Minotaur (2 page)

4.

T
he small dining room turned out to be, surprisingly, quite small. It was no bigger than the kitchen where Chapel normally ate back at his apartment in Virginia. Apparently the movies had lied to him, and rich ­couples didn’t eat at opposite ends of a table long enough to double as a shuffleboard court.

They sat down to a salad of crisp greens, matched with a white wine that Chapel thought smelled a little like creosote. He smiled when Fiona asked him if it was to his taste—­he must have winced to get her to ask a question like that. He very much wanted to ask Angel if it was drugged or poisoned but there was no way for her to know—­as much as he thought his guardian angel was omniscient, she could really only hear what he heard. The hands-­free unit he wore didn’t even have a camera onboard. It was designed to be discreet, to look more like a hearing aid than a telephone accessory. Anything else would have been rude to wear to dinner.

After the salad Favorov’s children came in to say hello. Angel guided Chapel through the delicate matter of greeting the children—­two boys, Daniel and Ryan, respectively aged ten and seven. The boys were politely introduced and Daniel came forward to shake Chapel’s hand. Ryan stayed close to his mother, even hiding his face in her skirts when Chapel tried to talk to him.

Chapel looked up at Fiona and they shared a smile. “Do you have any children, Jim?” she asked.

“No, no,” he said. “I guess I never had time.”

“You should find it. These two mean the world to me. I never really understood what it meant to love someone until I met Daniel for the first time.”

Favorov had no comment on that. Daniel just rolled his eyes, which made Chapel smile all the broader.

The children were sent off to their room to get ready for bed before the salad course was finished.

The second course—­Chapel would have called it an appetizer—­proved to be slices of duck in a fruit sauce. Chapel had never had duck before and found he actually liked it. Like a lighter cut of beef, he thought. “This is really delicious.”

Fiona dabbed at her smile with her napkin.

“Is she covering her mouth?” Angel asked. “I bet she is. It would be unseemly for her to react too much to a compliment like that. Especially since she didn’t cook your food herself.”

Not for the first time Chapel wished he could speak back to Angel. But his hosts would wonder who he was talking to, and he wanted to preserve the illusion he was here alone.

Before the main course the servants brought out a tureen of soup, a clear consommé. Chapel stared at the bowl placed in front of him as if it was full of snapping alligators.

“You’re hesitating,” Angel said. “I know we talked about this before. It’s going to be okay. Just don’t slurp.”

Chapel grimaced and picked up what he assumed was his soup spoon. It was bigger than the others. He glanced up and saw Fiona chatting pleasantly with Favorov about the weather.

He lifted a spoonful of soup toward his mouth.

It was important, he’d been told, that he keep the upper hand here. Hollingshead and the Pentagon didn’t really care if he ate his soup properly. They didn’t care if he picked up his dinner roll and threw it at Fiona’s head—­as long as he kept his authority intact. If he slurped his soup, if he came off like a clown, the actual business he’d come for would be much harder. He needed to make Favorov feel like he was talking to a social equal, or at least a man worthy of respect.

He put the spoon in his mouth. Poured the soup onto his tongue rather than sucking at it, just the way Angel had recommended.

She’d forgotten to warn him it might be hot enough to scald him.

Chapel tried desperately not to make a sound. A groan started up in his throat as his tongue lashed about inside his mouth. He grabbed for his napkin and pushed it hard against his lips to make sure he didn’t spew the volcanically hot liquid all over the table.

He couldn’t help but stamp his foot on the floor. The pain in his mouth needed some kind of outlet, and that, it turned out, was what it chose.

Instantly the light conversation on the other side of the table stopped. Every eye in the room—­Fiona’s, Favorov’s, those of the servants—­fastened on him and wouldn’t let go. Fiona started to rise from her chair but he waved her back down.

He forced himself to swallow. The soup seared his throat all the way down and he felt a terrible need to cough. “Hot,” he gasped.

It was enough to make Favorov grin. The man had the grin of a cheetah watching a limping antelope.

Damn.

Chapel threw his napkin down on the table in self-­disgust. He couldn’t believe it. He’d failed already, and the entrée wasn’t even on the table.

Fiona did rise from her chair, despite his protests, and came toward him with a bottle of wine, clearly intent on refilling his glass. Across the table, Favorov put down his fork and knife and folded his arms. He looked like he was watching an especially engrossing play. “I’ll warn the cook not to serve it so hot next time,” he said. “That is, if you ever come back.”

In his ear Angel whispered something he couldn’t make out over the rush of blood in his head. What a screwup—­he’d been given very specific orders and he hadn’t carried them out. There were few things in the world that hurt a good soldier like Chapel more.

