by Kirk Russell
From his truck he checked in with the team. They’d started driving early this morning from the Oregon border and were still a hundred miles from Sacramento and the safehouse. He recrossed the Golden Gate, drove up the mountain, and waited for Maria to get home. She didn’t have a sixth or seventh period today so was home by 2:00. She came in the door, then called, “Dad, where are you?”
“Back here working on your bathroom door. Do you want to take a walk?”
“Where?”
“On the mountain.”
“If it’s not a long one.”
“We’ll turn around when you say so.”
They drove up to the lot across from Mountain Home Inn and walked the paved road past the ranger station and water tanks, then up the steep climb to the fire road before saying much.
“Here’s the deal. As long as you’re going to school and talking to your mom every day while you two work this out, you can keep staying with Stacey and Wendy.”
“Mom’s okay with that?”
“Yes, but the deal is you and your mom have to talk at least half an hour a day.”
“That’s weird.”
“Not as weird as you moving out, and besides, what’s weird about talking to your mom every day?”
“Why for half an hour?”
“So there’s a chance you’ll communicate.”
“You mean it’s my fault.”
“I’m not interested in fault.”
“Does Mom agree with this?”
“I wouldn’t be telling you otherwise.”
She thought on that as they came around another long rising curve, and Marquez looked out at the dark blue of the ocean. Maria’s long-legged stride was like her mother’s. He watched her pick up a piece of serpentine and flick it off the slope, send it over the manzanita and oaks. It made him remember her at nine, the way she used to race up here.
“So I’m supposed to go back to San Francisco tonight?”
“No, you’re already here. I figured you and I could go see my fishing friend, and maybe we can grill some halibut or bass tonight. That sound okay?”
She was quiet too long. She sensed some trick in all this, or maybe it bored her to think about riding around with him and picking up fish from his friend. But then she nodded.
They ended up grilling hamburgers instead of halibut, and he left Maria and Katherine talking near the fireplace, the light of the fire catching their profiles. From the deck he called in and asked dispatch to help him check three hang-up calls on his cell, numbers he didn’t recognize, two from the same spot.
“What you’ve got there are pay phone booths. The two that are the same are in Fresno. The next one is in Sacramento.”
“Thanks.”
The first calls were late this morning, ten minutes apart. The third must have come when he was on the mountain with Maria. A fourth came later that night after he was in bed with Katherine. She moved silently against him, only the rustle of sheets making any noise as her hand found his shoulder and moved across his chest, touched his face, his lips before sliding down to his groin and taking him in her hand. He turned, and the smooth warm skin of her belly was against him. She pulled him on top of her and her arms wrapped tight around his back, and later she laid her face on his chest and quietly wept for the loss of a dream of the way life might have been. It all came back to Maria. She was no longer the little girl who’d been Katherine’s best friend in the years after her first husband abandoned them.
Late in the night the phone rang, and he walked down the hallway and outside with his cell phone. He slid the deck door shut, speaking quietly, wondering if the FBI was listening in.
“A lot of officers looked for you that night.”
“I had to do what I did.”
“Sure, and I know you must be very sorry for what you had to do to me.”
“I am sorry, but the FBI promised to get my son for me and now they say they can’t. Everything has happened because of that.”
“When did they promise to get your son for you?”
“A couple of years ago, and I’m supposed to help them get closer to my ex. They’d like to lock him up for a long time.”
“Where are you now?”
There was a hollowness to her voice that made him think she was in a pay phone.
“I’m in California. I’m not far from the delta, but I really am going to disappear, if they don’t arrest me first. Do you want to meet me tomorrow? I really do care about the poaching and that’s why I came to you in the first place. I know what they’re doing and what their plans are. I wanted you to bust them. If you don’t meet with me now, I’m afraid you might not get the chance.”
“Why not tell me what you know over the phone? Why make a game out of meeting you?”
“Because they’re probably listening to this conversation.”
“Who is?”
“The FBI. I can meet you tomorrow. I can tell you where the caviar gets moved around. I can meet you where we met that first time.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you there.”
He sat with the phone in his hands after hanging up. Agreeing to meet her was an impulsive move, and he should call Ehrmann. They’d been backed off any contact with her when they followed her, yet this was different. She’d called him. She’d made the contact. He made coffee and thought it over, read the papers, watched the dawn, and decided not to tell anyone on his team, not to jeopardize anyone’s career.
Just before 10:00 he drove into the delta, looped around Sherman Island, backtracked, worked his way east, then cut across a levee island and came in the back way to the slough. He parked and did the rest on foot, keeping an eye on the vineyard roads as he walked toward the meeting spot. Across the flat water the skyline of Sacramento was visible, pale red-gold in the early light, the slough calm, grass and reeds yellowed and burned with fall. He rounded the next turn and saw her standing near the big oak she’d been at the first time. Her face had lost weight and left her gaunt looking.
