Chapter 19
Bell, the second Russian they’d visited earlier in the day, called Lucas at six o’clock the same evening. “I have no specific information for you, but I’m now worried for myself. This is a very sensitive subject. Nobody will talk about it.”
“Do you know who specifically won’t talk about it?” Lucas asked.
“I spoke to five friends. Two knew nothing, except what they saw on television and in the newspaper. The other three have heard about the, what did you call it, the group…”
“Hit team.”
“Yes. The hit team,” Bell agreed. “All they know is that somebody is helping them, rumors only, and it’s best to not know who it is. Everybody is, how to say it, twitchy. I can promise you, they don’t know much.”
“Do they know a little?”
“They know that two more vehicles were delivered. They believe these are a pickup truck and a white van. That’s all. No description or license plate.”
“That doesn’t help much,” Lucas said, going into negotiating mode. “There are thousands of pickups and vans in the Cities…”
“I know. That’s all I could get without the wrong people becoming curious. But you have pictures of this hit team and so if you see a group with these vehicles…this is something. I will continue my listening, but now you must do something for me.”
“I’m not going to do much, because you didn’t do much for me,” Lucas said.
“You might not object,” Bell said. “There are three Russians who operate dating services in the Twin Cities: me, one in Saint Paul, one in Bloomington. I need you to search all three. Including me. I will give you names and addresses.”
“I see what you’re thinking,” Lucas said. “But that will draw some attention to you that you might not want…”
“I already have done that. That’s why I need the police to be my enemies, and for certain people to see.”
Lucas: “I would guess that you’ve already removed anything from your house that would be worth searching for?”
“Of course, but I have not told the other two what I am doing, so you should find their businesses…mmm, how do you say, intriguing? I will complain about what you took from me. I will leave laptops for you to find. If you do this, I will continue listening.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Lucas said.
“Must be soon. Tomorrow. Whoever is doing this, helping this hit team, these are not good people.”
“And you are?” Lucas asked.
“I hurt nobody. I run a clean business. No drugs.”
“We’ll have to disagree about that,” Lucas said. “Give me the names, I’ll call a guy.”
· · ·
When they finished talking, Lucas called Capslock, who told him that his judge was unlikely to sign a batch of search warrants. “We’re both already on a tightrope.” He didn’t doubt that warrants could be gotten from another judge, with a proper application.
“The other guy’s a Jesus and family freak. He’ll sign up. I have to put together the applications, talk to some cops in Saint Paul, Minneapolis, and Bloomington, get them to back me up. I’ll talk to Jon Duncan, get him to okay the raids.”
“Tomorrow, if possible. Bell said we’d find the other two places intriguing.”
“Talk to you in the morning. Not too early,” Capslock said.
“Great. I’ve been getting up too early every goddamn day. I’m gonna sleep in myself.”
· · ·
Weather, fully dressed, poked him at six o’clock the next morning. “Get up, sleepyhead.”
“What? What time is it?”
“Your phone says it’s three minutes after six. John’s been calling.” She handed Lucas the cell phone. “He’s called three times so far, starting at four o’clock, so leaving the phone in your bathroom drawer worked until I got up. Must be important.”
“The fuckin’ Russians hit the hospital,” Lucas groaned. “My God, I hope it wasn’t a massacre.”
He took the phone, propped himself up with a pillow, and called Sherwood. Sherwood picked up on the first ring and Lucas blurted, “Who got shot?”
“Nobody. But somebody might have gotten to Leonid.”
“How? There were…what happened?”
“We don’t know. He started convulsing during the night.
None of his medication should have caused that, but you know, a blood clot to the brain could do it.
One of the docs here, a woman, thinks he might have been poisoned, but the other docs are telling her to shut up.
She wants to pump him full of atropine and diazepam, but…
they’re waiting for a better diagnosis.”
“Sounds like what they did to that other Russian guy, the freedom fighter guy…”
“Alexei Navalny. Exactly. Speaking of ‘exactly,’ I have exactly no idea what to do. What do we do?”
Lucas didn’t say anything for a moment, then: “Well, since I don’t have any antidotes on me, and if it’s a blood clot, I don’t know much about brain surgery…I guess I’ll go back to bed. I’ll try to think something up.”
“C’mon, Lucas, the FBI is running around like their asses are on fire, but nothing is getting done. Come up with something. I’ll call you at nine. We’ll go to breakfast.”
· · ·
Lucas did go back to sleep, but not soundly. Sometime between seven and eight o’clock, things changed.
