Death Echo

60

DAY FIVE

NORTH OF DISCOVERY PASSAGE

4:01 P.M.

Let’s cut the bullshit,” Harrow finally said. “We need to get a locator on Blackbird.”

“Not going to happen,” Emma said.

“Joe Faroe assured me that St. Kilda would cooperate,” Harrow said with an icy kind of neutrality. “He knows they can’t afford the kind of trouble I can cause.”

Emma met his eyes calmly. “Is it as big as the trouble that would come down on you if the sovereign nation of Canada discovered the CIA was running a covert op in its territorial waters?”

“We’re not running an op,” Harrow said.

“Exactly,” she said crisply. “You were running an op of some sort, maybe along with the FBI, and then things jumped the border. So now you’re relying on a private proxy, St. Kilda Consulting, to get the job done.”

“You have no need to know,” Harrow said.

“Think of it as a need to survive,” Mac said.

“Mac and I have our asses on the firing line,” Emma said. “If we get caught with whatever prize everybody is chasing, we might convince the Canadians we were good guys investigating an international smuggling operation. Might.”

“But the odds are that we’ll draw a long prison sentence,” Mac said. “That probably would depend on what goods we were caught with.”

“So tell me, Tim, what we’re going to go to jail for,” Emma said.

“You want me to believe you don’t know what you’ll be smuggling?” Harrow laughed without humor. “Not going to happen.”

“Mules don’t have to know what’s on their backs,” she shot back. “What difference does it make? They’re just dumb muscle.”

Harrow stared at them.

“Right,” Emma said. She turned to Mac. “About that seaplane.”

“You really don’t know what’s going on?” Harrow asked in disbelief.

“Now you’ve got it,” Mac said.

“Bloody, buggering hell,” Harrow said in disgust, proving that he was an internationalist when it came to language. “This is a three-star cluster. What do you know?”

“You first,” Emma said.

Harrow hesitated, then shrugged. “I was told that there was an old op, one that began years back, before the present administration.”

“Sweet,” Mac said under his breath. “Feasible deniability, all present and accounted for. Public theater in an off-Broadway opening, soon to be in D.C.”

Harrow ignored him. “We didn’t want to use drugs to pay our secret allies, or arms, because there was a huge political downside if the press found out. And when the presidency changes hands, so do secrets. For our covert allies, any diamonds that aren’t Russian goods are automatically suspect on the market.”

“How could anyone know the difference?” Mac asked.

“Russian diamonds have a very faint green tinge,” Emma said. “Not enough to be noticed by anyone but a real expert.”

“Our allies didn’t want to be carrying bales of American money around in satchels, either,” Harrow said, “so we sent them some embryonic currency.”

“What-” Mac began.

“You gave them printing plates?” Emma cut in, startled.

Harrow nodded. “They were old. Not good for more than a few hundred passes before they would be too worn to use.”

Emma waited, listening very carefully to what Harrow said. Or more important, what he didn’t say.

He stopped talking.

“Who were your dollar allies?” Mac asked.

“Georgia. The Ukraine. A few of the ‘-istan’ governments.”

“So you were bankrolling insurrections,” Emma said.

“Can we help it if a few old printing plates go missing?” Harrow asked, shrugging. “It was years ago. Shit happens.”

“Fascinating and all that,” Emma said, “but what does it have to do with Blackbird?”

“The op went south. Russia got hold of the plates and began minting new hundreds. A lot of them.”

“Where did they get the good paper to go with the plates?” Mac asked.

“Same place they get truckloads of blank passports,” Harrow said. “They hijacked what they needed. Now they’re trying to smuggle tens of millions into the U.S. to leverage some financial deal that will at best break a few hedge funds and at worst drag the economy into another Great Recession. If that happens, the party that doesn’t believe in war anywhere will be in control, which would please the hell out of our enemies.”

“Our economy eats billions and looks around for a real meal,” Mac said. “What good is a few million?”

“Spoken like a true warrior,” Harrow said. “You flunked advanced economic manipulation, didn’t you? A few hundred million can be a lot of leverage, but I don’t have time to explain calculus to a kindergartener. All I want is Blackbird. Here. Now.”

Mac and Emma looked at each other.

“Keep talking,” Emma said. “I’m having trouble envisioning a multimillion-dollar yacht being used to smuggle currency.”

“Abkhazia,” Harrow said in a clipped voice.

“Suspicious tribes, clans, and gangs,” Mac said. “Fallout of the FSU. Criminal Central for Middle Europe. Specialty, counterfeiting. Pounds, euros, dollars, whatever sells. And they’re good at what they do. Very good. They damn near put Lithuania’s economy under. It’s war without firing a shot.”

