The Russia Account

by Stephen Coonts

  “No,” he told the receptionist. “I will not comment upon the Hintons’ problems. I know absolutely nothing except that I have full faith in their honesty and moral character.”

  “Yes, sir. And your accountant wants you to call him. There’s a fifteen-thousand dollar deposit in your investment account that seems odd.”

  “My investment account?” This was trouble. The campaign account he could defend, but his personal accounts? Uh-oh. Still, only fifteen thousand, chicken feed. “I’ll call him.”

  So he did. “No, Senator. It’s fifteen thousand a month for the last twenty-two months.”

  “For the love of Christ, how in hell did you miss deposits that big?”

  “Senator, the deposits were bank transfers. They looked normal to me. I even put them on your income tax returns. Didn’t you read the things?”

  Hell, no. He had signed them, his wife had signed them, and the secretary sent them off to the IRS, the State of New York, and the City of New York. Did this pinhead really think he had nothing better to do than sit in his office reading forms he didn’t understand, the federal return three-quarters of an inch thick? He snarled at the accountant, “I pay you to fill in the blanks, keep me out of trouble. That’s what you are supposed to be doing.”

  “I’m trying, Senator. I’m trying. Apparently someone else is doing their best to boil you in oil.”

  A half hour later, he got another telephone call on his private line, this one from a secret friend in one of the agencies. The man didn’t give his name, but Harlan Westfall recognized the voice. “The Russian is talking, Senator. He’s naming names.”

  Westfall cradled the receiver and sat looking at the wall. No two ways about it, the fucking Russians had double-crossed them. Anton Hunt was such an ass. And he, Harlan Westfall, had been a fool.

  Jesse Hughes lived in a four-room flat in Ellicott City, Maryland, which is just west of Baltimore. His was the third floor of an old house that had been converted to flats and condo-ized. He was the guy who had spoken to Paul Hockersmith on his cell phone five times in the two days before his death. Maybe he had paid Hockersmith to burn up the safe house with the Russian in it, or maybe he was financing a flight from Mexico to the U.S. with a load of drugs.

  Sarah had given me and Armanti some information about Hughes. He was a retired civil servant, supposedly now a part-time financial consultant for one of the big hedge funds. Had a business degree from the University of Maryland. Was gay but looked straight. His partner was very effeminate and stayed home with the pooch, a lapdog that liked to bark. They didn’t own a car; used Uber if it was too far to walk.

  “So as far as we know, no one knows Hockersmith is dead,” I said to Sarah.

  “As far as we know.”

  “He might have run off to Mexico or Argentina.”

  “Might have.”

  “Or he might have been arrested by the DEA or FBI and is ratting out people.”

  “That’s a possibility too,” she admitted.

  “We can work with that.”

  After we got back to Washington, Armanti and I drove out to Ellicott City to scope out Hughes’ pad. We had no idea what he looked like, nor had we seen a photo of the love interest. Just to be on the safe side, we called Bill Leitz, who was following us with a van decked out to monitor bugs.

  “You ready?”

  “Born ready.”

  “Let me test these out.” I got the bugs out of my pocket one by one and whispered into them. They were the latest hot thing, so small they rested on the head of a pin, ridiculously easy to plant. Just jab the pin into a piece of stuffed furniture or a drape, even a carpet in a spot where it wouldn’t be trod upon too much, and let the tech gods do the rest.

  We were in a little bar on the corner sipping soft drinks when we saw the partner come along from the park with a little yapper on a leash. At least, we saw a very effeminate guy with a very small dog. Armanti nudged me.

  He went into the building, and in a moment the lights on the third floor of the building came on. We ordered coffee.

  Hughes was supposedly about six feet and an inch, weighed about two hundred, and was balding. After a bit, a guy who answered that description came by carrying a rolled-up umbrella and a brief case. He turned in at the building across the street.

  We sat and watched to see if anyone else was interested in Mr. Hughes. Apparently not. I called Sarah. “Do you have his cell phone tapped?”

