Hidden Prey ld-15

by John Sandford

"So: Should I brace Nadya, or what?"

  "Your call," Harmon said. "We talked it over last night and couldn't see any reason to be subtle."

  "Who's we?"

  "Us guys," Harmon said.

  "You said you were drawing a blank on Spivak specifically. Does that mean you're not drawing a blank on something else?"

  "Yeah. We talked to some old guys, you know, from back in the fifties and sixties. There were quite a few Soviets doing hard-core espionage. Height of the Cold War, and all that. When we'd get a line on a guy, sometimes they'd figure it out and run for it. They'd fly to Chicago or Omaha and rent a car or catch a bus and then they'd disappear. The cars were usually found in Iowa, around Des Moines, or in Wisconsin, around Milwaukee. The point is, there was a big-time cell operating someplace in the upper Midwest, specifically tasked with getting their agents out of the country. We never found the cell. Now we see there's this longtime residential network showing up on the Iron Range, where there's this long history of radicalism, lots of eastern European immigrants, ore ships and grain ships going in and out… and the Canadian border's right there. It'd be a perfect spot for an exfiltration cell. Maybe that's what we've got."

  "Huh. But they'd be sort of the lay-low type, right? They wouldn't get involved in murdering people."

  "Depends on what the problem was. If it was a question of getting caught, I don't think murder would be off the table."

  When he got off the phone, Lucas called BCA headquarters in St. Paul and checked with a secretary in technical services about the phone trace he'd requested the night before.

  "The call came from a pay phone at Snelling and University in St. Paul," said the secretary.

  "The supermarket?"

  "No, it's out on the street. Outside, anyway. That's what the note says."

  "Damnit." If the woman had used the supermarket phones, they might possibly get a description from a cashier or a bag boy. If the phone was on the street, finding a witness would be next to impossible. "Okay. Thanks for the check."

  He called Marcy Sherrill, but her cell phone was in message mode: "Get anything on that fence? Call me-I'm on the cell phone."

  Reasons was running late, and Lucas was sitting alone with Nadya in a breakfast booth. After ordering, Lucas asked her what she'd done the night before, and she said, "Shopping. There are excellent shops at this mall. Everything is cheap compared to Russia."

  "You didn't talk to your shadow?"

  She looked at him over her coffee cup. "Shadow?"

  "You know, your shadow operative. Our FBI people said you'd have one."

  She was shaking her head. "They misunderstand what is going on."

  "Then why don't you tell me what's going on?"

  Now she put her coffee cup down. "You are angry, and you weren't angry last night. What has happened?"

  "First, tell me what's going on. What you know. Why the feds are wrong."

  "The… feds." She worked it out. "The federals. The FBI… Okay. Here is what they don't understand." She leaned forward, intent now. "We don't care for two shits who killed Oleshev. We care nothing about this. Nothing. We care for one thing, that somebody take his father and Vladimir Putin and all of their friends off our backs. You have that phrase, off our backs?"

  "Yes."

  "So-we don't care if this murder is solved. We can't do anything, one way or the other. We have not the power. We have not the resources. We want only to get ourselves clear of the trouble. If Maksim Oleshev wants to blame your president, your FBI, your Lucas Davenport, or your Jerry Reasons for this problem…" She shrugged. "What is it you teach me yesterday? Tough shit? We don't care, as long as they go away and leave us to work. Do you understand that?"

  She sounded exactly like Rose Marie Roux, Lucas thought: Just make us look good. He nodded, and said, "I understand what you're saying, but I don't think I believe you."

  "Why is this?"

  He told her what happened with Spivak. She listened, her eyes narrowing as he got into the story. He finished with, "There are only three people, Nadya, who knew that Spivak wasn't telling us what he knew-me, you, and Reasons. I didn't pull this stunt and I doubt that Reasons would have the resources, unless he's some kind of spy, too."

  She thought for a moment and then said, "Well, there are some others…"

  "Who?"

  "Anyone Spivak talked to. If Oleshev told one of his associates that he was meeting Spivak, if Oleshev is then killed, his associates might want to know what happened. If Oleshev's killer came from Spivak."

