Chapter 31
Sherwood took a half-dozen phone calls from his office as he and Lucas drove north, with White and Capslock trailing behind. He punched up the speaker phone so Lucas could understand what was going on, and after the final call, he asked, “Are you starting to get an idea of how big a deal this is?”
“Starting to,” Lucas said. “I don’t know how we do this, other than to talk to this guy, whoever he is, and then let Bernie and the woman escape.
I’m not inclined to do that—they killed two FBI agents and Masha Sokolov, with Bernie’s help.
Bernie murdered his own father. You even got shot, and that poor damn motel clerk is seriously fucked up. ”
“You gotta think about this like a war. People get killed in a war, and you don’t blame the individual soldiers,” Sherwood said.
“Bullshit.”
“Not bullshit. Lucas: we can work this out. We gotta work this out,” Sherwood said.
“I don’t know how we’ll do that.”
“Neither do I,” Sherwood said, settling back in his seat. “But we gotta.”
Lucas would never figure out how everything in the new Porsche worked, but he fiddled around with the satellite radio while he was driving and landed on the Chris Stapleton station and left it there.
The trip was fundamentally boring, through a flat and low countryside, grim-looking oaks and drab pines and spruces, widely spaced small towns with nothing to recommend a stop except the need for gasoline.
Sherwood continued to vibrate, until Lucas said, “You gotta calm down.”
“I’m absolutely calm,” Sherwood said.
“If you don’t calm down, you could screw us up. You need to calm down and think about how we do this.”
“I’m thinking. I’m calm.”
Three hours after leaving Minneapolis, they rolled into Hayward to the sound of “Tennessee Whiskey.” The trip had taken longer than usual because of a thickening of traffic on the two-lane going into Hayward, and occasional snowpack in shady spots on the highway.
By the time they got inside Hayward, they were inching along and finally found parking spaces well out of the downtown area. As they walked the rest of the way in, Lucas told Capslock and White that they would play the part of barflies and stay well away from the conversation with Titov.
“You guys are the backup, if there’s a problem.
We’ll talk to the manager when we go in, make sure he knows about all four of us, so we can hang out,” Lucas said.
“He’ll probably want to keep things turning over, so two people sitting at the bar drinking one beer for forty-five minutes won’t work, unless he knows what we’re doing. ”
White asked, “Do we talk to the local cops?”
Three skiers went past on an improvised track just off the street, and then two more; they weren’t racers, and fifty yards ahead, they ran into a crowd that had trampled down the track they were using; the crowd was thick and confused, individual members moving in all different directions all at once.
“Not yet,” Lucas told White. “I was thinking about that on the way up. The locals wouldn’t be subtle.
There are too many people in town, and if we tell them what we’re up to, that we’re dealing with a bunch of Russian killers, they’ll want to crush it as fast as they can.
John wants to play it out, see what we can do here. ”
Sherwood explained that, and Capslock said, “All I should do is dangle my tongue in the beer, but not drink it?”
“That’s about it, unless you see a fight start,” Lucas said. They were winding their way through the crowd into the downtown area, and Lucas pointed at a garish aqua-colored sign and said, “There’s the Musky Hunter. Let’s find the manager.”
· · ·
The Musky Hunter’s Bar and Grill was packed to the doors and out the doors, a ton of brats going by as the four of them shouldered their way inside.
The manager was behind the bar, the bald guy, a waitress told them, so Lucas rammed through to the bar, throwing a vicious hip-check into a woman who tried to push by him, and stuck his badge in front of the manager’s eyes.
“Gotta talk,” Lucas shouted over the noise. “One minute.”
The manager, an average-looking, heavyset guy with an out-of-season tan, wearing a Green Bay Packers hat and a three-day beard, shook his head: “I can’t just walk away from the bar, man, I mean, look at this place.”
“One minute, down at the end,” Lucas said.
At the end of the bar, Lucas pointed out Capslock and White: “Those two are going to be leaning on the bar, as soon as they can get to it. Might drink one beer in an hour. You gotta leave them be.”