  “Yep.”

  “We’re going over now. Shouldn’t take over fifteen minutes, if that. Listen up.”

  So we paid our bill and walked across the street. Pushed the button above the mailbox to buzz the third floor.

  “Who is it?”

  “FBI, Mr. Hughes. If we might have a word.”

  A long moment of silence. Then the click and Armanti pulled the door open. He looked at me and I looked at him.

  No elevator. We hiked up to the third floor and knocked.

  Hughes opened the door. He was trying to manage his face. “Mr. Jesse Hughes? I’m agent Wilson and this is agent Brown.” We offered our credentials, which were great CIA fakes, even better than the real ones. The badges were works of art.

  He merely glanced at them. “What do you want?”

  I kept the puss deadpan. “Well, it might be better to talk to you in your home with the door closed, or you can come downtown with us, if you like.”

  He opened the door. We entered and the dog yapped. The lover was wearing a dressing gown and had shaved legs. After he closed the door I asked, “And this is…?”

  “Joe Leschetizky.”

  Armanti dropped to a seat on the couch and whipped out a notebook. He said, all business, “You are going to have to spell that for me, please.”

  Hughes did. So he was rattled, already on the defensive. The dog kept barking. The apartment was severely hip, as modern as the day after tomorrow, with art on the walls that would have baffled Picasso and uncomfortable chairs of many different primary colors. If you liked this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you would like.

  I sank into a purple chair. Hughes took a chair which was some shade of red.

  “We could probably do without the dog,” I said gently, almost allowing myself to smile. Joe L. floated up from his chair, which was blue, and sashayed out of the room, murmuring to the dog, which followed him. He closed the door.

  “Mr. Hughes, we find ourselves in a very difficult position. Do you know a man named Paul Hockersmith?”

  He had to think about that. “Hockersmith?”

  “Yes. Paul Hockersmith.” I spelled the last name for him.

  He decided he wasn’t going to know Mr. Hockersmith.

  “He says he knows you, Mr. Hughes. He’s in protective custody. Apparently someone is trying to assassinate him.”

  Hughes eyes grew noticeably bigger and rounder.

  “Do you know any reason why anyone would want to kill Mr. Hockersmith?”

  This question conveniently ignored the fact that he had just said he didn’t know the man. He remembered, but barely, just in time. “Why no… but I don’t recall ever meeting Mr… Hockersmith, you say?”

  “Right. Paul Hockersmith.”

  He tried to look mystified and succeeded in looking just plain scared.

  “Well, if you have never met the man,” I said, and stood. Armanti rose and seemed to expand as he did so. Hall was an ugly-looking bastard. I could see Hughes giving him the eye. Armanti adjusted his shoulder holster. Hughes saw that, sure enough.

  I held out a card and he tore his eyes from Armanti. “Thank you for your time tonight, Mr. Hughes. Obviously, your name came up in our interviews with Mr. Hockersmith, who does say he knows you. If you think of anything else you want to tell us, that’s my card. Give me a ring anytime and leave a message. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  He took the card.

  “What is Hockersmith saying about me?”

  I smiled and shrugged. “We can’t tal
k about ongoing investigations, Mr. Hughes. But we are worried about possible assassins. If you see or hear anything that makes you suspicious, please call. We can’t help unless we know you need help.”

  And with that we made our exit. Trooped down the stairs and headed for the bar across the street. “Got four planted,” Armanti told me.

  We perched on two stools at the end of the bar. I could watch the door to the apartment house by looking in the mirror.

  “Been a long day,” Armanti said to the bartender. “What do you have on draft?”

  He ordered a Guinness. I said I’d take the same. Armanti called Bill Leitz to see if the bugs were working. He nodded at me. Yes.

  We were sipping stout and relaxing when my phone rang. The caller ID said it was Sarah.

  “He’s on the phone to a man named Kevin Edwards, one of the twenty. He’s almost hysterical. Edwards is trying to calm him down. Here’s Edwards’ address.” She read it to me and I copied it down.

