C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
I
t actually took Venice less than thirty minutes, but in that time, Jonathan had managed to fall asleep. The Lagavulin had a part in that, but so did the absence of sleep in the past thirty-six hours.
“I’ve got it!” Venice announced, blasting into the office without warning. “Leonard Shaw,” she said. “Does that name mean anything to you?” She didn’t address the question to anyone in particular, but Jonathan assumed it was for Yelena.
No one said anything.
“Alexei Petrov,” Venice said, and Yelena’s face lit up.
“You know him,” Jonathan said, observing the obvious.
“Alexei,” she said. “Yes, he was a sweet boy. What does that have to do with Leonard . . . who?”
“Shaw,” Venice said. “Leonard Shaw. He prefers to go by Len. That’s Petrov’s new name. He’s a Canadian now.”
More recognition on Yelena’s features. “He was a Canadian then.” She chuckled at something that passed through her mind. “A socialist to his soul, he never fully understood what to do with his feelings. He has changed his name?”
“So it seems,” Venice said. “Quite some time ago.”
Jonathan raised his hand, partly to poke fun, but mostly to give Venice a chance to shine. “Dare we ask how you determined this?” he asked. Not everyone understood how thoroughly she terrorized electrons with her computer skills, and he thought a showcase was important for her credibility.
Venice explained. “After I scanned through the various drawings we pulled off the data retrieved from Banks, I briefly scanned what you sent me from Vasily and Pyotr. I remembered a reference to Ottawa, which didn’t mean anything to me until David mentioned an international connection. I just worked backward until I found an e-mail about a visit to go see Len Shaw.”
As she paused for a breath, Jonathan said, “This is the part that I always like. Wait till you see how she connected the dots.” He said this in full confidence, having no idea how she in fact connected the dots.
Venice continued, “I matched Len Shaw with Ottawa, and of course that didn’t mean anything to me. So then I threw in the list of names from Mrs. Darmond’s participation with the FBI way back when, and I found a record that showed that Alexei Petrov had changed his name to Len Shaw.”
She stopped, clearly assuming that she’d explained everything. Recognizing the blank stares for what they were, she said, “Come on, how could that be a coincidence? I looked him up, and I found that he’s become quite the real estate investor.”
“Investor?” Irene prompted.
“Investor,” Venice confirmed. “He’s assembled quite a few properties over the years, all of them in the greater Ottawa area.”
“Relevance?” Jonathan said.
“International,” Venice said. “I don’t know why, but I guess I assume that if they’re going to take high-profile hostages, they’re going to stay contiguous to the United States. I didn’t find any Mexican references.”
Thank God for that
, Jonathan didn’t say. He’d spent enough time south of the border, thank you very much.
“How about it, Yelena?” Jonathan asked. “Is this the connection we’re looking for?”
Yelena looked to Irene. “Is Alexei with Dmitri now? I could see that happening.”
“Don’t look at me,” Irene said. “This is Venice’s show. I have no idea where she’s going.”
“Why could you see it happening?” Jonathan asked. He suspected that Venice had already divined all the answers, but sometimes it’s best to absorb other stakeholders into a problem to embrace the obvious on their own.
“You need to remember when we were together,” Yelena said. “We all thought that for the Soviet Union to thrive, the United States had to die. I don’t know to this day if that was true. As it turns out, the Soviet Union is gone and the United States is still here.”
“Congregation say halleluiah and amen,” Boxers said.
Yelena continued as if she hadn’t heard. “Alexei, as I recall, believed that everything the USA did was wrong. Everything. His family had Vietnam deserters living in their home. It was that kind of a house. Right around the time I was arrested, he fled back to Canada, knowing that no one would prosecute him there. I had no idea that he changed his name, though.”
Jonathan asked, “Do you think he is capable of kidnapping?”
“Maybe,” she said. “He was all about loyalty back then. Loyalty and action. If he felt that I betrayed him, maybe he could be moved to kidnap.”
“I don’t want to put too fine a point on this,” Boxers said, “but didn’t you in fact betray him? Didn’t you betray all of your friends when you turned government witness?” He winked at Irene. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
Irene acknowledged his wink with a smirk. For Boxers, there was no greater crime than turning your back on a friend.
Venice brought the conversation back on track. “If it’s even remotely possible that he would participate in such a thing,” she said, “I think that he’s where you all need to focus your attention.”
They all waited for her to answer her own riddle.
When the answer didn’t come in a few seconds, Jonathan primed the pump. “Why is that?” he asked.
“Because one of the properties he owns is an abandoned prison,” she said. A smile bloomed on her face as she took in the shocked looks.
“Yes, a prison,” she clarified. “Saint Stephen’s Reformatory. On Saint Stephen’s Island in the middle of the Ottawa River. It used to be Canada’s own little Alcatraz. According to the zoning applications, he’s planning to turn it into a hotel.”
“What a romantic getaway,” Boxers said.
Venice ignored him. Again. “But I can’t find any records that he’s followed through on the plan.”
“I don’t get it,” Irene said. “Are you suggesting that he bought that property with the idea of kidnapping Mrs. Darmond’s children?”
“No,” Venice said. “I’m suggesting that he bought the property to fund whatever he’s interested in funding. The fact that it’s still a prison merely plays into his hand. Think about it. It’s in the middle of a river, accessible from a single bridge. If I were going to run a summer camp for would-be terrorists, I could think of worse places. A great place to make a last stand, if it came to that.”
Jonathan felt a chill at the realization that they might be dealing with a fortress. The room fell quiet as everyone thought through what they’d been told.
“It makes too much sense to dismiss it,” Jonathan said, breaking the silence. “But how do we confirm it?” His eyes drilled Irene. “Do you have influence over the satellite taskers?”
