The Queen pbf-5

by Steven James

  Alexei ended the call. Electronically transferred the funds.

  On Wednesday Valkyrie had mentioned his Tanfoglio. Mentioned Italy. Why even bring it up? How had Valkyrie found out about it, anyway? And why leave the remaining $1,000,000 at the dead drop?

  Alexei didn’t know, but he couldn’t help but think that Valkyrie had been playing him ever since Tatiana’s murder.

  Okay, change of plans.

  Becker Hahn had told him to expect a call at 9:00 tomorrow night: “Not a minute before, not a minute after.” Alexei was aware that plans change, but 9:00 was also the time Valkyrie had told him earlier, so it appeared that he had a window of opportunity until then.

  Alexei was confident that even if Nikolai came up short, Becker, who’d been so bold as to mention Valkyrie in the meeting earlier today, would have information leading to the intelligencer’s identification or whereabouts. Eco-Tech had something planned, but even more importantly, they were still in this area and they were connected with Valkyrie.

  Alexei arrived at the cabin, gently transferred the woman from the car’s trunk to the room at the end of the hall, secured her, then pulled out his computer to review his notes about Becker Hahn and his team.

  He was going to find the people who had set him up, and then go through them one by one until they told him who Valkyrie was.

  I awoke.

  No one else in the hospital room.

  Looking around, I found my watch on a small dresser beside the bed and checked the time.

  8:02 p.m.

  I rubbed my head.

  From the time I’d tried to save Bryan Ellory-apart from awakening briefly just after six o’clock-I’d been out more than six hours. I was off the cardiac monitor now, but still had the IV.

  I felt bleary and weak and ached all over, either from the aftermath of the hypothermia or from some type of medication they were giving me. Whichever it was, it didn’t matter, my energy was gone.

  Knowing that my face had been exposed to subzero temperature for an indeterminate period of time, I apprehensively slid my hand across my nose, felt my earlobes. They still stung from frostnip, but thankfully, all seemed fine, frostbite hadn’t ravaged my face. I checked my hands, my fingers, wiggled my toes. All good-but when I tried to move my ankle, I felt a jolt of pain.

  I thought again of the river, of what had happened.

  Ellory is dead. You let him die.

  I’d barely known the man, and yet now I felt a wash of stark sadness and loss as if we’d been friends for years. He might not have been as thorough as he could’ve been in his police reports, but he was forward-thinking enough to send the Lab the tread patterns that led to the open water on Tomahawk Lake. And he was dedicated: he’d done all he knew to do at each scene, pursued the suspect through the snowstorm, and died trying to apprehend a killer.

  No, he died when you let him drown.

  You let him go.

  Ellory was a hero, and I was the one who’d let him die.

  Another voice tried to reassure me, but it was faint and distant: No, Pat, you were the one who tried to save him.

  Any negative thoughts I’d had earlier about Ellory now vanished, and I felt armed with fresh fire and a deep sense of purpose to catch his killer. I was going to get the man who did this and I was going to bring him in or put him down.

  Needles make me queasy, but I sat up, steeled myself, and tugged out my IV, then slid the piece of tape over the needle hole to stop any seepage.

  My clothes were piled on a chair in the corner of the room. Surprisingly, all of them, even the camo coat, looked dry, and I was thankful for whoever had taken care of that little detail.

  I swung my legs out of bed, paused to catch my breath and calm my dizziness, and noticed a note beside the phone in Amber’s looping handwriting: “Good news from the X-rays. The ankle’s not broken! I’ll be right back. You’re supposed to call Margaret.-A.”

  The last I’d heard, Margaret was checking on Donnie Pickron to see why he had Sensitive Compartmented Information access.

  Since Sean still had my cell, I dialed Margaret’s number from the room phone. She picked up.

  “Margaret, it’s Pat.”

  “Jake told me about the river.”

  “I’m all right. But-”

  “Agent Bowers, do you have any idea how serious your condition was?”

  “Listen, I’m not on a secure line here. Can you have security reroute the call through our proxy server and call me back?”

  A pause. “Just a moment.”

  I hung up and only a few seconds later the phone rang and I answered. She spoke first: “I understand the suspect got away.”

  “He did.”

  “And we still have no confirmation that Donnie Pickron is dead?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How did you fall into the river?”

  “I jumped in to try and save Bryan Ellory.” It felt like a stone was lodged in my throat. “But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get him to shore. He’s gone.”

  Another pause. “Yes, I heard. I’m very sorry. I’ve sent condolences to his wife Mia on behalf of you and the Bureau.”

  Just hearing his widow’s name seemed to make things worse.

  “You put your life on the line for him,” Margaret said. “I’ll recommend you for a citation of-”

  “None of that matters.” I didn’t want to talk about the river. “Did you find out anything more about Donnie? Why he was in the area?”

  A moment passed. “Yes. He used to lead an information warfare team at an old Navy communication base nearby.” Her tone shifted slightly and indicated to me that, at least for the time being, she was willing to leave behind the conversation concerning what’d happened at the river. “I’ll send you the files, everything I have on it. But the station was closed in 2004.”

