High Treason

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Who?” Yelena asked. Her tone was just this side of Wpanic. “Who kidnapped him?”

“A Russian,” David said. “That’s all I know.”

“And how do you know that?” Irene asked.

For the first time, David took in the faces he saw in the room. His shoulders and jaw both sagged in unison. “Holy God,” he said. “Are you Director Rivers? Of the FBI?”

“I was this morning.” She shot a look to Jonathan. Can I trust him?

Jonathan shrugged. We’ll find out together.

“I believe you have the advantage,” Irene said as she shook hands.

“Huh? Oh. My name is David. David Kirk. I work for the Washington Enquirer.”

“Oh, shit.” That came out before Irene could stop it.

Jonathan tried to defuse the moment. “And this is Becky Beckeman,” he said. “Also with the Enquirer. For what it’s worth, they have both pledged not to report anything of what they see.”

Yelena connected the dots in her head. “You’re the boy Mr. Grave was telling me about. You knew Officer Lincoln.”

David brightened. “You knew Deeshy?”

She demurred. “In a manner of speaking. Please tell me about my family.”

Davis fished a reporter’s notebook out of his back pocket. “I’m really sorry to have been so blunt,” he said as he fished through for the right page. “We’re talking about Nicholas Mishin, right?”

Yelena paled and sat heavily in her chair.

“Okay,” David said. “Well, my source told me—”

“Stop there,” Jonathan commanded.

David’s head snapped up.

“Names,” Jonathan said. “At this stage, we need names. Who is your source?”

David looked to Becky, who looked at a spot on the ceiling. It took the better part of a half-minute for him to search his conscience. Jonathan got that he was conflicted, but he also got that there were too many secrets on the table now to start holding back selectively.

“It’s a guy in the White House press office,” he said, finally. “His name is Billy.”

“Billy Zanger?” Yelena said. She seemed startled.

“Yes, ma’am,” David said. “He told me that they’d just gotten word. Apparently, you were—” He stopped himself.

“Candor, Mr. Kirk,” Irene said. “That’s really all we’ve got at this point.”

He nodded. “Okay. Apparently, you were supposed to be killed last night,” he said to the First Lady. “That, or you were supposed to be brought back to the White House. That was Douglas Winters’s preference, so you know. Being brought back, I mean.”

“How does this Bobby what’s-his-name know this?” Jonathan asked.

“Billy Zanger,” David said. “And I don’t know how he knows. I forgot to ask him.”

“But he’s telling the truth,” Becky added. “I could tell. He was like totally relieved to get this off his chest. I think he’s really scared.”

“Billy Zanger is Douglas’s press liaison,” Yelena explained. “They work very closely with each other. The two of them thought each other’s thoughts.”

“All well and good,” Jonathan said. “But what does this kidnapping have to do with anything?”

Becky said, “It was some kind of quid pro quo. Billy said he didn’t understand the details, but apparently the kidnapping was in retaliation for something Mrs. Darmond had done. Billy didn’t know what that was.”

But Jonathan did. Except for the latecomers, the entire population of the room knew. The kidnapping had been triggered by the First Lady’s decision to spirit the flash drive out of the White House.

Jonathan looked to Wolverine. “This sounds like a job for your shop,” he said.

“Do you have any idea where they took them?” Irene asked.

David shook his head. “No. But Billy seemed to think that it would be out of the country.”

“Shit,” Jonathan said. “Any idea where? Even which country?”

David looked down at his feet. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry I don’t.”

Yelena scanned the group with her gaze. “We have to get him back,” she said. “He has my grandson with him this week.”

“Oh, damn,” Boxers said. He wasn’t all that fond of small children, but he had a special hatred for those who abused them.

“How old is he?” Jonathan asked.

“Josef is thirteen,” Yelena said. “And a half.”

Jonathan nodded as he considered the ramifications. At that age, kids were far from rational, but they were able to respond to commands and participate in their own rescue. That was a good thing.

“Where were they kidnapped from?” Jonathan asked David.

Yelena answered, “Vail. In Colorado. David has a home out there.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “They must be terrified. We have to get them back.”

Easier said than done, Jonathan didn’t say. “First, we have to figure out where they are.” He looked to Wolverine. “Is this your op or is it mine?”

“So far, I don’t have a vector into the case,” Irene said. “If this goes international, it all gets very complicated.”

