Even (24 page)

“I was thinking about these planted IDs,” Weston said. “Especially the Ukrainian ones. Where did they come from? Are they real, or fake? Did they make them, or steal them? And when?”

“Good angle,” Varley said. “Could definitely lead somewhere.”

“And don’t forget the basics—follow the dollar,” Weston said. “These guys had just been paid off. Three months’ money. Their line of work that could be, what, fifty grand each? Three hundred thousand dollars? That’s a decent motive right there. And no one looked at it before, ’cause we thought they were bums.”

“You’re right,” Varley said. “Get the full financials on all of them. Including the company they worked for.”

“Good call,” Weston said. “Must be people there who knew about the payoff.”

“We’re moving on that already,” Lavine said.

“I’d focus on the employer, if it was up to me,” Tanya said. “Not so much on the money. I’m not sure the payoff’s all that relevant.”

“Three hundred grand isn’t relevant?” Weston said.

“You have to understand how it works, over there,” Tanya said. “I’ve been thinking. Something about how the people were moved around between jobs sounds fishy to me.”

“What’s your problem with it?” Varley said.

“When my brother first went back, he was on convoy protection,” Tanya said. “The others were, too. My brother’s still doing it.”

“What kind of convoy?” Lavine said.

“Captured ammunition,” Tanya said. “On its way for destruction.”

“Ouch,” Lavine said. “Rather them than me.”

“Exactly,” Tanya said. “They get all sorts of bonuses, because of the risks. And because it’s so critical to keep the ammo out of the insurgents’ hands.”

“And yet Redford and Mansell were pulled off these ammo convoys to guard some hospital?” Varley said.

“Right,” Tanya said. “So what does that tell us about the hospital work?”

“It was more important than protecting the convoys,” Varley said.

“Exactly,” Tanya said. “And the whole team was pulled out of the hospital under some bogus cover story. Then they were fired. And a few days later, they started being killed.”

“I see where you’re going,” Varley said. “It doesn’t sound like a coincidence.”

“No, it can’t be,” Tanya said. “That’s why I think the company holds the key. Someone there knows something.”

“Did your brother give you the name of the company?”

“He did. Tungsten Security.”

“Contact details?”

“Kelvin Taylor. Chief operating officer.”

“We need to run his background, pronto.”

“I ran it already,” Lavine said. “Nothing stands out.”

“So who is he?” Varley said.

“Ex-military. Served in Iraq during the first Gulf War. And Kuwait. Mustered out shortly after. Went back to do charity work. Set up some
kind of humanitarian project. It’s still running. The only U.S. program to survive. He may have got married over there as well, but his wife never surfaced Stateside if he did.”

“What’s his involvement with Tungsten?”

“He set that up, too. It’s basically your garden-variety private security contractor. Current climate, they can’t make money fast enough. Balance sheet’s more than healthy. They’re awash with cash. List of government contracts as long as your arm. No employees with criminal records. No red flags on file. Nothing to help on any systems. It’s going to take a coordinated effort to unravel.”

I listened to Lavine’s words in disbelief. In a literal sense I knew how we’d got to this point. Stumbling across Lesley’s victim dragged me into her scheme; finding that the body belonged to an agent bounced me into the railroad case; the connection with the security firm suggested something larger was going on. But what I couldn’t comprehend was how I’d been plucked from the departure lounge at JFK and dumped on the verge of a full-scale FBI frolic. Staying on to help Tanya fight her demons was one thing. I was thinking about time spent in restaurants. And bars. And other, more secluded places. Not in offices. Not sitting through endless meetings. Talk of corporations was a bad sign. Any mention of conspiracies and government contractors was worse. Interagency cooperation was only a sentence away. Task forces would be proposed. I knew how it would end up. If I let the FBI go down that road I’d never get away. I’d be stuck here for months, and at the end I’d have absolutely nothing to show for it. I needed to head them off at the pass. Something more direct was called for. It was time to shake the tree.

“So the whodunitometer isn’t working,” I said. “What a surprise. Tanya, how do we contact this guy?”

