by J. C. Fields
“He said you were an old friend going through a rough time and needed a companion for the night.”
“He was blowing smoke up your dress. He’s not an old friend, or a new friend, for that matter.”
She folded her arms under her breasts, exposing more cleavage. “Doesn’t mean you and I couldn’t have a good time anyway. You know what they say, what plays in Vegas, stays in Vegas. No one would know.”
“I’d know.” He stood. “Don’t follow me to my room. Oh, and when you see Franklin Dollar again, tell him I recorded his conversation and the one you and I just had.” He pressed an icon on his cell phone and showed it to her. “I just sent both to the Director of the FBI.”
Her eyes grew wide as he walked away.
Chapter 25
Flagstaff, AZ
Sleep eluded him as he lay in the creaky bed watching the lopsided ceiling fan turn. The hotel was cheap and the room cheaper, smelling of stale cigarettes and Lysol. His hasty departure from the Mandalay Bay created an issue with cash. Cash needed to fund his un-timely departure from the United States. His emergency money was still available, but he would need more once he got to his post-Stephen Blair location.
Unfortunately, he was running into an issue with his bank accounts. Each time he checked, his anger grew. “Zero Balance” or “Account Frozen” was the response from nine of the ten accounts scattered around the globe. One account in Dubai was still accessible, and he immediately transferred those funds to a brand new account in Zurich. With less than ten million dollars available, he needed to find a way to get his two hundred million dollars back. With his anger changing rapidly to fury, Bishop resorted to breathing exercises, learned in Thailand, to reign in his emotions.
Leaving the laptop behind was an unavoidable mistake. Apparently the FBI used it to find his accounts and compromise them. His exit from Mandalay Bay was chaotic. After walking out the hotel entrance into the circle drive and having his car returned, he drove straight to the airport. It took fifteen nerve-wracking minutes as he continuously checked his rearview mirror for any sign of pursuit. After leaving the rental with Hertz, he took the shuttle to the departure terminal. Without stopping, he immediately walked to the arrival area and took the shuttle to Terminal Three long term parking. Twenty minutes later, after paying for his parking, his Jeep Grand Cherokee was exiting the airport. He found I-515 West, which led to US-93 South. At Kingman, Arizona, he took I-40 East. Four hours after leaving Vegas, he drove past a city limit sign for Flagstaff, Arizona. At the first Walmart he saw, he used cash to buy an HP laptop, a duffel bag, two changes of clothing and a few personal grooming items. After everything was packed into the duffel, he drove to a two star hotel with a sign out front claiming free Wi-Fi near the downtown area.
Paying cash, he checked into the hotel under his Everett Stewart ID and sequestered himself in the room. Without knowing if the Stewart ID was compromised, he decided he would leave early evening for the drive to Mexico. But first on his priority list was finding more information on the FBI agent who seemed always one step behind him.
He sat at the computer and Googled the name Sean Kruger. The results shocked him. He expected an FBI functionary, but found a dynamic, prolifically efficient investigator. He sat back and for the first time in several years, felt concern. A year earlier, Kruger unearthed and stopped a plot to blow up an auditorium with 15,000 souls attending a meeting. Prior to this, he spent two decades at the forefront of tracking down and bringing to justice numerous serial killers.
Bishop sat back in the desk chair and placed his right hand under his chin.
“I have to find his weaknesses.”
He didn’t realize he had said it out loud.
Searching Facebook, he discovered the FBI agent did not have a presence on the site, but he found someone who claimed to be his ex-wife. The ex-wife lived in Aurora, Colorado. A twelve-hour drive from his location. The ex-wife was extremely chatty on Facebook, most of it uninteresting. Within some of her posts, there were hints about a son. Nothing concrete, but hints. When he searched for the son, he found nothing. Just like the father, the son did not seem to have a presence on social media, something he found strange assuming the boy’s age.
