by Ty Patterson
In reality, while Zeb was the lead operative of the Agency, there was no hierarchy. The team worked as a single unit, a family.
‘You didn’t call me to just to talk,’ Andropov said when they had finished with the pleasantries. ‘Is this related to Angie Konstantin?’
‘Dang it,’ Beth fumed in mock anger. ‘How did you know about that?’
‘There’s enough media coverage about the attacks on her. In the latest one, there was a mention of two women PIs. No names were mentioned, but …’
‘Yeah, we’re involved,’ Beth admitted, ‘which is why we called.’
She broke down the entire timeline for him and waited while he turned it over in his mind.
‘Nikolai? That’s all Hidalgo gave you?’
‘Yeah. There was the number he called from, but that’s a dead-end. A burner phone, probably,’ she grimaced, knowing where he was coming from. There would be thousands of Nikolais in Russia.
‘His name doesn’t ring a bell,’ Andropov replied, ‘but that only means he is so good he hasn’t crossed my radar. You want me to ask around?’
‘Yeah, and there’s something else. Those six men who attacked us in her building’s basement? They are Russian. Interpol sent us the details.’
‘Share them with me. I can check out who hired them.’
‘There will be cut-outs,’ Meghan warned.
‘Of course, but the underground world isn’t large. I can find someone who can be persuaded to talk,’ Andropov replied.
Despite the tense relationship between Russia and the U.S., Zeb and Andropov regularly pooled intel and assisted each other on cases. National security mattered, but so did global safety.
Beth emailed the Russian the identities of the six hitters and then brought up security camera footage at JFK.
Werner had face-recognition software built in, and it took a mere few minutes to scan through the huge dataset to identify the Russians. They traveled in a group, making no attempt to conceal their faces.
The footage ended when they exited the airport’s concourse.
‘No one met them,’ she said in disappointment.
‘Not that we could see,’ Meghan corrected her. ‘Try checking street cameras.’
‘That hasn’t been very successful. And it would take a long time.’
‘We have time.’
Beth gave Werner new instructions and opened Hidalgo’s folder.
‘He’s got shell companies and accounts all over the place.’
‘Standard operating procedure,’ Meghan grunted over her shoulder. ‘Did you check the money trail?’
‘Yes. Werner’s referenced the payments received five years back. We have to assume a lot was paid in cash. There are two payments.’ She tapped the screen. ‘One came from a bank in Bermuda, the other from a Russian one.’
‘Would Nikolai be that obvious?’
‘If he’s got an ego, yeah.’
‘You’re looking into them?’
‘Yes.’ She looked at her sister in irritation. ‘Did you find anything about Kloops? It looks like I’m the only one doing some work.’
‘Oh, ye of little faith,’ Meghan replied smugly, as she turned her screen around to face Beth. ‘You want to know who he dated?’
‘No.’ Her sister thumped her desk. ‘Anything on why he suddenly turned killer?’
‘No,’ Meghan admitted. ‘His financials are complex and will take some time to unravel. He has accounts all over the world and moves money regularly. So far, Werner hasn’t found anything suspicious. He was a gun nut. A collection in his house, assault rifles and the like.’
‘What about his —’
‘We’ve hacked into his emails and phone records. No red flag there, either. There’s one thing, however.’
‘What?’
‘He was a gamer. Bought a ton of them regularly. Those violent, shoot-em-up ones.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ Beth said in disgust.
‘He was also part of a gaming community.’
‘Again, means nothing.’
‘This was underground.’
Beth swiveled her chair and rocked back, her eyes closed. ‘You mean in the darknet.’
Websites in the darknet weren’t accessible to Jane or Joe Public. Not unless they had the links, and even then, there were hoops to jump through.
These were invariably illegal sites that criminals operated for their businesses. Payments were made with cryptocurrency and were virtually untraceable.
‘For all his security, he saved the link and his password in a draft email.’
Meghan typed in the url and logged into the site. A pop-up appeared and asked a series of verification questions that she answered.
‘You’ve done your homework,’ Beth acknowledged.
‘I always do.’
And then the pop-up turned on her machine’s camera.
She shut down the site before the video could load and steepled her fingers. ‘I haven’t got past that security check.’
Beth’s silence didn’t last long. She leaned forward, her fingers flashing over her keyboard.
‘What —’
She held a finger up imperiously to silence her sister and continued working.
An hour later, she settled back.
‘Now, bring that site up on my machine.’
Meghan brought the link up and ran through the verification steps.
Beth brushed her hands away when the pop-up loaded the camera and pressed a key.
‘What are you doing?’ Meghan cried, ducking and pushing her away when their images appeared on the screen.
‘Relax,’ Beth wheeled her chair back to her machine.
Meghan’s protest died when the gaming site loaded. ‘What did you do?’
‘I spliced a video together from Kloops’ public appearances. Inserted our office backdrop …’ she raised her right palm, high-fived her sister and turned back to the site.
