Edge (40 page)

“
A PUMPKIN BOMB,
Corte. You
do
have a sense of humor. Despite what everybody says.” Freddy kicked at a piece of slimy vegetable. “You just express it different than most people.”

There were two FBI cars in the underpass, bracketing Zagaev's yellow-and-orange-smeared vehicle, the windshield messy but intact; the folks in Munich make a solid machine.

Since a traditional takedown wasn't an option—because Zagaev could warn Loving—I'd decided to stop him myself as he cruised under the overpass I was parked near. I'd bought a ripe pumpkin from the produce stand beside the road and, when Zagaev sped underneath me, I dropped it into the middle of his windshield. I then slid down the incline, gun drawn, and got him out of the car. He was stunned but unhurt. A fast check of the phone revealed he'd placed no calls or sent any texts in the past five minutes.

I was pretty sure that neither Loving nor the partner would be present, but not positive, so I asked Freddy, “Your people notice anybody peel off when he didn't make the turn on the tollway?”

“‘Peel.' That's funny. Like with fruits and vegetables. But I don't suppose you meant it that way.”

I lifted an impatient eyebrow.

“No. He was alone.”

In a faintly accented voice, Zagaev muttered, “Who are you? Why you did this to me? Look at my car! It's ruined.”

I wasn't interested in his complaints. I was sore from my jog along the shoulder of the road with my ripe, twenty-five-pound projectile.

Another agent had gone through the BMW's trunk and had assessed the arms haul. He reported, “Nothing spectacular. M-four rip-offs from Russia, with magical disappearing serial numbers. And a couple of Beretta nine mils,
with
numbers. They're stolen, surprise, surprise. Lot of bullets. Nothing that goes bang in the night.” He transferred the lot of it into the trunk of Freddy's car.

“I want my lawyer.”

Ignoring him still, I said to Freddy, “What's around here for a chat?”

The Washington, D.C., area is home to dozens of police and national security organizations, some as public and visible as the CIA, some of them sort of anonymous, like ours, others so anonymous they don't exist. Like Williams's. But one thing they all have in common: They need facilities—buildings to operate from, just like insurance companies or computer software start-ups. Many of even the most secret take space in high- and low-rises in and around Tysons, where we were now. It's plenty overbuilt—so the general service managers can get good bargains. Saving us taxpayer dollars.

Besides the area's got Clyde's and Starbucks and
Arigato sushi; even spies need to eat franchise food like the rest of us.

Freddy thought for a moment and turned around, nodding at a boring-looking white office building on the other side of the tollway, only two hundred yards away.

“That's convenient,” I said. “You have a hood?”

The agent produced one.

“No, no!” Zagaev blustered. “You can't do that. I'm a citizen.”

I pulled the hood over his head and guided him to the backseat of Freddy's car, mindful of his head. Another agent slipped in beside him and asked, “Can you breathe?”

“You fucker!” he shouted. “Motherfucker. You can't do this. I will see my lawyer now.”

I turned to Freddy. “He can breathe.”

A half hour later I was through security at the building that Freddy had indicated. It was, as it turned out, one of the more public federal organizations. Because of which, the FBI agents explained, Zagaev had been taken through the back.

I went downstairs and met a slim woman of around forty, short dark hair. Sharp eyes. She was wearing a black suit and had a heavy bag slung over her shoulder. She worked for our organization and helped us out in what I'd call unusual situations, like this one. Her name was Roberta Santoro, though she was known around the office simply as Bert.

I greeted her. She was characteristically silent. I asked, “Ready?”

A nod.

We went into a conference room and found
Aslan Zagaev sitting in a chair, wrists shackled behind him. A video camera on a tripod was focused on him. The red light glowed. He looked up at us indignantly. “You could have killed me!”

“It was a pumpkin,” I pointed out. “It wouldn't've killed you.”

“Yes, it could have. It could have come through the windshield and killed me.” He snapped, “Why do I not have a lawyer?”

