Judgment

79

She steered the Tesla over to the side of the road about a half mile outside Protasov’s estate. A black Suburban pulled in right behind her. The front passenger’s-side door opened, and Alex Venkovsky got in. He sat down and opened a Dell laptop.

“How’d it go?” he said.

“No problem.” She unbuckled the skinny black belt and handed it to him. “They didn’t detect a thing.”

“Because we’re good,” he said with a grin.

“As long as this one worked right, we’re all set.”

Venkovsky took the belt and began to work the silver buckle, finally taking out a pin from his pocket and using it to pop out what looked like a SIM card. He seated it into a port on the side of the laptop with a click.

A minute later, he’d opened an audio program on his laptop and clicked a green play button.

The sound came through clear and loud. A woman saying, “Welcome. The board members are gathering in the sitting room for some coffee before the meeting.”

Then, much louder, her own voice: “Thank you.”

“Great,” Venkovsky said.

“We got it?”

“Good quality too,” he said. “I mean, you can’t tell with these tinny laptop speakers, but the sound gradient is excellent.”

He clicked some buttons on his laptop, forwarding and clicked play again.

“Please stand with arms at side.” The voice of the young guard who had wanded her. The device seemed to have recorded just fine.

“Mr. Protasov will be with—”

All of a sudden the sound became a loud white-noise static roar, like an airplane taking off. She saw the oscillating green sound-wave icon on Venkovsky’s laptop twitch and dance on the screen.

And all they could hear was that white-noise roar.

“Shit,” Venkovsky said. “When they wanded you, they disabled the recording devices.”

“What about the — the key fob?” She pulled the Tesla key fob from her purse. Venkovsky extracted a small black chip-like thing from the back of the Tesla logo and inserted it into his laptop.

He clicked a Play button on his laptop, and a male voice came out. “Mr. Protasov will be with—”

A staticky roar broke in.

“Shit,” Venkovsky said again.

“Is it even worth trying the shoes?” she asked.

“Why not.”

She took off her left shoe and handed it to him. He located the slot on the side of the wedge heel and pressed a little button, and the black chip popped out. He inserted it into the computer and played, fast-forwarding until they heard “Mr. Protasov will be with you shortly.”

There was a long pause and then Protasov’s voice. “Judge Brody, I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a very busy time.”

Venkovsky smiled.

“Got it?” she asked.

“So far so good.”

They listened for a few seconds longer.

“Good thing they didn’t wand your shoes. This is excellent,” Venkovsky said. “This is how we get him to play ball with us. This is our pressure point. Because I’d wager that he’d rather spend the next twenty years of his life in some kind of witness protection program in America than face the kind of... ‘debriefing’ process he’d be put through back in Moscow.”

She nodded, took out her phone, and texted Duncan. All systems go.