Agent X (25 page)

“I think I should at least get a good-night handshake.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

“Come on, Katherine. How about I come in for a cup of coffee?”

“I don’t know, my roommate is a bit of a psychopath.” She whispered, “He’s in the building trades.”

Vail put his hands against the door on either side of her. “Have you two got something going on?” He leaned in and put his cheek against hers.

She nuzzled against the heat of his neck. “It’s complicated.”

“That sounds like a yes. Is he here now?”

“He’s very close by.”

He kissed her gently on the mouth. “How close?”

“Very,
very
close.”

“I say we chance it.”

“Well, that was an expensive dinner,” she said.

“I won’t stay any more than four or five hours.”

“You promise?”

“Certainly no later than spring.”

She turned around and opened the door. “Just coffee, right?”

They were inside and quickly dropped their coats where they stood. She threw herself against him and kissed him almost angrily.

He said, “For some reason I have a sudden taste for Girl Scout cookies, too.” He unzipped her dress, and she stepped out of it, then unbuttoned his shirt. “You’re sure there’s no chance of a handshake.”

She pulled at the end of his belt. “Absolutely not.”

25

The first gray light of morning seeped into the bedroom, but Vail had been awake for almost a half hour, sitting up, watching Kate sleep. Even the darkness couldn’t mask the remarkable balance of her features, which seemed to pulse in the low light. Her hair, though messed by Vail and sleep, had a provocative quality to it. A few strands streaked past her ear, a sheaf above it against the part, rising up and then tracing the contour of her head. More of it fell across her pillow, haloing her perfectly round cheekbones. In a flash he saw his next sculpture: a prone figure, vague, its sex barely discernible until the eye found the hair, displayed exactly like Kate’s was now.

As quietly as possible, he got up, taking his pillow. As he reached the bedroom door, he heard her pick up the telephone and, after pretending to dial, say, “Is this 911? Yes, I’d like to report a hit-and-run.”

“Luke could be here anytime.” He smiled.

She got up and pulled him back into bed. “I don’t care if he knows. I don’t care if anyone knows.”

He threw his pillow next to her. “Actually, I was worried about my reputation.”

Vail heard the door opening quietly and sat up on the couch. He had moved there just minutes before. The sound of keys jingling against one another on a ring told him it was Bursaw.

Bursaw walked into the living room and looked at Vail’s pillow and blanket on the sofa. He shook his head, smiling. “Don’t blame me. That restaurant has always worked for me. It’ll probably take Kate a while to adjust, what with being locked up with all those good-looking women and you not exactly leading-man material.”

“If you think the women in jail are good-looking, it’s no wonder that restaurant always works for you.”

Bursaw held up a paper bag. “See, that’s why I brought you fresh bagels, I know how cranky you get when you haven’t eaten in thirty or forty minutes.”

Kate came out of the bedroom tying her robe. “Hey, Luke.”

“Mmm, mmm, mmm. Now I see why you’re the most wanted woman in D.C.—even before you went over the wall.”

Kate laughed musically. “Somebody needs coffee awfully bad.” She held out her hand for the bag.

“Have you heard anything?” Vail asked him.

“Not a word. I drove by the off-site, and the marshals are still sitting on it.”

“Hopefully Kalix is making some progress—otherwise your sister’ll have to find a new place to live,” Vail said. “I’m going to get cleaned up.”

When Vail stepped out of the shower, he could smell the coffee. And he could hear Kate and Bursaw talking. Occasionally a short burst of her laughter reached him in the bedroom. Unable to make out what they were saying, he sat down on the bed for a while to listen to her laugh.

When he walked into the kitchen, he poured himself a cup of coffee. “You want me to toast a bagel for you, Steve?” she asked.

He tore one in half and said, “Thanks, this is fine.”

“So what do you think John’s chances are today?”

“I think they’re good, but you can’t go by me. I’m frequently wrong because of my overly optimistic attitude.”

“Actually, you’re rarely wrong, precisely because of your cynicism,” Bursaw said. “But I got a feeling this
is
turning around.”

Kate said, “Is there something else we should be doing? You know, in case John strikes out?”

“I guess I can start going through everything again,” Vail said.

She studied his face for a minute. “I don’t need you sitting around here reassuring me that everything is all right. If you want something reviewed, I’ll do it. You and Luke can make better use of your time looking for Sundra. Besides, watching you sit around here all day will drive me crazy.”

“You up for that, Luke?” Vail asked.

“Thanks, Kate. Now I’ll have to put up with him all day.”