“I can send down to the kitchen for something cold, if that would help,” Favorov said. “Maybe a gazpacho. That’s a kind of soup that’s served cold, if you don’t know.”

Chapel felt his face turning red, and not from the heat of the soup.

“Here, please, drink. It will help,” Fiona insisted, handing his wineglass to him. The tarry smell of the wine made Chapel want to turn his head away.

All right. Enough, he decided. There was still one thing he could do, to regain control. He reached inside his jacket. Favorov’s eyes followed his hand as if he expected Chapel to pull out a gun.

But it wasn’t a gun Chapel drew from his pocket. It was the steel casing of a single bullet, a 7.62
×
39 mm round of the kind used in AK-­47 assault rifles around the world. The actual bullet had been fired—­only the casing remained—­but it was still big enough and solid enough to make a
thunk
when he smacked it down on the table.

That shut Favorov’s mouth, at least.

5.

F
avorov stared at the bullet casing for a long while. Then he took a careful sip of his wine and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I sense,” he finally said, “you’re trying to make a point here. But I have no clue what it is.”

Chapel nodded. He hadn’t expected the man to break down and confess everything right away. There was a reason this case had been made airtight. “I didn’t come here tonight to debrief you on things that happened thirty years ago. I came to ask what this was doing in your trash.”

Favorov’s eyes revealed nothing. “The Pentagon is going through my garbage cans now? I wouldn’t have thought that was your job.”

Smiling, Chapel reached into his pocket and took out a handful of additional casings, identical to the first. He spilled them out on the table. One rolled off onto the rug, but he ignored it. “Your garbage man found these. And about five pounds more of them. Hundreds of discharged rounds from an assault rifle. He got suspicious when your garbage clanked. He opened the bag and found these, and did exactly what he was supposed to do—­he called the local police. Now, there’s no crime against throwing away spent rounds, of course, but the police do get nervous when they see evidence that someone has been throwing away this much ammunition from an assault rifle. They called the ATF, who got very nervous.”

“So I own an AK-­47,” Favorov said. “I was teaching my son to shoot.” Favorov shrugged. “All perfectly legal. Yes, I own an assault rifle, but it has been modified so that it cannot fire in full automatic mode. And, anyway, you don’t work for the ATF.”

“No, no, I don’t,” Chapel said. “I never would have heard about this case, actually, if things hadn’t started getting weird after that. You see, the ATF has some very bright scientists who do nothing all day but study bullets and casings. They found that these casings were an almost perfect match for another one they had on file. One that had been used to shoot an FBI agent about six months ago.”

Favorov dropped his napkin on the table. “So now I am a murderer?”

“Of course not. The man who shot the FBI agent was arrested within days of the shooting. Nobody you would know—­a white supremacist out in Idaho.” Chapel waved one hand in the air, dismissing the very idea of a connection between the scumbag killer and the millionaire in front of him.

“Well, good,” Favorov said. “Anyway. This is not exactly a peculiar type of ammunition. The 7.62 by thirty-­nine millimeter is probably the most common type of rifle ammunition in the world. Maybe this murderer and I bought rounds from the same supplier. Who knows?”

“Sure,” Chapel said. “So far, you’re right, there’s no connection. No reason for me to get involved, and certainly no reason for me to be bringing this to you. By the way—­who did you buy these rounds from, if I can ask?”

Favorov gulped down some more wine. Fiona came around behind him and refilled his glass. He didn’t even look at her. “I have a friend, in the city. I can give you his information, he’ll vouch for me.”

“That would be very helpful. Maybe we can put this behind us, once I track down this friend,” Chapel said. He smiled. “Sorry, I know that was kind of dramatic, but there’s a lot of pressure on us to close this case.”

“Oh?”

Chapel nodded. “Yes. And I, for one, will be glad to be done with it. You know, it’s funny, a case like this—­it’s not about running around dodging bullets and fighting bad guys. It’s more like the homework I used to do in school. A lot of reading. I just learned recently about taggants and trace elements in gunpowder. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.”

Favorov shook his head and drank more of his wine.

“It turns out—­and forgive me, but I find this kind of thing fascinating—­it turns out that every batch of gunpowder made, anywhere in the world, is slightly different. A lot of them have what are called taggant chemicals added to them. So that a forensic expert can know where that particular kind of gunpowder was made. For instance, every batch of gunpowder made in the US has taggants added.”

