AGENT X

by Noah Boyd

  “Yes.”

  The single syllable was delivered abruptly, as some sort of implied message. “Did he send you here?”

  “If I had to guess,” Kalix said, “I’d say he didn’t believe any of the charges either. Of course I’d just be guessing, because the director couldn’t get personally involved in a case with the ramifications that this one promises to carry. Especially with how much he likes Kate. You have to remember, however, that the Justice Department has got their teeth into this, so his hands are tied. They won’t even let us interview her, because she’s so high up in the Bureau.” Kalix opened the briefcase he was carrying and took out Vail’s gun and credentials, handing them to him. “I would also guess that if he had his way, Director Lasker would want you more than anyone to do something about this.”

  It was apparent that the director had sent Kalix unofficially to enlist Vail’s help.

  “John, I’m starting to think that Langston’s not the only one I’ve underestimated. It looks like you have more than one backup plan.”

  Kalix smiled. “I’ve built a career on letting people underestimate me. I am what I am.” He started to leave. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  As soon as the door locked shut, Vail sank down on the marble stair where he’d been standing. Thoughts were rushing through his head at blurred, indecipherable angles. He sat paralyzed, a prisoner of what he’d just been told. After a moment he leaned back, setting his head on the black stone tread above him, looking for the comfort of its hard, cold reality. He closed his eyes and searched his memory, trying to find the image of Kate’s face. At least her smile. Then he realized that more than anything he wanted to recall her laugh. Its slightly husky tone, its honest depth. But it wouldn’t come to him.

  He thought about how confused she must be, how she certainly wasn’t laughing at the moment. Was that why he couldn’t hear her? Because she couldn’t laugh?

  Vail bolted upright in anger. Someone had to pay for this. No, everybody was going to pay for this.

  He turned and ran up the stairs two at a time. In the workroom he let his eyes run along the wall covered with photos and reports. He started pacing back and forth. Since her innocence was not a consideration, only one conclusion could be drawn: Kate had been framed. To clear her he would first have to answer two questions: Who? And, more important, why?

  The who had to be the Russians. Calculus, whoever he was, was not a double agent but a front man for the plot to take out Kate. With his mission completed, he probably had disappeared into the maze of his country’s bureaucracy. He was probably in Moscow, not being tortured but being decorated. And Vail had fallen for it, all of it.

  They had known how to appeal to his ego. He had figured out each of their codes because he was supposed to. If he was really that smart, he would have seen through the plot from the start. There were all those little inconsistencies that he’d explained away so that his answers were the only ones that were acceptable. Ariadne’s thread—he had to admit that was the one thing that drew him in. Although its presence didn’t make any sense—and Kate had questioned why Calculus would leave a trail of clues if he wanted money for each of the individuals being exposed—Vail had invented a reason so he could feed his own ego.

  And now Kate was paying for it.

  If he was going to figure this out, the first thing he had to do was disconnect himself from all the emotion of the situation, and that included self-recrimination. He went to the desk and found the file with Calculus’s grainy photograph. He pinned it to the wall to remind himself that, although extremely elusive, his enemy was not invisible. He started searching the face for clues of his deception, but of course there were none. Finally he saw the Russian as just another face, his true identity meaningless. The only thing that mattered now was finding a way to destroy his plan.

  He got up and went into the kitchen to make some coffee. After filling the pot with water, he started measuring the coffee. As he was about to put in the third scoop, it hit him. He dropped everything and headed for the shower.

  18

  The flight attendant asked Vail if he wanted anything to drink. He smiled absentmindedly and said no. Checking his watch, he looked out the window. They were crossing Lake Michigan, and he could finally see Chicago’s ice-covered beaches. The white-and-gray bleakness swept under them, and his thoughts returned to Kate. The one good thing about something as catastrophic as Kate’s arrest for treason was that it reduced everything around it to a level of insignificance. Whatever problems there were between them, real or imagined, they would have to wait. Right now her freedom was the only priority.

  The thing Vail admired most about money was its way of leading to the truth. Stories could be faked and lies told, but when money was introduced into the equation, honest answers had little choice but to rise to the surface.

  While the three-quarters of a million dollars the Bureau had already wire-transferred to Calculus’s designated account in Chicago was a drop in the bucket for the Russians, it was still seven hundred fifty thousand dollars American, and chances were that some enterprising soul wasn’t going to just let it sit there unclaimed. Even dishonestly gained money had a way of tracing itself back to the truth.

  Since he no longer had to worry about Calculus’s Chicago “relative” warning him that the FBI was trying to discover anything about the account, Vail could now go to the bank and ask direct questions. Once the plane landed and he collected his luggage, he took a cab to his apartment. He dropped his bags inside and, after spending a half hour clearing the snow off his truck, drove to the Lakeside Bank and Trust in downtown Chicago. It was an eight-story building on LaSalle Street.