Vail took a last swallow of coffee and said to Kate, “Don’t answer the door for anyone. If the phone rings, don’t answer it. If you need anything, call Luke’s cell.”

“Anything specific you want me to look for in the files?”

“Why don’t you take a look at all the moles they gave up that lead to you. There’s something rattling around in one of the subbasements of my brain telling me we’ve missed something. There’s got to be at least one mistake they made. Maybe something else that’ll expose Rellick.”

She walked them to the door. “Boys, don’t forget to say please and thank you, and absolutely no gunfighting.” She pushed them both out the door and locked it.

Once they were in Bursaw’s car, Vail said, “Okay, who’s next on the deleted-file list?”

“Kate seemed a lot less tense this morning. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“If you’re going to use your Vulcan mind meld, this could turn out to be a very long day.”

“Okay, I’ll let it drop, but be advised I have made a mental note that there was no denial.” Bursaw reached over the seat and grabbed his briefcase. “Let’s see.” He flipped through some pages. “How about the El Mejor Car Service?”

“Is that Spanish?”

“In this town it could just be misspelled.”

The address was in a commercial neighborhood. The building was two stories and ran a long way back into the property. There was parking all around the rear, and several of the cars were older limousines. Vail said, “Let’s take a ride through the lot and see if we can figure out what we’re looking at here.”

Bursaw coasted around the building, which was, judging by the high overhead doors, mostly garage in the back half. Vail looked at the cars that were not part of El Mejor’s fleet but more likely belonged to the employees. He pointed out Colombian-flag bumper stickers on two of them. Bursaw said, “You want to pass, maybe come back with some help when you’re off the marshals’ Top Ten list? I think there’s a rule right in the handbook which states that wanted FBI agents should not get into shoot-outs with drug dealers.”

“No, I’m feeling very docile today.”

Bursaw snorted a single syllable of laughter. “Docile? You? I guess you should ‘sleep on the couch’ more often.” He parked against a back wall near a walk-in door.

As they entered, they counted seven men scattered around five vehicles. The hot smell of oil and grinding metal hung in the warm air. Every one of the workers stopped what he was doing and scrutinized the two agents. No one said anything, and as Vail started to slowly unbutton his topcoat, he and Bursaw casually stepped away from one another, minimizing themselves as targets.

“Who’s the boss?” Vail asked. No one answered. “Who’s the boss?” he asked again, a little more impatiently.

Still nobody spoke up. He took a couple of steps toward the closest man, who had the dashboard from a Cadillac next to him on a bench and was working on one end of it.

Suddenly, from behind Vail, a man spoke with a slight Hispanic accent. “I am the owner.”

Vail turned around as Bursaw continued to watch the men. He flashed his credentials. “We’d like to talk to you.”

“Do we have something to talk about?”

“It’s not about what you think it is. It’s about a missing person. But if you send us on our way, others will come back, and it won’t be to talk.”

The owner weighed his options. “I guess I have a couple of minutes.”

The three men walked into an overly ornate office. “What’s your name?” Vail asked.

“Alberto Clark.”

“Americanized?”

“My parents did it when we came here. I was three. I didn’t know the FBI was so interested in genealogy.”

“Actually, we’re more interested in true names.”

Bursaw handed Clark a photo and said, “Her true name is Sundra Boston.”

“And?” Clark asked.

“Know her, seen her, heard of her?”

He handed back the picture. “I don’t know her. Why would you think I did?”

“She’s an FBI employee, and now she’s missing. She was investigating your business.”

“This is a legitimate business. I pay taxes. I am a citizen.”

“This has been a paid public service announcement,” Bursaw said in a sarcastic monotone. “And your employees?”

“I’m not a fool. They are all here legally on work visas.”

Vail said, “And those cars out there, the ones they’re working on. That’s part of your business?”

“Those are their cars. When it’s slow, I let them work on them.”

Bursaw threw his head back and laughed. “I’d like an employment application because you must have the best wages in America. Those guys don’t know three words of English, and they’re all driving luxury cars? The one working on the dashboard was swapping VINs. I expected you to lie to me, but try to keep it at a level that’s not completely insulting. You’re from Colombia. You’re supposed to be dealing cocaine, not stolen cars. Have you no ethnic pride?”

“Alberto, we’re with the FBI, where lies will get you five years apiece,” Vail said. “Now, have you had any contact with the FBI regarding your
business
?”

“No, I swear,” Clark answered, the concern growing in his voice.

“Convince us.”