Bert walked to the end of the table and sat. Her hands rested in her lap and her face was passive. I didn't say anything about her to Zagaev, nor did she proffer any ID. He looked at her once then back to me. Snuck a glance again and told me, “You have no right to do this. I know how those guns got there. You planted them.”

In game theory your opponent's personality is irrelevant. There's even a type of game in which it's understood you can substitute any human being for the other player. But for me, when playing a board game, seeing the person sitting across from me is everything. Sometimes on my lunch hours or after work I'll go to my gaming club in Old Town, and if I'm not in top form I'll just sit and watch others play. I study mannerisms, their eyes, how they hold their cards or roll the die or move their markers or chess pieces. I'm not trying to spot tells—those are either obvious, in unskilled players, or nonexistent, among the talented—but I watch to see how players act and react, what they enjoy and what they dislike.

I watch for responses to victory and to defeat.

I watch for trembling hands.

Now, I regarded my opponent carefully, as if we
were sitting across from each other over a chessboard. Zagaev had a round head, a double chin that his beard obscured pretty well and bristly hair that couldn't decide to be gray or less gray. His age, duBois had reported, was only forty-three. His head was large, his pallor anemic. He nervously gripped and ungripped his hands every few seconds. I knew this only because I heard the tinkle of cuffs behind his back. He wore a thick gold chain around his neck and an amulet on which was an unlikely icon. I was pretty sure it was Tsar Alexander II, who I knew from my studies was a moderate reformer—by absolute-ruler standards—in mid-nineteenth-century Russia. Still, it was curious that a Chechnyan would choose this particular image.

Zagaev's clothes were expensive, more than I could afford, more than I wanted to. His suit was cut from vibrant blue silk, the color of the sky in a child's fantasy book. His snakeskin shoes glittered in the jarring overhead light. His sweat was repulsive; I could smell body odor and onions from across the table.

I leaned forward. I am not large, that's true. But I've learned something interesting in my years as a shepherd. People tend to fear you more if you're not physically imposing. Perhaps they're thinking that the damage I can do to their lives is worse than that of somebody with a lead pipe. Zagaev, who outweighed me by fifty pounds, now eased back.

“I need to know who you're working with.”

“I'm not a bad person.” Zagaev looked up at me with imploring eyes. Claims of ethical purity are
a common strategy in games like this. But they're paper, forever losing to scissors.

“That doesn't enter into our discussion. Who are you working with?”

He then grew angry and the softer expression of a moment ago vanished. “There is no one! No conspiracy, no airplane hijackers, no subway riders with backpacks . . .”

I glanced toward Bert. Not a blink of response.

Zagaev noticed, discomfited. He'd be wondering who she was.

I continued, “We know one person you're working with. You were speaking to him on one of your employees' relative's phones not long ago.”

His face filled with disgust. He muttered some words to himself. “It was not me! An impersonator. You people do this all the time.”

Ignoring the tired denials, I said, “Well, Aslan, we have to assume you're working with a cell and that it's a threat to our national security. Given your misstep six years ago—your relation with the Pakistani couple.”

“Murdered by you! I wasn't guilty of anything. I confessed only so I wouldn't be hounded. Or murdered myself.”

I continued calmly, “We need to know who else is involved.”

“Involved in what?”

I continued, “Understand me, Aslan, I'm not an interrogator. I'm just asking you the questions that the interrogators will ask. I'm not trying to trick you. It's not a strategy. I'm explaining to you.”

“That in itself could be a strategy,” he offered with an oily smile.

“Your life as you've lived it is over. We can make the case against you. The guns, the connection with Henry Loving, the fact you want to extract information from Joanne Kessler.”

The smile faded some, hearing what I knew.

Bert continued to watch, passively.

Zagaev's eyes slipped to her and back. “Who is your friend?” he asked me. “Why doesn't she say anything?”

“Who are you working with?”

“I
work
in my carpet stores and in my restaurant. Why are you persecuting me? You plant guns in my trunk, you try to kill me with that projectile. You will be in very bad trouble over this. I have a right to a lawyer.”

