Chapter 26 #2
He scoffed quietly, but then after a few seconds, he said: “Twenty minutes. You don’t mind?”
“Who knows? I might get lucky and find some more gay porn.”
“Stay in incognito mode on the laptop, if you search anything. It’s connected to the apartment wi-fi, which is secure, but the fewer chances we take the better.”
By morning, after taking it in shifts to flick through the files and sleep, they’d built firmer profiles of the names on the list and had drawn several links with the kompromat blackmail, but it was all sketchy. Nothing even close to a smoking gun.
“I just get the feeling we’re not even scratching the surface here,” Carter said, as Alice emerged from the shower, wrapped in a towel.
“Like this—it’s a photo of a woman in what looks like a business meeting with several men, taken surreptitiously, by the look of the angle.
She bears a strong resemblance to the woman on this website, don’t you think? ”
“Definitely. Who is she?” Alice said, pulling out the chair beside him and sitting.
“She works at the American Embassy in Russia, some relatively lowly assistant on the diplomatic staff. But I have no idea who these guys are, or the significance of the meetings. And that’s like everything we’ve found so far.
Take Gay Porn Star here. Could be this guy on the list, who used to work as an office assistant at the American embassy in Paris, but I’d have to see him naked and from behind to be sure. ”
“I know, right? I found a series of emails that mentions a meeting with someone called ‘Annelise,’ and there’s an Annelise on the list who works for a multinational finance company, but so what?”
“Nothing at all seems to reference the station chief, let alone his murder. And I haven’t even started on the documents that are in Russian.
Every single one of these documents is a three-hour trip down an internet rabbit hole—the ones that hold any obvious clues at all—and even then I end up with a whole lot of meaningless garbage.
Oh, here, I made you coffee.” He slid it across to her.
“The common thread is that these people were obviously being bribed or blackmailed. But by who? And to what end? What did they get out of it?”
“Right? Like, being blackmailed is probably not a crime in itself. But there’s gotta be a reason someone would go to that effort.” Carter pulled his neck to one side and the other, wincing. “Ah, Alisa, this could take weeks, and we could still end up short of any killer evidence.”
Alice stared at him, rubbing her lips together. “Alisa.”
“It’s what Nika called you, on the tape. You don’t like it?”
“That’s the Russian version of ‘Alice,’ right? She called me it sometimes, especially when she was getting confused.”
“What are you thinking?”
“If she was calling me ‘Alisa’ on the tape, then what about the ‘Tatiana’ and ‘Yakov’ she talks about? Could she have been getting confused between the Russian and English equivalents? Do they have English equivalents?”
Carter pulled the laptop toward him and tapped. “Well, Tatiana’s name is on the list, or at least part of it, so I don’t know about that, but it says here that Yakov is Jacob or James, in English. Tatiana is…” He typed. “Tanya, or Tania.”
“Tania?”
“There was a Tania on my last trip to Russia, celebrating her sixtieth. She was a regular on the tours. A real Russophile—and a pain in the ass. But no Jacob or James.”
Alice shot to her feet.
“Alice?”
“Where did I put my capris?” She ran into the bedroom, located them and dug into the pocket. “Here, look—the card of the woman I told you was bankrolling Randolph’s campaign. Her name is Tania. Tania Garrett.”
“The fuck?” Carter’s turn to stand abruptly. “That’s her—the Russophile. She must have come on my trip three times over the years. A billionaire. And her husband’s name was … Jake.”
“Short for Jacob?”
“Could be. They’re financing Randolph’s campaign? She’s the ‘Tatiana’ that Nika was saying is key to all this? Oh, that’s just fucking great. Not only are we taking on the U.S. government but the establishment as well.”
“The Tatiana on the list—it’s only the ‘T-A and then the I-A’ that’s visible.
It’s not ‘Tatiana,’ it’s ‘Tania.’ Nika must have been just confused on the name—there never was a Tatiana.
And the blue car—if she’s behind Randolph’s campaign, maybe she’s the link to the car.
Is this enough to take to the authorities? ”
“Not nearly, not yet. It’s quite a leap from four letters on a handwritten list and the ravings of a woman who was losing her mind to murder and treason. I haven’t seen any mention of a Tania or a Jacob or Jake in the kompromat. But this is a good lead.”
Carter’s phone rang, making them both jump.
“Yeah?” he said, answering it. “It’s for you, Alice,” he said darkly. “It’s Malik.”
“Oh God,” Alice said as Carter put it on speaker. “Malik?”
“I’m so sorry, Alice.”
“What? What is it?”
“It’s… You’d better meet me at the hospital. And you’d better be quick.”
“What’s happened?”
“I’ve gotta go. Just … get there.”