  "And he just happens to show up a few hours after we talked to him," Lucas said skeptically.

  "I don't know what happened. If there is a shadow, I don't know it. But there are other possibilities, than a shadow for me." She stood up. "I will call now, with the e-mail. I will find out now if there is a shadow."

  "And you'd tell me."

  "Probably," she said. "As I say to you, I… we… don't give two shits for Oleshev. All we want to do is get clear."

  As she stepped away, Lucas said, "Did you ask about the laptop?"

  She stopped and turned: "I did. The captain of the Potemkin said Oleshev definitely had a laptop, a small silver Sony and very expensive. The man who interviewed the crew in Toronto said that some accessories… this is correct? Accessories?" Lucas nodded. "… that some accessories remain in his cabin. A CD drive with some games that plugged in with a PCMCIA card and also one of the small disk drives."

  "All right. Go make your call, and then I've got another thing to talk about."

  "What? Tell me now."

  She came back to the booth, leaned a hip against the table, and crossed her arms as Lucas told her about the call from the woman the evening before. He concluded by saying, "She was the real witness. I'm sure of it. She put the laptop on the street."

  "You can find it?"

  "We're trying."

  Nadya went to check with the embassy. When Reasons showed up, Lucas told him about the hassle at Spivak's, again leaving Andreno out of the equation, and about the call from the anonymous woman.

  "Well, shit," Reasons said. "We've got to get more pressure out on the street. You find the laptop, we'll get a name for her. Somebody's got to know who she is."

  "There's another problem for your guys," Lucas said. "There's almost no point in chasing after the Wheaton murder, if it was a mistake. You won't find any connections. There aren't any."

  "Yeah." Reasons thought for a minute. Then, "I gotta talk to the boss. He's not gonna be happy."

  Reasons ordered pancakes and Lucas got a Diet Coke and a waffle, and they talked about the case and the view out toward the lake and about Nadya's ass. Nadya came back and slipped into the booth next to Lucas. She wore a very light fragrance, like apple blossoms.

  She exhaled and said, "Well: they say to me that there is no shadow. But."

  "But," Lucas said.

  "Yes. But. But somebody else called to the embassy this morning and asked for the intelligence officer. When he got the duty officer, he asked for the shadow to be put in touch with him. This call came in twenty minutes ago." She looked from Reasons to Lucas. "This was not you?"

  "Not us," Lucas said.

  "What about your shadow? The FBI man you talk to-there must be one."

  "I'll ask," Lucas said. He pulled his phone from his pocket. "What was his name again?"

  Nadya smiled and said, "I wouldn't know that," and waved at a waitress. "But say hello for me."

  Lucas called Andy Harmon again and said, "This is Davenport. I'm sitting here eating a waffle and talking to Nadya. She says hello to my shadow. She says somebody just called the Russian embassy in Washington and asked to be put in touch with Nadya's shadow. Nadya says she doesn't have one, and she wants to know if it was you guys who called the embassy. 'Cause if it wasn't, that would mean that the embassy is probably talking to the killer."

  "Wasn't us," Harmon said. "It just flat wasn't us. If the embassy will give us the time the call came in, we could try t
o trace it."

  "Just a minute," Lucas said. He turned to Nadya and said, "If the embassy can give us the time the call came in, we can trace it."

  "Let me talk," she said. Lucas passed her the phone and she and Harmon talked for a minute, and she gave Harmon the name of a man at the embassy he could check with.

  When she was done, Lucas took the phone back and asked, "What are the chances?"

  "I don't know," Harmon said. "But we'll check it. By the way, she's lying to you about the shadow. She's got one. Be nice to find him, or identify him, anyway."

  "Yeah, well…"

  "Get back to you," Harmon said.

  For breakfast, Nadya had a bowl of strawberries with a smidgen of cream, and two cups of coffee. She was a slow eater, and they went over the case again, piece by piece, as she worked her way through the strawberries. Finally, Reasons said, "I'm gonna go talk to the boss. What are you guys doing?"

  "Maybe I oughta go back to Virginia and jack up the Spivaks."

  "Couldn't hurt," Reasons said.

  "Then that's what I'll do," Lucas said.