Clark thought for a moment. “We’ve been operating here freely for three years. We have little concern about the police interrupting our operation. Do you think that if we had done something to a federal agent we would be doing business as usual with the door open so any FBI man could walk in?”

Bursaw and Vail looked at each other and shrugged in agreement that it was a strong argument. “We’re going to push you—temporarily—to the bottom of our very short list. If we don’t come up with something better, we’ll be back,” Vail said.

“I don’t know what else I could do, but if I can help in any way, just call me,” Clark said.

As Vail started toward the door, Bursaw said, “I’ll be right there.”

Five minutes later Bursaw came out of the building and slid in behind the wheel. “What were you doing?” Vail asked. “I’m not going to see you driving a new Cadillac, am I?”

“Actually, I was deputizing my newest informant. We don’t really have anybody working stolen cars, so I thought someone with Alberto’s talent and range of friends was worth a ninety-day audition. I’m sure he knows other Colombians who still believe in the sanctity of their country’s leading export. We do have people working drugs.”

Bursaw’s cell rang. When he saw that it was Kalix, he handed it to Vail. “No one knows where Rellick is,” the deputy assistant director blurted out.

“What happened?” Vail asked.

“Apparently the CIA can be just as inept as the Bureau. One of their polygraphers. They wanted to make sure he’d be available to test Rellick this morning, so they scheduled him yesterday but didn’t say anything about this guy possibly being a double agent. Well, you know how examiners are. They have a whole checklist they give the subject the day before. No excessive drinking, no mood-altering drugs, make sure the wind is out of the southeast at no more than eight knots. The people here are theorizing that Rellick might have gotten spooked and took off.”

“Are they doing anything to find him?” Vail asked.

“They’ve called his home, and there’s no answer. They’re getting a search warrant for his house and bank records. They still don’t want us involved in it officially, so they’re moving at warp speed before the director and Langston come back.”

“Okay, I’m going to let Kate know.”

“I’ll stay with them until we get an answer one way or the other. Keep your fingers crossed.”

26

Bursaw parked the Bureau car in his sister’s guest parking space, and they went up to the apartment. Vail used a key to open the door and yelled inside, “Kate, it’s us!”

She came around the corner wearing an apron, a curious expression on her face. “I thought you’d be longer.” Then she read something positive in Vail’s expression. “You found Sundra?”

“No, not yet.” He told her about Rellick’s vanishing act. “When John called to tell me, he said the CIA was getting search warrants for his bank and house. There’s a good chance that he wouldn’t have confessed to the polygrapher, so this might turn out even better.”

“Except he had time to clear out anything incriminating.”

“You weren’t supposed to figure that out, at least not so quickly. Stay positive—this is moving in our favor.”

“You’re absolutely right,” she said. “Lunch is not going to be ready for a while. You guys want something to drink?” she asked with surprising nonchalance.

“No thanks,” Bursaw said.

“I’m all set,” Vail said. “You’re taking this well.”

In a faked whisper, she said, “Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve got a couple of really good guys looking out for me.”

Bursaw said, “You went and got somebody else?”

After lunch Vail picked up one of the Calculus folders and started rereading it. Ten minutes later he tossed it onto the table in front of him. “That’s it, I can’t read anymore. I’ve been over this stuff so much that I wouldn’t recognize the answer if it were highlighted.”

Bursaw’s phone rang; it was Kalix again. He put it on speaker. “I’m with the group going to Rellick’s house with a search warrant. They pinged his cell phone, and it shows he’s home. I’ll call you—we’re just about to make entry.”

Everyone tried to appear unexcited, as though too much optimism might jinx the outcome. Kate went back to the kitchen, and Bursaw turned on the news. For the next half hour, he listened to the local broadcast. Vail became lost in his thoughts, reexamining everything, looking for another way to prove Kate’s innocence in case Rellick proved to be uncooperative. When nothing came to him, he got up and went into the kitchen. He stepped up behind her and slowly pulled on one of the apron strings. “I think I know what we need.”

She let him get it completely untied before she turned around. Reaching behind her, she retied it. “Yes, Steve, that’s exactly what we don’t need right now.”

“I never even got a real New Year’s kiss.” He put an arm around her waist.

“I kissed you. Which, by the way, triggered my one New Year’s resolution—to only kiss men in tuxedos.”

“I’ve been thinking about canceling my diving trip and going to maître d’ school.”

“You greeting people for tips. That sounds like a shorter career than you had with the FBI.”

