The Queen pbf-5

by Steven James

  Chekov’s close, he has to be. How else would he know to call this phone just as we finished the meeting?

  I looked out the window.

  Nothing.

  “I regret to tell you that he’s dead.”

  My grip on the phone tightened. “I’m coming for you.”

  Outside. Maybe he’s in the woods nearby.

  Yanking on my coat, I headed for the front door.

  “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I truly am sorry for what happened to both him and Ellory.”

  It bothered me that Chekov really did sound remorseful. I wanted him to be completely evil, fundamentally different from the rest of us, not a combination of mixed motives, of good and bad. It would have made things so much easier.

  Outside now, I carefully studied the windswept landscape. Saw no one. Only the wrath of the storm.

  “I have a proposal to make,” he said.

  Keep him on the line. Keep this conversation going.

  “What proposal is that?” The livid wind cut through my jeans. I used the building to shield me as much as possible as I passed around the corner and scanned the other side of the parking lot. Nothing.

  “I would like you to help me find some people. The ones who killed the Pickrons.”

  “Good idea. Let’s meet. Have a little chat.”

  He pressed on. “In return for my help, you have something that I need.”

  First he asks for your help, now he’s promising his?

  It didn’t follow, but for the moment I decided to play along. “What do I have that you need?”

  “Resources,” he answered vaguely.

  I returned to the front of the building but stayed outside to keep the conversation private. “You’re in no position to ask me for anything, Alexei. You killed two people yesterday-or was it three? Did you abduct someone else from the restaurant parking lot where you abandoned the truck?”

  A small silence. “I’ll be letting her go. I have no reason to hurt her.”

  Sharp anger flared again.

  He said “her,” that helps, we can “I think you owe me, Agent Bowers. If I hadn’t called 911, you’d be dead.”

  “I’d only be dead because you threw Ellory in the river. I was just trying-”

  “To save him. Yes. I know. I was impressed. That’s why I called emergency services for you. But now I’m making you an offer. If you help me stop these people you can save Kayla’s life.”

  “Kayla?”

  “The woman I took from the restaurant.”

  “You just told me you’d let her go, that you had no reason to hurt her. Don’t play me, Alexei. What do you really want here?”

  “I don’t kill children. And I don’t kill women.”

  “But now you’re threatening to kill Kayla.”

  He was quiet.

  He’s conflicted. It’s not about the Pickrons or Kayla.

  “Prove she’s alive. Let me talk to her.”

  After a tight silence I heard a woman gasp, then cry out for help, her voice shrill, desperate. “Help me! He’s-” Then the sounds became muffled, and I pictured him gagging her.

  “Oh, I am going to find you, Alexei, and I’m going to-”

  “You left your laptop inside. Check your email.”

  How is he watching me?!

  Promptly returning to the room beside the lobby, I flipped out my laptop and clicked to the secure FBI email server, opened my account, and found a message from Alexei Chekov, identified by name. This guy was unbelievable.

  As I opened the file I wondered if he’d sent me pictures of Kayla, but it turned out to be photos of four people I’d never seen.

  “Who are they?”

  “Members of a group called Eco-Tech.”

  “Eco-Tech?” That was the group that had lobbied to have the information about the SSBN sub routes released through the Freedom of Information Act. “People from Eco-Tech are involved in this? How do you know?”

  “I met with them. They’re working on a project with someone using the code name Valkyrie. I don’t know who it is, but I want to find out. I have an access code and a phone number I haven’t been able to trace.”

  He gave the number to me, and the code Queen 27:21:9. I typed them into a Word doc. “You told me you’d kill Kayla unless I helped you. What are you proposing? Just trace this phone number? Is that what you meant by resources?”

  “Help me find Ardis and Lizzie’s killers. Just you. If anyone else comes with you, I’ll disappear and Kayla Tatum will die.”

  Of course I wanted to find the killers, but why he would want to find them was a myster They turned him in, Pat, remember? The anonymous call.

  “When we find them I will need to deal with them appropriately. That’s part of the deal.”

  “Appropriately?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t let you kill them, Alexei. I bring them in. That’s the only way.”

  A pause. “I’ll tell you what: if you get to them first and find a way to stop me, then you deserve to win.”

  A game?

  Is this all a game to him?

  This guy wasn’t like any killer I’d ever dealt with before. It didn’t frighten me, but it did fine-tune my focus. Actually, that felt kind of good. “You know that when this is over I’m sending you to prison.”

  “I’m experienced at eluding investigators.”

  “I’m not your typical investigator.”

  A small pause. “I’ll text you with the time and location where we’ll meet. You can have the Bureau look for Valkyrie, but don’t tell your on-site team we’ve spoken. I’ll know if you do.”

  How?

  How is he watching!

  “Agent Bowers, though I do not believe in killing women, I will take Kayla Tatum’s life if I need to. While I am a man of conviction, I am also a man of resolve.”

  Before I could reply, he ended the call. A power play.

  I pocketed the phone and went directly to my room. After doing a back trace on the call and failing to find either his number or GPS location, I turned to my word processing program. I tend to be pretty good with details, and I typed up the conversation. Even if I didn’t get it word-for-word, I was confident that I was close.