‘There’s nothing here,’ she muttered in disgust after studying it for a while and navigating through the menu. ‘It’s like an auction-based shoot-’em-up game. The players bid for taking down targets, all of them make-believe. The price depends on the value of the target. It goes up when players bid for the same target, and who bids the most, wins.’
‘What has that got to do with Angie?’
‘Nothing.’ She went to a discussion forum where players talked about the game and boasted about their kills.
‘Why’s it underground, in that case?’
‘Because it’s violent? I’ll need to study it some more. Don’t we have to get somewhere?’
Meghan straightened when she glanced at her watch.
‘Let’s go.’
It was time to bug Hidalgo’s bar.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was dark by the time they reached the Blue River. The driveway was packed, and a stream of revelers was entering the joint when they arrived.
The sisters were dressed in jeans and hoodies, beneath which they wore black skin suits. Their backpacks in the rear seat, their weapons on their bodies.
Meghan drove around Westchester Avenue and headed to the quieter street. The restaurant had long since closed, a dim light at its front illuminating a wall-mounted menu.
A delivery van rumbled to the rear of the Blue River, and workers hustled as they unloaded crates of drinks. She parked down the street, facing the back entrance of the bar.
‘We wait,’ she announced. She adjusted her seat, lowered its backrest and closed her eyes.
At three am, her eyes opened.
The city was quiet. It never slept, and there was still the muted growl of traffic from Westchester Avenue, but it was much quieter.
She pointed a thermal imager at the bar, which was lit from the interior. No humans present.
They probably leave the lights turned on.
She nudged Beth, who woke up immediately, brushed her eyes and stifled a yawn.
They removed their oute
r clothes and exited softly, making sure the SUV’s doors didn’t thunk shut loudly. No dome light appeared, because they never turned it on.
Beth brought out a device and ran around the perimeter of the bar. Shook her head when she returned. No motion sensors in the backyard.
They scaled the small wall and waited. No alarms rang, no lights turned on.
The backyard had a neatly maintained garden. Sprinklers turned on and off, watering the lawn. The dark windows at the back cut off most light from inside. But there was a couple of pale glows high up, which flickered.
Meghan held her hand up. Beth stopped. They studied the light for a moment.
TVs, the elder sister mouthed. On reaching the rear walls, they came across their first problem. Meghan had figured on climbing over the windows and getting to the roof. However, the glass was fitted with intrusion detection alarms.
No idea what make they are. Some of them go off if pressure is applied.
To her left, a wall separated the deli’s rear from the Blue River. No idea what’s over there. We’ll lose time if we check it out.
To her right, the sides of the bar curved around the corner. No windows, just a concrete surface. They could climb that surface, however it faced Westchester Avenue. Passing traffic would illuminate them.
What if we’re quick?
Beth shoulder-bumped her and went ahead, making the decision for her.
The wall was twenty feet high, not insurmountable.
The sisters tightened their backpacks, secured their Glocks in their shoulder holsters and climbed rapidly using suction grips.
They froze at the midway point when a car passed, its twin lights sweeping across the bar beneath them. They tensed, listening. The vehicle didn’t slow down. Its driver didn’t honk or shout out. They relaxed when its sound receded in the distance and resumed climbing.
The roof was flat and presented no obstruction to their landing.
They bent over double and ran towards their destination, the AC vent.
A loud clatter.
They froze and looked down. The younger twin had stepped on a stray piece of pipe.
Meghan frowned at her savagely and crept towards the side. No lights had come on. No heads peered out of any window.
Dumbass, she whispered, and they proceeded carefully to the vent, next to which was an old-fashioned TV antenna.
They had spotted it during their recon run when they visited the bar the first time. It’s not in use; the bar has cable. However, no one had bothered to remove the antenna.
They knelt and removed their backpacks.
Beth extracted the components of the cell tower and assembled it. Meghan removed fastenings and a battery pack from her bag.
They taped the tower to the antenna, secured it to the roof, and powered it up.
Meghan withdrew her screen and motioned at Beth, who made a call to the bar. The tower captured the call and displayed it on her screen.
The elder sister nodded and the two left the roof. They reached their SUV and put on their outer clothing again.
With one last glance at the antenna, Meghan drove out.
The tower would capture all incoming and outgoing calls across all bands. It would even snag encrypted calls. The military-grade device they were using wasn’t available in any Best Buy or any online store. They’d significantly enhanced it, and only the NSA had comparable equipment.
‘If luck’s on our side,’ Meghan told her sister as she parked in their basement lot, ‘Nikolai will call.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nikolai didn’t call.
He knew about the report the PIs had filed with the cops. Making contact with Hidalgo would be pointless.
He knew of Kloops’ death, too. He couldn’t miss it. It was widely covered by the world’s media, all of them speculating on why the millionaire had turned killer. They interviewed his associates, his staff, some of his ex-girlfriends, but no one had any answer.
Nikolai also knew the NYPD were clueless. They hadn’t made any progress and were hoping for a stroke of luck.
Nikolai Khem believed in luck.