  “According to the Navy.”

  “Yes.” A small pause. “According to the Navy.”

  The recently issued biometric ID card came to mind. “Tell me about the station. Where is it?”

  “In the center of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.”

  Hmm. Yes-the area Donnie would have passed on his snowmobile on the way to the sawmill.

  I tried to stand on my swollen, discolored ankle. Couldn’t. Dropped back onto the bed. “I’m going over there.”

  “Not tonight you’re not. We have no idea what we’re dealing with here. And you need to rest.”

  I would never admit it to her, but I really was exhausted right now and I couldn’t even imagine fighting my way through a blizzard with this ankle in the pitch black looking for a communication station that might not even exist.

  “Besides,” she said, “for all we know, this Alexei Chekov is halfway across the state by now.”

  For all we know, he hasn’t gone anywhere, I thought.

  But she was right as well, he might be gone.

  “Is there an APB on Chekov?”

  “Well, that’s the problem,” she told me. “We don’t have a photo.”

  “State patrol found the rental car he was driving and we have the plate numbers. The anonymous caller said he was using the alias Neil Kreger. Check with the rental car companies and airport security at all the airports within a day’s drive. We should be able to pull a photo of him from airport surveillance cameras, get it to law enforcement across the state.”

  “Yes. Good. I’ll get some agents on it.”

  “I assume there’s an APB on the semi?”

  “There is.”

  Maybe it was too obvious, but I felt like the next few words needed to be said: “This is a lot bigger than just the Pickron murders. I don’t think he committed them.”

  “Then who did?”

  “I don’t know. An associate. An accomplice maybe. At the river he told me he didn’t kill Ardis or Lizzie.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “I did.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “You need a couple days
of rest; however, if you’re up to it, I’d like you to brief Jake, Natasha, and Sheriff Tait in the morning. I told them 9:00.” I hadn’t yet met Tait, who’d been down with the flu yesterday, but with Deputy Ellory gone it made sense that Tait would get involved even if he was still sick.

  There was no way I was going to sit around resting for a couple days. “Nine isn’t a problem.”

  “I’ll have Tait send some state troopers to check on the site of the old ELF station as soon as it’s light.” Even though the sheriff’s department was lead on this, I knew that in remote rural areas, they work closely with the state patrol, as it appeared Tait was in the position to do here.

  “ELF?”

  “Extremely Low Frequency, that’s the kind of electromagnetic waves the communication system used.”

  “All right. I’ll go with the officers.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Do you realize you were not breathing when they found you?”

  “That’s probably overstating things.”

  “Not to mention your ankle. I need you to take care of yourself.” She actually sounded concerned for me.

  How does she know about my ankle?

  “I’m fine, Margaret.”

  “I believe the word is stubborn. If the officers find anything, we’ll get you and the rest of the team over there as soon as possible to have a look around.”

  With that, she ended the conversation.

  Stubborn?

  That wasn’t very nice.

  I put a quick call through to Lien-hua. She was in the middle of a meeting and sounded very rushed, so when she asked how I was, I simply told her that it’d been a long day, and that the weather had gotten the best of me. “I’ll fill you in later,” I said, “when we have a little more time to talk.”

  Before ending the call, she made a point of assuring me that my surprise was still coming. “You’ll find it later tonight in your room.”

  “At the Moonbeam?”

  “Yes.” A slight pause. “Pat, I have to go. It’s not that I don’t want to talk. It’s just-”

  “No problem. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay. Talk to you soon.”

  I was ready to get out of this hospital but didn’t know where Jake or our car might be so I punched in his number and caught up with him at the sheriff’s department in Woodborough. After I convinced him I didn’t need to stay here, he agreed to pick me up in fifteen minutes to take me back to the motel. The doctors and nurses might not be happy that I was leaving, but I could deal with that.

  Tessa was annoyed that Sean hadn’t called her while she was at Lindberg’s to inform her that Patrick was in the hospital. “I waited because I thought I should tell you in person,” he explained. “I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “You sound like your brother.”

  He was quiet and she wondered if he had taken that to somehow be an insult.

  “Seriously, though,” she said, “he’s okay?” She was uptight enough, and the pickup’s gun rack right behind her head with two guns for killing wildlife wasn’t helping her calm down any.

  “From what everyone’s telling me, yes.”

  She pulled out her cell phone, but Sean warned her, “I’m not sure we should wake him up. Before I picked you up, they told me he was sleeping.”

  She hesitated.

  Then set it down.

  Both of her parents were gone, and she couldn’t even imagine the thought of losing Patrick too. If he died, that would totally put her over the edge. No question about it.

  Death. Too much death.

  She found her thoughts returning to her dad’s funeral in June up in the mountains of Wyoming.

  After everyone else had left, she and Patrick had stood alone and silent by the graveside. After a while she’d whispered to him, “They say we’re never really gone as long as there’s someone to remember us.”

  A moment passed. “Maybe that’s what makes us human. What makes us unique from animals.”

