The Backup Asset

…63

“How many did you say we had, again?” Alex asked in disbelief.

“There are 142,” Jeremy replied. “The entire complement of the Fletcher, well, minus Simionov; he’s been dealt with already.”

“We’ll be here ’til midnight,” she complained, grabbing the mouse from Jeremy’s desk and clicking through sailor profiles.

Jeremy’s phone rang, and he picked it up immediately.

“Agent Weber. Yes,” he said, “let me put you on speaker.” He put the phone on his desk and touched the speaker icon. “It’s one of the surveillance teams deployed at Smolin’s house,” he told Alex.

“Yeah, hi,” Alex greeted the caller.

“Good morning, ma’am. Nikolai Novachenko, Smolin’s so-called son-in-law, left earlier with a suitcase and a duffel bag and is headed for Norfolk International. What do you advise?”

“Damn,” she muttered. “Stay on him, and call TSA and ask them to screen him very thoroughly. Got it?”

“Yes, got it.”

“If he carries as much as a safety pin we wanna know about it, OK? And tell TSA to call us the minute they’re done with him.”

“Yes, understood,” the agent replied dryly, a little offended to be treated as if he didn’t know how to do his job and some civilian consultant had to spell it out for him.

Alex bit her lip. She wasn’t making any friends, that was for sure.

She stood and grabbed her empty coffee cup. “Want some?” she asked Jeremy.

“Please.”

A moment later, she was back with both cups refilled to the brim.

“Did they call yet?” Alex asked.

“It’s only been a minute,” Jeremy said. “Take it easy, will ya’?”

“Yeah, OK.”

She resumed clicking through the sailor profiles, a little preoccupied. Her mind wouldn’t focus on the work in front of her, stubbornly going over every possible scenario Novachenko could use to transport classified information out of the country. When the phone finally rang, she almost jumped out of her skin.

“Good morning, Agent… Weber,” the caller said hesitantly, “this is Shift Supervisor Davidson with TSA at Norfolk.”

“Yeah, what did you find?”

“We had to let him go, Agent Weber. We didn’t find anything wrong with him, and we checked him thoroughly. We took him in a private screening room and went over everything in detail: clothes, his luggage, everything.”

“Anything out of the ordinary? Anything at all? Was he nervous, agitated?” Alex intervened.

“N — no, ma’am, nothing out of the ordinary. He was relatively calm, even apologetic. Most people are a little antsy when we pull them in for private screening, and his behavior was quite normal under the circumstances.”

“Why apologetic?”

“Oh, he had a sandwich with him, and he apologized for that, said he didn’t know if that was allowed or not. We let him go; they’re boarding the flight now.”

A wave of adrenaline spiked her heart rate. She hesitated a little… What if she was wrong? Ahh… the hell with it.

“Stop him,” she yelled at the TSA agent. “Grab him, and get that sandwich. We’re on our way.”

She ran to the elevator, followed closely by Jeremy.

“Care to share?” he asked, as they were heading downstairs in what seemed to be the slowest elevator invented.

“Not really,” she said sheepishly. “Just a hunch.”