Minotaur

5

Favorov stared at the bullet casing for a long while. Then he took a careful sip of his wine and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I sense,” he finally said, “you’re trying to make a point here. But I have no clue what it is.”

Chapel nodded. He hadn’t expected the man to break down and confess everything right away. There was a reason this case had been made airtight. “I didn’t come here tonight to debrief you on things that happened thirty years ago. I came to ask what this was doing in your trash.”

Favorov’s eyes revealed nothing. “The Pentagon is going through my garbage cans now? I wouldn’t have thought that was your job.”

Smiling, Chapel reached into his pocket and took out a handful of additional casings, identical to the first. He spilled them out on the table. One rolled off onto the rug, but he ignored it. “Your garbage man found these. And about five pounds more of them. Hundreds of discharged rounds from an assault rifle. He got suspicious when your garbage clanked. He opened the bag and found these, and did exactly what he was supposed to do—he called the local police. Now, there’s no crime against throwing away spent rounds, of course, but the police do get nervous when they see evidence that someone has been throwing away this much ammunition from an assault rifle. They called the ATF, who got very nervous.”

“So I own an AK-47,” Favorov said. “I was teaching my son to shoot.” Favorov shrugged. “All perfectly legal. Yes, I own an assault rifle, but it has been modified so that it cannot fire in full automatic mode. And, anyway, you don’t work for the ATF.”

“No, no, I don’t,” Chapel said. “I never would have heard about this case, actually, if things hadn’t started getting weird after that. You see, the ATF has some very bright scientists who do nothing all day but study bullets and casings. They found that these casings were an almost perfect match for another one they had on file. One that had been used to shoot an FBI agent about six months ago.”

Favorov dropped his napkin on the table. “So now I am a murderer?”

“Of course not. The man who shot the FBI agent was arrested within days of the shooting. Nobody you would know—a white supremacist out in Idaho.” Chapel waved one hand in the air, dismissing the very idea of a connection between the scumbag killer and the millionaire in front of him.

“Well, good,” Favorov said. “Anyway. This is not exactly a peculiar type of ammunition. The 7.62 by thirty-nine millimeter is probably the most common type of rifle ammunition in the world. Maybe this murderer and I bought rounds from the same supplier. Who knows?”

“Sure,” Chapel said. “So far, you’re right, there’s no connection. No reason for me to get involved, and certainly no reason for me to be bringing this to you. By the way—who did you buy these rounds from, if I can ask?”

Favorov gulped down some more wine. Fiona came around behind him and refilled his glass. He didn’t even look at her. “I have a friend, in the city. I can give you his information, he’ll vouch for me.”

“That would be very helpful. Maybe we can put this behind us, once I track down this friend,” Chapel said. He smiled. “Sorry, I know that was kind of dramatic, but there’s a lot of pressure on us to close this case.”

“Oh?”

Chapel nodded. “Yes. And I, for one, will be glad to be done with it. You know, it’s funny, a case like this—it’s not about running around dodging bullets and fighting bad guys. It’s more like the homework I used to do in school. A lot of reading. I just learned recently about taggants and trace elements in gunpowder. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.”

Favorov shook his head and drank more of his wine.

“It turns out—and forgive me, but I find this kind of thing fascinating—it turns out that every batch of gunpowder made, anywhere in the world, is slightly different. A lot of them have what are called taggant chemicals added to them. So that a forensic expert can know where that particular kind of gunpowder was made. For instance, every batch of gunpowder made in the US has taggants added.”

Favorov glanced over at Fiona. Chapel wondered why. He put that thought aside and continued. “The residue of the gunpowder in these casings,” he said, “doesn’t contain any taggants, though. Which is weird. So the ATF looked instead for trace elements. Radioactive isotopes, say, or particles of dust that got into the gunpowder during its manufacture. That turned up a match right away. The trace element profile on these casings is very distinctive, and it’s one that the Pentagon knows a lot about. Now maybe you see why I got called in to this case.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Favorov said.

“The trace elements in these casings only come from one gunpowder mill in the entire world.”

Favorov had been trained by the world’s second-best intelligence apparatus. His face did not shift or change or reveal anything. Chapel had to admit he was impressed. Apparently he was going to have to spell this out.

“The gunpowder in these casings,” Chapel said, picking one up and twirling it in his fingers, “can be traced back to the same mill that used to make gunpowder for the KGB. So could the residue in the bullet that killed the FBI agent. You see why somebody called the Pentagon when they saw that? The KGB. The supposedly defunct Soviet spy service. They have their own mill specifically so they can make gunpowder containing no taggants. Twenty years ago, that would have made this gunpowder untraceable. But not anymore.”

“I think you should say what you came here to say,” Favorov announced. Both of his hands were on the table, where Chapel could see them. Chapel assumed that was intentional. “Say it, and then I will call my lawyer.”

“The bullets you used to teach your son to shoot—the bullets the white supremacists fired at the FBI—come straight from Russia. So did the AK-47 the killer used, and, I’m pretty sure, the one you taught your son with. I’m accusing you, Mr. Favorov, of smuggling illegal weapons into this country. And I’m pretty sure they were supplied to you by elements in the Russian government. That might constitute an act of war. I am one hundred percent certain that makes you a traitor.”