  Nadya went with him. Before they left, they both went to their rooms to check for messages, and Lucas used the break to call Andreno in Virginia. "Anything?"

  "No. I just got going a couple of hours ago. Spivak's gonna be checked again this morning and then they're gonna let him out. They're gonna take him down to the police station and get a drawing of the guy who hanged him, for whatever that's worth."

  "Where're you?"

  "In the van across from the hospital. His son went in fifteen minutes ago, and since Spivak doesn't have a car here, I'd guess the son is picking him up."

  "All right. Stay with him. I'm coming up that way with Nadya. I'm gonna jack the guy up a little. Maybe his kids, too."

  Lucas and Nadya drove north mostly in quiet, at the start, Pink Floyd's A Collection of Great Dance Songs playing soft on the CD. Nadya, it turned out, was married, now separated, and had three children, two boys and a girl, one at Moscow State University, the other two in secondary school. Both her husband and her father were professors at the university-her father had, in fact, introduced her to the man who'd become her husband. Her father was a chemist, her husband did computer software research.

  "I once owned a software company," Lucas told her.

  Her eyebrows went up. "This is serious?"

  "Sure. Davenport Simulations. We made software programs that would simulate different kinds of emergencies on police computer systems to train people to respond. You know, you have a centralized communications center, and you get two car accidents with injuries and then a shooting, all coming in at the same time, and then one of the cars you expect to send is off the air, and another one breaks down on the way to a scene, what do you do, where do you put your people? We had dozens of different scenarios. I'm out of it now, but the company still exists. I hear it's been making a bunch of money since the World Trade Center attacks. Government contracts."

  "You don't look like, mmm, a technologist," she said. She had more questions, and Lucas found himself being thoroughly and pleasantly debriefed. When she'd finished, she said, "Hmph."

  "Hmph., what?"

  She smiled: "I would prefer to work with somebody a little stupider."

  He laughed and his cell phone rang. "Yeah?"

  Marcy said, "Lucas. I think we have a line on your guy. What do you want to do?"

  "What do you have?"

  "He's a student, majors in psychology. Name is Larry Schmidt. Twenty-four. Six years in school, hasn't graduated yet. He might be hanging around because it gives him access to his market. Handles hot electronics-mostly computer equipment and sound stuff. He's been busted twice, walked both times. He's not big, he's not small, he's just… profitable."

  "You got enough for a warrant?"

  "Absolutely. We've got three different people who name him as a fence and who tell us he sells out of his apartment."

  "Get one. I can be down there…" He looked at his watch. "By four o'clock. I'll see you at your office."

  "Do that."

  Nadya said, "What?"

  "We found the guy who probably has the computer. Or had it," Lucas said.

  "You will arrest him?"

  "Yeah. I'm going down this afternoon."

  "I will come. Maybe we should go now…"

  Lucas said, "We're right at Virginia. We take a half hour to scare the shit out of the Spivaks, to see if that produces anything, and then we head back."

  "Good," she said. "Maybe things start to move."

  At the hospital, they were told that Spivak had already left. One of the nurses said he was apparently going to the police station. Lucas called the number he'd been given by the chief, and the duty officer said that Spivak had just left, and he thought he was headed for the bar.

  The bar was open: Spivak was in the back with his son, and unhappy to see them come through the door. "What, you didn't get me killed the first time you came, so you come back," he grated. He was wearing a plastic neck collar, but his voice had improved.

  "That wasn't us," Lucas said. Spivak was sitting at a table, a beer in front of him; his son had just come out of the Pointers. Lucas pulled a chair around, sat down, and faced the older man. Nadya stood, looking down at him, and his son pulled out a stool at another table. "What happened was, you took a meeting that you shouldn't have. We want to know what it was about. Are you a Russian spy? Are you selling dope? Information? What? What's going on?"

  "Spy," Spivak said, recoiling. "Me. I was in the fuckin' army, I'm an American. Were you in the army? You come in here and almost get me killed by some crazy man…"

  "Yes, yes, yes," Nadya said. "This is all very…" She flipped a hand, as if brushing him away. "… dramatic. Rehearsed. We don't need this. I think Mr. Davenport would tell you that he doesn't care about spy. What we need to know is, What did Oleshev say to you? What did he say that caused him to be killed? If you wish, we can pretend that you only overheard it."