“Not without making all of this official,” she said.
“But my guys have Peter in custody now. We can try leaning on him a little harder. He was pretty talkative for you.”
Irene pulled out her cell phone and pressed buttons.
Jonathan pivoted to face David and Becky. He made a V with his first two fingers and pointed at both of them simultaneously. “Honest to God, you two. You’re seeing shit that you have no right to see. If even a hint of this appears in some newspaper—”
“I get it,” David said. His tone was harsh, his words percussive. “You’ve made that point already.”
Becky held up her hands in surrender. “Ditto. I understand.”
Jonathan held his glare, gauging their sincerity. He liked what he saw: equal parts fear and indignation.
Jonathan turned to Venice. “Have you already talked with our friend down south?”
She nodded, knowing that he was referring to Lee Burns, a former unit colleague who owned the SkysEye satellite network, for which Jonathan paid an astronomical fee every year to have access to a view from above that nearly rivaled the imagery that Uncle Sam could produce through the NSA and the air force.
Venice said, “I’ve actually pulled up some interesting imagery in the War Room. If you—”
“I need to speak to you both outside,” Boxers said. “Now.”
From the tone alone, Jonathan knew what he wanted to talk about, and it was probably a conversation worth having.
“Excuse us,” Jonathan said. He followed Boxers and Venice out into the area—he supposed you could call it a lobby—that separated their offices and the War Room.
The door to Jonathan’s office had barely closed when Boxers said, “What are we about to do?”
“Launch a rescue mission,” Jonathan said. “We’re going to do what we’re good at.”
“At what cost?” Boxers said. Even at a whisper, his voice was louder than it should have been. He leaned down when he spoke, an effort to get close to their faces. “And I don’t mean dollars. Do you see how many people we’re about to bring into the circle? Reporters, for God’s sake. Are you crazy?”
Eighty percent of Jonathan’s professional life these days was lived outside the law. Not the
wrong
side, but the outside. Whenever the covert element of Security Solutions kicked into gear, the laws of any land became irrelevant. This meant that he and Boxers routinely broke laws, and that Venice was an accomplice every time they did it. OpSec was a critical concern.
“Look,” Jonathan said, “Wolverine already knows what we do. She’s been involved in half of the ops anyway.”
“I’m not worried about her,” Boxers said. “She’s got skin in the game. If we testify, she’s toast. That makes her trustworthy. But these others . . .” He let his voice trail away.
“I agree with Boxers,” Venice said, words that rarely escaped her lips. “And that very fact should tell you something.”
“It’s a hint that life as we know it is about to end,” Jonathan quipped, but it fell flat. “Okay, Big Guy, tell me what our alternative is.”
He shrugged. “We just walk away. A day ago, Yelena Anna Poltanov friggin’ Darmond was our precious cargo. She’s the one we signed on to rescue. Okay, she’s safe. We’re done. Declare victory and walk away.”
“And her son and grandkid?” Jonathan addressed that question to Venice, who looked away.
“You see?” Boxers griped. “That’s your weapon. You use it all the time. You try to make it about the
people
and not about the
operation
. I hate that.”
“But the operation
is
the people,” Jonathan said. Boxers’ eye grew hot, no doubt because Jonathan was being deliberately obtuse. He knew exactly where Big Guy was coming from. Back in the day when they did what they did under the auspices of Uncle Sam, the operation meant everything—trumping all of humanity except that of the team members. You did what you did to accomplish the mission, and if that meant trading your life for that of the PC, that was fine. The difference—the wild card—back then was that someone else chose the mission for you. These days, the risks were all hand selected, and when you started stacking them on top of each other, it could get daunting.
Jonathan looked to Venice. “You?”
He could almost see her brain racing for options behind her eyes, but nothing formed.
“If it helps,” Jonathan said, “I’m not thrilled by the cast of characters, either. The First Lady is . . . well she’s whatever the hell she is, but this is for her kids, so I don’t worry too much about her.”
“Which brings me back to my original point,” Big Guy said. “The reporters. There’s no such thing as a trustworthy journalist. And that’s a lesson all three of us have learned the hard way.”
“We’ve never been screwed by anyone whose life we’ve saved,” Jonathan said. Something about the words amused him—the fact that the world could be divided into slices that actually included such a category.
He sensed Boxers’ frustration. Apparently, Venice could, too, because she moved to lighten the mood. “There’s another way to think of this,” she said. “Dig, you already gave your fear-of-God speech, and they already know where we are and what we’re doing. You saved their lives.”
“They’re
reporters
,” Boxers growled. How could he make his point any clearer?
“And as long as they’re here,” Venice said, “they’re controllable.”
“You know they’re going to want to come along, right?” Boxers said. “They’re going to try some embed bullshit, and you’re going to buy it.”
“The bright side,” Jonathan said. “Maybe they’ll get shot.”
“Not a bad idea.”
“You’re always free to say no,” Jonathan said. As soon as the words were out, he knew he’d made a mistake.
Boxers swelled to his full height, and somehow more than his full girth. His face turned red as his jaw set. Boxers had never once refused to follow Jonathan into any Golf Foxtrot—goat fuck—and as often as not, Big Guy had been the reason why Jonathan had gotten to come home to do it again.
“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said quickly. “That was cheap and it was wrong. I’m really, really sorry.” He had no business throwing a passive-aggressive guilt trip on him. It wasn’t even Jonathan’s nature to do such a thing. “Chalk it up to being really tired.”
Boxers held his anger long enough to make his point, and then he deflated. A little. “Just what we freaking need,” he said. “Here we are about to invade Canada, and you’re too tired to think straight.”