“We should call the police,” Yelena said. “They should be out looking for them.”

“Did this Billy guy give any indication of how long ago the snatch went down?” Jonathan asked David.

“We were waiting for him when he got back to his house at about one this morning,” David said. “And by then, it was already a done deal.”

“And why didn’t they call the police?” Venice asked.

David cleared his throat. “From what I could tell, the police are the last people that any of them want to talk to.”

Jonathan faced the First Lady. “Mrs. Darmond, think. Does any of this make sense to you? Do you have any idea who would want to put you in this kind of jeopardy?”

Yelena closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. With her eyes still closed, she said, “You seem to know about my past, Mr. Grave. If that is the case, then you know there are a great many people who would want to hurt me through my family.”

“Does any one of them float to the top?”

She waited long enough to answer that Jonathan thought she was formulating a lie. “Dmitri Boykin would be one,” she said.

And just like that, it all came home. “I’m hearing that name a lot,” Jonathan said. “Do you want to tell us the rest of the story?”

She closed her eyes again and seemed to transport herself to a different place. As she spoke, her cheek muscles tightened, creating a countenance of pain. “Back then,” she said. “Back before, when we were all dissidents, Dmitri was among the worst of the worst. While I wanted to bring down institutions, he wanted to kill people. He believed, I think, that the Soviet Union could be avenged through violence in America. I think he never grew past that.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Irene interrupted, “but that’s too easy. I don’t recall a mention of this Dmitri Boykin in any of your testimony.”

Yelena’s eyes opened. “I might not have mentioned him,” she said.

“Might?”

“I did not mention him.”

“But your deal with the government—”

“I know what my deal was, Director Rivers. I signed it, remember? I gave you everyone else. Everyone else. But Dmitri was different. He was a crazy man. Capable of anything. And by then, I was a mother and I had greater concerns. I always worried that he would—”

The words caught in her throat, and she dislodged them with a cough. “Come after my family.” She finished the sentence at barely a whisper.

Irene leaned in closer to Yelena. “Mrs. Darmond, this is the time to be one hundred percent forthcoming. We cannot help you if you don’t give us all of the details.”

“I don’t have details,” Yelena said. “It’s been too long. Your predecessors wanted me to turn on the co-conspirators I worked with, and I did that. Except for Dmitri. He was just too connected and too unpredictable. Even if he was in prison, he would have found a way to get even.”

“Was this a negotiated arrangement?” Jonathan asked. “Did you make a deal with him that if you withheld his name he would give you a pass?”

“I wish it had been that direct,” Yelena said. “I was young and stupid and scared. I thought that if I just didn’t mention him he wouldn’t come looking for me.”

Venice asked, “Have you been in touch with him at all since then?”

Yelena shook her head. “No. Of course, as the campaign kicked in, and I got more and more exposure on the news, I knew that he would see it and that there might be repercussions, but there was never a confrontation.”

“Didn’t that surprise you?” Jonathan asked.

She considered the question. “No, not really.” She paused to reconsider. “Well, yes and no. I knew that he would be aware of the fact that he had a pressure point against me and by extension against my husband, but I also thought he would see that as his free pass for the rest of his life. Which it could have been.”

“You let a murderer go,” Boxers summarized, “so that you could feel safe.”

Yelena seemed ready to do battle for just an instant, and then she calmed herself. “Do you have children, Mr… ” she clearly had forgotten his name.

“None that I know of,” Boxers replied. “But if I did, I’d be sure to set a good example.”

“What you’d do is protect them,” Yelena said. “And you’d do it at any cost.”

Her answer could not have been a more perfect way to disarm the Big Guy.

Yelena went to a place in her head that did not include anyone in the room. In the accompanying silence, Jonathan felt his anger swell.

“Yelena,” he said, deliberately reverting to the name she didn’t like, “you’ve been deceitful tonight, and I don’t appreciate it.”

She looked offended.

Jonathan leaned in close to the First Lady. It was a gesture designed to make her pull back. She responded just as she was supposed to. “You just finished walking us through this song and dance,” Jonathan said, “about a gray-haired man who met with Douglas Winters and happened to turn out to be Dmitri Boykin. And through that entire story, you knew that this guy had a vendetta against you and your family. If David and Becky here had not come forward with the fact of their kidnapping, you would have kept that to yourself.”

