Puppet Master

by Dale Brown

  A friend.

  Which friend?

  James.

  James who?

  God, she would never be able to bluff her way through. The account had been set up entirely online.

  She could tell him that. Just leave out the details.

  I set the account up myself online.

  Why?

  Why . . . why? Because . . . I wanted to see if I could do it.

  Dumb answer. That was practically admitting that she had hacked in.

  But she didn’t hack in, and she had set up the account online. And lied in doing so, of course, but still, the original setup was legit.

  What followed wasn’t. Everything that followed.

  Should she tell him everything?

  Oh, God, no. He’ll have a conniption.

  Conniption. One of her teachers used that word. It was a good word. It fit.

  Borya let her bike drop on the back walkway and ran up the stairs. She’d beaten her father home. Maybe she could pretend she was sleeping.

  28

  Boston—a half hour later

  They took the suspect to the FBI Field Office at One Central Plaza, walking him in through the back and up to a suite of interrogation rooms.

  The Bureau had assigned an interrogator, Jill Hightower, to the task force. She met Jenkins as they walked in, standing back against the wall as the agents and suspect passed. Letting the others go ahead, Jenkins led her to the small office down the hall.

  “He’s the guy?” asked Hightower.

  “Looks like it.”

  “He talk?”

  “Said nothing.”

  “Ask for a lawyer?”

  “No.”

  Hightower seemed skeptical but let it pass. “A little older than I expected. Better dressed.”

  “Yeah.” Jenkins thought that, too—he’d expected someone in their twenties, a gofer. This guy looked much farther up the food chain. And he was smart enough to keep quiet.

  “Did he have ID?”

  “Passport and driver’s license.” Jenkins showed her the passport. “We’re checking it out. There are no local warrants, for what that’s worth.”

  “I hate it when they don’t fit the profile,” said Hightower. “We going in together, or do you want to hang back?”

  “Let’s do it together.”

  “You better get some coffee first. Your eyes are slits.”

  Back at the van in Cambridge, Chelsea watched as the Hum circled above the black Lexus it had followed from the bank ATM. The driver had gone inside the nearby convenience market.

  “Surveillance team is about five minutes away,” said Flores. “Any change?”

  “Still inside. Oh wait—here he comes.”

  The driver came out with a large coffee in one hand and a six-pack of something in the other. He went to the rear of the car and popped the trunk.

  “Coffee for now, beer later,” said Chelsea. “He’d be in the same place if he skipped both.”

  “He’s not drinking the coffee,” said Flores, looking over her shoulder. “Watch.”

  The driver dumped the coffee out onto the pavement. He had put two cups together, one inside the other; he switched them, so that he had a clean cup on top, then he opened one of the beers and poured it in.

  “At least it’s a light beer,” said Flores.

  “Can you get him for DWI?” Chelsea asked.

  “Have to call the locals. Not worth it—here are our guys. They’ll handle it.”

  Chelsea watched as two FBI agents walked over to the Uber car. They had already run the plate and found out who the driver was, an Iranian Christian who had come to the U.S. a decade and a half before.

  They didn’t expect trouble, and they didn’t get it. The man got out of the car without resisting and, after a few moments of conversation, walked meekly back to the agents’ vehicle. By then, four other FBI agents had moved in to secure his car; it would be searched and possibly impounded, depending on how cooperative the driver was.

  With the driver in custody, Flores visibly relaxed, joking with the surveillance agents and checking baseball scores on his phone. Chelsea flipped back through the Hum video screens, first checking on the two FBI agents watching the ATM, who were waiting for a technical crew and the bank manager to arrive so they could remove it. After that, she flipped over to the other UAV feeds. Their placid scenes were almost shocking to her; how could things anywhere else be calm when there was so much excitement elsewhere?

  It was exciting, even just sitting here in the van. More exciting than watching a robot she’d programmed run through its paces.

  Or rescuing someone?

  That had been different somehow, more immediate, or more dire, or more . . . that was different because it happened so quickly, and she was inside it. This was quick, too, or had been, but she was more distanced, more able to make decisions.

  But both experiences were more like dancing than math, more like a sport, adrenaline racing.

  And she liked that. It was a part of her that hadn’t been used in several years.

  “You gonna join us when we wrap up?” Flores asked.

  “Don’t we have to keep watching?” Chelsea asked.

  “Nah. They have it under control now. We’ll just wrap it all up. What are you going to do?”

  “Go home, I guess.”

  “Hell, no. We have to celebrate. Ike’s.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Downtown. It’s great.”

  “Is it open this late?”

  “For us.”

  Tolevi sat ramrod straight in the chair in the FBI interview room, staring at the two-way mirror across from him.

  Did they really think he didn’t know he was being watched? Did anyone not know?

  The door swung open. The man the others had been deferring to walked in, followed by a short, slightly overweight woman. Neither was dressed particularly well; the man’s suit was crumpled at the shoulders, a clear sign that he had bought it at JCPenney or some similar outlet. The woman’s slacks were a size too big; her jacket the opposite.