“They’re undercover?”
“Yes.”
“There’s not going to be trouble?” the manager asked.
“Not here,” Lucas said.
“Then, if they don’t get shoved out the door by the crowd, okay with me,” the manager said. “Now I gotta get back to work.”
· · ·
Sherwood looked at his watch: “Ten-forty. This is a fuckin’ zoo. I’m gonna be pissed if he doesn’t show. Maybe we ought to wait outside, by the door.” He was chewing on a brat, with a greenish relish leaking out of the bun, along with mustard.
“Just as bad out there as it is in here,” Lucas said. A man tried to push between them, but they fended him off. “We don’t know what he looks like, but he knows what I look like, and we said we’d be inside. I’d hate to have him come in the back, or something, and miss us.”
“All right. Well, grab a brat. These are pretty damn good. Crispy.”
An elbow hit Lucas in the back, right in the spine, hard, and he lurched forward, turned, half expecting to see the Russian, but it was the woman he’d thrown the hip-check at, on her way out. She said, “Sorry,” but didn’t mean it.
Sherwood was gagging on the brat and Lucas said, “Shut up.”
· · ·
They waited, milling around in the sweaty crowd, eyeballing anyone who might be a candidate.
A few minutes before eleven o’clock, a man walked in wearing a red hat, peering at faces as he came.
Lucas said to Sherwood, “Look at this,” and Sherwood turned to look at the same time as the man saw Lucas. He nodded and pushed toward them.
“You’re Davenport,” he said. “I saw you on television.”
“You’re…”
“Titov. I have no time. What are we doing? What are you offering?”
“We’re offering to maybe not shoot you where you stand,” Lucas said. He could see White and Capslock closing in on them.
Titov said, “Don’t waste my time because I don’t have any. Where is the CIA man?” He checked out Sherwood: “You him?”
“I am,” Sherwood said. “How much time do you have to talk?”
“I can’t talk ten minutes. Maybe five, then I have to run.”
“What do you want?” Sherwood asked. White and Capslock closed up, boxing Titov.
“I will give you Katerina Abramova, the leader of the assassination team, and Bernard Sokolov, who you know. I want what Sokolov got: witness protection and a house in the West.”
Lucas: “Where’s Katerina and Bernie?”
“In a car. Before I tell you, I want to know if I get what I want.”
“What if we just say ‘fuck you’ and put the cuffs on?” Lucas asked.
Titov shrugged: “I’m not part of the team.
I have shot nobody. I don’t want to shoot anybody, that’s why I called you.
I don’t want to go back to Russia. But, if you put the cuffs on, you can do that, and you will never see Kat or Bernie again.
A year from now, two years in prison, and I’ll be traded back to Russia, where I’ll be a hero and you’ll be standing there wondering why you wasted everybody’s time. ”
“We will give you a deal, a good deal, a great deal,” Sherwood said, moving so his side and shoulder were in front of Lucas.
A man pushed between Sherwood and Titov carrying two beers; he was wearing a ski cap with floppy hang-down ear coverings, like a hound’s.
He slopped a little beer and said, “Sorry, dude.”
Sherwood stepped around him toward Titov. “I need to ask, are you really headed for the Canadian border, like you told Lucas?”
“Yes, but the Canadian border is long, lots of crossing points,” Titov said.
He checked his watch, and then glanced over his shoulder, scanning the crowd.
“Three minutes, four minutes more, then I run, deal or no deal. They are waiting for me, Kat and Bernard, they’ll be suspicious if I’m too long.
If Kat suspected I was talking to you, she’d kill me without a second thought. ”
“Here’s what we want,” Sherwood said, moving to further block Lucas out. “We want you to separate this Kat from Bernie. We want you and Bernie to continue to the border, and we want you to send Bernie across, but we want you to come back and continue working as the sleeper. While we watch.”
Titov hesitated, then said, “I could do that, but how do I separate them?”
