Chapter 29
At six o’clock the next morning, Weather prodded Lucas and said, “Your phone is ringing.”
Lucas, who’d been wrapped in sheets and had a foot stuck under Weather’s weight blanket, groaned: “What time is it?”
Lucas had left his phone in his sock drawer, with only a thin charging cable attaching it to the outside world. “I guess,” he said.
Weather was back in a minute and handed him the now silent phone.
The call had come from the Marshals Service office in Minneapolis.
He poked the redial and when the phone was answered, the woman on the other end said, “A man called here. Said it was critical that he talk to you, but he was going to throw his phone away in half an hour. That was…six minutes ago?”
“Who’d he say it was?”
“He said it was about the Russians you’ve been tracking. He had a Russian accent. I think it was a Russian accent.”
“Give me the number.”
Lucas punched in the number, which was answered on the first ring with a “Da?”
“This is Lucas Davenport. Who am I talking to?”
“I’m not sure I should give you my name, in case I manage to squeak out of this mess on my own,” the man said. “Anyway, I’m the man whose face you’ve been putting on television, the sketch from my neighbors in Minnetrista.”
Lucas dropped his feet to the floor, hunched over the phone as Weather sat down on the bed beside him. He pressed the speaker option so she could hear and asked, “What do you want?”
“There is an excellent possibility you will kill me later today. I don’t want that to happen.
I’m what you Americans call a sleeper agent.
I arrange the comings and goings of Russian spies in the United States.
That’s all. I’m not part of the assassination squad sent here to kill Sokolov, but I’m with them… ”
“How do I know you’re not lying to me? You don’t sound much like a Russian.”
“I can do a Russian accent if you want me to,” Titov said in a heavy Russian accent. Then back to his American voice, he added, “I’m a sleeper agent, for Christ’s sake. Of course I sound like an American. I even hate the Packers.”
Lucas nodded at a sentiment he recognized: “All right, so you’re either from the Twin Cities or Chicago. Possibly from Dallas.”
“I also hate the Cowboys,” Titov said.
“Yeah, so does everybody else,” Lucas said. “What do you want from me?”
“I maybe want to come in, but I don’t want to get killed if I do it.”
“Why should I pay any attention to what you want? Maybe I’d prefer to kill you later today,” Lucas said.
“That’s only a thirty percent possibility—I have calculated seventy percent we get away clean, thirty percent you catch us. If you catch us, after what happened, I think you will kill us.”
“That’s a good bet,” Lucas said. Weather was standing next to the bed, listening, raised her eyebrows, shook her head.
“I haven’t seen anything on television yet,” Titov said. “The shooter, who I think you killed, was very effective. I assume you also have dead?”
“Two FBI agents dead, another one in critical condition, and another one hurt bad,” Lucas said. “The FBI gunmen are seriously on the hunt.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Titov said.
“I am in a position where I can give you Bernard Sokolov, who poisoned his father with Novichok and also the controller of the assassination squad, who is a woman. I’m sure you have seen her on your videos or know about her from talking to the doctor she took out of the Bison hospital. ”
“All you want in return is…what?”
“That, I would negotiate. I know how these things are done,” Titov said.
“No jail. That must be clear. I am going to pull the battery on my phone, so you can’t track it, but sometime in the next hour, you will send me an agreement by email guaranteeing no jail, nothing like jail.
Freedom in the United States. The exact conditions we can negotiate.
If it takes more than one hour, I’m gone, because the squad will be here to get me. Then it will be too late.”
“I’m not positive I can do that, but I think I can,” Lucas said. “I am working here with a CIA agent, who I believe will be very interested in your offer.”
“Good. He is exactly the man I wish to talk to. To negotiate with, because he will see the value I offer. I want his name on the email, with yours, and the highest officials you can reach. I am now by myself, but in one hour, I will be back with the squad, and unable to talk. By the way, don’t bother trying to run down the location of the Gmail address I will send you.
There are 1.8 billion active Gmail addresses.
I have one hundred of them. I have never used the address before, and I will never use it again, after I read your guarantee.
If I don’t see it, I will take my thirty percent chance. ”
“I understand,” Lucas said.
“Good. If you can arrange this, I will see you later today,” Titov said.
One second later, he was gone, and Lucas looked up at Weather, who said, “My God.”
· · ·
Sherwood, two minutes later, said, “Do you realize…No, you probably don’t, because you’re a humble deputy marshal.