“We have you on tape.”

“Fake, as I was saying. I'm bored with this now. You are very tedious, sir.”

I sighed.

I looked toward Bert. She lifted her index finger, ever so slightly.

Grimacing, I paused then nodded.

I pushed back and stood.

Bert glanced toward the camera.

I stepped forward and shut it off, unplugged and wound up the cord and started for the door, with the camera under my arm.

Zagaev said nothing but his eyes widened. He'd be wondering why I was taking the camera with me. What did I not want preserved for posterity?

As I pulled the door open, Bert rose and circled behind Zagaev. She drew the blinds over the one-way mirror. She looked at Zagaev's shackled hands, then his lap. Her face revealed some satisfaction.
Then she sat beside him and extracted from her jacket pocket a vinyl box about the size of a paperback book. It was bright red, as if warning that the contents were very dangerous.

As she drew the zipper open loudly, Zagaev gasped.

I stepped outside, letting the door swing shut behind me.

“
WAIT!” THE PRISONER
cried.

His face had gone ruddy. “Please, you must be patient! Have a little patience! This is all very disorienting to me. One moment I'm driving along and the next, bang, here I am, my life threatened. You can understand that. Surely you can understand!”

I turned just before the door closed. I slipped my foot into the jamb, stopping it. I looked back. Zagaev stared at the red box.

Bert regarded me, her face completely impassive.

“You're stalling,” I said to Zagaev.

“No, no! I will not waste your time.” His face collapsed. “Please . . .”

I stepped back into the room, left the camera beside the door and leaned across the table. “If you help us out, I'm in a position to make sure that no one troubles your family, other than to interview them, provided none of them has committed any crimes.”

“No, no, my family is innocent.”

“You won't have to worry about reprisals against them. I can arrange for them to be relocated. I'll protect you too through trial and, if you fully cooperate, I'll recommend to the FBI and the prosecu
tor that they take that into account in charging and sentencing.”

“Can you protect my family,” he whispered, “from Henry Loving?”

“Yes,” I said firmly. “I'll protect you from him too.”

A long moment of debate. I looked at Zagaev's amulet, Alexander II with his impressive mustache. Though arguably the most liberal of the tsars, the emancipator of the serfs, he was assassinated by revolutionaries.

“All right, yes. All right.” He slumped.

I sat in my original chair and Bert returned to hers.

Our organization didn't torture to get information. Not even water boarding. We made this decision for two reasons. First, it was illegal—this is a country of laws, after all. Second, we'd studied the subject and found it largely inefficient, since processing all the information you got from a tortured prisoner and reassembling it into the truth generally took much longer than using softer methods of interrogation. Even then torture tends to work with only a small number of subjects.

Nor was Bert Santoro our resident grand inquisitor. She was the office manager of our headquarters in Old Town, the woman who reviewed expense accounts and budgets and ordered furniture and computers. She had nothing to do with operations. With four wonderful kids and a great husband, Bert was like any one of thousands of government workers in the D.C. area. But she had a cold beauty that made her perfect to play the steely operative role, someone who enjoyed pulling out fingernails
or using electrodes to extract information from my interogatees.

Zagaev whispered to me, “Who is she?” He turned to her. “Why don't you say anything?”

Bert, probably thinking about something like my overdue expense account, silenced him with a look.

I said, “Aslan?”

With a last glance at the red vinyl case, which I knew happened to contain only makeup, he sighed and I heard chain tinkle as he lowered his shoulders and hands. “Naturally you thought I was part of some plot, some terrible plan to bring down the infidels. What nonsense! No, no, my plan was about business. You see how much of an American I have become? That's what I care about. The all-powerful dollar.”

He seemed concerned that my notebook was closed. “Please, this is my story. Please, you can write it down.”

Every syllable was, of course, being recorded by a hidden video and audio system—the Sony video by the door was more of a dramatic prop. Still, I thought it best not to remind him he was being taped surreptitiously and so I opened my notebook.