“How many cars are you in?” Sherwood said. “Two, three? Are you all separate, or…”
“Two,” Titov said. He checked his watch again, plainly nervous.
“Tell this Kat that you have seen police officers checking cars, and that it would be safer for all of you if you drove Bernie, and she went solo in your other car—because the cops are looking for a woman and a man traveling together, the woman with an accent. You can spot the car for us, and we’ll grab her.
You and Bernie continue on to the border… .”
“And I go back to Chicago to a crappy apartment and…”
“You’ll get a stipend…”
“Wait!” Titov held up a finger, pulled out an iPhone, punched an app. “I’m recording this, he said. “Tell me your name, your positions, I want Davenport on it, too.”
Sherwood puffed up his cheeks and blew air at the phone, then nodded.
“I’m John Sherwood, I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency and I’ve been deputized as a temporary U.S.
Marshal. I’m with Lucas Davenport of the Marshals Service.
If you are successful in returning to Chicago, we will provide you with a working stipend that you can stick in a bank account that nobody knows about, and after a while, you’ll get your witness protection hideout,” Sherwood said.
“How big a stipend?”
“Jesus, man, I don’t know? Five thousand a month?”
Titov rolled his eyes. “How about ten? I stay for…three years.”
“Ten thousand a month for five years,” Sherwood said. “Five years, and at the end you can re-up for more money, if you want it. Even if you don’t, you’d have better than half a million.”
“Four years, ten thousand, now I go.” He held up the cell phone. “Call me, so I have your number.”
“Your controller may be able to access your phone,” Sherwood said.
“Not this phone. They don’t know about this phone,” Titov said.
Sherwood: “Give me the number.”
One minute later, they’d traded phone numbers and Sherwood told Titov, “When you’ve gotten out of town, when you’re well up north, stop for gas or something and call me. You gotta call me.”
Titov nodded and they were all shoving through the crowd toward the door.
Lucas grabbed White and Capslock and said, “They’ve seen me.
The woman and Bernie. You have to track Titov to their cars.
I’ll stay back. And Sherwood…” He tipped his head at Sherwood.
“…He looks like he just got out of a GQ magazine photo shoot. He sticks out like a sore thumb, so he’ll be back with me. ”
Capslock took Titov’s arm: “What are we looking for? A white van and a black Jeep?”
“White van, yes. No black Jeep, the Jeep is burned, we dumped it.” He looked anxiously at his watch. “I have to run…The other car you will see, it is a red Ford SUV. Kat will be in the Ford, after we trade cars. You’ll see it. I have to go.”
White held him for one last question: “Is she armed?”
“Of course she is,” Titov said. “She has an automatic handgun. There is also an American rifle, a semiauto, like the new Army rifles, in the van. I don’t think she will try to move it to the Ford.
She is an excellent shot, I have seen her working with the rifle, but I don’t know about the handgun.
The pistol has fourteen rounds, the rifle, she has a short magazine, I don’t know how many rounds.
Not one of the big ones with thirty rounds.
A short magazine, but it is a killer gun.
If you let her get away with it, if she uses it, it could be a massacre. ”
“Good to know,” White said. “If she shows a gun, we take her down.”
Lucas said to White, “Pull your ski mask up a little more.”
Titov pushed out, trailed by Capslock and White. Lucas waited until they were far enough away that he thought it unlikely that he’d be seen; Sherwood, impatient, said, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”
Lucas: “Wait, wait, wait…okay…Okay. Go.”
They lost sight of Titov, but followed White and Capslock, their heads bobbing through the crowd, out toward the edge of the business district. “This is gonna work, we’re gonna pull it off,” Sherwood said. He was more anxious than exultant.
“We ain’t there yet,” Lucas said. “The crowd’s getting thinner. Stay back.”
“I gotta see this,” Sherwood said.
“Not yet you don’t. Let Shelly and Del do the job,” Lucas said. “Let’s not fuck it up at this point.”