With a thought. Or possibly a dream.
He’d been flashing back on the three separate shootings he’d been involved in, over the space of three days.
He’d been badly wounded in another gunfight a couple of years earlier, another place with hard-crusted snow and a machine gun…
and he flashed on that night as well, something he hadn’t done for a while.
He got up for a drink of water, thought about stopping to pee, but he really didn’t have to. He got back in bed, lay on his back with his hands behind his head.
He ran all the attempts on Sokolov through his mind like a movie reel, stopping now and then to consider the picture in his mind’s eye, then starting again.
After a while, he thought the thought. Or dreamt the dream. Whatever.
He went back to sleep and slept restlessly until his phone alarm went off at eight-thirty, and called Sherwood.
“We on for breakfast at nine?” Lucas asked.
“Yes. I’m not doing anything but standing around. The FBI guys will barely talk to me,” Sherwood said.
“How’s Sokolov?”
“Bad. They’re working on him, but they don’t like his chances.”
“See you at nine.”
· · ·
Sherwood was prompt and they took his rental out to Cecil’s, settled into a booth. Sherwood seemed watchful and Lucas said, “You seem watchful.”
“Yeah, I’m watching you,” Sherwood said. “You’re onto something. Or up to something.”
“I had a thought last night. Maybe this morning. I’m a little cloudy on the time.”
The waitress came back with coffee and Diet Coke and took their orders, and when she was gone, Sherwood said, “You had a thought. Spit it out.”
“Their intelligence is too good. Way too good. The shooter’s crew.”
“It’s driving us nuts,” Sherwood admitted. “Nobody knew about the FBI’s move at the apartment house and it wasn’t even on time. Now they’re saying only a few people had access to Sokolov, though it turns out he might have been alone occasionally, for only a minute or two at a time…Okay. What?”
Lucas said, “Bernie.”
· · ·
Sherwood stared at Lucas for what must have been fifteen seconds, then said, “Mother of God. I’m so stupid. Or maybe I’m not cynical enough. I mean, that’s an idea that would make a congressman proud.”
He took his phone out of his pocket, pushed one button, and a moment later said, “Our marshal had a thought.” He repeated the thought and then listened again.
“I had another thought, too,” Lucas said.
“He had another thought,” Sherwood said into the phone. “I’m going to put us on speaker.” He put the phone on the tabletop and asked Lucas, “What was the other thought?”
“Letty, my daughter, is with Homeland Security…”
A tinny voice from the phone: “We know. We looked her up.”
“She has a very tight connection with a woman at the NSA,” Lucas said. “The NSA woman is hooked into people who do telephones. All phones. All day, every day.”
Sherwood licked his bottom lip and said, “Interesting.”
The phone on the tabletop burbled something unintelligible. Sherwood picked it up, said, “Say that again,” listened, and then said, “We’ll get back to you.”
He clicked off and said, “We need to talk to Letty. The guy I just talked to? He doesn’t know about it.”
· · ·
They called Letty from the diner. She picked up and said, “You get shot again?”
“No, but only because I got lucky. Listen, I’m sitting here with a guy from the Unspecified Agency. He actually knows your friend Barb. You could clear him with her, if you need to.”
“You’re leading up to something you want me to do…”
Lucas introduced Sherwood, who said, “Hi, I admire your work,” and then Lucas explained in detail what had happened since the shooting at the hideout.
He concluded with, “It’d help a lot if you could talk to your friend at the NSA and get her to take a peek at the phones coming out of the FBI cars and then out of the condo where the Sokolovs were stashed overnight.
We can give you the phone numbers of all the cell phones involved.
It probably wasn’t one of them, but would help you locate them in time and space. ”
Letty: “Why doesn’t the CIA ask? They talk to the NSA.”
Sherwood leaned over the phone: “We could do that, and it’d start with me and go to my boss, and then he’d take it to his boss, and then at the NSA, it’d start the top and trickle down. We’d probably get a response in a week.”
Letty made a crunching sound, said, “I’m sorry, I’m eating carrot sticks…” and after a couple of more crunches, said, “I’ll make the call. The Marshals Service and the CIA will owe me. Owe me big.”
“We can talk,” Sherwood said.
They rang off and Sherwood said, “My, my. I like that girl. You gotta give me her number.”
“She has a serious boyfriend. He’s a knight. You know, a British knight.”
“Yeah? Weird. Anyway, I don’t want to sleep with her,” Sherwood said. “I want to exploit her.”
· · ·