High Treason

by John Gilstrap

  Jonathan pointed to that larger building. “What is this?”

  “Used to be the main cell block,” Venice said. “Held a couple hundred inmates. The roof there is made of stained glass. All the better to inspire the residents to lead better lives.

  “The jail closed its doors as a jail in 1978. Until 1952, none of the side windows in the cell blocks had glass. In Canada. Lots of prisoners died of hypothermia in the early days, but then they started stacking people eight to ten in a cell, and the hypothermia deaths plummeted. Of course, then there was the disease problem.”

  Irene looked confused. “How do you know this?”

  “The Internet and I are very good friends,” Venice said.

  Jonathan asked, “Did you contract for thermal imaging?”

  “We did,” she said, and she started tapping the computer.

  The image on the screen turned to various shades of black, gray, orange, and red. Jonathan used a laser pointer to trace the northern annex, where the thermal footprint was hottest. “This seems to be the most occupied building,” he said. “They’ve clearly got the heat on, and if you look carefully, you can see an occasional human form.”

  The other buildings showed cold, except for a faint pink glow from the easternmost corner of the southernmost annex. “What’s that?” Irene asked, pointing.

  “With the walls and floors as thick as they are, it’s hard to tell. My guess is that they’re firing up the furnace.”

  “Which means they’re expecting guests,” Boxers said.

  Irene nodded. “That’s consistent with what I got from the police in Vail. I had our Denver field office ask around, and they found someone who saw Nicholas Mishin and a boy—I’m assuming that’s his son—in the grocery store around six o’clock this evening. They then verified that the house had been broken into and that neither Nicholas nor Josef were there.”

  Yelena had moved to the very front of her chair. “What else did they find?”

  “I told them to stop looking,” Irene said. “I told them to seal the place up. Treating it as a crime scene right now will just grab attention we don’t want. I think we’re all comfortable that we’re on the right track. If we’re wrong, we’ll know soon enough, and then we’ll pull out all the stops for the investigation.”

  “How the hell are we going to get in there, Dig?” Boxers wanted to know.

  “One step at a time. What else do we know about this prison place?”

  “I found some pictures of the inside,” Venice said. Fifteen seconds later, the screen blinked, and then displayed a terrible, tiny claustrophobic jail cell with stone walls and heavy plank flooring. A small arched window looked like a droopy eye, equal parts heavy bars and air.

  “Oh my God,” Yelena breathed. “My poor baby.”

  Jonathan felt a flash of pity, but then dismissed it. They were fast entering the phase where emotion posed nothing but liability.

  “Wooden floors,” Jonathan observed aloud.

  “Is that good?” Yelena asked.

  “Neither good nor bad,” Jonathan said. “It just is.”

  Venice clicked again, and they were looking at what appeared to be an interior hallway that ran the length of a cell block. The doors were all open in this photo, but they looked to be made of heavy timber, with only a single, round observation window that was maybe two inches in diameter.

  “This is all great,” Boxers said. “But unless we know where within this complex the Mishins are being kept, it’s not going to do us much good.”

  “I might have something for you there,” Irene said, glancing at her buzzing cell phone. She pressed a button and said, “This is Director Rivers, and you’re on speakerphone.”

  “With who?” a male voice asked.

  “Not your concern,” Irene said. A glance around the room told everyone else to remain silent.

  “Okay,” the voice said. “Do I need to introduce myself?”

  “I’d prefer you didn’t,” Irene said. Jonathan got that that was her nod to give the agent on the other end of the phone plausible deniability if this whole thing came unzipped.

  “Okay,” the agent said, “I just finished a one-hour interview with . . . the Russian. Director Rivers, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I saw some of the marks on that man’s body. I don’t think—”

  “Please report what you know,” Irene interrupted. “What you think in these circumstances is less important to me.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Well, he tried to hedge on answering questions, but when I confronted him directly with Saint Stephen’s, he seemed too tired and exhausted to resist. The prison is, in fact, a garrison of sorts, but they are not armed.”

  Jonathan’s first instinct was to be buoyed by the words, but his bullshit bell rang just a few seconds later. A terrorist without weapons was like a doctor without a stethoscope. They just didn’t occur in nature.

  “Are you saying that there are no weapons at the prison?”

  “No, ma’am. The weapons are there, but the occupants don’t go around armed all day. They stockpile the weapons.”

  “What kind of weapons are we talking about?”

  “Firearms and explosives, to be sure,” the agent said. “But he wasn’t able to give us numbers. He said that he hadn’t been up there in a while.”

  “How many people?” Irene asked.

  It was killing Jonathan not to be asking the questions.

  “Under fifty.”

  “There are a lot of numbers between zero and fifty,” Irene said.

  “Yes ma’am, but that’s all we’ve been able to get out of him so far. The guy is a mess.”

  Jonathan pointed to the northern annex, where all the heat was coming from.

  “Did you show the Russian the photo of the prison?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And what did he tell you about where things happen?”

  “Well. Do you have a photo there with you?” the agent asked.

  “I do.”