“For years it’s been the only way he’ll let me see my son or talk to him.”
“The only way who will?”
“Alex, my ex-husband. He’s a criminal, and I deliver things for him. Like fly to LA, pick up a stolen car, and drive it to Las Vegas or someplace.”
“Someplace like Weisson’s Auto.”
“How do you know that?”
“By following the sturgeon.” He tried to read her eyes, couldn’t tell if she was lying or not. “Are you saying you help his criminal network and in return he lets you communicate with your son?”
She nodded.
“Where is he now?”
“He moves around the world. He has a big yacht in the Med and a house in Switzerland and lots of different names.”
“Does he ever come here?”
“They say he does.”
“Did you ever go to the police?”
“Yes, and to the State Department. They said they’d work on it through channels and referred my case to the FBI. The FBI came to see me and interviewed me for two days. They’re very interested in my ex. He’s wanted for a lot of different types of crimes. He sells stolen weapons from the Soviet Union and other places. They told me about all the things he does and what I’m supposed to listen for. I speak Russian. I was a Russian; I am a Russian. His guys all know that. They all knew I was married to Alex once and they all knew the deal. They figured I wouldn’t risk screwing it up.”
“Then the FBI showed up.”
“That’s right, and they wanted me to keep on making deliveries and whatever Alex’s people wanted, and they promised they would work with the Russians, find my son and bring him here.”
“Last night you made it sound like the FBI came to you with the idea that you start doing deliveries for Karsov. Now you’re telling me the deal was already in place. Which is the truth?”
“I had already made a deal.”
“And they discovered what was going on and approached you.”
; She nodded.
“And now they’ve told you they can’t get your son back, so in your mind the deal is off, but the problem is they already had the earlier evidence on you. What they’d gathered before they sanctioned your dealing with Karsov.”
She nodded again.
“They don’t usually back out of deals.”
“They backed out of this one. For a long time they said they were looking for him and when I first showed the emails I sent to him and the ones I got back, they were sure they would find him. But they didn’t and after the first year they said the emails were bounced around the world and they didn’t even know if he was in Ukraine. They thought he might be in Switzerland. They kept making me promises, but I could tell they weren’t trying very hard anymore. They said they weren’t sure they’d be able to get him. When they said they probably wouldn’t be able to and I was still lucky because they could have arrested me instead of making a deal, I guess something snapped in me. That’s when I decided I was done acting like a criminal. I decided to fake the abduction so the FBI would think something had happened to me. They knew I’d gotten involved with Fish and Game because Alex’s guys wanted me to. Then I got the idea it was the way I could fool everybody and disappear.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because it didn’t work out like I hoped. I didn’t fool anybody.”
“You fooled me. You had me racing to that fishing access. I would have gone a long time looking for you.” She reached and touched him.
“They’re going to make the sturgeon business work, so they’re learning all about Fish and Game. They want to find out where the wardens live.”
“We’re not talking about the FBI anymore.”
“No, we’re talking about Alex’s people, and the FBI knows who they are. I gave them the names, and I know they already knew some of them. But once Alex’s guys know where you live, they’ll come to you just like they do with a banker they want a loan from in Sacramento. They’ll watch your wife or your kids and then one day one of them will call you and you won’t know them but they’ll offer to pick up your kids when they get out of school, and they’ll tell you what time, where they get out, and what school. Then it’s your choice, either you let them fish for sturgeon or maybe they’ll pick up your kids and the next phone call will be to let you know you can still have your kids back. With the banker all he had to do was approve a loan. I know it doesn’t sound real, but it is, and they’re very patient. They want to know who they’re up against, and that’s why I called to meet with the SOU. They told me to meet with you and find out who you are. The FBI should have told you all this.”
“You told me last night that you called because you cared so much.”
“That’s because I was afraid you wouldn’t show up.”
“What do you think I can do for you?”
“They’re going to try to put me in prison because I stopped helping them and I’m still doing what Alex’s guys tell me to do. I just delivered a stolen car. The FBI probably knows, and they warned me if I ever stopped working with them I’d end up going to prison for all the things I’ve done for Alex. But I’m not working with the FBI anymore because I think Alex’s guys are suspicious of me. They must have found out something.”
Marquez started to answer, then turned as he heard engine noise. He saw a blacked-out Suburban coming toward them on the slough road and another down in the vineyard.
“Oh, no, here they come,” she said. “Please don’t stop me.”
She ran across the road and down the slough bank. But where could she go? Without slowing she dove into the water and swam to the other side of the slough, had climbed up the bank before the first Suburban reached him. The agents drew their guns as they came out of the Suburban. Two ran past Marquez, two others ordered him down. He saw the second Suburban down in the vineyard slowing to a stop as he dropped to his knees.
“Face down, arms out, asshole! Where is she!”