I will send you this guarantee in five minutes and will sign it in ink and send you a PDF, you can print it, sign it, scan it, send it back to me, and I’ll see if I can round up more signatures while you’re doing that.
We gotta get this guy! We gotta! And preferably, in a way that the Russians won’t realize what’s happened. ”
“What don’t I realize? As a humble marshal?”
“This guy told you that he moves NOCs around…” Sherwood began.
“I don’t know what a NOC is.”
“A spy with no diplomatic cover. N-O-C. It stands for non-official cover. If we can keep this guy in place, as a sleeper, I mean, holy cow, Lucas, this would be a coup.”
“All right, I’m willing to believe that, but I’m not sure the feds will go along.”
“They will when they see the other signatures on the guarantee. I don’t know who I can get out of bed, but it’s after seven o’clock on the East Coast, and I bet I can get a couple of good ones.”
“All right,” Lucas said. “Send me the letter. As soon as I send it back to you, I’ll get cleaned up and head over there to pick you up. Wherever the guy wants us to go, we’ll be ready.”
“I’m good with that. Listen, this is you and me and, I don’t know, maybe Del and Shelly? I don’t want to tell the FBI about it, because they’ll go in heavy.”
“Jesus, we’d really be putting our necks on the chopping block,” Lucas said.
“True. That’s what makes it exciting. I’ve already got a major hard-on,” Sherwood said.
“I heard that,” Weather said.
· · ·
Ten minutes, the letter came in to Lucas’s email. Weather got it, printed it, took it to Lucas, who was shaving, had him sign it, took it back to the home office, scanned it, and sent it back to Sherwood as a PDF.
Ten minutes after that, Sherwood called back: “I got the DDO—deputy director of operations—to sign off on it. He’s calling somebody at the Justice Department, but we’re getting short on time.”
“Get what you can,” Lucas said. “You know, we could just lie, put a bunch of fake signatures on it, and grab the guy and drop him in jail.”
“We could, which would just get us some spam in the can and do us no good at all. Lucas, this is large. You’re going to justify your entire wretched existence with this score.”
“Yours maybe, not mine,” Lucas said. “I feel my neck stretched out and the axe coming down.”
“Call Del. Call Shelly. Get over here,” Sherwood said.
“How about St. Vincent?”
“No! Not Mallard, either, or your friend Jane! There’s no way they’d want to do what we need, which is to separate this defector from the pack. If the FBI didn’t flat out kill him, they’d want a show trial. We need people who don’t have anything invested in revenge and can keep their mouths shut.”
Lucas had to think about that. He could use a little revenge himself, but had spent enough time in Washington that he understood what Sherwood was trying to do.
He wound up calling both White and Capslock, and they agreed to meet at the federal building in Minneapolis. “I’m not sure about taking Del along, because I don’t know where we’re going,” Lucas said. “If it’s not here in the state, all he could do is stand around.”
“Call Edie Lamb,” White said. “Tell her to get her ass into the office.”
“What for?”
“She can deputize Del. Perfectly legal, and not totally uncommon. In fact, I think you or I could deputize him, but I’m not sure about that.”
“You think she could deputize Sherwood?” Lucas asked.
“I think she can deputize a ham sandwich if she wants to. Anyone she likes, including a flat-out ass-scratching sidewalk citizen.”
“I’ll call her.”
Lucas looked at his watch: still early Saturday morning.
Edie Lamb was the U.S. Marshal for the district of Minnesota.
She liked to have a drink or eight on Friday nights.
All right, he thought, an exaggeration. She was trying to dry out, but he wasn’t sure how far that project had gotten.
If it hadn’t gotten far, she could be unconscious.
He called anyway. She answered the phone immediately and said, “This must be bad. I assume about the Russians?”
“Yes. There’s been a development…”
Lucas told her about the call from the member of the hit team. “We want you to deputize Del Capslock and John Sherwood because we don’t know where we’ll be going. The team is on the run, and they’re probably on the road somewhere.”
Lamb said, “We’ll be leaving here in ten minutes. I can be down in the office in thirty minutes. If you can swing by, we’ll fill out some paper…Who else is going with you?”
“Shelly, and she’s good. So just the four of us.”
“I will see you in half an hour.”
Sherwood was enthusiastic. “I’ll walk over as soon as I’m dressed. I called my guy in Washington, told him the situation. If we can get this guy…”
· · ·
Lucas was in his car when the hit team man called back and asked, “What are we doing?”
“You should have gotten an email.”