He was smart, sure. He was wealthy, immensely rich, but it was luck that Anatole Kharkov, Russia’s foremost arms dealer, had been his father.
Nikolai had inherited the business when his father died. His mother had long ago passed away, and while his father had taken a steady stream of mistresses, none had taken over the role of mother.
Nikolai also knew he was lucky because he had good looks. He didn’t have a pound of spare flesh on him — that wasn’t luck — but he had dark, thick hair that women loved to curl their fingers into, flashing dark eyes, and an easy smile. He had a chiseled chin and sharp jawbones and attracted female attention in any social gathering.
Nikolai was a gifted conversationalist. He could talk about just about any subject, and that came in handy when he was courting a woman. It was also a useful trait to have when making friends with politicians.
Anatole’s weapons business was restricted to Eastern Europe. Nikolai had expanded that. He sold weapons to Syria, to both Iraq and Iran. He made friends with disillusioned soldiers in the U.S. Army and got them to smuggle arms out.
Middle Eastern countries, African dictators, and South American governments were in his client list. He had a well-established supply chain and willing customers, as well as powerful friends in the Kremlin. The world was his oyster.
Nikolai was smarter than his father.
He rarely met his customers and removed all evidence that he was Anatole’s son once his father passed away.
That wasn’t difficult, because his father, who had been based in St. Petersburg, had been a secretive man with few friends. He hadn’t exposed Nikolai to any of his business associates, and the couple of friends who knew, were old.
Nikolai was home-schooled, and all his tutors met untimely deaths when they finished teaching him.
Once Nikolai moved to Moscow, he ended contact with his two friends, who conveniently died a year later. He posed as an employee whenever he was with clients and shrugged his shoulders when they asked him about the business’s owners.
‘A private group took over Anatole’s business,’ he would explain. ‘I am just a salaryman.’ He would laugh, and they would laugh with him.
Nikolai ended the arms-trading business when he turned forty. That was five years back, and the shipment to Hidalgo was one of his last.
Nikolai’s new business venture had started when he had come across Vasily Seleznez. He was in need of a hacker to penetrate British security systems and steal their nuclear submarine plans. Vasily had been recommended by another associate.
The arms dealer hadn’t been impressed with the tousled-haired, sleepy-eyed, stammering younger man. He had planned to use the hacker and dispose of him when the job was done.
Dispose, in his world, meant killing.
He had observed the hacker closely and, while watching his fingers at work, a few ideas had come to him.
‘How good are you?’ he had asked.
The hacker didn’t reply. His head bobbed as he listened to music on his headphones, his eyes nearly closed as lines of code streamed across his screen.
Nikolai was tempted to rip his earmuffs off but decided to let the man complete his job.
It took the hacker three days, and then he repeated his question.
‘No one has caught me,’ Vasily shrugged.
‘Maybe you haven’t done anything worthwhile,’ Nikolai prodded.
The hacker swung back to his screen, his fingers dancing, and brought up a page.
‘That’s the National Security Agency.’
He typed rapidly and a tree appeared. Folders.
‘I am in their system. I have entered the FBI’s system, the CIA’s —’
‘LEAVE! RIGHT NOW!’
Vasily rose and started leaving the room.
‘NO, YOU FOOL,’ Nikolai roared, ‘EXIT THAT SYSTEM.’
The hacker
went back to his screen, and the screen changed to a game he was playing.
The arms dealer brought out his handgun and toyed with it. ‘You’ll never hack into any government system without my authorization.’
‘I have other clients.’
‘No longer. You will work for me. You will live here. Everything you want will be delivered here. You will not leave this house.’
Vasily looked around the lavishly outfitted room and mentally compared it to the small, cramped apartment he had in Kapotnya. The neighborhood was several miles away from the city center, to the southeast. It had a high migrant population, depressing brick housing.
Nikolai’s mansion was in Rublyovka, a prestigious area in the west of Moscow. It was called the ‘billionaires neighborhood’ for a reason. The country’s wealthiest had their estates in the neighborhood. Gated communities offered kottedzhi for those who were mere millionaires. A high-end shopping mall offered all the luxuries a billionaire would need.
The Rublyovo-Uspensekoye Highway connected the neighborhood with the city center, a road that was heavily guarded by police and often closed for the movement of politicians.
‘What will I have to do?’ Vasily asked.
‘What you’ve just done.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
The next day, the sisters trawled through the calls made and received at the Blue River.
No Russian accent in any of the calls, which didn’t surprise them. Most of the calls were routine. Delivery orders and instructions, staff checking in, customers booking tables.
The evening’s call records were more interesting. Hidalgo was in action, directing shipments to various warehouses, receiving or organizing payment, and the twins were able to identify two Mexican cartels he was talking to.
However, that wasn’t who they were after.
‘We should find a way to send this to Chang,’ Beth grumbled, making a face when she tasted her cold coffee.
‘Hmm.’
She looked over at her sister, who was looking at the screen, her face scrunched. Meghan was the more analytical of the two. She could see several steps ahead. Beth was the impulsive one. The two complemented each other.