  “So, Mr. Tolevi.” The man pulled out the chair opposite him. The woman sat down next to him. “You live in Boston?”

  Who was going to play good cop? Tolevi wondered. Probably the woman.

  “You have my passport,” said Tolevi.

  “Were you planning to go somewhere?” asked the man, who hadn’t introduced himself.

  “I just got back.”

  “And you went to the cash machine rather than going home?”

  “I wanted to make sure I still had money in the account.”

  “No withdrawal?” asked the woman.

  They hadn’t told her they’d looked in his wallet. Or maybe she was just playing dumb.

  “I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” he told her.

  “Jill Hightower. I’m a senior agent.”

  Tolevi turned to Jenkins. “And you?”

  “Jenkins. Agent in Charge.”

  “Well, Jenkins, Agent in Charge, why am I here?”

  “I think you know.”

  “No, really I don’t. And I believe you’re under some sort of obligation to tell me.”

  “Do you understand your Miranda rights?” asked the woman. “Let’s go over them again.”

  Jenkins studied the suspect as Hightower went through the pro forma warnings. She was right about him; he was very much more polished than what they had expected.

  But his background fit. American of Ukrainian and Russian descent.

  Russian mob. Had to be.

  “You want a lawyer?” Hightower asked when she was done.

  “Not unless I need one,” said Tolevi.

  “Oh, you definitely need one,” said Jenkins. “And a good one.”

  “Why is that?”

  “What were you doing on Warren Street?”

  “I think you already know I was at the ATM.”

  “How did you get there?”

  The que
stion took Tolevi by surprise. Why were they asking about the ATM? Surely they were here for something else.

  Did they know he had dealings with the SVR? Were they upset about that? But if that was the case, why hadn’t Johansen mentioned it—or simply taken him in Bucharest? It could have been easily arranged.

  The key now was to stay calm until he figured out what the game was.

  “I had a car drive me to the ATM,” said Tolevi. “What’s the big deal?”

  “Who drove you?” asked Jenkins.

  He said it so quickly that Tolevi suspected he already knew the answer. There was no sense lying, anyway.

  The one thing he wanted to do, however, was leave his daughter out of it. He didn’t need the FBI—if these guys were really FBI, not CIA pretenders—scaring the crap out of her.

  Though that was tempting, in a way. Whatever the hell she was up to—maybe a little tough love would straighten her out.

  No, foolish. They would harm her. Best to leave her out. And yet he wasn’t sure exactly how he could do that—lie, and they’d use that to pressure him somehow.

  “An Uber car picked me up at the airport. They just started doing that,” he added. “I find it useful. Usually a little cheaper than a service.”

  “And you went straight to the bank machine?”

  “No, I was going home and then decided to go there.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do we do anything?” He turned and looked at the woman. She had a sympathetic smile, but of course that was an act.

  You have to watch the sweet ones.

  “You stopped at home, then went to get money?” she asked.

  “We almost stopped. Then, you know—I changed my mind.”

  “Aren’t there more convenient ATMs?” asked Hightower.

  “Why are you so interested in my banking?” A strategy started to crystalize. Tolevi would push them a bit.

  If they were FBI, they would be looking for a payoff—that would be proof he was working with the Russian spy agency.

  They could look for that all they wanted. And ultimately, if—or rather when—he went back to the CIA, he would easily explain that: the only way to get access in Crimea was to deal with them. It was impossible not to.

  Surely Johansen knew that, even if he didn’t know the extent.

  “Tell us about how you skim the ATM machines,” said Jenkins.

  “Excuse me?” asked Tolevi, taken off guard by the question. It seemed a non sequitur, out of left field.

  “Your scam on the ATM machines.” Jenkins smirked. “Tell us about it.”

  Tolevi glanced at Hightower. She had a slightly distressed look on her face; he guessed that meant that the other agent had gone off script.

  But what the hell did that question mean?

  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” Tolevi told them. “Skim? How?”

  “Don’t bullshit me,” said Jenkins. “Who do you work for? Or do they work for you?”

  “You’ve lost me,” said Tolevi. “Explain what you’re talking about.”

  Jenkins reached into his jacket pocket and took out a baggie. Inside was the bank card Tolevi had taken from his daughter. “What’s this?”

  “An ATM card.”

  “What about the coding on it?”

  Did they think he was passing information with a bank card?

  No. This was some sort of ruse or plan to get into his house and unlock his safe, where he had the machine he used to make false IDs, including the credit and bank cards.

  Keeping it there hadn’t seemed like that big a risk; he wanted to be able to move quickly in case there was trouble, and the CIA knew he used phony identities, so the machine wasn’t particularly incriminating.

  But they were obviously going to use it as if it were.

  Time to call their bluff.

  “I know nothing about coding,” said Tolevi. “I believe I’m entitled to a phone call, am I not?”

  29

  Boston—a half hour later

  Flores and the others had to secure the van and check in back at the task force headquarters, so Chelsea went alone to the bar, a place on Tremont Street. She’d never been there before—not unusual, since she was hardly a partier.