  Then I googled Kayla Tatum’s name and found 3,780,000 hits. Only one of the women near the top of the list lived in Wisconsin. I started with her, and after locating her cell number I put a call through to her. When she didn’t answer I left a message for her to call me immediately.

  Taking Alexei’s warning to heart, I bypassed telling my team here what was going on but contacted HQ and asked a desk jockey buddy of mine named Barry Callaway to pursue any relevant leads concerning women named Kayla Tatum. “I can’t tell you any more than that, I’m sorry. Trust me on this one.”

  “Got it.”

  Alexei had already proven that he was good at flying under our GPS radar, but it wouldn’t hurt to check. “Go ahead and track the GPS on their cell phones and, where possible, their cars,” I said. “See if any of the women are in this part of the Midwest.”

  “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  We hung up and I forwarded the email with the attached photos, as well as both the access code and phone number that Alexei had given me, to Angela Knight, then gave her a quick call and asked her to see if she could trace the location from which the email had been sent and what she could dig up on Eco-Tech.

  She surprised me by telling me she was familiar with them. “They’re on one of our watch lists. Small-scale hackers, but they’re flagrant. They like to be in the spotlight.”

  “I need your team to see what connections they might have with Alexei Chekov.” I decided for the moment not to mention that we’d spoken on the phone. “Also, have Alyssa send me whatever we have on him as soon as possible. Any cases in which he’s suspected of involvement with a crime or a terrorist act. And also any links to someone using the code name Valkyrie.”

  Environmentalists prote
sted the ELF base.

  Now Eco-Tech is in the area.

  After the call, I went online and after a couple of searches found just the site I was looking for-one that would help me follow up on the unswerving Ski-Doo tracks to the water. I posted my offer and then went back to the transcript of my conversation with Alexei and scrutinized it for clues as to his whereabouts that I might have missed earlier.

  Alexei had confessed to killing the truck driver, Bobby Clarke. Normally, local law enforcement would notify surviving family members, but false confessions aren’t uncommon and it might have been a gambit, so, for the time being I made sure Tait put it off until the body was found.

  It struck me that this whole thing just didn’t jibe.

  While I did believe Alexei had a woman with him, if he was going to kill her, why all the talk about not killing women and children?

  I couldn’t shake the thought that I was being played.

  Still, whatever his motives-revenge, clearing his name, protecting the innocent, or all of the above-it didn’t really matter. I had an opportunity here to catch him, to save a woman’s life, and, potentially, to find the people who’d killed Lizzie and Ardis Pickron.

  But of course there was also the matter of the call and the email themselves. Somehow Alexei had found out both my confidential email address and Lien-hua’s personal cell number, and had apparently known that I was with her and that our meeting was just finishing when he called. He even knew I had my laptop with me.

  I wondered if he’d somehow planted a bug in the motel. If so, he would’ve had to enter the building.

  I called the front desk and found out they didn’t use security cameras. “No real reason to,” the guy at the front counter said. “People up here, we trust each other.” I gave a quick description of Alexei to him; he didn’t remember seeing anyone who fit that description.

  Maybe Alexei…

  Unless He would need a place to keep a victim.

  Oh.

  I hurried to Natasha and Lien-hua’s room. When Natasha opened the door, I found Jake and Lien-hua with her, bent over their computers. “We need to search this motel.” I was speaking just loud enough to be heard. “It’s possible Alexei Chekov might be here in the building.”

  When Kayla refused to quit squirming and trying to cry out beneath her gag, Alexei was forced to sedate her. He used a mild dose of Propotol so she would fully recover within a couple hours. Then, once she was unconscious, he removed the gag so that it wouldn’t restrict her breathing.

  Finally, he surfed to an online map of the area and considered the best place to meet with Agent Bowers.

  Cassandra received confirmation from Allighiero that he’d finished cleaning the sub and the USB device was in place.

  Good.

  She told Becker to gather the team. “We’ll meet downstairs in the old billiards room. I want to have a few words with them before we take down the landlines.”

  He left, and she flipped open her laptop to review her notes.

  Terry Manoji calculated the time in Bahrain and realized that if the sub had not set sail yet, it would within the hour.

  He waited for the nurse to exit his room, then rolled into the bathroom, pulled out the cell phone, went online, accessed JWICS, and through the Trojan horses he’d placed there while still in the employ of the NSA, began to transfer the data that his algorithm would be needing later in the day, once Cassandra and her team had entered the base.

  Valkyrie thought about the ELF station, the payment, the deadline.

  Everything would tear apart at the seams if anyone found out about the involvement of Abdul Razzaq Muhammad.

  Especially if that person were Alexei Chekov.

  Or Special Agent Patrick Bowers.

  Today it was vitally important for Valkyrie to remain undeterred.

  Focused.

  Careful.

  Tonight everything would come together. Alexei would be out of the picture and the money would be transferred to the account that only two people in the world had access to.

  Tessa stared at the ceiling, then glanced at the clock beside her bed.

  Already after 11:00. The last time she’d checked, it was just before 6:00 a.m., so somehow she’d slept for over five hours, amazing, since she hadn’t even had any pills at all last night.

