“I, for one, would like to know just who sent that murderous son of a bitch,” Armanti said, quite superfluously.
“Yeah.”
“By the way,” he said to me, “You still stink.”
“You don’t smell so hot yourself. Maybe you need to get that beard and hair shaved off so you’ll look like the dickhead you are.”
“One of the things I like about you, Tommy, is that you’re so subtle.”
“That’s enough, you two,” Jake Grafton said firmly.
Our interrogation of Yegan Korjev was almost anti-climatic. He was partially sedated; we administered the truth serum again, and an hour later Grafton began asking questions.
Yes, Anton Hunt had approached Korjev six years ago with the idea of subverting his political enemies in America with funny money. Korjev took it to his pal in the Kremlin, and after they had worried the bone, got an approval. The whole operation took a year or so to set up.
Needless to say, Hunt had his list of recipients to poison with funny money and the Kremlin had theirs, and they didn’t coincide. So the Russians took it upon themselves to spread the wealth to people and institutions on their list, without bothering to inform Hunt. Hunt’s death last year didn’t make any difference. The operation was three years along.
Hunt’s son, another committed radical progressive, took over in his stead, but it didn’t matter—the Russians didn’t need them anymore. The operation suffered from mission creep—the list of recipients kept expanding. It was just a matter of time until the whole thing exploded, but the recent tensions in Syria and the Black Sea, plus European and U.S. sanctions, made the Kremlin decide to not wait for nature to take its course. They arranged for the kidnapping so as to expose the branch bank, then set up Korjev in his yacht. Korjev had invited key players in the scheme for the foreign authorities to get interested in when the smelly stuff hit the fan. In effect, Russia double-crossed its foreign agents and allies.
Under the influence of the drug, Korjev named names, at least twenty Americans who were direct recipients of Estonian transfers, people Hunt had designated, with instructions to pass the money on. No doubt some of the money stuck to some of them, but that really didn’t matter, since they were all expendable as far as the Kremlin was concerned. The whole idea was to stir up massive finger-pointing and recriminations, ruin reputations, cause the Americans to turn on each other. If another American civil war broke out, that was fine with the men in the Kremlin. And Korjev gave us names of Kremlin agents, who had been busy donating money to Hunt’s friends.
As I listened to all this, I took solace from the fact that I had made a small contribution to help Anton Hunt start his journey to hell.
After an hour, Grafton had all he wanted. He came out of the room, closed the door, and pointed his boney finger at me. “Come along, Tommy.”
On the porch the odor of kerosene was still rank. The plane had burned itself out. There wasn’t much left, just a lump where the motor had been.
Grafton plopped down on the edge of the porch and I sat beside him. He leaned over, picked up a pebble and tossed it. Then another.
“You could give those names and a summary to the FBI,” I suggested. He picked up another pebble, inspected it and chucked it into the yard.
“Or you could leak it to your favorite reporter,” I added.
More pebbles.
The sun was sinking toward the mountains on the far western horizon. All in all, it had been one hell of a day. The setting sun, the stink of kerosene, the wisping smoke off the ashes of that airplane…
“Is Korjev telling the truth now?” I asked.
Grafton looked as if he had taken a punch. He tossed another pebble. “He’s telling part of it, anyway.”
“Can a man lie under the influence of the truth drugs?”
“It’s been done,” Jake Grafton said.
“I don’t understand what the Russians have to hide,” I said. “We know they sent the money through Estonia. We suspect it was funny money. They’re blaming it on a dead man. The people who received it don’t know beans about how or why. What is the big secret?”
“That’s just it,” Grafton said. “At this point, what do they have to hide?”
“Perhaps nothing,” I suggested.
“Nothing if we buy the story as presented. They’ve worked really hard to sell it to us.”
“Do you buy it?”
Jake Grafton took his time answering. “It could be true. The problem is that they’ve worked really hard to sell it to us, and that bothers me.”
“So what are we going to do?” I asked.
