16 “P is for Pertinence”

Downtown San Diego was already emptying out in a lemming rush for the suburbs by the time Dar finished his lunch with the FBI man.

At one point, Warren said, “The Bureau will do anything it can to help you.”

“I’d like to have copies of all the dossiers available on Pavel Zuker and Gregor Yaponchik,” said Dar. “Not just FBI files, but CIA, NSA, Interpol, Mossad, NDA—any that are out there.”

Warren looked dubious. “I doubt if I could get clearance to show you even the Bureau’s limited files. What makes you think we could come up with Israeli documents?”

Dar answered him with silence and a poker face.

“Why would a civilian need this stuff?” asked Warren.

“The only civilian who would need it is the civilian who’s been attacked twice by these two Russian gentlemen,” Dar said softly. “That information might keep the aforementioned civilian alive, rather than dead.”

The special agent looked like he had swallowed an olive pit, but he eventually nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll try to get you copies of whatever is available.”

“Great,” said Dar.

“Anything else you’d like?” said Warren lightly. “A helicopter, perhaps…or access to some of the different agencies’ spy satellites?”

“Sure,” said Dar, “but what I really want is the loan of a McMillan M1987R.”

Special Agent Warren laughed good-naturedly before realizing that Dar was serious. “It’s impossible.”

“It’s important,” said Dar.

“It’s illegal for a civilian even to own one,” said Warren.

“I don’t want to own one,” Dar said patiently. “Just borrow one.”

They ended the lunch with Warren still shaking his head. “I’ll try for the files, but the McMillan…”

“Or its equivalent,” said Dar.

“No chance of that whatsoever,” said Warren.

Dar shrugged. He gave the special agent his card with all of his phone, fax, and e-mail numbers on it; he even scribbled in the cabin number that he had given to no one but Larry and Syd. “Let me know about the files as soon as possible,” he said. He did not offer to pick up the check.

Leaving the metro area in his Land Cruiser, Dar called Trudy. “What’s the most recent word on the Esposito investigation?”

“Thanks to you and the ME, it’s being listed as a probable homicide,” she said. “I interviewed the architect—the one who was talking to the foreman, Vargas?—and he’s willing to testify that he and Vargas were very focused on referring to blueprints for several minutes right at the time of the accident…or murder.”

“So someone had time to keep Esposito under the lift—probably at gunpoint—and pull the hydraulic plug without being seen,” said Dar. “Interesting.”

“Both the LAPD and San Diego detectives are hunting for Paulie Satchel…the claimant who was supposed to have been meeting Esposito there.”

“Good,” said Dar. “I hope they find him before this string of accidents continues in his direction.”

“You don’t think that Paulie was the one who killed Esposito?”

“Nope,” said Dar, relaxing as the traffic stopped completely. He checked in his mirror. The same car had been following him since he left the Justice Center. He would have been alarmed, but he recognized Syd’s Taurus and her mop of blonde-brown hair. For a chief investigator, she did a lousy job of covert surveillance. “I know Paulie,” said Dar. “He’s a small-time liability claimant…he’s had more disability claims than most people have had head colds. He’s not the hit man.”

“If you say so,” replied Trudy. “I’ll keep you informed. Is your phone going to be on?”

“Later,” said Dar. “Right now I’m going shopping.”

Dar’s shopping was more efficient than Syd’s surreptitious tailing. He stopped at a downtown Sears and bought an inexpensive but rugged sewing machine. He drove to an army surplus store that catered to hunters and bought three old two-piece sets of camouflage fatigues and a wide-brimmed boonie hat. He also found a mosquito-netting rig for his head and shoulders—“strong enough to keep out Alaskan ’skeeters,” said the clerk, a one-eyed Vietnam vet, “but fine-mesh enough to keep out the fucking black flies.” He had to try two more outdoors stores before finding the larger netting he needed in the quantity he required.

Dar had to go to several fabric stores and another outdoor store before finding all the tough canvas and hessian and burlap fabric he wanted in the colors he needed. He had the last fabric store he visited cut the canvas into patch-sized segments, and the rolls of dun-colored fabric into literally hundreds of irregular strips and bits. At one point he had four clerks and the manager cutting and ripping and slicing. The woman who ran the store looked at him as if he were crazy, but she took his money.