  “Call me back when they get done,” I said.

  Twenty minutes slipped by. When the phone rang, Sarah had some information. “Edwards is a big wheel in a hedge fund.” She named it. “Your friend in Utah named him as one of the twenty.”

  We finished our Guinness and walked to where we parked our car. We set off for New York City with Bill Leitz following in the van. We crashed at a small hotel that specialized in housing government employees on per diem, a tired old hotel with tiny elevators and tiny rooms. The next morning, we went to find Kevin Edwards. He lived in the fifties, between Park and Madison. After we had another conversation with Bill Leitz and tested another half dozen bugs, we rang Edwards’ button in the lobby.

  “Yes.” A man’s voice. So we caught him at home.

  “FBI, Mr. Edwards. May we have a few minutes of your time?”

  There were three cameras mounted high in the lobby, no doubt taping Hall and me for future reference, or posterity, if anyone ever cared to check.

  Six minutes later we were seated in Edwards’ living room. We displayed our credentials. Edwards actually looked at mine. He was in his fifties, pretty buff, wearing work-out clothes that showed off his biceps and shoulders. Flat stomach. About five-feet eight or nine inches. Armanti Hall could have broken him in half with one hand.

  “Your name came up, Mr. Edwards, in the interrogation of a Mr. Paul Hockersmith.”

  “I don’t believe I know the man. Does he live here in New York?”

  “Utah.”

  “I don’t know anyone in Utah.” He frowned. “I don’t think I have ever been there, even.”

  “He mentioned your name. And that of a Mr. Jesse Hughes. We have talked with Mr. Hughes, and he said he didn’t know Mr. Hockersmith either.”

  “Well, I don’t, so I can’t help you.” Edwards stood. I didn’t.

  “Here’s why we are here, Mr. Edwards.” I lowered my voice a notch and watched his eyes. I didn’t want him watching Hall jab pins into the furniture. “We believe assassins are targeting Mr. Hockersmith, Mr. Hughes, and you. I can’t tell you where this information comes from, but we believe it to be credible. If I were you, I would take reasonable precautions. Do you have a bodyguard?”

  “No.” He was still standing, but trying to decide if he wanted to sit. His eyes were riveted upon me.

  “You might think about employing one or more. If an assassination attempt comes, it won’t be half-hearted. It will happen extremely fast.” I snapped my fingers.

  Now Armanti and I stood and walked toward the door. “Look both ways before you cross the street,” Hall told the guy. I bit my lip to keep from smiling. I checked Edwards’ eyes again. He didn’t think that was funny. He was scared, obviously.

  “Good day, Mr. Edwards.” We pulled the door shut behind us.

  In the elevator I said to Hall, “You ass. Watch both ways… Shit.”

  “Six more bugs.”

  “Onward and upward.”

  “I’m ready to go get some breakfast,” he said. We hailed a taxi on the street and gave the hackie the address of our favorite bagel joint. My phone rang before we got there. Sarah again. “Edwards is on the landline. He’s calling Senator Westfall, but I can only hear his half of the conversation.”

  “Well, how about that?” I said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When he was on the truth serum, Yegan Korjev fingered Ava Silva as the Kremlin’s minister-without-portfolio in the fake money sting targeted against Democrats. She had plenty of help, of course, from committed progressives who knew that Democrats were just Republicans who didn’t belong to a church or golf club. The progressive revolution would not, could not, succeed unless and until both the Democrats and Republicans were consigned to the dustbin of history.

  Ava’s disciples had been the ones who flooded the Hinton Foundation with cash, gave money to most of the Democratic candidates for the House and Senate, including Harlan Westfall, and got prominent Democrats tied up in inexplicable, embarrassing conflicts of interest. One of their best stunts was to get the Democrat senator from Massachusetts, the former Indian and Harvard professor who wanted to be president, entrapped as a slum lord in downtown Boston by buying buildings at tax sales, in bankruptcy court, and in mortgage foreclosure proceedings in the name of a corporation they had created for her. They had done the same thing to the mayor of Detroit, but on a lesser scale. The Boston strike was a masterpiece.