Frustrated with the lack of finding anything further about the FBI agent, he walked to the parking lot and lifted the back gate on the Jeep. Making sure no one was watching, he lifted the floor board to reveal the spare tire, jack and tools. Once the screw holding the spare tire in place was loosened, he lifted the donut tire and removed one of three narrow brown paper bags used in liquor stores to cover wine. He then re-secured the spare tire and replaced the floor board and carpeting. Once back inside the Jeep, he opened the paper bag and pulled out one of three bundles of hundred dollar bills. In all, nine bundles of emergency money were stashed in the car. Ninety thousand dollars would have to last him until he could acquire a new set of IDs in Mexico and establish an account to transfer funds from his last remaining account in Zurich. Then, and only then, he would get his revenge on the FBI agent Sean Kruger.
He left the hotel parking lot, returning to the Walmart a mile and a half south. He walked to the back of the store to the electronics department where he bought a Virgin Mobile Samsung prepaid smartphone. He also purchased a wheeled suitcase and additional clothing. His next stop was a Target store on the way back to the hotel. There he purchased two cheap prepaid phones, these he would use only once.
Back in this hotel room, he used the Virgin Mobile phone to call Thailand. By the end of the call, he knew where to go and how much it would cost to become someone else.
***
For an American, entering the tourist area of Nogales, Mexico, was easy. For someone like Randolph Bishop, it was daunting. Unsure of his Everett Stewart Australian credentials and confident his Stephen Blair identity was blown, he sat on the American side of the border in a small café pondering how to get across the border. He watched tourists park their cars in lots around the border crossing, pay for the parking, obtain their Mexican Tourist Card and walk across the border. While he was in the café, several tourist buses from Tucson arrived and disgorged their passengers—all of which walked across the border.
He checked his watch and decided he would get his Mexican Tourist Card as Everett Stewart and cross the border when the next bus arrived. If his luck held out, when his transaction was done in southern Nogales, he would be someone else. Everett Stewart would disappear in Mexico, never to be heard from again.
His gamble paid off. The Mexican Immigration Officers barely looked at his passport and card. When asked, he told them he would be in Nogales for less than twenty four hours. The man smiled and stamped the Tourist Card.
Once past the touristy section of Nogales, he found a cab. The address he gave brought a frown to the driver’s face, but he nodded and headed south. Bishop was dropped off in what seemed to be an abandoned industrial park with dilapidated buildings. Checking the GPS map on his cell phone, he located the correct building and walked through a door next to a loading dock.
Four hours later, the small man who identified himself as Juan handed Bishop a California driver’s license, a United States passport and an American Express Platinum card in the name of Gary Yates of San Diego, California. They looked authentic.
Bishop nodded. “Cuanto cuesta?” How much?
“Diez mil…americano.” Ten thousand, American.
Bishop shook his head. “Demasiado.” Too much.
Juan reached for the items just given to Bishop. Holding them back, the new Gary Yates offered, “Nueve.”
Juan stared at Bishop for a few moments, tilted his head slightly to the left. “Noventa y cinco.”
Bishop smiled and handed the man a bundle of one hundred dollar bills.
Juan smiled a toothy grin. “Gracias.”
As Bishop walked toward the exit door of the expansive empty warehouse, Juan said in heavily accented English, “The American Express is good for month. Owner on cruise in Medi
terranean.”
Bishop turned and smiled. After hesitating for a second, he walked back to Juan and handed him the remaining five one hundred dollar bills from the bundle and the Everett Stewart passport and driver’s license. “Thanks for the tip, amigo.”
Juan nodded and slipped the money into his jeans pocket. He opened the passport Bishop handed him and smiled.
“This made in Thailand; it is good. I do better.”
Bishop stared at the diminutive Mexican for a few moments, smiled, shook his head and walked out of the warehouse.
Two hours later, Gary Yates crossed the border from Nogales, Mexico, to Nogales, Arizona, without so much as a second look from the US Border Patrol officer. He got behind the wheel of his Jeep Grand Cherokee and drove north toward Phoenix.
