The Backup Asset

…53

“OK, let’s deal with the elephant in this car, Jeremy,” Alex said, “what have I done to piss you off?”

He hesitated before answering. His face read like an open book for Alex. Frustration, uneasiness, and a little sadness.

“It’s not you,” he eventually answered. “I–I’ve had a rough patch lately. I’ve changed partners quite a bit lately, and it’s impacting my work.”

“Let me see if I can translate what you said in plain English… no one wants to work with you, and you’re in trouble with your boss because of that?”

“Whoa… you are direct,” he said.

She looked straight at him, inquisitively.

“Yes,” he admitted. “Something like that.”

“I was wondering why you were on your own, you know. Feds normally roam in pairs,” she said, smiling. “What happened?”

“I’m impatient, I guess, and don’t care much for procedure, if it’s in the way of catching the bad guy sooner,” he said, relaxing a little.

“We have that in common, you know,” she chuckled.

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“He’s on the move,” Alex said in a brisk tone. “He’s going into the picnic area.”

They had been stuck on a stakeout, watching Quentin Hadden’s every move. Just hours earlier, Louie had brought the results of an in-depth pattern analysis for the five suspects on their list. His analysis included credit card charges, bank account transactions, phone and data records, the whole shebang.

He’d spent significant time digging into Sylvia Copperwaite’s background. Typically, a gambler carrying a significant amount of debt fit the profile, but she was clean. She’d been living on the edge for more than a year, and she never did anything wrong, not even a speeding ticket. She was clean as a whistle. The only unusual phone call she’d made in the past months had been in the past week, and it was a call to an addiction help center. She was getting help.

Everyone else’s financial transactions and phone usage had stayed unchanged, following the usual patterns seen in the past six months, except one.

Quentin Hadden had stopped using his credit card almost completely, and no cash withdrawals were made out of his bank accounts. There wasn’t any other discrepancy in Hadden’s patterns of behavior, which was strange. He wasn’t making or receiving any different calls than the usual. Of course, he might have purchased a burn phone, for which they had no records whatsoever. However, he hadn’t been traveling, eating out, or buying any large ticket items since surveillance had started. That was it, the only shred of discrepancy they had was the fact that the man had stopped using his credit cards for anything other than gas and online shopping. He either had an influx of cash to burn, or he somehow stopped needing food and toilet paper.

They had no better lead to go with, so Alex and Jeremy had decided to stake him out, one of the first points they had agreed on since they had met. Hadden had taken the day off, raising another red flag, and for some reason had been sitting for a few hours in his car, reading, right there in the Botanical Gardens parking lot.

Spending countless hours locked in the car with a grumpy fed had been a bit of a pain in the backside for Alex, that was for sure. But Hadden was finally on the move, leaving his parked car behind and heading toward the picnic area.

Alex hopped out of the car and put on shades and a baseball cap. Jeremy followed suit, then they locked arms and walked slowly and casually down the alley, just a few yards behind their target.

Hadden approached the picnic tables, where several people sat. There was a family with three children at one of the tables, packing their cooler and food containers and getting ready to leave. They were noisy and gregarious, but he didn’t pay any attention to them and didn’t stop there; he continued walking down the alley.

Several tables farther, two older men were playing backgammon, completely absorbed in their game and letting out sounds of frustration or exhilaration to go with the rolls of their dice. Hadden slowed down, as if captivated by the game, and stopped, watching the players.

“Who’s winning?” Hadden asked.

“I am,” one of the men replied.

“The hell you are,” the other one said. “Not as long as I have breath in me.”

Hadden smiled and patted the first man on his shoulder, leaning into him and discreetly sliding a small envelope in the man’s jacket pocket.

Alex and Jeremy almost missed that.

“That’s it, that was the drop, we got it,” Jeremy said.

“No, we don’t,” Alex replied, grabbing him in a side hug and taking what appeared to be a selfie, but in fact snapping a quick and somewhat distant image of the man at the backgammon table.

“Let’s go,” Jeremy said impatiently, “Hadden’s leaving.”

“So let him,” Alex said calmly, “we know where to find him. We have a bigger problem, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Yeah, and I’m arresting the bigger problem now,” Jeremy said, reaching in his pocket for his cell to call the backup unit stationed at the park entrance.

“No, you’re not,” she said, forcing his hand away from his pocket.

“Jesus, woman, what the hell is wrong with you?” Jeremy snapped.

“Don’t you wanna know where this lead takes us? If you book him now, I’m sure he’ll clam up and you got nothing else.”

“There isn’t a single case in the FBI’s procedure manual where we let spies go free when we catch them red-handed. What if we lose him? Then what?”

“Give me a minute, will you please?” Alex replied unperturbed, and sent the picture via encrypted text message, with just two letters typed under it, “ID.”

Hadden had disappeared around the corner, headed most likely for his car, and the two of them took a bench under an old oak tree, with a direct line of sight to the backgammon game that still continued. She sensed the frustration in Jeremy, who could have easily closed the case as a win and make amends for his lack of partner retention, but she didn’t care. She still fostered some hope that this case might somehow be related to her mystery man, the Russian ghost with the initial V.

A chime coming from Alex’s mobile got their attention a few minutes later. A new text message read, “Major Evgheni Smolin, Russian Foreign Intelligence (SVR), entered via Toronto Pearson as Rudnitsky inbound from Zurich. Then crossed as Duncan, Canadian passport, at Niagara Falls on April 9. Current address, Smithfield Virginia, Novachenko residence.”

“There, see?” Alex said, exhilarated to see the suspect was, indeed, Russian. “Now let’s set up surveillance to find out who else is invited to this party.”