  She rubbed her eyes and heard Sean in the kitchen. Smelled sausage frying.

  What is the deal up here? Do they eat anything other than meat?

  She threw on some clothes and carefully avoided the living room and the dead deer and fish on her way to the kitchen to grab some fruit and toast.

  “Morning,” Sean said as she stepped into the room.

  “Morning.”

  He slid the frying pan from the stove and dumped a stack of sausages onto a plate. “Made you some breakfast-well, brunch.”

  Oh man.

  “Um, I was just gonna grab some toast or maybe a banana.”

  “I make a mean plate of venison sausage.”

  Tell him, or he’s gonna keep trying to feed you meat.

  “Actually, the thing is, I don’t really eat meat or anything.”

  He hesitated. “You don’t eat meat?”

  “No. Or eat eggs or cheese. Or drink milk. I’m a vegan.”

  “A vegan.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry about it. I’ll grab something on my own.”

  “No.” He seemed to be repressing his true feelings about her admission. “I’ll get you something.” He opened the fridge. “I think we’ve got some apples in here. And maybe…” He paused. “Looks like some leftover spaghetti. I can take out the meatballs.”

  Oh, yuck.

  The meat sauce’ll still be Tessa felt bad that Sean had cooked brunch for her and she had to pass on it-even though it was something she’d never have been able to stomach. “Sure, okay.” She was forcing herself to say it. “That’ll be good.”

  As she waited for him to scavenge her some other food, she turned toward the window and stared at the wind ravaging the nearby woodshed and the field bordering the house.

  It didn’t take Natasha, Jake, Lien-hua, and I long to search all the rooms of the Moonbeam Motel, but we found nothing suspicious. No sign of Alexei or Kayla Tatum or any other women in distress.

  When we reconvened outside the front doors, Lien-hua said, somewhat irritated, “Pat, you still haven’t told us why you thought Chekov might be here. Does it have to do with the call you got at the end of the meeting?”

  Alexei’s words flashed in my mind: Don’t tell your team we’ve spoken. I’ll know if you do.

  If Kayla’s life really was in danger, I couldn’t take the chance of sharing too much information with my friends.

  “Nothing’s as effective as hiding in plain sight,” I said vaguely.

  They all waited for me to go on.

  “Who was on the phone?” Lien-hua asked.

  “Listen.” I lowered my voice. “Something’s going down, and I need to play this close to the chest. That’s all I can say right now.”

  “If you know something, don’t keep it from us,” Jake challenged me. “We’re a team here and we’ve got a job to do.”

  Think this through, Pat. Be careful.

  “We can’t talk here,” I said. “Grab your things, meet in my room in ten minutes.”

  It wasn’t a lot of time, but at least it gave me a small window of opportunity to try to think of something honest to tell them that wouldn’t end up endangering Kayla’s life.

  I turned to the thing I knew best, geospatial analysis.

  51

  As Tessa waited for Sean to heat up the spaghetti, she walked into the living room to get away from the sausage smell.

  Last night all she’d really noticed were the deer and muskie, but now she took in the room. A quilt lay on the back of the couch, and paintings of loons and sunsets over northern lakes hung on the walls. A Brett Favre-signed football sat in a glass case near the window, from back in the day when he was
still a Packer, before he retired, unretired, and the Packers fans turned rabidly against him.

  Sean didn’t have any photos of himself, just of his family: his parents, his son in Phoenix, Amber, Patrick, and two pictures of their younger sister who’d died when Patrick was eight. A staph infection that went systemic took Emily’s life when she was only five. Over the last couple years, Tessa had noticed that talking about Emily’s death was hard for Patrick, so she almost never brought it up.

  One painting near the window particularly caught her attention. It showed a rippling lake with a sailboat leaning elegantly into the wind. The horizon was marked with a string of golden clouds hiding a twilight sun.

  The picture invited her in, made it feel like she was a part of it, as if she were watching from a small island as the sailor rode the waves that reflected the dusky sky.

  She knew that over the years, tons of stories had been written about people who magically entered or left paintings.

  Someone steps into paradise.

  Someone slips into the abyss.

  Fiction.

  Fact.

  Only a brushstroke away.

  The water looked so alive, and the wind seemed to whisper from the painting and glance against her face, but she knew, of course, that this was all an illusion. Of course the water was still. Of course the soft breeze was only in her imagination. No one can step into a painting or sail free from one. No one can step from one eternity to another. We’re locked in here, on this side of the canvas.

  On this side of the glass with the dead wasps.

  And the deer and “Ready,” Sean called from the kitchen.

  After one more lingering glance at the painting, she went to the table. “Amber here?”

  He was pouring a glass of grape juice. “She ended up staying at the motel in Woodborough. It was a good thing Patrick reserved a room for you because I can’t imagine there would’ve been any left last night after the roads were closed down.”

  He slid a plate with two cut-up apples, a steaming plate of spaghetti, and a thick piece of toast covered with a generous layer of strawberry jam in front of her, then took a seat beside her. “So are you a vegan for health reasons or philosophical ones?”