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27
EMMY
It was bloody freezing, but despite the chill, I had to appreciate the wild beauty of Baldwin’s Shore.I’d persuaded the leader of the off-the-books task force who’d picked up the three Moscowteers to drop me off half a mile from the Peninsula, and now I was waiting for James to call.The beach wasn’t as good as a SCIF, but between the biting wind and the desolate surroundings, I figured it was unlikely anyone would be eavesdropping on my conversation.Hurry the fuck up, James.My fingers were turning blue.
I’d spoken to his chief of staff earlier, a whip-thin guy named Martin O’Connor—who everyone just called Irish on account of his grandma having hailed from the Emerald Isle—and he’d put me in touch with the right people.Grudgingly, because he liked to do everything by the book and I most certainly didn’t, so we’d butted heads on more than one occasion.But he’d done as James instructed, and now the prisoners were safely tucked away at a location unknown.Separately, so they couldn’t finesse their stories, and also because we didn’t want to reveal Darya’s sleight of hand with the driver.
Fucking milk.
The task force leader, a guy named Slug I’d met once or twice before, had chortled about that little switcheroo but agreed they’d get a doctor to take a look at him.Both of us were of the opinion that the driver had brought the misfortune on himself.Slug’s team—and incidentally, he’d gotten the nickname for being good in a fight, not for being slow—would keep an eye on Ottie Marquette and also begin working the Stepanov angle.They already had him on their list of suspects, somewhere near the top, apparently.The burner phones would go to an unnamed agency for analysis, so probably the NSA, and Slug would start the fun process of tracking their connections.
But he was already a step behind.
How did I know that?
Because Mack was on the hunt too, and at one minute past noon, those connections had started blinking out.There must have been a check-in requirement, and when the team leader—Darya called him Moscow—didn’t get in touch with an update by the appointed time, whoever controlled him had shut that branch of the burner network down.Perhaps we should have guessed, but even if we had, we wouldn’t have let Moscow make the call.It would have been all too easy for him to slip in a warning, an innocent-sounding phrase that in reality meant “we fucked up, run.”
So, the burners had disappeared like dust motes in the dark, but not before Mack had gotten a lock on the first one—the phone Moscow had called this morning, right before his ill-fated trip to the hospital.It had been moving around downtown LA, taking in the sights before stopping at a coffee shop named Brewed Awakening for a while, presumably for brunch.Bet its owner paid cash.But while he was nibbling on a bagel or whatever, our man—or possibly woman because, hey, I was the last person to judge—made a mistake.Or rather, they made a call.To another burner, and where was that device located?At the Russian embassy’s Orange County field office in Huntington Beach.Wasn’t that interesting?
I thought it was interesting.
I also thought there was a good chance I’d be visiting California in the near future.
My phone rang.
“Hey.”
James’s voice was soft, a little husky as if he’d just woken up.But Irish said he’d been meeting with a group of Gold Star families this morning, so probably he was hoarse from speaking.James was far better at offering sympathy than me.I preferred action to talk.
“Hey.How was your breakfast meeting?”
“Probably not as exciting as yours.You really caught three guys?”
“Not personally, because I was doing damage control at another location.But the team caught three guys.”
I gave James a quick summary, leaving out Darya’s name and credentials.That information was on a need-to-know basis, and at this stage, James didn’t need to know.
“The Russian embassy?Fuck.Markovich isn’t going to be happy about that.”
“Then maybe he should vet his people better?”
“Vetting can only tell you what a person’s done, not what they plan to do.Ideology shifts.Allegiances change.”
“Money talks.”
“That too.”
“We both know there’s no chance in hell the Russians will give us a bona fide list of embassy personnel, no matter how pally Markovich appears to be, which means you need to speak with the NSA or Slug’s buddies or whoever the hell eavesdrops on the Orange County field office.”
“Are you suggesting the United States government might be spying on another country’s embassy?”
“Dude, have you forgotten who you’re talking to?The cleaner’s probably on your payroll.I’m not dumb enough to believe the FBI really spends fifty thousand bucks on an umbrella stand and twenty thousand bucks on a soap dispenser.Somebody’s watching that building.”
“If the soap dispenser has a bug built into it, then it might cost twenty thousand dollars.Interesting things happen in bathrooms.Remember that evening at the country club in Chesapeake?”
Yes, I remembered.I remembered sneaking into the men’s bathroom with James while he was a mere state senator, trying not to moan as he fucked me against the wall in a stall while a congressman and a well-known televangelist compared mistresses right outside the door.
“Stop changing the subject.And if the soap dispenser is bugged, then isn’t that proving my point?”