Carrying the huge bags of fabric fragments back to his truck, Dar paused when Syd got out of her car, parked in the same lot, and walked over to him. “I give up,” she said. “I don’t have the faintest, foggiest, fucking idea what you’re doing.”

“Good,” said Dar.

“Will you tell me?”

“Sure,” said Dar, unlocking his truck and dropping the bags in. “I’m making a ghillie suit.”

Syd shook her head. “What’s that?”

“You’ll have to look it up, Investigator. Are you going to keep following me?”

Syd bit her lip. “Dar, I know you don’t like it, but I feel responsible for—”

“Fuck ‘responsible,’” said Dar softly. “You’ve got a job to do and so do I. Neither one of us is going to get it done if you’re following me all the time.”

Syd hesitated. Dar touched her bare forearm. “Let’s not work against one another,” he said. “My best bet for staying alive is if you succeed in putting Dallas Trace and his shooters away quickly. Let’s do that.”

Syd nodded but said. “Will you answer one question for me?”

“Sure,” said Dar, “if you’ll give me an honest response to a question in return.”

“All right,” said Syd. “Where are you going to be tonight…this weekend?”

“I’m driving up to the cabin from here,” said Dar, “but not staying the night. I’ll drive back to the condo late. As for this weekend…well, I may go camping on Sunday and take a day or two off.”

“Camping,” Syd said dubiously.

“Sort of,” said Dar.

“Will your phone be on while you’re…camping?”

“No,” said Dar. “But I promise you one thing, Investigator. I’ll be someplace where neither Dallas Trace nor any of his minions would think to hunt for me.”

“Minions,” said Syd softly. “All right. I’ll get off your tail. For now.”

“My turn,” said Dar. He looked around. They were alone in the parking lot. The evening shadows were getting longer. “What was that charade of a meeting this morning?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“You know damned well what I mean,” said Dar, with no anger in his voice. He leaned against his Land Cruiser and waited.

“There have been serious leaks,” said Syd, “during the past month. We’re certain that Trace and the others in the Alliance are getting our plans even before we put them in motion.”

“The grand jury?” said Dar.

Syd shook her head. “This is operational stuff. It’s being passed along by someone in the task force or someone privy to much of our information. So I had today’s meeting and we’ll be instigating some phone taps.”

“On Hernandez or Sutton?” said Dar, surprised. “Unless you suspect Lawrence and Trudy and me and are going to tap our phones as well.”

“Nope,” said Syd. “This stuff was being leaked long before you and the Stewarts got involved.”

“Are you tapping Special Agent Warren’s lines as well?”

Syd made a face. “The Bureau’s doing the tapping, moron.”

“Typical,” said Dar. Then, in a more serious voice, “I can’t believe that your friend Santana’s going back undercover and that you both let the information out when you know there’s a leak.”

Syd frowned. “My ‘friend’ Santana knows what he’s doing, Dar. We mentioned it deliberately. He knows that there’s a good chance of his being made even if there weren’t a leak. The official story is that he’ll be operating alone, but actually there will be three Latino agents going in as illegals at the same time.”

“Fraud Division?” asked Dar.

“FBI,” said Syd. “We’re into the major leagues now. Tom knows exactly what he’s doing and he’ll make sure that his back is covered. Why does your voice get funny every time you talk about Santana?”

Dar said nothing.

The traffic was very heavy on Interstate 8 headed east, San Diego breathing out its week’s worth of tired day workers. Dar kept the windows closed, the air-conditioning on, and played a CD of Bernstein’s Berlin recording of the “Freiheit” Ninth while he relaxed. The traffic was much less dense on Highway 79 headed north and no one had exited the interstate behind him. He had not seen Syd’s Taurus during the commute, and as far as he could tell, no one else was following.

The shadows were growing longer and merging as he drove up to his cabin. He checked his usual little telltales to make sure that no one had come through the front door since he had last left, and then he let himself in and locked the door behind him.