Bursaw’s phone rang again. He called in to Vail that it was Kalix. Vail put Kate at arm’s length—“It’s so easy to mock someone else’s dreams”—then walked into the living room and took the phone. “Yes, John.”

“Is everyone there?” Kalix asked.

Vail called Kate in from the kitchen and pushed the Speaker button. “We’re all here.”

“Rellick’s gone. He left his phone here and turned it on as a decoy. That’s the bad news. But up in his attic, there have to be fifty of those banker’s boxes—you know, for storing records. Not only his own, but all kinds of family stuff his parents must have accumulated for decades. Everything—his divorce records, stocks sold twenty years ago. So far they’ve found five or six of them with classified documents in them, all copies he evidently made. So now the CIA will be able to reconstruct exactly what information he turned over to the Russians. They’re most appreciative.”

“Will that be enough to clear Kate?”

“It will be with what they found in one of them. Remember on that thumb drive, the typed list of eight FBI-CIA joint investigations along with their named targets? The one that Kate’s latent was supposed to have been on?”

Vail looked at Kate. “It was in there?”

“They’re going to examine it for prints to see if Rellick’s are on it. It hasn’t been processed before, so the Russians must have copied it and fumed the copy for the flash-drive setup.”

“You’d think Rellick would have destroyed everything, especially that.”

“He probably panicked, and maybe he intends to defect. If so, why bother? Considering where this box was, under all the rest, he may have just forgotten it, and even if he didn’t, it would have taken him some time to find it in all that mess. From the other documents in the box, it looks like it’s a couple of years old, so if he did think about getting rid of it, he probably knew that it would take too long to find.”

Vail said, “That sounds like all good news to me.”

“For us, yes, but for them there’s a new problem. As soon as they discovered he was gone, they unleashed the techs on his work computer. They found a deleted file that he’d cobbled together from a bunch of different files that he shouldn’t have been able to gain access to. They’re thinking maybe the Russians helped him ‘jailbreak’ some of the CIA security measures.”

“What was on it?” Vail asked.

“Dozens of the agency’s European sources. If he’s taking it to the Russians, the likelihood of their being killed is quite high. It would set the Agency back ten years.”

“You said ‘if he’s taking it to the Russians.’ ”

“The last entry in the file was just two days ago. And it was deleted last night after the polygrapher told him about the impending test. So they don’t think he had completed the list yet. But somehow they were able to tell that it was downloaded before it was deleted.”

“Did they check his e-mail?” Vail asked.

“Both at the office and here. He didn’t send it through either of them. I don’t know, maybe he put it onto another thumb drive. As you can imagine, there’s a fairly large amount of panic around here. Right now they’re trying all their super-secret spy stuff to find him. The problem is that he knows how to avoid it,” Kalix said. “Steve, they found one more thing on his computer here. That photo that was sent to the two guys at the house who tried to kill you, through that untraceable CIA phone line—it was on there. The Russians must have had him send it so it wouldn’t come back to anyone.”

“Well, that answers who,” Vail said.

“Anyway, before Kate’s innocence gets lost in all the impending catastrophe, I’m going to go see the United States Attorney. He says he’ll see me as soon as I get there. In the meantime, maybe we can find something else here that will eliminate any doubt that Kate wasn’t part of this.”

“I don’t know how to thank you, John,” she said.

“You’re not clear yet, Kate. As long as Rellick’s on the loose, they are going to need somebody to blame. They’ve got evidence against you, and even though it’s all manufactured, the United States Attorney probably isn’t going to be a fan of yours the way you made a fool out of him when you escaped. But I’ll let you know once I talk to him.”

After Kalix hung up, Vail said, more to himself than the others, “He’s right.”

“Think so?” Bursaw said.

Realizing he’d said it out loud, Vail looked at Kate. “Sorry. It would be better for you if they found Rellick. Much better.”

She thought for a second and then said, “See if this sounds right: Rellick left his cell phone behind at his house, mostly as a decoy. Would he have another one? You know, just for spy business?”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Vail said.

“You have that CIA dead-end number, right?”

“Yes.”

“Since you were last in the Bureau, we’ve developed fairly sophisticated reverse-toll record traces, especially for cell phones, because every call is noted for billing. So we can take a call if we know the date and time and, with a fairly simple computer run, determine the phone it was made from.”

Vail said, “So if Rellick does have another cell and we can identify it through the reverse records, if he’s got it on, we can ping it.”

“And find out where he is,” Bursaw added.

Vail had his pocket notebook out, turning pages. “Here it is.” He started to write it down, then stopped. “But how do we get it done? Technically, you’re still wanted.”