“We’re going to put the fear of God in the people Korjev named. His accusations aren’t enough. We need to make them talk. Make them run screaming for the nearest FBI office.”
“Too bad we don’t have a Hannibal Lecter.”
“You listened to those names. They’re rich people, important people: sanctimonious, self-righteous assholes willing to light the fuses to blow up America. The FBI will go knock on their doors hat in hand, they’ll lawyer up and won’t say peep, and meanwhile the political circus will play on until America comes apart at the seams, just as the Kremlin intended.”
“I’ll sign on for fear. How are we going to do it?”
Chapter Seventeen
Desert View, Utah, was a bedroom suburb south of Salt Lake City. The pilot of the ag plane who tried to immolate us was a dude named Paul Hockersmith, who lived in Desert View. Or did until yesterday. His place of business was, of course, at the airport. I stopped there first, but his cubbyhole office at the end of a row of tee-hangars was locked up. I peeked in through the dirty window and saw one room with a littered desk and what appeared to be a toilet and a closet.
The airport didn’t look prosperous. Hockersmith’s office didn’t look prosperous. I went back to the airport manager at the FBO, who had told me where to find Hockersmith’s office. “He isn’t there,” I said, and leaned on the counter. The coffee pot in the corner was plugged in. “Got any coffee?”
“Help yourself. Only cream is that damn powder.” This guy was wearing an old green Air Force flight jacket.
“I drink it black,” I said, and toggled some into a styrofoam cup. It looked like it had been in that pot since Christmas. I took a deep breath and sipped it. Ye Gods.
“You were an Air Force pilot, huh?” I said.
“Yep. Twenty-two years. Flew Phantoms. F-4s. After they retired them I mostly flew desks.”
“Hockersmith, was he a military pilot?”
“Naw. Civilian. Ag pilot. Doesn’t fly much. Not much spraying around here, and what there is that new company at the big airport ten miles north gets.”
“Got any idea when he might be back?” I tried another sip of that black stuff.
“No. He goes away for three or four days at a time. Haven’t seen him for a couple of days.”
“Well, maybe I’ll just try his cell phone. Do you have that number?”
The old guy eyed me shrewdly. “You’re with the government, aren’t you?”
I let my surprise register. “Does it show?”
“You’re packing heat. I know the bulge. You with the DEA?”
“They been out here?”
“Twice. Last time about three weeks ago.”
“Huh.”
“Bet you’ve already got his cell number?”
I grinned at him. “As a matter of fact, I do. You’re pretty sharp.”
“I ain’t accusing Paul of nothin’, you understand. But I never could figure how a guy, a pro pilot, who does as little ag work as he does, even keeps eatin’. Drives a nice ride, too. His work car is that pickup parked by his office. Only two years old.”
“Maybe he married money,” I said. “That’s what I intend to do.”
“Good luck with that.”
We chatted another minute or so, I took the battery acid he called coffee with me, and when I was out of sight of the FBO poured it into the grass. It would kill
the grass there, as if a dog peed on it.
I typed Hockersmith’s home address into my phone and drove over. It was a decent, middle-class, three-bedroom, two-bath house in a tract development with a lawn full of weeds that had never seen a sprinkler. A kid’s trike lay on its side near the porch. There was a driveway and a one-car garage, where I figured the family car lived.
I could hear a dog barking as I walked up the crumbling sidewalk to the porch, climbed the two steps, and knocked. In a minute I could hear a woman’s voice, talking to the dog. She opened the door about half way. The screen door was closed and, I suspect, latched.
“Yes.”
“Hi. My name is Jim Wilson.” I had my ID fold in my hand, but she merely glanced at it. “I’m with the FAA. Is Mr. Hockersmith around?”
“No, he isn’t.” She didn’t relax or make any indication she might open the screen door. The dog was right at her knee, and he was a big one. Wasn’t growling, though he looked like he would welcome the opportunity to take a nice hunk out of me.
“Do you know when he’ll be home?” I put the ID back in my jacket pocket, taking my time.
“Maybe in a day or two.”