“I have his cell number,” she said. “My brother knew it.”

“Perfect. I’ll give him a call. Pop around, have a chat.”

“No,” Varley said.

“Yes,” I said. “You guys stick to your paper trails. Leave the infiltration to me. I’m the only one who’s trained for it.”

“We’re not going to infiltrate,” Varley said.

“You’re not,” I said. “Not with your track record.”

“We can’t, because everyone at Tungsten is a suspect. We may need to arrest people.”

“We may need to do more than that.”

“Absolutely not. Anything we find needs to hold up in court. No way are you going in on your own. If you go, all four of you go. Keep an eye on each other. This one stays above the line. No exceptions.”

I sighed and pulled out the phone Lesley had given me.

“What’s his number, Tanya?” I said.

“You’re a bit gung ho,” Weston said. “Somewhere you’d rather be?”

“Yeah,” I said. “The other side of the world.”

The navy loves to use role-play in its training exercises.

That can be embarrassing at first. Pretending to be a businessman or a plumber or a traffic warden in front of twenty other people makes you feel like you’re back in grade school. But after a while the awkwardness wears off and the value starts to show through. Doing something is always better than being told how, and seeing other people perform gives you plenty of food for thought.

The first time we tried it we were given a clear scenario. We worked for a company that wanted to build a new refrigerator factory in one the ex-Soviet republics. We had to meet a group of their government officials at a hotel in London to haggle over state subsidies. We were suspicious that they had offered our competitors a better package, so we were sent with a list of questions to test the theory. And at the same time, we had to avoid revealing any details about ourselves that would strengthen their hand. To make the exercise realistic we were told to bring our suits and briefcases. Then we were taken to a location in the City and sent on our way.

Everything that happened in the hotel was videoed, and reviewed afterward. All of us did a pretty good job. Evil communist schemes were revealed, our lips remained tight. We were ready to pat ourselves on the back when the instructors passed a piece of paper around to each of us.
These detailed everything we’d given away about ourselves. The lists were long. At first no one could understand, because nothing on the sheets corresponded with the recordings of the meetings. Then the real point became clear. The information they’d gathered about us hadn’t been spoken. It had come from our coats, which they’d politely hung up. Our jackets. Briefcases. Anything that had been out of our sight or opened or left in plain view.

The lesson was, information can come from everything people show you.

Whether they mean to, or not.

Tungsten Security had two sets of premises. Their operational base wasn’t in the most promising part of New York. It was built on a scruffy, unfashionable patch of land in Queens that had been clawed back from the marshes when Kennedy Airport was first developed in the forties, but the isolated compound was in no way run-down or neglected. And it hadn’t been starved of money. In fact, the people who’d fitted the place out had burned through an even bigger pile of cash than the decorators at the company’s official headquarters I’d seen on Fifth Avenue. They just hadn’t been as concerned with esthetics.

The line of five drab, olive-green warehouses sat uninvitingly alone at the far end of a long, straight service road. It was easy to find. There were no other structures within five hundred yards in any direction. The reinforced mesh fence separating the buildings from the surrounding land was sixteen feet high, with four gleaming strands of razor wire sloping toward us at the top. Another fence ran parallel to it, twenty yards inside the perimeter, identical except that the wire faced the other way. Nothing taller than a blade of grass grew in between, and posts set at regular intervals on the far side carried an array of floodlights, security cameras, infrared beacons, and motion sensors.

There was no mention of the company name. And no signs to welcome visitors.

The only obvious way in was through a pair of stout metal gates. They were wide enough for heavy trucks to use, so Weston’s Ford felt pretty small as he coasted up to them and stopped inside a hatched area marked on the road with yellow paint.

A small notice on the vertical bars said
WAIT
.

“What is this place?” Weston said.

“Did I miss something?” Lavine said. “Are we at Gitmo?”

The outer gate slid silently aside and Weston rolled forward until his window was level with an intercom mounted on a steel pillar. A second box was attached higher up, for truck drivers. Weston reached out with his left hand but before he could press any buttons the gate started to close behind us again. The gaps on both sides were blocked with the same mesh and razor wire as the main fences, leaving us completely caged in.