  Vail flashed his credentials and asked to see the head of security. A few minutes later, a gray-haired man in his late fifties walked toward Vail. Although Vail had never seen him before, his smile was one of familiarity, causing Vail to check the man’s hands. He was wearing an FBI ring made from a twenty-five-year service key. Vail stood up and smiled back. “Steve Vail,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Les Carson.” He shook Vail’s hand. “I know a lot of the guys from the Chicago office. Are you new here?” There was the slightest edge of suspicion in Carson’s voice.

  “Can we go somewhere a little more private?”

  “Sure, my office.” Carson led him to an elevator and then to an office on the third floor.

  As soon as Carson closed the door, Vail said, “Actually, I’m out of headquarters, working a special for the director. And it’s extremely confidential.”

  “I’m sorry, Steve, can I see your creds?”

  Vail took them out and handed them to Carson. He looked at them for a moment, running his thumb over the embossed seal at the edge of the photo to verify their legitimacy before handing them back. “Why is there something familiar about your name? What other offices have you been assigned to?”

  “I was in Detroit for three years, but that was a long time ago.”

  “That’s it. You’re the one who was fired during that cop-killer investigation the year before I retired.”

  Vail smiled. “Sounds like me.”

  “And now you’re back, and at headquarters?”

  “The director asked me to come aboard to handle this one case.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I did it once before, and it worked out. No one was supposed to know about it.”

  “What do you do when you’re not on the Bureau clock?” Carson asked.

  “I’m a bricklayer. I actually live here, on the Northwest Side.”

  Vail could see that Carson was questioning the plausibility of his background. “And what exactly is it that you need, Steve?”

  Vail took out a slip of paper and handed it to Carson. “In the last week, there have been three deposits wired into that account, each for a quarter of a million dollars. I need all the information available about whoever it belongs to.”

  Carson fell back in his chair. “Come on,
Steve, you know that banking information is impossible without a court order. I could lose my job.”

  “I can get the director on the phone if that would help. It’s a matter of national security.”

  “If you got Jesus Christ himself on the phone, I couldn’t help you, and I’m Catholic. I like it here, and I really doubt I’d like being sued. And as far as it being a matter of national security, do you know how many times I used that line in twenty-five years?”

  “Les, this is extremely important. And I don’t have time for a court order. Besides, I can’t let the local U.S. Attorney’s office know about the specifics of the case.” Vail could see that the real problem was Carson’s suspicions about him and his story. It was understandable—a stranger was asking him to risk his job on his word alone. He would have been crazy to agree to chance everything for someone he didn’t know he could trust. “There’s got to be some way you can help me.”

  The appeal didn’t seem to register with Carson. He was studying Vail’s face. After a few seconds, he pulled open a file drawer behind him and took out a thick folder. He started flipping through the pages inside. He found the one he was looking for and held it up as though placing it side by side with Vail’s features. After studying it for a few more seconds, he looked back at Vail and his mouth curved upward into a smile of discovery. “This is a flyer another bank distributed statewide. It seems last year they had a robbery that went bad, and more than two dozen customers and employees were taken hostage. Then a lone male customer overpowered the two robbers and threw them through the bank’s windows. When everything quieted down, the man had disappeared into the crowd. They said he was dressed like a construction worker, and the bank was on the Northwest Side. He was never identified. That’s why they sent this out, trying to find out who he is. They wanted to reward him. Why do you think someone would vanish like that?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to pay for the windows,” Vail said. “Or answer a lot of useless questions.”

  Carson turned the flyer around to show Vail the surveillance photo of the man who had disrupted the robbery. “You wouldn’t know anything about it, would you? What with both of you being from the Northwest Side and in the construction business.”

  Vail didn’t look at the flyer. “Retired or not, Les, you’ve still got a pretty good eye.”

  “We heard that when you were fired, it was for doing the right thing, but nobody ever got any particulars. And that bank robbery . . . well, that tells me a hell of a lot more about you than a set of credentials. I assume that any good faith I might show you will be reciprocated.”

  “Just give me someone to throw through the window.”

  Carson typed the account number into the computer on his desk. “The balance on that account is zero.”

  “That’s good. What’s the holder’s name?”

  “Donald Brown. With an address in Evanston.” Carson started writing down the information.

  “Is there a phone number?”

  “Yes,” Carson said.

  “Let’s find out if any of this isn’t phony. Can I use your phone?” Carson pushed it toward Vail and wrote down the number for him.

  “Can I ask what kind of case this is?”

  “This has to stay right here. The only thing I can tell you is that it is a counterintelligence matter, at an extremely high level.” Vail dialed the number. He listened for a few seconds and hung up. “It’s a restaurant. Did this Brown withdraw the money himself?”

  Carson queried the computer again. “No, all three deposits were wire-transferred out of here the day they were received.”

  “To where?”

  Carson hit another key. “That’s odd, it doesn’t show. That information has to be listed.”

  “Does someone have to authorize those transfers?”

  “Yes,” Carson said. “But the data can’t just disappear. Let me get ahold of our IT guy.” While Carson made the call, Vail wondered if he hadn’t run into another dead end.

