The previous five years had lent themselves to a bit of aging, though nothing as pronounced as Hutch. Given that he was just a handful of years older than me it was to be expected; the major changes for both of us were still a little ways ahead on the horizon.
Like me, his hair was longer, but his was pulled back into a ponytail that ended at an unknown length somewhere behind him. He had lost at least a dozen pounds since I’d last seen him. His cheeks were hollowed out, which accentuated the pockmarks dotting them.
The little I could see of the room behind him appeared to be a home lab of some sort. Computer monitors took up almost the entire backdrop of the space, and the bit of desk that was visible was covered by an array of electronic wizardry.
I had been the one to initiate the call, choosing to go in a few minutes early to get the perfunctory small talk out of the way before the others arrived. It wasn’t that I had any problem with Pally—of all the guys on the team, he was one I liked the most—it was that each passing moment seemed to pull me back further into my old self.
When the incident with Lita first took place, it was a surprise to me, a jolt to the system that I survived through muscle memory and blind luck. Spending those days on the rock shelf with Mateo, finding her body on the way out, they had served to awaken something inside me that I had buried deep within, had even tricked myself into believing was dormant.
Seeing Hutch had only made it worse. Being back in California, knowing what lay just up the road, seeing so many familiar names, it was all tugging me straight back into a life I no longer wanted any part of.
Pally was just another part of that. Seeing him up on the screen, despite the obvious physical changes, was like staring into a vision of 2010 all over again.
It was a vision I wasn’t sure I wanted to see, friend or not.
“So Hutch tells me you got yourself deep into something again,” Pally said, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers behind his head. The sleeves of his baggy green sweater fell down around his forearms as he did so, a quartet of brightly colored rubber bands around his wrist.
“More like I was pulled in,” I replied, pushing a chair to the side and hopping up onto the table in the vacated space. I ran a hand back through my still-damp hair and wiped it against the leg of my slacks, and a thin, dark water line appeared as I did.
“Mhmm,” Pally snorted, his entire body rocking backward, “sure ya did. Just like ya weren’t the one always charging headfirst into every situation we ever encountered?”
The left side of my mouth curled up into a smile, knowing full well he was right. Still, that was a different time; I was a different person. If there was any way I could go back and change all that I would, no questions asked.
“Maybe then,” I conceded, “but not this time.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Hutch said from behind me, the corrosive scent of his miracle concoction arriving just a moment after his voice. “This one went all the way to Montana to drag his ass out of retirement.”
He appeared on the opposite side of the table from me, mug in one hand, the other shoved into the pocket of dress pants. Like me he had showered after waking, opting to stay with the same rumpled togs he’d been wearing instead of putting on something new.
Knowing Hutch, there was an equal chance he had forgotten to bring along anything else, or had and just chosen not to unpack it.
“And hello to you, our fearless leader,” Pally said, raising a hand to his brow and lowering it in an overdone salute. “A pleasure, as always.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hutch said, offering the tiniest bit of a return salute.
“You wouldn’t be saying that if you could smell that shit in his cup right now,” I offered, drawing a knowing grin from Pally.
“Yeah, yeah,” Hutch repeated, taking another drink from the vile concoction.
“No, he’s right,” Diaz said, her voice all business, pulling all three of our gazes toward her. “It smells like ass in here.”
In the hours since our last meeting, she had shed the jacket, now sporting just her slacks and a T-shirt. Her hair was piled high in a messy bun, her face wearing a don’t mess with me veneer.
Whatever new information she had wasn’t good.
Sensing the about-face from our host, Hutch shifted his attention back toward the screen. “All right, Pally, hit us with it.”
On-screen, Pally remained in the same position: reclined in his computer chair, his hands atop the crown of his head. He shook his head, his entire upper body twisting. “Not a lot to tell. The account was set up in Haney’s name, which we all know to be fake. It was set up as a subsidiary of the family business, which—”
“Also fake,” Hutch inserted. He remained standing to my right, his arm bent at a ninety-degree angle, his drink in front of him. On my left, Diaz rested a hand on the top of the closest chair, crossing her right leg over her left, the toe of her shoe pointed into the floor.
“Meaning?” I asked.
“Well,” Pally said, raising his eyebrows a fraction of an inch, “even if the names and addresses are fake, the money has to come from somewhere. And believe me, that somewhere is where things get interesting.”
Diaz and I exchanged a glance as Hutch took another pull on his drink, his slurp audible throughout the room.
“We’re listening,” I said.
Without turning around or consulting anything, Pally lowered a hand and held it in front of him, his thumb and forefinger pressed together. “The money was wired into New Mexican National Bank from an account in West Cayman.”
“So it’s a dead end?” Diaz asked.
“Ha!” Pally spat, his head rocking back a few inches. “The Caymans aren’t nearly as untouchable as they want people to believe. Most of that mythos comes from corporate stooges and bad television.”
I had heard the same rant on multiple occasions over the years. The vitriol was a little dialed down from times past, but the general message was still the same.
“So how did it get to Cayman?” I asked.
At that, Pally shifted his thumb from his index finger to his middle finger. “Prior to landing in the Caribbean, these fortunate funds spent some time in the Swiss Alps. Surfing and skiing, not a bad way to live.”
“Right up until it decided to become a chili farmer in New Mexico,” Hutch deadpanned, drawing a smirk from Pally.
