Chapter 9 #2
Lucas shook his head. “I never even thought of it. Years ago, a Russian intelligence officer came here to Minnesota. We were investigating a murder case in Duluth, a Russian sailor whose father was big in the Russian oil industry. That turned out to involve an old spy ring that had been embedded there to help Russian agents get in and out of the country. Nobody on our side—you guys—cared much about the spy ring, they’d been inactive for decades. Most of them had died of old age.”
He continued: “But the Russians were upset about the guy who’d been killed—his father was one of these oligarch guys, and they sent a woman here to observe our investigation. She turned out to be a member of one of their investigative services. I forget which one, it was all initials.”
The man: “GRU? SVR? FSB?”
“I think it might have been the ‘s’ one,” Lucas said.
The woman said, “This is something. When was the last time she was in touch with you?”
“Like, a couple weeks after the investigation ended. She sent me and my wife a letter thanking us. When she was on her way back to Russia, we let her stay in our guest room over in Saint Paul.”
The woman: “So you were close?”
“No…just an overnight thing, on the way to the airport.”
“What was her name?”
“Nadya Kalin. Uh, Nadezhda Kalin. When I said her first name, she said it sounds like I sneezed.”
Neither of them smiled, and the man asked, “When was this, exactly?”
“Let me see,” Lucas said. He tipped his head back and thought about it. “Okay, my son was a baby, and Weather wasn’t pregnant yet with our second kid, our daughter, so…mmm…fourteen years ago?”
“You haven’t been in touch since the letter?”
“Nope. Not a word. We did bust the spy ring. Not that anyone seemed to care.”
The woman said, “I’m sure somebody cared.”
“The FBI was involved, probably you guys, actually, your specific office,” Lucas said. “Like I said, nobody seemed to care. I was talking to a guy, let me see…”
“What?”
“I’m trying to remember his name…Andy something. Lemon? No. That’s not it.”
The man said, “Harmon? Andy Harmon?”
Lucas pointed a finger at him: “Yeah, that’s him. Kind of a fleshy blond guy? He was all over it.” The two agents looked at each other. Lucas asked, “Is he a big shot or something?”
“He’s more like a middle-sized shot,” the man said. “He’s in our office. We’ll talk to him about your involvement. And his involvement.”
“That’ll work,” Lucas said. “Though, and don’t tell him this, I thought he was a dipshit.”
A smile flickered across the woman’s face, and she said, “We won’t tell him.”
They worked him for a while longer, on the Kalin woman, and the investigation that ended with the busting of the spy ring. When that wound down, the male interrogator said, “We’ll be reviewing what you told us, Marshal. We’ll talk to Harmon.”
“You gonna leave me on the case?”
“For the time being, anyway,” the woman said.
“We’ve looked into various connections involving the leaked information about Sokolov’s location and the timing of the moves, and can’t see how you were in a position to leak much.
If you could help Mr. Sherwood clear this problem, the leak, we’d much appreciate it.
If it turns out you are the leak, that you’re lying to us, you can expect to spend many years in a federal prison. ”
“Thanks for that,” Lucas said.
· · ·
Sherwood was waiting in the hall. “All good?”
“Not really.”
“What happened?”
Lucas told him about the Russian agent he’d worked with, Nadya Kalin, and the spy ring investigation, and Sherwood said, “I gotta get this back to my boss. You’re sure you’re not the leak?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Any more ideas?”
“I’ve got a question,” Lucas said, as they walked down an empty, echoing corridor toward the elevators. “How many teams like this do you think the Russians have in the States?”
“I’d be surprised if they had two,” Sherwood said. “An operation like this is rare, especially with all the current tension. The Europeans are cowed, so…there might be more of them there. But not here. These guys would be kept well away from other Russian assets. Is that important?”
“I was thinking, this team might not be done yet.”
“Yeah. That’s an itch I’ve been scratching,” Sherwood said.
“Do you know where the Sokolovs are? Right now?”
“No. An FBI SWAT team took them somewhere—a private apartment, with guns pointing in six directions. We’ll get them out of here and back to Washington, either tomorrow or the next day.”
“Too bad,” Lucas said. “If somebody tried to hit the Sokolovs again, that would tell us a lot about where the leak might be. Given the level of their intel, they might know more about the apartment than you or I do.”
“Don’t tell anyone I said this, but I’d be willing to lose Sokolov if I could identify the leak,” Sherwood said. “I’ll talk to the AIC. Maybe we could get some agents on the street. Watchers. See if anyone’s cruising the apartment.”
“Might be prudent,” Lucas said. “Although, I’m not sure the feds will go for it. They might think a surveillance operation would give away the actual location…although, hmm.”
“Hmm what?”
“Maybe we need a decoy group,” Lucas said. “Somebody who might look like the Sokolovs, but are actually, you know…not them. Put the surveillance on those guys.”
“Maybe we need all of it,” Sherwood said. They had gotten to the elevators and were waiting, and he said, “Let’s turn around. Find St. Vincent. Talk to him about it.”
· · ·
They went back to the conference room, where most of the marshals were still waiting for their turn at interviews, and got one of the feds to call St. Vincent’s office.
Ten minutes later, they walked into his office, where St. Vincent was talking to two other agents, older guys in their forties or fifties, senior people.
When St. Vincent saw them, he said, “We caught a break. We got the wounded guy. Shot in the back and the buttocks, dropped at the emergency room, will not say a word to anyone. We’re getting some photos we can show to Juarez.”
“Sounds right,” Sherwood said. “Where is he?”
“Kansas City,” St. Vincent said. “Just like the nurse told us. Uh, the doctor.”