Harrow studied Mac, then nodded. “Your file didn’t mention that you spent time there.”

“Spent time where,” Mac said without inflection.

Harrow nodded again. “Warlords, mafiya chieftains, and the bitter ends of corrupt bureaucracies all got together to act like governments and get rich fleecing the peaceful, stoic, or stupid. No matter how you look at it, Russia ‘taxes’ or runs most of the various criminal enterprises within the Russian Federation.”

“Crime is where the money is,” Emma said.

“Exactly,” Harrow said. “Our best estimate is that the Russians either have taken over or are in a power struggle with the Middle Europeans over the hundred million dollars that is somehow connected to Blackbird. This isn’t the first load they’ve run into the U.S.,” he admitted. “It’s just the first one we’ve found out about in time to do something.”

“A hundred million bucks at a crack,” Mac said. “Even in hundred-dollar bills, that’s a big pile of green.”

“A million C-notes,” Emma said, doing the math in her head. “That’s a hundred thousand bundles of a hundred bills each.”

Mac smiled slowly at her, then said to Harrow, “I’ve been all over Blackbird looking for your damn bugs. I didn’t see a good place to hide that much paper.”

“Fuel tank,” Harrow said.

“Those bills are going to stink of diesel,” Mac said. “Hard to pass skunky bills.”

“Not if you build a sealed trap to hide the money inside the tanks,” Harrow said.

Emma didn’t know about fuel tank dimensions, but she did know about stacks of currency. She’d used a few suitcases of payoff money in her time.

“So,” she said, “the Agency says Blackbird is the mule of choice for a currency-smuggling gig.”

“That’s what we believe,” Harrow said. “Dollars may not be as sexy as diamonds, but they’re a hell of a lot more convertible into sheer leverage in the marketplace.”

Mac didn’t know what Harrow or the CIA really believed, but he knew that counterfeiting was the story they were passing out.

“Considering that you provided the plates for the counterfeiters to work with,” Emma said, “discovery would be seriously embarrassing for some high-up people. Career fatalities all over the place.”

Harrow let out a long breath. “I told them you would understand.”

“Where’s the handover supposed to take place?” Mac asked. His voice was like his face, neither understanding nor skeptical.

“We’re not sure,” Harrow said. “We have information that the goods are coming off a container ship onto a fishing boat off the Pacific Coast somewhere between Port Hardy and Prince Rupert. The fishing boat will come south and make the transfer to Blackbird at their leisure, somewhere in a quiet cove. God knows the Inside Passage is full of deserted places.”

“Can’t argue that,” Mac said. “Especially after summer.”

“When is it supposed to go down?” Emma asked.

“In the next few days,” Harrow said.

“Was Tommy yours?” Mac asked, his voice as unreadable as his face.

“Tommy?” Harrow looked confused.

“The dead man on the rez,” Mac said.

“Oh. He was the Bureau’s. That’s why they were unusually territorial about the case. I looked at the file. Nobody owned Tommy but the last person to put crank or a bottle in his hands.”

“Lucky for you Tommy died,” Emma said. “It gave you a ticket aboard Blackbird.”

Mac had been thinking the same thing.

“Maybe,” Harrow said, shrugging. He narrowed his eyes at Emma. “Tommy was whacked by someone, but it wasn’t the Agency or the Bureau. We would have been happier with him in place.”

“Huh,” Mac said, a word as neutral as his expression.

“But we’re in place now,” Emma said. “What if we don’t want to play nice with you?”

“Even if St. Kilda Consulting wiggles out by playing the rogue-agent card, you and your ex-hotshot captain become international fugitives with serious money on your heads. Award paid on proof of death.” Harrow shrugged. “Doubt if you’d last real long.”

It wasn’t a threat.

It was a fact.

“Where is Blackbird?” Harrow asked again.

“You don’t trust us to play nice?” she asked.

“I don’t trust anyone.”

“Especially not the man in the mirror,” Mac said very softly.

She didn’t argue.

“We need a locator and a data recorder aboard,” Harrow said, “and we’re going to get them. Cooperate or I throw you to the bounty hunters.”

“Who killed Tommy?” Mac asked flatly.

“I told you. I don’t know. Why do you care?”

“Collateral damage pisses me off.”

“Throw a fit on your own time. Are you in or out?” Mac looked at Emma.

They exchanged a long silence.

Then she turned to Harrow and said, “In.”