All of the stashed money from the spare tire area was now in the rolling suitcase purchased at the Flagstaff Walmart, as were his clothes, laptop, cell phones and personal items. Before crossing back to the US side, he picked up two additional cell phones with prepaid minutes from a Mexican cell phone company.
He parked the Jeep in a heavily used long-term parking area at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, leaving the keys in plain sight and the doors unlocked.
The shuttle took him to the departure terminal. He immediately went to the Hertz counter in the arrival terminal and thirty minutes later, using Gary Yates’ American Express card, he was exiting the airport driving a Dodge Charger. He checked into the Four Seasons resort in Scottsdale using the American Express card and settled in for a few days of planning and shopping.
Chapter 26
Springfield, MO
“Stephen Blair’s Jeep Cherokee was found stripped and abandoned in a really bad part of Phoenix last night.” JR stood from his seat at the cubicle and walked to the Keurig. “Everett Stewart entered Mexico at the Nogales crossing under a forty-eight-hour Tourist Ticket and never left.”
Looking up from the report he was reading in the next cubicle, Sean Kruger asked, “When did they find the Jeep?”
“About 3 this morning, their time. Police report thinks it’s been there at least a day.”
“How did you find that out?”
“Snooper program. Similar to a Google search engine, but without all the ads.”
“I thought we were supposed to be notified when anything about Blair, Bishop, or Everett Stewart was discovered by local police departments.”
“We will, but it still takes a few days. That’s why I’m using the snooper program.”
“Shit.” Kruger was now pacing. He watched JR start to make a cup of coffee and drifted over to the machine and waited for him to finish. When JR took his cup back to the cubicle, Kruger started his own cup. “Have you ever heard of a drip coffee maker?”
“Sure, but you have to clean them. All you have to do with a Keurig is fill it with water.”
Kruger frowned and stared at the finished cup of coffee. He shrugged and walked back to JR’s cubicle as he sipped the hot beverage. “This is like fast food. It takes time to make a good cup of coffee.” He frowned as he sipped it again. “So what where you saying?”
“I like the convenience of the Keurig…”
“Not about the coffee machine. About Nogales.”
“I’m saying Bishop probably got a new set of IDs in Nogales and is back in the US with a completely unknown identity.”
“Okay, how?”
JR chuckled. “How long have you been an FBI agent?”
“Is it that easy?”
“Uhhhh, yeah.”
“How much?”
“It’s expensive, at least five figures.”
Kruger stared at his friend. “How do you know?”
Shrugging, JR took a sip of coffee. “Before you and Joseph helped with my identity crisis several years ago, I contemplated changing Mia’s and my identities and moving to Australia.”
Kruger was silent.
“Of course, I didn’t have to. But through my connections within the hacker community, I discovered some of the best forgers are in Nogales, Mexico. Close to the border and all that. They usually charge at least ten thousand. Usually more, depending on what they are offering their clients.”
“Huh.”
“Which tells us Bishop has access to cash.”
“Huh.”
JR turned to look at Kruger, who was staring at his coffee cup. “You okay?”
“Yeah…”
Crossing his arms over his chest, JR kept his attention on Kruger.
“How did he know about a forger in Nogales?” Kruger asked. “I don’t see him having that kind of information at his fingertips. Who’d he call?”
JR’s eyes widened, and he turned to his computer. “Damn. Damn, I should have thought of that.”
Watching JR work the computer never ceased to amaze Kruger. His fingers danced over the keys, and his head swiveled between three flat screen monitors like spectators watching a tennis match. Two minutes after he started, he sat back, lifted his coffee cup and took a sip.
“The number in Thailand we know about was called by a Virgin Mobile number three days ago, just before Everett Stewart’s trip to Nogales.”
Kruger took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Bishop’s bought new phones.”
“I would agree. I can trace the Virgin phone, now that I know about it. But he’s turned it off and hasn’t used it since.”
“He probably bought several throw-aways in Mexico. I would.”