Yelena’s eyes had a hard time finding a spot to settle on as she worked through the accusation. “It’s not like that,” she said. “You don’t understand—”

“I understand that you’re a woman of many secrets, ma’am, and that when you live with secret upon secret, life becomes extraordinarily complicated. But that’s never an excuse to lie to the people who may very well be the only allies you have left in the world.”

Yelena made a waving motion with both hands. “I didn’t think—”

Jonathan turned to Irene. “Okay, Wolverine, what are our options?”

Irene took a deep breath and looked to the newcomers. “David, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did this Billy person say anything to you about a ransom, or conditions for release?”

David cleared his throat. “I actually asked that,” he said. “Or essentially that. Billy didn’t know.”

That made perfect sense to Jonathan. “Their demand is to be left alone,” he said. “And the First Lady’s family is the leverage to make that happen. That means that this Dmitri guy doesn’t know that you’re not in the White House, ma’am.”

Yelena scowled.

“If he thought you were on the run, as you are, he wouldn’t assume that the president’s chief of staff would have any sway in this. Winters couldn’t talk to someone who wasn’t there.”

Jonathan asked Irene, “Can’t you put HRT on this?” The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team.

“Where would I put them?” she asked. “We can check out the family’s residence in Vail. I guess we should do that anyway, but there’s really not much doubt what we’re going to find.”

“And there’s the fact of the law enforcement connection,” Paul Boersky said, his first statement of the evening. “The whole reason we brought Scorpion into this in the first place was the fear that we couldn’t trust our own to keep things secret.”

“I think that horse has left the barn, hasn’t it?” Venice asked.

“Not necessarily,” Jonathan said. “It’s your call, Wolfie — my job is already done — but if the control of information is the endgame here, I’m thinking it might be a mistake to involve the real authorities too soon. They leak. You and I both know that.”

“The whole world knows that,” Boxers said. “Our enemies all count on it.”

Irene rubbed her eyes, then looked at Yelena. “Ma’am, how much of this do you imagine that the president knows?”

Yelena shook her head slowly. “Tony and I have literally not spoken in two months. Not even hello in the morning. I have no idea what he knows.”

“Is he close to your son?” Venice asked.

“Oh, good heavens, no. They hate each other.” After the words were out, Yelena retreated. “By that, though, I don’t mean to imply that he would consider hurting them.”

“Good heavens no,” Boxers mocked.

“You know,” Irene said, “I think it speaks volumes that my cell phone has not been going crazy with reports of the kidnapping. Especially given that the White House knows.”

“What are you suggesting?” Jonathan asked.

“I’m suggesting nothing,” Irene said. “I’m merely observing. And at this point, my observations are leading me to believe that Scorpion is correct. It may well be too early to involve official Washington in any of this.”

Yelena’s face became a mask of disbelief. “But what about my family?”

“We’ll get them back for you,” Jonathan said.

“There’s the words I’ve been dreading,” Boxers grumbled.

“How?” Yelena and others asked in unison.

Jonathan smiled as he looked at Venice. “Let me get back to you on the specifics,” he said. “After we do a little research.”

Venice groaned. When Jonathan said we he actually meant she.

Venice held up a finger, as if to point to the lightbulb that had appeared over her head. She looked to Irene. “Do you remember that Yelena’s group had a sleeper cell in Canada?” she asked.

Irene scowled, scanning her memory. Then she saw the same lightbulb. “Toronto?”

“Ottawa. Yelena? Mrs. Darmond? Does this ring any bells?”

The First Lady’s eyes grew large, as if she were considering a new detail for the first time. “Yes,” she said. “Back then, it was easy to be anti-American if you were from Canada.”

“Is that where this Dmitri guy comes from?” Jonathan asked.

“No,” Yelena said. “But it would not be unreasonable for him to know about it. Personally, I have no idea if that cell even exists anymore.”

“Which means that you have no idea that it went away, either,” Boxers observed.

Yelena conceded the point with a combined shrug and nod.

Venice stood abruptly, startling Jonathan. “You all stay here,” she said. “It shouldn’t take more than an hour to decide if we have a reliable lead or if we’re dead in the water.”

“What does that mean?” Jonathan asked.

Venice’s eyes flashed. “It means that I’m going to go do what I do best.”

They all watched as Venice left the room. When she was gone, Jonathan said to the group, “More times than not, it’s worth waiting around for the answer.”