From the outside, there was no hint that the cabin had a basement: no basement windows, no outside entrance. But it did. Dar rolled back the red Persian rug on the far side of his bed, found the faint seam in the floor, opened it, and used another key to unlatch the trapdoor. The basement light went on automatically as the door was lifted and latched in place.

Dar went down the steep ladder and shivered slightly in the cave-coolness of the narrow corridor. There was nothing in this cement-block hallway except the steel door at the end. This required two keys to open and Dar fumbled for the second one.

The room beyond was only a third the size of the huge living space upstairs, but it was large enough for Dar’s purposes. He had to snap on the lights here, but once they were on, there were no shadows in the neatly arranged stacks of boxes, crates, shelves, and drawers. The temperature in this room was regulated and the air dehumidified. The cinder-block walls were lined on the inside by a contained-asbestos layer and a thin wall of aluminum. The room was essentially a large safe-deposit box, safe from fire, tornado, or distant nuclear blast. Dar smiled at the irony of how much this rarely visited room had cost him.

On the far wall was a padlocked grille that opened to an oversized air shaft. It ran 122 feet to the abandoned mine shaft of a gold mine more than a century old; the mine shaft itself ran another 208 feet to its small opening in the steep gully. The shaft ended more than a hundred meters east of the sheep wagon. This air shaft—padlocked on both ends—had cost Dar almost as much to dig and install as it had to build the entire rest of the house.

He walked the narrow path between the storage boxes. As always, he glanced at his “go bag”—the black suitcase that had always been packed and ready when he worked for the NTSB. As always, without his thinking about it, his hand passed over the large green crate that held all of Barbara’s clothes, all of their photographs from that time, and David’s baby clothes. As always, Dar did not open the crate.

There was an unconcealed wall safe at the rear of the room, and Dar turned the dial quickly. He knew it was foolish to use David’s birth-date numerals as his combination, but anyone who had come this far wouldn’t be deterred by a mere combination lock.

It was a large safe, deep, with several metal shelves holding documents and computer disks and photographs. Dar ignored these and pulled out a walnut box with a carrying handle.

He closed the safe, set the thin walnut box on top of a crate, and clicked it open. Inside, laid carefully in green felt with sections packed in Cosmoline-filled plastic wrap, was a disassembled M40 Sniper Rifle—a military version of the classic, bolt-action Remington 700 sporting rifle.

Dar ran his fingers over the wooden stock of the rifle and then removed the 3–9 variable-power Redfield Accu-Range telescopic sight from its creche. He glanced once through the sight and then set it back in its place. He was clicking shut the locks on the carrying case when he heard a distant but loud banging from upstairs.

Dar took the gun case with him as he left, locked the storeroom, and climbed the steep ladder. Someone was banging loudly at the front door. Dar secured the trapdoor and the carpet, considered assembling the rifle as the banging at the door became a pounding, but kept the gun case closed as he peered out the front window.

Dar sighed, slid the gun case onto a lower shelf of books, and went to open the door.

“Are you all right?” asked Syd. She was holding her ninemillimeter Sig Pro in her right hand. All that banging on the door had been with just her left hand. Her knuckles on that hand were red.

“Sure,” said Dar, standing aside so she could come in.

“Then why didn’t you answer the door?”

“I was in the bathroom,” said Dar.

“No you weren’t,” said Syd. “I walked around and peeked in that window. I couldn’t see you anywhere.”

Dar knew that the trapdoor, even locked open, was out of the line of sight of any of the windows. “Two hours ago you said you wouldn’t follow me,” said Dar. “Now you’re peeking in my bathroom window.”

Syd’s face was flushed. It grew redder as she reholstered the semi-automatic and pulled her linen jacket closed. “I didn’t follow you. I tried to call your cell phone, but it wasn’t on. I tried to call your cabin number, but you didn’t answer.”

“I just got here a few minutes ago,” said Dar. “What’s happened? Is something wrong?”

Syd’s eyes darted around the room. “Could I have a glass of Scotch?”

“We’re both driving,” said Dar. “I’m headed back tonight, remember? I was just going to leave in a few minutes.”

“I know what a ghillie suit is now,” said Syd, rather breathlessly, as if she had run from her car to the cabin. “And I know about Dalat.”

Загрузка...