“See?” Lavine said. “A guy will come out, now, with orange jumpsuits for us to wear. You wait.”

“State your name and business,” a voice said through the intercom. It was male, and had an Australian accent.

“FBI,” Weston said. “Kelvin Taylor is expecting us.”

“Building one,” the voice said.

The buildings each had a four-foot-tall number stenciled in white paint above their main door. We emerged through the inner gate in front of building number three. Number one was at the far end, to our left, with a pair of old, battered Toyota Landcruisers and a shiny silver Prius parked outside.

“What do you think these places are for?” Tanya said.

“Don’t know,” I said. “Presumably building one will be their admin block, if that’s where they’re meeting us. And if this is where their people prepare for deployment, they’ll need a warehouse and an armory.”

“There,” Weston said, nodding at number two as we trundled past. “No windows.”

“See the roll-up doors on three?” Lavine said. “That’ll be their workshop. They’ll need to prep their vehicles for different climates.”

“And the others?” Tanya said.

“Didn’t get a good look,” I said. “Accommodations? Briefing rooms? More storage?”

“Who knows?” Weston said.

“Maybe the place is just a front,” Lavine said. “Could be what this whole thing’s about. Could all just be stuffed full of drugs and illegal immigrants.”

“Could be,” I said. “Let’s ask Mr. Taylor. . . .”

The doors to building one swung open automatically, but as we followed Lavine inside I got the impression we’d be dealing with people who weren’t big on hospitality. The space we entered was more like a cell than a reception area. The gray paint on the floor was wearing thin, the walls were bare, unfinished cinderblocks, and the three fluorescent lights on the ceiling had no covers to diffuse their glare.

A plain metal table had been placed in the center. Its legs were bolted to the ground. A man was sitting behind it, keeping one eye on us and the other on an oversized flat-panel monitor. He was wearing shiny black paratrooper boots, sand-colored utility pants, and a matching short-sleeved shirt with fake epaulets. It had a logo on the left pocket—a bold, capital
W
with some kind of dog’s head superimposed on it—and a stenciled name label stuck to a Velcro patch on the right. It said
SMITH
. A cordless headset with a boom mike was hooked behind his left ear. When he finally stood up to greet us, you could see a Sig Sauer pistol in a holster on his right hip.

“Good morning, folks,” he said. It was the same voice we’d heard on the intercom. “Still is morning, just about. And Mr. Taylor is already on his way over. Just need to see some ID while we’re waiting. . . .”

He was happy with Weston’s and Lavine’s, but raised his eyebrows when he saw the card Tanya had returned to me in the car along with my wallet and other papers.

“Royal Navy?” he said. “You’re a bit off the beaten track, aren’t you, mate?”

“Telling me,” I said. “Tried to go home this morning, but this lot couldn’t manage without me.”

He was still trying to decide whether I was joking when a door opened behind him and a slender, gray-haired man appeared. He was wearing an identical pseudouniform, but his was a little darker as if it hadn’t seen much outdoor action. The name badge said
TAYLOR
, which saved him the trouble of an introduction.

If Lesley’s hit man had been a squirrel, this guy was a mouse. It wasn’t that he was particularly small—five eight, five nine at the most—but there was something about the nervous energy in his wiry limbs and tight, pinched face that made him seem jumpy and unsettled. And the impression grew stronger as he guided us through the main office, darting between rows of steel desks like an animal in a laboratory maze. We had a struggle to keep up as he scuttled around the final few banks of metal filing cabinets and disappeared through the door to a meeting room.

The tables in the meeting room were also made of metal. There were four. Each was wide enough for two people. They were arranged in a diamond shape with only their inner corners touching, leaving a square gap in the center. The space had been used to display a Plexiglas sphere. It was two feet in diameter, and was sitting on a wheeled wooden frame like the kind that hold ancient globes in libraries and museums. A chunk of rock was suspended inside. It was a rough pyramid shape, with patches of pitted gray occasionally visible through a thick, uneven crust of white and yellow crystals.