“Right you are, boss,” Pally said. “Sort of.” He ticked his finger from his middle to his ring finger and said, “But you guys haven’t heard the kicker yet. Before Switzerland, that money originated in none other than Mother Russia herself.”
“Russia?” I asked, my face twisted up in confusion. I turned to face Diaz, who had a similar look on her face, and asked, “You guys working anything in Russia right now?”
“Nothing,” Diaz said, shaking her head. “You guys do much there when you were around?”
“Almost nothing,” I said. “Stopped through one time when we suspected an outfit from Hungary was hiding there. Nothing local.”
“There’s not much on the national scene involving the Ruskies, either,” Hutch said, finishing his beverage and sliding it onto the table. Without the mug, he shoved both hands into his trousers, remaining in place, staring back at Pally.
If he seemed at all surprised by the revelation, he didn’t show it.
“All right, Pally,” I said, “I’ll be the first to bite. Where did it come from in Russia?”
Pally replaced the hand back atop his head and said, “Don’t know. Not yet anyway.”
“You don’t know?” Diaz said, her eyes widening a bit.
“Well, I can tell you the shell corporation it is said to have originated with,” Pally said, motioning over a shoulder to the monitor on his right. “But if you want actual usable intel, it’s going to take me a day or two yet. The Russians are a bit more lax on their SEC filing requirements than we are.”
Despite the weight of the moment, I allowed a single snicker to roll out. Pally never missed an opportunity to take a jab at the country that held his ancestors in persecution for so long, no matter how veiled or innocuous it might sound.
Besides, the fact that he had traced the funds that far meant it was only a matter of time before he found out who was behind them. If he could crack both the Cayman and Swiss banks, figuring out a false business front in Moscow would be no problem.
“Russia would definitely fit the names of Pavel and Lita,” I said, glancing over to Hutch. He nodded in agreement, his face bunched tight, deep in thought.
“You had any luck on that front yet?” I asked, turning back to Pally.
“Actually, I farmed it out,” Pally said, raising his hands from his head and holding them out wide before dropping them back into place. “I know somebody at the NSA that owes me a favor. Seemed easier to let her do the digging from the inside than to tiptoe around them the entire time.”
“‘Her’?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Stop it,” Pally said, rocking forward to sit erect, his face much closer to the camera. “I get anything on either front, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Thanks, man,” I said. “Good seeing you again.”
“You too, Hawk,” Pally said. Once more he raised two fingers to his brow and said, “Hutch, Diaz.”
They both murmured a farewell as the feed in front of us cut out and the screen changed to bright blue. It cast a harsh pallor over all three of us as we sat in silence, each chewing on the new information.
“All right,” I said after a moment, “the money originated from somewhere in Russia. Not exactly what we were looking for, but at least we now have a heading.”
“Not a lot of activity coming out of there,” Hutch said, his gaze aimed at the wall, just beneath the television beaming blue onto us. “Shouldn’t be too hard to narrow the field quickly if we have to.”
“True,” I conceded, bobbing my head in agreement. I paused a moment to add that to the tangle of information nestling itself into my brain and turned to Diaz. “So what happened while we were asleep?”
The question seemed to jolt her out of her own thoughts, her head snapping upward to face us. “Huh?”
“Something happened since the last time we talked. It was obvious when you walked in. Pertinent to us, or something else we don’t need to know about?”
I had no illusions that she didn’t still have an entire branch to run, with cases stretched across the gamut of subject areas that the DEA dealt with on a daily basis. I appreciated how helpful she’d been and how much autonomy she was granting us, both facts I wanted to impress upon her. In return, I understood that she had things on her plate sep
arate from us, and I respected that.
Still, if whatever had happened was relevant, I’d prefer to know sooner rather than later.
She glanced at each of us in turn and said, “Carlos Juarez is gone.”
My eyes bulged as I stared at her, my heart rate picking up a tick. “You mean after we . . . ?”
I left the question open-ended, the destination clear.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Our guys picked him up right behind us, brought him here. A little later they tried to take him back to his safe house in Texas, but he refused and I guess things got ugly.
“As of this afternoon, he’s in the wind.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Hutch decided to remain behind at headquarters. Being a ranking bureaucratic official in one of the larger agencies under government control meant he had responsibilities beyond the case at hand, no matter how hard any of us tried to ignore it. Diaz offered him her office to work out of, giving him free reign over his old digs with the lone exception that no herbal teas were to cross her threshold.
The comment was meant to be a joke, something to lighten the mood a tiny bit, though it barely drew more than a half-hearted chuckle from Hutch. He hadn’t said anything to us directly, but we could both tell there was a bit of disapproval about the way we’d handled Carlos earlier.
We all knew the incident hadn’t led directly to his leaving, but it damned sure hadn’t helped the situation, either.
“What in the world could have Carlos spooked enough to never return to Texas, but secure enough that he would leave protective custody, even after what happened to Mateo?” I asked, staring out the side window as we rolled into the Metropolitan Correctional Center on the outskirts of San Diego.
Diaz remained silent for a moment as we pulled up alongside the front gate and a reed-thin guard in a light brown uniform stepped out to meet us. She flashed her badge at him as he bent at the waist and peered in at us, the same man who had been on seven hours before.
Cold Fire Page 13