Favorov glanced over at Fiona. Chapel wondered why. He put that thought aside and continued. “The residue of the gunpowder in these casings,” he said, “doesn’t contain any taggants, though. Which is weird. So the ATF looked instead for trace elements. Radioactive isotopes, say, or particles of dust that got into the gunpowder during its manufacture.
That
turned up a match right away. The trace element profile on these casings is very distinctive, and it’s one that the Pentagon knows a lot about. Now maybe you see why I got called in to this case.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Favorov said.

“The trace elements in these casings only come from one gunpowder mill in the entire world.”

Favorov had been trained by the world’s second-­best intelligence apparatus. His face did not shift or change or reveal anything. Chapel had to admit he was impressed. Apparently he was going to have to spell this out.

“The gunpowder in these casings,” Chapel said, picking one up and twirling it in his fingers, “can be traced back to the same mill that used to make gunpowder for the KGB. So could the residue in the bullet that killed the FBI agent. You see why somebody called the Pentagon when they saw that? The KGB. The supposedly defunct Soviet spy ser­vice. They have their own mill specifically so they can make gunpowder containing no taggants. Twenty years ago, that would have made this gunpowder untraceable. But not anymore.”

“I think you should say what you came here to say,” Favorov announced. Both of his hands were on the table, where Chapel could see them. Chapel assumed that was intentional. “Say it, and then I will call my lawyer.”

“The bullets you used to teach your son to shoot—­the bullets the white supremacists fired at the FBI—­come straight from Russia. So did the AK-­47 the killer used, and, I’m pretty sure, the one you taught your son with. I’m accusing you, Mr. Favorov, of smuggling illegal weapons into this country. And I’m pretty sure they were supplied to you by elements in the Russian government. That might constitute an act of war. I am one hundred percent certain that makes you a traitor.”

6.

F
avorov watched Chapel’s face very, very carefully. He took his time before he opened his mouth to reply. “You didn’t come here to arrest me.”

Chapel didn’t reply. Let the traitor sweat for a while, he decided. Let him work it out on his own, if he could.

“No one goes to the trouble of getting invited to dinner just so they can arrest a man,” Favorov said. “You want something from me. You want information.”

Chapel nodded.

“You want names. You want to know my contacts, you want to know where the guns come from, and who I have dealings with.”

Chapel decided to give him a little something. “It’s simpler than that. We need to know if this arrangement you have, this connection, is official or not. If the Russian government is behind this, then we have an international crisis on our hands. If, instead, you got those guns from the Russian mafia, say, or from rogue KGB agents, then it’s just a criminal matter. I need to know whether the State Department or the Justice Department is going to handle this.”

Favorov’s eyes narrowed. “Why should I tell you anything?”

“Because I’m the last chance you have to be honest,” Chapel said, with a sigh. “I need the truth. I need the truth before lawyers and courts and the press get involved. I need to make sure I know exactly what I’m dealing with. Once you lawyer up you have the right to remain silent. Your lawyer will coach you on what to say. I’ll never know the actual facts.”

“So you’re here to make a deal. A deal, I assume, no one else will ever hear about.”

Chapel nodded. “You worked in intelligence. You know about secrecy, and about plausible deniability. The Pentagon can’t be seen negotiating with traitors. But sometimes we have to do it anyway. I need your information and I need to keep it quiet that we have that information. We’re willing to cut you a break in exchange.” Though if it were up to Chapel, this man would be hanged from the Washington Monument. He hated double agents—­and Favorov was something even worse, an actual triple agent. But he knew how to follow orders, and Rupert Hollingshead had been very clear on his orders this time.

Clearly surprised, the Russian licked at his lips with a dry tongue. “You’re going to offer me immunity?”

Chapel shook his head. That was definitely not going to happen. “I’m afraid not. You will be arrested. You will go to jail, or worse. But in exchange for your testimony—­testimony that I can verify—­I can have you arrested as an illegal arms dealer, not as a traitor and a spy. You’ll probably get twenty years in prison, but that’s better than the alternative.”

A dry, sardonic chuckle came out of Favorov’s throat. “If I give you this information, I’ll be killed by the Russians.”

“If you’re found guilty of treason you’ll be executed by the Americans.” Chapel sat back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. “Your choice.”

Favorov started to reply.

Chapel didn’t hear what he was going to say, though. Because just then a sharp burst of pain hit him at the base of his skull and he slumped forward, unable to see anything, unable to think straight.

“Chapel?” Angel called from his earpiece. “Chapel? I’m getting really weird data from your hands-­free unit. Chapel? Are you okay?”

Someone grabbed the hands-­free unit out of his ear. He heard it drop into the tureen of soup with a terrible plopping sound. And then Angel was gone.