  She’d expected a fairly rowdy place, given the way Flores and the others had talked about it—a sports bar maybe, or a place the Dropkick Murphys would call a second home. But Ike’s was far more upscale than that, loungelike, the sort of place you might find on the roof of an upscale hotel, except it was in the basement, and the images that were being projected on the fake windows at the side were just that, images piped directly from video cameras on the roof. The music was cool jazz, late 1950s-early ’60s vintage, a very sophisticated vibe that Chelsea never would have associated with the Bureau guys she’d met, and certainly not with Flores.

  But they were all here, a dozen of them, all in their late twenties to early thirties. Two were women, which she hadn’t realized from the radio transmissions. Only one was black, a tall, football-player type who said he came from Nebraska when they were introduced, then shyly moved away, talking first to the man he’d partnered with, then to the bartender and waitress at the far end.

  Most of the agents were not from the Boston area. They had volunteered from different offices across the country, expressing a variety of reasons—boredom, said one outright; the others laughed, though Chelsea guessed they were only surprised at his candor.

  Dryfus, the head of the tech team, came in about forty-five minutes after the others. Chelsea was just finishing her beer and was thinking of leaving. He convinced her to stay, asking about where she’d gone to school, what her majors had been.

  “And how did you end up in the FBI?” she asked him.

  “Ah—I was in the Army, as an E5, which is a sergeant, and I was repairing combat networks. A lot of wires,” he laughed. “I left a year after the Gulf War, got my BS at RIT, and . . . here I am. In Miami.”

  “This doesn’t look like Miami,” said Chelsea.

  “Ssshh, don’t tell him,” said Flores. “Let him figure it out on his own.”

  “I’m assigned to Miami. Although I don’t think I’ve spent more than a week there in the last two years.” He took a long sip of his drink, a Dewar’s on the rocks, then pushed it toward the bartender for a refill. “I got out of Rochester because of the snow. They assigned me to Tulsa first. Took me almost four years to get to Miami, and now look where I am.”

  “Where the action is, baby,” said Flores. He slid his empty beer bottle onto the bar.

  He was a little tipsy, but then, so was Chelsea. Not used to drinking, the beer had started to go to her head. It didn’t help that she had not eaten dinner.

  They ordered some wings. Chelsea had another beer. Somehow she found herself talking to Flores about baseball.

  Mostly, she listened, watching his eyes. They were very blue.

  “I always thought blue eyes went with blond hair,” she blurted.

  “Huh?”

  “Your eyes. They’re blue.”

  “All my life.”

  They moved to a table. Another beer appeared in front of her, then another. She felt warm and a little sleepy, as if there were a fire at the far end of the room.

  “What do you think?” Flores asked, putting his hand on hers. “Time to go?”

  “Where’s your apartment?” she asked, surprising herself.

  30

  Boston—roughly the same time

  “This is his bag,” said Jenkins, pointing to the suitcase that had been recovered from the Uber driver.

  “Can we look inside?” asked Hightower.

  “Not according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Not without a warrant. Or his permission.”

  “But you’ve already looked, right?”

  Jenkins didn’t answer. He was starting to like Hightower. A lot.

  The office he had borrowed was small, used by two lower-echelon agents. He would have to give it up in a few hours when
they came in for work. After that, he’d have to camp out upstairs in one of the empty interrogation rooms.

  Or maybe a closet. He didn’t want to bring Tolevi to his own headquarters. If the guy was a master hacker, he’d learn too much about the operation just seeing it.

  If.

  Doubt had started to creep in. Tolevi had some sort of sketchy connection to the Russian mob, but it wasn’t at all clear. The phone call he had made was not to an attorney, or a known mafya connection for that matter, but to a Virginia-area cell phone. The message he had left—Jenkins had been close enough to “inadvertently” hear—gave nothing away:

  I’m being questioned by the FBI in Boston. I have no idea why.

  The number belonged to a prepaid cell phone apparently purchased for cash; that certainly fit with a mafya or underground connection, but it didn’t give Jenkins any real information to work with.

  The U.S. attorney wasn’t sure they had enough to go on yet for a warrant. And because she was so cautious—anal might be a better word—Jenkins couldn’t even examine the ATM without a warrant. They might be able to get one, but only by laying out a lot of their theory of the case in court, which would give Tolevi or anyone else involved a map on how to clean up the evidence. Not to mention that he would be opening himself up to potential Fourth Amendment complications, which would throw out everything they’d found.

  So he wanted, needed really, Tolevi to voluntarily let them examine it. And once he did that, then by extension they could look at all of its transactions, because what else did looking at the card mean? He’d win without a warrant, and without any worries about using the information in court, let alone tipping their hand or telling the world where they got their information.

  Always a dance.

  “Did you check on Amsterdam?” Hightower asked. “The hotel he claimed he stayed in?”

  “They said he checked out yesterday, which matches his story. They wouldn’t give out any other information.”

  In fact, Jenkins had only gotten that much through subterfuge, claiming to be a friend trying to track him down. The hotel’s night manager had rebuffed the FBI’s formal request, telling Jenkins’s assistant that the request would have to come through channels and be made during the day.