  “Okay, well, the weapons are stored in the part of the complex that used to be a chapel. If you look at the big part that used to be the main cell block, the chapel is connected to it on the western wall of the compound. Just north of the main entrance.”

  Jonathan’s gut turned. The chapel occupied a big footprint. If it was anywhere close to being filled with weapons, that could be a lot of firepower. When he met Boxers’ gaze the Big Guy was grinning. Clearly, he saw the opportunity to make a crater.

  The agent continued, “Those four buildings in the middle of the compound that form the giant square are additional cell blocks. The northernmost building of that square—the one that runs east-west—is where the garrison sleeps.”

  That would be the garrison that numbers somewhere between one and forty-nine people.

  “What do they do there during the day?” Jonathan asked. He didn’t do silent well, and he’d reached his limit. Irene’s glare actually gave him a chill.

  “Who is that?” the agent asked.

  “He’s authorized,” Irene said. “His identity doesn’t matter.”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  Jonathan sensed that he was stalling for time, but he cut him some slack. “This unarmed, unnumbered garrison,” Jonathan said. “What do they do when they’re not garrisoning?”

  A pause. “I don’t know.”

  “Some of them have been busy shooting down airliners,” Boxers said.

  “Um, Director Rivers, how many people are there in the room where I’m speaking?”

  Irene’s ears had gone hot. “There’s a good handful of us,” she said. “But that should not concern you.” She glared at Jonathan and drew an invisible zipper across her mouth. It was exactly the same gesture that Mama Alexander used with the kids at Resurrection House. The absurdity of it made him laugh.

  “Here’s the thing,” Irene said, daring anyone in the room to speak. “If, hypothetically, someone were to try to gain entrance to Saint Stephen’
s Reformatory, how many people would they be likely to encounter at, say, midnight as opposed to noon?”

  Silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Are you still there?” Irene asked.

  “Jesus, is that what you’re planning to do?”

  “Focus, young man,” Irene said. “Answers are far more welcome than questions.”

  “I-I don’t have an answer for that, ma’am.”

  “You mean you don’t have an answer, ma’am, yet, right?”

  In all these years, Jonathan had never seen Irene in badass boss mode. He was impressed.

  “Right,” the agent said. “That’s exactly what I meant.”

  “And you’ll get back to me as soon as you have answers?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “One more thing,” Irene said. “I don’t want to mention any names or locations, but are you still at the facility to which you were dispatched?” Jonathan knew she meant Arc Flash’s farm.

  “Yes, ma’am. But we’re almost packed up to leave.”

  “Don’t do that just yet,” Irene said. “The owner of that facility—a little man who goes by the name of Arc Flash. Is he still there?”

  “He’s the reason why we’re in a hurry to leave. I can’t tell you how offensive—”

  “There you go with opinions again,” Irene said. “What did we say about those?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Irene closed her eyes as she spoke the rest, as if too ashamed to make eye contact. “Here’s what I need you to do,” she said. “I want you to return the Russian to the custody of Mr. Arc Flash. Then I want you to go and sit in whatever vehicle you brought while he asks the questions. It shouldn’t take long. When he’s done, call me with the details.”

  Another long silence.

  “Hello?” Irene prompted.

  “Ma’am, do you know that you’re asking me to break the law? You know that nothing we get will be usable in court.”

  Irene stewed for a while before answering.

  “Ma’am?”

  “I’m going to tell you an interesting story,” she said. “You might know that J. Edgar Hoover’s body wasn’t all that cold when I first joined the Bureau. Certainly, his fingerprints were still on everything we did, from the firearms we carried to the way we comported ourselves in public. My first supervisor was a devotee of Director Hoover. Are you familiar with Director Hoover?”

  “I believe I’ve heard the name.”

  Ah, petulance, Jonathan thought. Bad move.

  Irene continued, “He told me that Director Hoover valued loyalty over everything—that if you went crosswise with J. Edgar, you either needed to quit, or prepare yourself for a long career at an Indian reservation.”

  Pause. “I’m not sure I understand your meaning.”

  “I’m quite certain you do,” Irene said. “How’s your Chippewa, young man?”

  “You’re threatening me.”

  “Absolutely not. I’m promising. You need to decide if you trust me enough to believe that what I’m asking is in the critical interest of the United States, or if you want to file a protest that, one way or another, will have you living your working years along the shores of Lake Superior.”

  Jonathan almost felt sorry for the guy. Fibbies tended to be purists at heart—unless their careers were at stake, in which case Grandma and her wheelchair were both eligible to be slung under the bus.

  Jonathan could hear the wheels turning in this poor guy’s head. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,” he said.

  When the line went dead, Irene winced to the rest of the room. “Well, that was ugly,” she said. “I feel like I need a shower.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Torture Report—that’s what Boxers called it, ever one to make people feel at ease—revealed only one additional bit of data, and it was a doozey. Sometime in the next two days—Pyotr thought it would be tomorrow night—the stores of explosives in the chapel would be transferred to trucks and transported to the United States.

  “Okay, now I’m interested,” Boxers said.