  “What’s that? Remembering the dead?” Figuring out what separates humans from other animals had been sort of a big question she was dealing with at the time.

  “No, loving them enough to remember them.”

  She’d stared at the gravestone and considered his words. The broad sky stretched above her, clouds covering the sun.

  “I’ll always remember him,” she said.

  “So will I.”

  Then Patrick put his arm around her shoulder and they stood there together quietly for a long time as the sun cut through a cloud and caught hold of a mountain range on the horizon.

  And then despite herself she’d cried, and Patrick had wiped her tears away.

  “Tessa?” It was Sean. “Are you all right?”

  It took her a couple seconds to mentally refocus. “How far is it? I need to talk to him.”

  “Another thirty miles.”

  “Well, just get us there, then.” Yes, her voice was sharp with impatience but it was mostly filled with concern. She hoped Sean could tell the difference.

  “Don’t worry.” He stared determinedly at the road ahead of them. “I will.”

  38

  CIA Detainment Facility 17

  Cairo, Egypt

  4:24 a.m. Eastern European Time

  Terry Manoji sat in his wheelchair in the hospital room in which he’d been confined since the CIA transferred him to this location sometime last year.

  Because of the coma he’d been in for eight months, time was a blur, but for the last few months he’d managed to get a handle on the passage of days, because nine weeks ago one of the nurses carelessly brought her Blackberry into his room. He was in bed when he saw it poking out of her pocket, so he sat up, swung his legs from the bed as if he were going to get into his chair, but then forced himself to lose his balance and topple to the floor.

  She’d helped him back into bed.

  And hadn’t noticed what he had hidden in his hand.

  She left soon afterward without realizing that she didn’t have her phone with her.

  Although flush toilets weren’t common in the Middle East, because of his condition it was a necessity for him to have one.

  There were no surveillance cameras in his bathroom.

  Which worked in his favor.

  Once in the bathroom, he used the phone to get online.

  To get into the phone company’s site he used a little port redirection and quickly gained administrator privileges, then created a back channel so it’d be quicker getting in again later if he lost the connection or when the nurse cancelled her contract after discovering her phone was gone.

  Once in their system, he blocked the ability to trace future calls made to and from this number and climbed through the company’s primitive firewalls to get to the central processing facility. After tracing the GPS signal to find out where exactly he was, he put a stop on the GPS tracking. If the nurse or agents tried to trace it, as they undoubtably would, the phone would simply appear to be turned off.

  He was online.

  Invisible and untraceable.

  He was home.

  The internet is one big playground, and wherever there’s WiFi or a cell phone connection, a good hacker can jump on the wire, and once he’s in, he’s in. And he can go anywhere.

  An hour later, when his interrogators came to search the room for the phone, he’d already hidden it. They meticulously scoured both his room and the attached bathroom but found nothing because before they’d arrived he’d used two discarded latex gloves, tied off, to create a double-layer waterproof bag, and then placed the cell phone in the toilet bowl, shoved back in the pipe so that it wasn’t visible.

  He knew he was taking a risk that someone might flush while they were searching the room, but thankfully they hadn’t been that thorough or that careless.

  Conserving the phone’s batteries had been a concern at first. The electrical current in Egypt would be 220 VAC, which would fry the phone. However, by the make and model of the
two video cameras monitoring his room he knew that they were not infrared.

  So he could work at night.

  An LED lamp that he didn’t use beside his bed had a DC converter at the plug and, by scraping off the wire’s insulation, he’d managed to create a crude way of recharging the phone by splicing the cord and using a bandage from his arm to hold the battery in place against the exposed wires.

  It wasn’t ideal by any means, and he had to be careful how much time he spent in the bathroom on the cell, but he found that charging the phone two to three times a week during the night was enough to get him through.

  Then, on November 18, through his online correspondence, he’d arranged everything with his partner after helping clear the way for her escape from prison. Then he’d contacted Abdul Razzaq Muhammad to put his own escape plan into motion.

  Since he was surveilled so closely, Terry was limited in what he could do from this room, but during his visits to the bathroom, he’d sent his partner detailed instructions on how to access the back doors he’d left in the military’s top secret JWICS network back when he was still in the employ of the NSA.

  And yes, also in the employ of the Chinese government.

  Which was actually the reason why, according to his interrogators, the CIA had pressured the San Diego Police Department to announce that he’d died while in custody.

  “As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you’re dead and buried,” the man had told him. “So we have nothing to lose keeping you here as long as we want.” Then he’d leaned forward. “Or shortening your stay if it comes to that.”

  And so, Terry fed the interrogators just enough information each week about Chinese hacking protocols to keep them coming back.

  Now he reviewed his plan.

  A distraction layered inside a distraction.

  The deal with Abdul Razzaq Muhammad had been simple-Terry would take out the target of Abdul’s choice and Abdul would transfer a rather sizable amount of money to an offshore account and send a team of militants to free him.

  According to Air Force Doctrine Document 3-12, or AFDD 3-12, released back on October 26, 2010, there are millions of attempts to hack into the US military’s computers every day. And, as Terry knew all too well, that number had only continued to rise since then.