“So would I.” JR placed his elbow on the desk and his hand under his chin as he stared at the computer monitors. “I’ll place a tripwire on the Thailand phone, then I can monitor any phones that call it.”
Kruger walked closer to JR’s cubicle. “Where did the Virgin phone call Thailand from?”
“Flagstaff.”
“The Vegas office assumed he went north.”
JR was typing on the keyboard again. He paused, reading the left screen for several moments. “Everett Stewart checked into an Embassy Suites in Flagstaff. Never checked out. He paid cash for three days and was gone a day later.”
“Damn. How can you follow him?”
“Until he uses the Virgin Mobile phone again, I can’t.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
JR glanced at the time on the lower right corner of his computer screen. “I’ll get as much information before the conference call as I can. When Joseph arrives, we can bring him up to speed.”
***
The conference call was scheduled for noon, Central Time. All the local participants were sitting around JR’s conference table by 11:45. Sandy Knoll was in town, so he sat next to Joseph. Kruger and JR sat across from them. JR’s version of a conference call speaker box was a modified Polycom Voice Station fed through a laptop. Not because it mattered, but because he was JR, no one on the other end of the call would be able to trace where the call originated.
Joseph clasped his hand on the surface of the conference table. “In three days, with an unknown identity, Bishop could be anywhere in the United States, or the world for that matter.”
Kruger nodded. “He hasn’t used the one phone we know about again. He may have already ditched it.”
“I don’t think he has.” JR shook his head. “According to records I found in the Virgin Mobile server, he bought a Samsung smartphone with cash at a Walmart in Flagstaff. He also paid for five hundred minutes of calling time. I wouldn’t think you would pay for that much time, use four minutes, and throw it away. Doesn’t make sense.”
“I would agree. Keep an eye on it. He’ll use it again, and we’ll know more about what we’re up against. In the meantime, the purpose of this conference call is to bring the President up to speed on our other projects. Sean, will you be covering those?”
Kruger nodded, but was obviously concentrating on something else. Joseph stared at him. “Sean?”
Looking up, Kruger returned the stare. “Yes.”
“Let’s get a cu
p of coffee.” Joseph stood and left the conference room. Kruger followed.
Kruger went to the Keurig and placed a coffee pod in the machine. Joseph crossed his arm over his chest. “Care to tell me what’s keeping you so quiet?”
“Bishop.”
“I gathered that. Do you want me to take the lead on the phone call?”
“Yeah, you probably should today.” He raised the coffee cup to his lips, sipped the hot beverage and grimaced. “We’ve transferred funds and frozen most of his assets, so he’s going to be pissed. He knew we were in Las Vegas to arrest him, thanks to Franklin Dollar. The question I keep asking myself is, if he feels desperate what’s he going to do next?”
Joseph was pouring water into the Keurig from a gallon jug JR kept under the coffee service area. “Does he know who you are?”
Kruger nodded. “He used my name in Atlanta to gain access to Tom Zimmerman’s condo.”
“So, what precautions do you want to take?”
“Stephanie and I don’t do Facebook or any of the other social media, and we don’t talk to reporters. My name was all over the news channels last year after the Fayetteville thing, but we never identified where we lived. Plus we’ve moved since then. JR has helped to keep our internet presence non-existent. Brian and his fiancée don’t have a social media presence either. It drives them nuts, but they understand why. These days, it’s hard not to be found, but I think we’ve taken the right precautions. I’ve made a few enemies in my life Joseph, though most of them are in jail or dead. But they’re out there. Bishop is different. He’s the most dangerous and cunning foe I’ve ever faced. This is the second time he’s eluded me. It’s almost like he can sense I’m getting close.”
Sandy Knoll stuck his head out of the conference room. “President’s running late, ten more minutes.”
Joseph smiled. “Thank you, Sandy, we’ll be right there.” He turned back to Kruger. “Only cats have nine lives, Sean. He’s going to make a mistake and you’ll be there when he does.”
