Chapter 18
Mark Richards, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Boston FBI office, got his way.
Cap was the only one who escaped the invitation for a helicopter ride back to Boston.
The only concession the governor managed for Dane and Shana was that the debriefing would take place at David Young’s office, HQ for the Scotland Yard Exchange Program in Boston. It was something.
Dane would need the director’s backup to keep the personal animosity from overcoming Special Agent Richards’s professionalism. He was sure David would keep the FBI’s focus on the big picture. They had got their man—alive, thanks to Shana.
Shana would be okay. No black marks against her.
Not only had she got her man alive, but lucky for her, she was seen as Dane’s sidekick and not responsible for the decision to go rogue and miss their date with the feds.
Dane didn’t disabuse the ASAC of his notion of Shana as an innocent bystander.
The fact that this view rankled Shana to no end almost made the entire exercise entertaining.
Dane smiled as they all got off the elevator and paraded into David’s office.
David stood behind his desk and returned the phone to its place in the solid old-fashioned cradle.
He said, “You’ll be pleased to hear that the prisoners are on their way to being locked up in the location specified. The remaining bodies are in the Suffolk County morgue.”
“No doubt about their cause of death, is there?” Mark Richards said with a sideways glance at Dane.
“What about Paulette?” Shana asked David without looking at the ASAC.
“She is in custody. On her way here.” David smiled.
That was the one thing the governor managed to do.
He had a woman from the local DSS office pick the baby up from Cap’s office and take her on the ferry back to Boston.
He’d arranged for Dane and Shana to return her to her mother.
There was too much sensitivity around whose baby she was and her various relatives to let the FBI get involved.
Dane suspected the governor’s wife Madeline may have even gotten involved in the negotiations with Mark Richards’s boss, the SAC.
That was yet another reason for Mark’s animosity, Dane figured.
He smiled, though his gut tightened at the prospect of taking the baby home.
It should be a happy occasion, the proverbial happy ending, but the amount of anxiety induced by the thought had him in knots.
It reminded him that it wasn’t over yet.
The ASAC turned to Dane and said, “What do you have for me on Anatoly Ivanov?”
“Nothing. He’s not involved in any way.”
“How can you say—”
David intervened, “We’ve already discussed this, Mark. The baby farm enterprise at the Garage Club was Spartak Ivanov’s very own sideline. From what I understand, your men—along with a few of mine—have already rounded up several suspects and will be able to confirm this shortly.”
“What about the missing woman?” Shana addressed David, once again ignoring the ASAC.
“I am happy to report that we managed to convince one of the men from the club to give us the young lady’s whereabouts with the promise of potential leniency.”
“Potential leniency?” Dane asked.
“Yes. We promised him nothing,” David confirmed.
Shaking his head in disapproval and frowning, Richards said, “Your manner of operating is going to make it difficult for—”
“No need to worry, Mark,” David cut him off. “I don’t think word is going to spread too far too fast in this case.”
“About the baby,” Richards said, “I want to send one of my agents with you—”
“You’re already getting more than your share of credit for all this. You don’t need to be involved with state social services matters,” Dane said.
He felt the razor edge of tightness return to his muscles, most notably his fists, as they bunched. Shooting men up didn’t relieve the tension, didn’t satisfy like a good punch in the mouth did. He imagined punching Mark Richards in the mouth would be very satisfying.
David eyed him with a twinkle and he could swear the man read his mind—probably shared his face-punching ambition. But David was more of a diplomat than Dane bothered to be, so he let David have the floor back.
David said, “I understand you have a press conference scheduled for this morning when you bring Spartak Ivanov in for arraignment in Federal Court. I imagine you may want to focus your efforts there and on wrapping up all the myriad charges you’ll be bringing against him and his associates.”
“I imagine so,” Richards said. “But what assurance do I have—does the FBI have—that a kidnapping victim—and you know kidnapping is FBI jurisdiction—has been returned to—”
“This was not a goddamned kidnapping,” Dane said, lifting from his chair before he felt Shana’s hand gripping his arm and pulling him back.