  He felt something he wasn’t used to—panic. What if he couldn’t figure this out? What if Kate went to prison? How could this be happening? He thought about what she must be going through, the confusion of being one of the top law-enforcement officials in the country and then, the next moment, a prisoner. And even if they were able to clear her, was her career over? Her competence was already being questioned because of that ridiculous suicide rumor. How could she recover from this? She must be going crazy right now. At least he was able to do something about it to keep his sanity.

  He hoped she would realize that he was working on it. If only there were some way for him to get word to her that he was, but that might prove just as difficult as tracing the three-quarters of a million dollars that had seemed to vanish from the bank.

  Carson said, “He’s going to trace everything through the computers. I told him to make it a priority, but it’ll be at least an hour. Come on, I’ll buy you lunch.”

  When they returned, Carson called the computer analyst back. Almost immediately he started writing on a pad of paper. “Okay . . . Okay . . . Really? That’s odd. Can you trace that? . . . Okay, thanks, Tommy.” He hung up. “All three transfers out of the bank were authorized by employee code ‘13walker13.’ And it looks as if the same person wiped the transfer information from our computer.”

  “What’s his name?” Vail asked.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why?”

  “That was the user ID for one of our vice presidents who retired six months ago and moved to Arizona. His access to the system was never canceled. Someone got ahold of it and used it.”

  “So the Bureau sent three-quarters of a million dollars to this bank and there’s no way to track where it went.”

  “The IT analyst says he doesn’t think so, but he’s going to keep at it. I have to apologize, Steve. Security at this bank is my responsibility, and obviously I’ve got some work to do.”

  “Don’t disembowel yourself just yet. The people involved in this investigation are very smart and have gone to a great deal of trouble and possess unlimited resources. If it’s any consolation, I’ve been made a bigger fool than anyone. We’ll just have to get creative.”

  “How?”

  “Whether you’re after the lowliest of thieves or the president of the United States, what’s the one tactic that rarely fails?” Vail said.

  “I don’t know, what?”

  “Follow the money. Is there a phone somewhere I can use in private?”

  “Use mine. I’m going to go find out how this happened.”

  “Actually, if you could, leave that access in place. I think I know a way to use it.”

  After Carson left the office, Vail picked up the phone and dialed John Kalix’s number.

  19

  At a few minutes before eight the next morning, Vail walked into Les Carson’s office and asked, “Your people ready?”

  “I just talked to Tommy. They’re locked onto that account. In fact, the deposit won’t move out of here until he personally releases it.”

  “And if 13walker13 accesses it, we’ll be able to trace it to whoever is using the password?”

  “To whatever computer is being used in this building, yes,” Carson said. “This must be a big case. One phone call and you get them to send half a million dollars that’s just going to disappear into . . . who-knows-where.”

  When Vail had called Kalix, he told the deputy assistant director he wanted the half million dollars they had promised Calculus for the final double agent to be wired to the same Chicago bank first thing in the morning. Kalix had argued that was in effect tantamount to giving the Russians half a million dollars more for framing Kate. He feared that when it got out, which the Russians would make sure happened eventually, it would be highly embarrassing for the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division.

  Vail said, “It’s the only way to track whoever set up Kate.”

  “As much as I want to help Kate, I simply cannot authorize the r
elease of that much money, knowing that it’s probably going to wind up in the hands of the Russians. We’ve already given them three-quarters of a million dollars.”

  “Actually, we’re not going to give them anything. When you send the money, we’re hoping that their man here will transfer it to wherever he sent the other payments. I’ll have the bank put a twenty-four-hour hold on whatever bank it’s transferred to. Once it’s transferred out of here, we’ll immediately be able to determine the bank and the account number it’s being sent to. Then we’ll invalidate the transfer from here, and the money will be sent back to the account you forwarded it from. Zero loss.”

  “Steve, it sounds like there are too many things that could go wrong, and then we’re out five hundred K.”

  “John, take a few minutes to meditate over this. Even consult your ‘higher authority.’ ”

  “Uh . . . oh, yes, yes, I could do that.” Kalix realized that Vail was hinting at contacting the director for approval.

  “Good. Call me back when you’re done mulling it over.” An hour later Kalix called and told him the payment would be ready to be sent first thing in the morning.

  Vail said to Carson, “Let me call Washington, Les, and then we’re on.”

  While Vail made his call, Carson stayed on the line with the bank’s IT manager. After a few minutes, Carson hung up and said, “Okay, the half a million just arrived.”

  Vail asked, “Right now, who can check on the account’s balance?”

  “There are dozens of employees who have general access to account information, depending on their jobs.”

  “And how many people can actually order transactions involving that account?”

  “It takes a completely different level of clearance to move money out of it, generally vice presidents and above. You said these people are smart. Aren’t you afraid they won’t fall for this?”

  “That’s always a possibility, but we have one thing going for us: five hundred thousand dollars. That’s halfway to seven figures. The best thing about greed is how quickly it melts even the smartest person’s IQ.”