“I see. Well, Mrs. Hockersmith, he didn’t answer the last letter we sent him, so they sent me around to see him. If he would just call us at the phone number on the letterhead?” This wasn’t as big a leap of faith as one might suspect. If the DEA was interested in this guy, the FAA probably was too. Flying drugs around was a bad crime.
She didn’t deny he got letters from the FAA. Just said, “I’ll tell him.”
“I’d really appreciate that. I really would. You have a nice day.”
I turned and went down the sidewalk toward the street. I heard her close the door behind me.
Jake Grafton and Yegan Korjev went for a walk. Korjev was up and about, had his IVs out, and was dressed in some old clothes that Mac Kelly had that fit well enough for a farm.
Jake kicked a few pebbles as he walked along with his hands in his pockets. “Where do you want to go from here?” he asked Korjev.
The Russian eyed him. “What are my choices?”
“I think you’ve told us about everything you want us to know, so where do you want to go?”
“That I want you to know?”
“You heard me. The drugs we gave you can be defeated by hypnosis. They hypnotized you in Russia before this caper went down. I give you and the SVR an A grade. You can tell Putin that.”
“And you don’t believe me?”
“I believe that you haven’t told me the whole story.”
The Russian walked along with long glances at the La Sal Mountains to the east and the Henry Mountains to the south. “What do you believe?” he asked.
“I think that Anton Hunt approached you five or six years ago. He was a revolutionary who wanted to bring down the United States government. You took the proposal to Putin, and he and his aides thought this was a good, cheap way to cause the American government some serious grief, tie it up in knots, make it focus inward. So Putin gave his approval.”
“We didn’t fool you.”
“You almost did.”
“Ilin said you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Putin didn’t really care if you fooled me or not. He just wanted to give Conyers’ enemies some ammunition to shoot. They’re running around chasing their tails.”
“So you are done with me.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.
“Yes. You can go home if you wish. We’ll give you transit papers and put you on a plane. Or you can go wherever. Your choice.”
“Russia is my country. I’d like to go to Moscow.”
“I’ll make some telephone calls.”
Yegan Korjev saw a boulder the size of a table, looked for snakes and didn’t see any, and sat on it. “America is a beautiful country,” he said. “I had no idea.”
Jake Grafton stood looking around, as if he were seeing it for the first time. The blue sky, puffy clouds, the distant mountains. Yes, he thought, a beautiful country. He smiled at Korjev.
What was the secret that Korjev and Putin had worked so hard to protect?
As he and the Russian walked back to the safe house, Jake realized that the secret could only be one thing: the identity of the person who proposed the funny money operation. It could have been Hunt, but if it had been, why work so hard to pin it on him?
Yet if it wasn’t Anton Hunt, who was it?
I had dinner at a chain steakhouse and drifted out to the airport again after dark. There was a light on a pole that illuminated the self-service fuel dispenser, but the FBO office was dark and there was no light down at the tee-hangars where Hockersmith had his office. I parked behind the tee-hangars, put on surgical gloves, and tackled the pickup first. Got the door open and climbed inside.
It was normal messy, I suspect, with bugs smashed on the windshield, dust on nearly every square inch and dirt on the floor carpets. Little notes here and there, a few gas station receipts, nothing interesting. There was a nine-millimeter pistol and a box of shells in the center console between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. It was loaded.
I had enough guns, so I left it there.
I locked up the pickup and attacked the office door. Had it in about two minutes. Once inside, I turned on the light and got busy on Hockersmith’s desk. He wasn’t a neat-nik. What I really wanted, of course, was a note in his handwriting with a phone number and a few words that said, “Use kerosene and flares.” But I would take a lot less.
I got a lot less. Got exactly nothing except for a few telephone numbers to pass on to Sarah Houston.
I was regretting shooting the guy. He knew damn well who had paid him to murder us, and after a session with Armanti Hall, he would have been delighted to share that information. After all, he had been standing there with his damned hands up when I drilled him. That had not been one of my better moments.