“If you think about it, there aren’t many people at headquarters who know my situation. The worst thing that could happen is that someone could find out I’m here. We really have no choice.” Both men nodded. “Why don’t you guys get out of here, and I’ll make the call. That way if something happens to me, you’ll still be able to look for Rellick.”

“Just remember, if you get locked up again, you’re on your own.”

“Talk about your one-night stands.”

Vail looked over at Bursaw, who had a huge, self-congratulatory smile on his face. “Thanks, Kate. Now I can spend the rest of the day fending off questions from the Special Agent Lust here.”

After eating burgers in the car again, Vail and Bursaw sat parked a half mile from the apartment, where Kate was making calls. “Steve, do you think we’ll actually find out what happened to Sundra?”

“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. We could. Right now I’d guess fifty-fifty.”

“You’re worried about Kate, aren’t you?”

Vail looked at him carefully to make sure this wasn’t a lead-in to a salacious line of questioning. “The way everything’s gone today, I shouldn’t be, but every once in a while I get worried that things won’t work out. That usually happens when I can’t do anything except sit and wait.” He took Bursaw’s phone and dialed Kate. After a number of rings, he hung up. “Does your sister have call-waiting?”

“I think so.”

“I didn’t get the machine, so hopefully Kate was busy on the line.”

Then almost immediately the phone rang, and Vail could see that it was Kate. “Everything okay?” he asked.

“Put me on speaker. . . . It looks like we got Rellick’s second cell. They queried that CIA dead-end number on the date and time you gave me and came up with a phone whose subscriber is William Jackson, with a billing address at that Russian safe house in Denton you tried to burn down. There were a number of calls on it from another cell that comes back to a Vladimir Demeter, same billing address. I’m sure they’re both aliases, one for Rellick and the other is probably Calculus’s, since the two of them were meeting regularly around that time.”

“And you’re having them ping Rellick’s number?” Vail asked.

“They’ve already started, but it’s not on right now. They’ll ping it every ten minutes. Our people at headquarters are going to track it with the Bureau satellite. Where are you?”

“About a half mile from you.”

They heard her other line click in. “Okay, hold on.”

Bursaw said, “You ever think about moving here?”

“You mean because of Kate?”

“We’ve got brick buildings, too.”

“I’m thinking Kate’s a little too well adjusted to handle me full-time.”

“Hey, contrarians need love, too.”

“That’s true, they do, but never each other.”

“In philosophy that would constitute a paradox. Just remember, a paradox, while seemingly illogical, is in fact true.”

“Go ahead, caller, you’re on the line with the love doctor.”

“Deflection is a sure sign of hitting a nerve.”

“Yeah, the auditory nerve.”

They heard Kate click back. “They’ve got him. He’s not far away. The GW Memorial, heading north just below the Arlington Memorial Bridge.”

Bursaw put the car in gear. “We’re on our way.”

It was starting to grow dark, and the evening traffic was getting heavier. Just as Bursaw’s car reached the on-ramp for the GW Memorial Parkway, his phone rang again. Kate said, “He’s pulled off the GW just after the Roosevelt Bridge. The only thing there is the parking area for Roosevelt Park.”

Vail said, “I told you the Russians love parks. He may be meeting his handler there. If so, they’re probably going to try to get him out.”

“I’ll have them keep tracking him in case he starts moving. I’ll call you back in five.”

Bursaw pulled into the lot. There was only one car, a midsize Chevrolet. It was freshly washed, and there was a car-rental sticker on its bumper. Both men drew their guns and, leaving their doors open should they need cover to retreat to, approached the car from opposite sides. It was empty.

Bursaw said, “He must have crossed the footbridge into the park. There’s nowhere else to go.”

“Is there another way out of there?”

“It’s an island. The footbridge is the only way on or off, unless you want to swim across a freezing Potomac.”

“How many flashlights do you have?”

“Just one.”

“Okay, you lock up the car and I’ll make sure he can’t drive out of here.”

As Bursaw went to the trunk to get the light, he watched Vail pull out his lockback knife and slash all four tires of the rental. Then he took out his phone and turned it on. “Put yours on vibrate,” he told Bursaw. “We’re going to have to split up. When we get across the bridge, you go north and I’ll take south. If you spot him, call me and we can pin him in.”

Vail then called Kate. “I’ve turned my phone on. It looks like Rellick’s in the park. Luke and I are going to split up. Just keep on Rellick’s phone.” He hung up. “Ready?” he asked Bursaw.