“How do—”
Shana cut him off this time. “The baby was in my care at all times. Father Donahue and then the baby’s mother Lara Bennett entrusted her care to me. You can speak to them—but I know you already have—so you already know. There was never any report of kidnapping. Ever. By anyone.”
Shana paused and stared him down. Dane cheered her on in the inside, still tense in her grip, but steady. Then with a glare at Richards she said, “Why are you insisting on harassing us, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Richards? I’d like to know before I report—”
“I’m not goddamned harassing you. You represented to us you were bringing the baby here to this office, in front of the two very people you just mentioned as witnesses, and then you refused to do so and refused to report your whereabouts. You bet your off-the-books rogue-ass I could make a case—”
“No one will be making any cases,” David said. He put up his hands. He looked at Richards and said, “This has been discussed with your boss.” That was it. That was all David Young said as he stared the man down until even Dane could see the man’s outrage had been tamed to useless resentment.
“I think that about covers it.” Dane stood. Shana stood a beat later, next to him. Dave pushed his chair back and nodded.
“I think you’re right.”
“That’s it? That’s—” Richards stood too. The problem was he was between Dane and the door.
“That’s it,” Dane said and stepped forward. He was aware of Shana following right behind him.
David said to Richards, “Tell your boss I said hello. And enjoy your press conference.”
Richards looked at David and then at Dane, finally understanding that Richards was getting all the credit.
David wouldn’t be at the press conference.
Dane and Shana certainly wouldn’t be there.
Cap should be there, but he wouldn’t be.
He wasn’t sure if the governor would show up, but Dane thought it would be a grand idea to send Madeline.
She’d keep it real. Dane smiled at Assistant Special Agent in Charge Richards and stepped past him.
The man stepped out of his way and he and Shana made their exit.
At the door he turned and said to David, “You owe me a Scotch.”
“Next time you’re in town.”
They left the office and he followed Shana to a conference room. She was in more of a hurry than he was now and that could mean only one thing.
“You get a text?”
“Yes. They’re waiting for us.”
His muscles cinched so that it was an effort to take a deep breath, but he forced it.
The social worker was waiting for them with Paulette.
The deal the governor had made was to have Shana turn her over to Father Donahue.
He was their client and he was the one who turned Paulette over to them.
He and Shana were to oversee the return of the baby to her mother.
On the word of the governor, the social services department was respecting the church and the privacy of the mother and Father Donahue—and they didn’t know half the story.
They had no idea the priest was the son of Anatoly Ivanov, ex-KGB and former officer in the Russian SVR--Foreign Intelligence Service.
Now Anatoly was a Russian-American entrepreneur of dubious business ventures, one of the very men they were after.
The feds also had no idea that the young mother, Lara Bennett, was the granddaughter of Anatoly Ivanov.
Peter, David, Dane and Shana all thought it best to keep it that way.
Shana opened the door. There sat a woman holding a baby. The baby girl, dressed in her pink outfit—the one he and Shana had bought for her—turned and looked at them with her blue eyes and smiled a big smile, waving her chubby hands.
Dane’s heart wrenched sideways and a dull stabbing pain took hold of his chest. She was a gorgeous, happy baby, exactly as Delilah had been.
Shana left his side and rushed forward to scoop her from the social worker’s arms. Dane took up the two bags and the carrier.
He didn’t want to touch Paulette, didn’t want to hold her or kiss the top of her soft curly hair.
He especially did not want to smell that baby scent.
That baby scent was the last memory he had from Delilah the last time he saw her.
She was dead and bloody and he bent down and closed her sweet eyes and as he did he breathed in the scent, her baby soft smell.
It was still there, uncorrupted by the blood or the gunpowder in that brief moment.
He caught the last whiff of her life. And then it was gone.
Overpowered by all the other smells of evil and death.
“Dane?” Shana said. “Are you coming?” She was at the door with the baby, Paulette, alive and waiting. Dane got himself back to the here and now and forced himself forward.
*****
Once they got into the taxi, Shana situated Paulette in her carrier-car seat, and gave the driver the address for the church. Then Dane pulled her close into the seat next to him and wrapped her in his arms.
“I’ve been wanting to hold you all day.”
“You have?” She looked skeptical to him in spite of his arms around her.
“You were perfect today. In every way.”