I finally gave up on the desk and checked out the closet. In addition to some miscellaneous junk, it held toilet paper, an open box of red mechanic’s rags, two cases of aviation oil, and a half-empty box of road flares. So we were right: there had been flares in that cockpit. They had burned with an amazingly intense heat when the fire got to them.
Looking at the flares, my distress at shooting the bastard as he held up his hands dissipated, never to return.
Senator Harland Westfall was having another terrible day. The man who thought of himself as the prophet of the new Democratic party was also the brain behind the Dump Conyers movement in the House and Senate. The Speaker had to get the votes in the House of Representatives to impeach, but Westfall had to get the votes in the Senate to convict the bastard in order to throw him out of the White House—a much bigger order. Today wasn’t going well. The news on the Russian money scandal—now the “Russian Fake Money” scandal—was like Chinese water torture: another story every hour, drip, drip, drip.
It seemed to Westfall that the FBI had every agent in the country digging into bank records and questioning people who sent or received fake money. Some people told the FBI to go pound sand, but a lot of them were trying to talk their way out of trouble. It’s human nature. You can tell a person he doesn’t have to say a word, but that’s counter-intuitive—that isn’t the way the world works. We all know that. From childhood on, you must tell the truth or think up a good lie when you are accused of something nasty, from eating all the cookies, screwing your girlfriend in the family car, or driving at a hundred miles an hour while your sweetie sucks your dick. Man, you gotta have a story! Silence isn’t an option.
Unfortunately for Harlan Westfall, while he had plenty of greasy, slimy things on Conyers and Republicans, who apparently were awash in Russian funny money, the Democrats were awash in it too. Today it was Westfall’s turn. Over a million dollars in Russian money went into his reelection coffers, and to make matters worse, his campaign manager had spent the damn money, so he didn’t have it to refund. That is, if he even knew who to ref
und the money to—which he didn’t. It had been donated by a bunch of PACs, foundations, shit like that that no one could ever really find. No real addresses, no real tangible people to grill and skewer, no phone numbers. Just the money the campaign manager had blown on ads to tell the good people of New York how great a job Westfall was doing bringing the great Satan, Conyers, to account—so great a job that he needed another term in the Senate. The bastard manager had damn near financed a landslide with fake Russian money. Westfall got seventy percent of the vote, and in some precincts in Brooklyn and the Bronx, over ninety percent. Severe overkill, like a nuclear blast. Now Westfall was paying the price. The smart move would be to give the money to a charity to cleanse himself, purify himself before the public, but it was gone. Damn.
Right now on the phone, Westfall was downplaying the amount of funny money his campaign received to a reporter. “Out of over twenty-four million contributed, only a million was Russian money,” he said, “About four percent, actually less than four percent.”
“Why do you think the Russians wanted to help you, Senator?”
Westfall almost smashed the phone on the desk. “I don’t think the Russians wanted to do anything except slime me, attempt to derail our representative government, ruin my reputation.”
“Why you?”
Ah, here was a question Westfall could hit out of the ballpark, a slow floater right across the middle of the plate. Yet he watched it go by without swinging. Everyone was getting slimed; that was his best defense. The money meant nothing. He said that to the reporter.
“So this money that was invested in Conyers’ resort—how would you characterize that?”
“I don’t know if he solicited it or not. The FBI is investigating. So is Congress. If the president is corrupt, he will answer for his crimes.”
The reporter tried to push him into defending himself and condemning the president, but Westfall stopped without digging his own hole deeper. He hung up the phone and shouted a common obscenity.
His phone beeped. The receptionist. “Another reporter, sir, on the Hinton Foundation scandal.” Yep, the FBI was busy there too. The former CFO said the foundation had received $25 million; now the figure was up to $42 million. One network was doing bongs for every million of Russian money that had gone to the Hintons. Cynthia was trying to repair the political damage, but Willy had reportedly jetted off to a private island in the Caribbean where, allegedly, underage prostitutes serviced old hulks. Westfall wished he were there too.
The Russia Account Page 19