  Lucas pointed a finger at him: "You got lucky the first time, pal. Some guy walking through the alley, sees you strung up. If he hadn't been there, you'd be dead. Right now, you'd be lying in a coffin down at the funeral home. And I'll tell you: whoever killed Oleshev, he's still out there. He killed Mary Wheaton in Duluth just because he thought she might have seen his face. He's coming back. He's a pro, and I don't think he'll miss you twice."

  "BUT I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!" Spivak shouted. "I DON'T KNOW

  ANYTHING!"

  Lucas leaned back in his chair, looking at the other man's reddened face. Nadya shook her head, looked at Lucas, and said, "He's lying. If we had him in Moscow…"

  "Maybe we'll export him," Lucas said.

  "I think you two better leave, and we should get a lawyer," the son said. "Dad, stop talking."

  Lucas looked at the younger man and said, "I wasn't joking about the killer coming back. But he might figure that if your father didn't talk when he was standing on the beer bottles, that he'll never talk. He might come and get you or your sister, try to get some leverage."

  The son was shaking his head: "We will be careful, and I think it's all bullshit anyway. Dad doesn't know anything. This asshole should have figured it out. If Dad knew anything, he would have told him, instead of letting himself get hanged, for Christ's sakes."

  "I hope so," Lucas said. "But if I'm right, and you're wrong…" He looked at Nadya. "There're going to be some dead people in the Spivak family."

  "Maybe all of them," Nadya said. "This man… perhaps you should ask your police chief to see the pictures of old Mrs. Wheaton. He nearly cut her head off, with this wire. Maybe then you'll believe."

  "I don't know anything," Spivak repeated. He took a nervous hit on the beer. "Honest to God…"

  "It's not us you're gonna have to convince," Lucas said. "You got guns? You better get some. Maybe the local cops will give you bodyguards."

  Nadya shook her head, speaking to Lucas, as one sober police officer t
o another. "That wouldn't work. This killer, as you say, is a professional." She looked at the Spivaks, from father to son and back. "To you two, I say, and to your sister and wife, good-bye. I believe because you do not tell us what happens, some of you will be dead before I return."

  They sat in silence for a moment, and then Lucas said, "Well, fuck ya. We told you."

  "Good-bye," Nadya said. "I am so sad…"

  Outside, in the street, Lucas said, "That was pretty good."

  Nadya said, "Standard procedure. He will ripen in a day or two."

  "If he's not dead."

  "That is my worry," she said. "That I was not fooling about."

  Chapter 12

  They stopped in Duluth to pick up clothes, and decided to keep their rooms; they'd be gone only overnight. As they headed south, they crossed the line of a weather front coming in from the west, a thin wedge of cloud that spit rain at them for a hundred miles, and then began to dissipate as they rolled through the northern suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

  On the way, Lucas called Weather and told her that they'd have an overnight guest.

  "The Russian guy?" she asked.

  "Not exactly."

  Marcy Sherrill and two of her intelligence cops were waiting in a no-parking zone by a McDonald's in the Minneapolis student village called Dinkytown, just off the University of Minnesota campus.

  Lucas pulled in behind them, and Sherrill got out of the unmarked car and walked back, sipping a cup of McDonald's coffee, a pretty, dark-haired woman who liked to fight.

  "Where're we going?" Lucas asked, rolling his window down.

  "Jesus, not even a how-do-you-do," Marcy said. She stooped to look past Lucas to Nadya and said, "You must be the Russian guy."

  "Yes," Nadya said. "You are the policeman?"

  "Listen," Lucas said hastily, "Is this guy going to be a problem? Larry?"

  Marcy switched her eyes back to Lucas and shrugged. "I don't know. I hope so. I haven't kicked anybody's ass in a long time."

  "Yeah, yeah, very macho. Is he gonna be a problem?"

  "No reason to think so, but he could be a runner. I've got a couple of squads ready to roll; they'll come in right behind us and cover the outside, back and front."