  Jonathan stopped him with a raised hand. “That’s not our mission,’ he said.

  “It is now,” Boxers countered.

  “The rescue comes first,” Jonathan said. “Not that we can’t kill two birds with one detonator.”

  Boxers smiled. “Nice line. But unless and until we know where the family is being kept,” Boxers said, “or where they will be kept if they haven’t yet arrived, any planning we do is just conjecture.”

  “What’s our worst case, then?” Jonathan asked. “Assuming that they’re in the most remote part of the facility, how do we get in and out?”

  “I actually have some construction details,” Venice said.

  All heads turned.

  “Hey, if you’re going to zone for public use, you have to tell people how the hotel rooms are constructed.”

  “Do you want to join the FBI?” Irene asked. She phrased the question as a joke, but Jonathan knew there was a serious offer in there.

  “You can’t afford her,” he said. And he believed that to be true. In fact, he was willing to bet that what he paid Venice trumped what Irene made as director of the FBI. With change. A lot of change.

  “The jail actually started life in 1792 as a single row of stone cells,” Venice said. She highlighted the western wall of the compound—the part that looked on the photo to be part of the outer wall and contained the chapel with the explosives. The southern end of the section became the northern edge of the archway that served as the main entrance. “Back then, not only was there no glass in the windows, the doors themselves—then made only of iron bars—opened directly to the outside. Can you imagine what manner of wildlife must have crawled in there?”

  The question was meant to be provocative, but Jonathan wasn’t in the mood. Apparently, no one in the room was in the mood.

  “Okay,” Venice said. She clicked, and the picture of the cell returned to the screen. “Those floors are constructed of six-by-six oak timbers. It was an attempt at insulation, but after all these years, they must be dense as concrete.”

  “But nowhere as brittle,” Boxers observed. Many in the room didn’t realize it, but that was a vote against explosives. Whereas stone and old concrete will shatter with a relatively small hit of HE—high explosives—heavy timbers will absorb a lot of the shock. It was a crapshoot whether they’d break or merely heave up and bend.

  “What about the roof?” Jonathan asked.

  “Originally, it was timber, too,” Venice said, “but sometime in the 1920s, it was covered with slate. It’s not entirely clear from the info I’ve been able to read whether the slate was ultimately replaced with something else.”

  Jonathan calculated whether the roof would make a good entry point, and decided that it posed too many challenges. “What are our ground options?” Jonathan asked.

  “I’ve got a better question,” Big Guy said. “Who’s our team?”

  “I’m going,” the First Lady said.

  “Oh, no you’re not,” Jonathan said. “You’re the res-cuee, remember? And you’re already safe. There aren’t a lot of rules in my business, but one of them is that once a PC is safe, you don’t throw them back into danger.”

  “PC means ‘precious cargo,’ ” Venice explained to David and Becky.

  Yelena smirked and cocked her head. “How sweet. You think I’m precious?”

  Jonathan let it go.

  “That’s my son and grandson, Mr. Grave. You can’t expect me to just—”

  “I can expect you to let me do my job, which means you staying out of my way.”

  “Would you rather I take a commercial flight to Ottawa and then just drive to the front door?”

  Jonathan stared. She was serious.

  Yelena continued, “It’s not as if I would be completely useless. You know, I have—” She checked herself and threw an uncomfortable glance at the director of the FBI. “Admitting to nothing, it’
s entirely possible that I have some experience setting explosives.”

  “Holy shit!” Boxers proclaimed with a giant laugh.

  “Then I’m going for sure,” David said.

  “The hell you are.” That came as a unanimous chorus from everyone else in the room, and the words seemed to press him back in his chair.

  “Think of me as an embed.”

  “You’re not writing about this, remember?”

  David held up his forefinger. “Not true,” he said. “I promised not to reveal details. No real names. I never said anything about the story itself.” He looked directly at Jonathan. “A deal’s a deal. You can’t change the terms now.”

  “Watch me,” Boxers growled.

  Jonathan felt the weight of the others’ anticipation as he considered his option. In his world, on an operation this small, an embed was another word for liability. This kid wasn’t a war correspondent. To bring him along could actually endanger others.

  On the other hand, he had already endured a lot, and seemed to be handling it well. “If you come, you’re not coming to observe and write,” he said. “You’re coming to engage. Have you ever fired a weapon?”

  David smiled. “Glock nineteen and twenty-three, Remington eleven hundred, Bushmaster M4 and 308, and, in one day of overkill, a Browning A-bolt composite stalker in three hundred Win Mag.” He seemed to have been waiting for the question.

  And his answer sucked all of the air out of the room.

  “What kind of scope did you use on the Win Mag?” Boxers asked.

  Without dropping a beat: “A Leupold Vari-X three.”

  “Did you hit what you were shooting at?”

  “Dead center,” David said. “At six hundred yards.”

  The room gaped in unison.

  “My dad belongs to a gun club out in Loudoun County,” he explained. “I went there a lot as a kid.”

  “Targets?” Boxers asked.

  David rolled his eyes. “Generally, they don’t let you shoot at people.”