  When the Boston Globe got wind of it two days ago, the senator owned twelve and a half million dollars-worth of rat and cockroach-infested tenements, forty percent of which had been condemned.

  This morning the story broke and Ava Silva was savoring the triumph. She was in her office at the university reading the story on the Globe’s website when her telephone rang. She checked the caller ID. Her maid. “Yes, Juanita.”

  “Ah, Senora, some men are here.” There followed some words that Ava didn’t get, followed by some she did. “…Gas company. Should I let them in?”

  Ava had no doubt these were indeed gas company employees checking the lines for leaks. “Oh, of course.”

  Doc Gordon and I were waiting at the door when the Mexican maid returned. “Senora says all right.”

  We were admitted with our testing devices, so we sampled the air in the basement, the kitchen, and around the three gas-log fireplaces… and left bugs all over. The whole job took twenty minutes. We thanked Juanita and went out the door to our borrowed power company ride.

  As Doc piloted us down the drive, I checked our list again. Next stop, Ava’s Number One lieutenant, an economist, Langwith Chandler, who worked for the largest private bank in America. Fortunately, he lived just three miles from the Silva’s humble cottage.

  I looked back at Bill Leitz, who was wearing earphones and manning the tech console. He gave me a thumbs up.

  Two minutes later I got a call from Sarah. “Ava is on the phone to Langwith Chandler. Apparently he’s at home today, about to do a telephone call-in interview with CNBC.”

  “We’ll try to stay out from underfoot,” I told her.

  And by golly we did. Admitted to check for gas leaks, I actually got into Chandler’s office while he was on the air with the financial gurus. He ignored me. I waved the wand around, checked the readings, and inserted two pins with bugs on them in the stuffed chairs.

  We had done five dwellings by noon. Three of them were simple two or three-room flats whose building superintendent gave us the key. We went in, checked for leaks, and got out of each place as quickly as our professional chores would allow. In the last place we hit, the tenant was there, an emaciated stringbean in his thirties who was obviously on heroin. He had needle tracks in his arms. He typed on his computer while we checked his digs, and damn if we didn’t find his stove was leaking. Got him into the kitchen, showed him the reading, and called the power company on the spot. We had our bugs all in place when the real gas men turned up, so we faded.

  In the van, Armanti said, “He ain’t ever gonna live to see the re
volution, not with that habit of his.”

  “Only if it happens quickly,” I said judiciously. “Like this week, or maybe the next.”

  “How many millions did this dude handle?”

  “Over half a billion, Sarah thinks.”

  “He’s probably got enough shit stashed away to keep New York pain-free for a decade.”

  The addict was the last of Ava’s local contacts, so we broke for lunch. After, we took the van back to the power company. We reclaimed our car and Armanti Hall and I set forth upon the highways to visit some more of Ava’s friends with Bill Leitz following in the company van. Two days later, we jumped a plane for California.

  If you are going to plot revolution and dictatorship, California is the place to do it. In the first place, everyone there thinks they are part of the intellectual elite and should therefore be on the dictatorship committee. Second, everyone from San Diego to the Oregon border hates someone with a pure and perfect passion. I should know: I grew up there.

  One of Ava Silva’s acolytes was a professor at Berkeley, Justin Alschwede, who had been busy using Russian money to slime and destroy prominent Democrats around the state. He lived with three girlfriends in a rooftop condo, just far enough from campus to be affordable. The girls didn’t work… just hung out and provided Justin with all the sex he could stand in return for food and pot.

  There didn’t seem to be much point in bugging the place, so we didn’t try. Justin didn’t have a landline and we were monitoring his cell phone calls.

  Yet as Armanti and I talked about Justin’s situation, we wondered if perhaps we could do something more, some little thing to make his life more exciting.