Marquez was belly down on the road, face pressed to the soft soil as his gun was stripped off him, a knee on his spine as cuffs clicked into place. An agent leaned over him.
“You’re done, pal. You just fucked up big time.”
35
The cuffs came off after the agent in the passenger seat talked with Ehrmann. But not before they’d driven hard for a little iron bridge over the slough, trying to cut her off, trying to figure out where she went. They hammered him with questions about where she’d gone. The agent sitting in the passenger seat turned to face him.
“You’re not doing yourself any favors,” he said. “You’re only getting in deeper.”
“Drop me here. I’ll walk back to my truck.”
“Where’s she headed?”
“Hand me my phone and gun.”
“You’ll get everything back real soon. Whether you’re going to need your badge and gun when this is over, that’s a different question.”
One of the agents handed him back his gun, phone, and badge, then asked him not to make any calls. The Suburban bounced hard in a rut. They drove too fast for the slough road, and Marquez knew the map showed a way to cross up ahead, but there wasn’t one really.
Still, unless Anna had it very well planned she’d never escape on a flat levee island. Row after row of bare vines and no place to hide. He rubbed his wrists, wiped the dirt off his face, saw one of the agents smile.
“Why were you meeting her?”
Marquez debated talking to them at all, waiting for Ehrmann instead.
“She called with information for me on sturgeon poachers.”
“So you sneaked out to a slough to meet her.”
“It was a place we both knew.”
“Sounds like you know her pretty well.”
Marquez didn’t bother with that. He stared through the window and listened to the radio chatter. They’d begun to worry she had an exit plan and had chosen this slough for a reason. The other agents had chased down the wrong vehicle, and he heard the frustration, one of them demanding over the radio, “Tell that Gamer his ass is fried if he doesn’t come up with answers fast about where she is.”
The agent in the passenger seat turned to Marquez, asked, “Where do you think she went?”
“I don’t know but she can’t be far away. Get a helicopter, the island is flat. Why do you need her so badly?”
He got handed off to another agent and driven into the Sacramento Field Office. Then he was informed that Ehrmann was on his way but that there were questions for him that would start now, and they led him to a room where three agents were waiting. Two men and a woman, the woman with black glossy hair and large eyes that bulged slightly, a way of cocking her head that made him think of a crow. A young agent who was probably undercover with the FBI, or maybe their Operation Russian Ballet was a joint operation with other agencies. He looked like he could be ATF, not quite cleaned up enough for the Bureau. The third agent was older, balding, probably a contemporary of Ehrmann, and didn’t look concerned, didn’t look like he’d made up his mind about any of this yet. He sat quietly, arms folded while the other two picked at Marquez.
“When did she call you?” the younger officer asked.
“Very early this morning.”
“Exactly what time?”
“4:10.”
“You were aware she was under surveillance.”
“Yeah, I was aware you picked her up when we left her at the airport. We found her for you and handed her off in Seattle, and I figured you might show up this morning.”
“Then why did you arrange a meeting with her?”
“She said she had information on sturgeon poachers, and I knew she was in trouble and thought it might be the only way to get the information.”
“What information did she give you?”
“She told me the FBI had reneged on a promise to her and she wanted to escape the situation. She said the deal was her son would be brought to America and in return she’d act as an informant for you until you
busted her ex-husband. According to her, a promise got made and broken by the Bureau. We didn’t get much farther than that.”
He took a harder look at the young officer and decided he had to be undercover. No names had been given, none of the three had introduced themselves. They were acting tough but looked worried. Whatever they had going on they were vulnerable to Anna, and he gathered they thought now they should have picked her up in Seattle rather than continue to follow her. Possibly worried she was angry enough to try to get even or double-cross them.
“Why did you meet her?”
“I already answered that. If you can’t come up with new questions then let me ask some. Anna was a confidential informant for us, and we still have an operation under way against sturgeon poachers. I drove out to the delta to meet her today because she disappeared one night and I haven’t talked to her since. I knew the Bureau connected to organized crime through her ex-husband and knew from Ehrmann you’ve been trailing her, but I didn’t know until today you had a deal with her. Was she telling the truth? Did you have a deal? Was she working as an informant for the FBI?”
“You’ve got some balls on you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Peres, and my vote is we lock you up until we get the truth.”
The woman cut in, cut them off, “You were told explicitly, no contact whatsoever, stay away, go home. Your scoutmaster was told the same thing.”
“My scoutmaster?”
“Your Chief of Patrol, whatever. I can’t keep up with these state agencies. Give us word for word your conversation with Ms. Burdovsky.”
“I’ve already given it to you.”
Another call would go today, of course, to Fish and Game headquarters, and the language would get a lot rougher.
“Do it again.”
“She said she had information for me, and I took a chance she might help us. We’ve been looking at a Nikolai Ludovna, Don August, Abe Raburn, and Richie Crey. Do any of those names mean anything to you?”
