“Flash, how’s it going?” he asked.
“On the last one.”
“I lost him, but I want to run down some of these roads for a second and see if he turned in somewhere. I’ll meet you at that little gas station we passed on the way up.”
“Sounds good.”
Danny found a place to turn around. As he drove back down the road, he realized that two of the estates had guardhouses set back a bit from the road.
“MY-PID, identify property owners for the street I’m driving down,” he ordered.
The computer had already accessed and downloaded the city property records, and within moments was reading off a list of owners.
Danny stopped it when it got to the Russian government.
“Is that the ambassador’s residence?” he asked.
“Negative.”
“Who lives there?”
“Not listed. Correlating with other data… residence appears to be occupied by the assistant ambassador for business. Possible link to GRU.”
In other words — the spymaster for the Russian military lived there.
Or might.
Was that where the doctor had gone?
The house was undoubtedly under surveillance, and Danny didn’t want to risk drawing any more attention to himself than he already had. He went back out to the main street and noticed a fire hydrant near the curb directly across from the intersection. He pulled over, got one of the video bugs and set it under the hydrant’s plug. Back in the car, he made sure he had a view of the street, then went and picked up Flash.
By the time Danny and Flash returned to the hotel room, Nuri had pieced together more of the money trail, with the computer’s help. Breaking into the Russian bank records after accessing the system through the new account, MY-PID found that 200,000 euros had been wired from the Russian account into a Moldovan bank account just that morning. The money was withdrawn in the afternoon, apparently in cash.
He showed Danny the money trail on the screen of their secure laptop. MY-PID had an Excel-based account tool that not only gave account balances and transactions, but could compare transactions to others at the same bank in real time, looking for related moves in shadow accounts. The SEC would have killed for it.
“First thing in the morning,” said Nuri, “we get a look at their security cameras. We’ll review the video and find out who went in there.”
“You think they’ll just hand it over?” asked Flash.
“Sure — if we’re there to fix it.”
“How do you get around not speaking the language?” asked Danny.
“I have a hearing aid,” said Nuri. “I pretend I’m hard of hearing, and I use MY-PID. Used to do it in Africa all the time. Plus my Romanian is getting better. Same language.”
The computer continued to churn through various bank records, first looking for obvious connections like direct transfers, then gradually becoming more esoteric. It looked for accounts that had similar usage patterns, but the only thing it could identify was an account used by GazProm, the Russian energy company, which made large transfers to cover payroll. No other accounts had received large transfers from the Russian account, and the only transactions the Moldovan bank account had on record, aside from interest payments and fees, were cash withdrawals.
“They probably use other banks,” said Nuri. “This just happens to be the one account we found.”
“Or this is all the money they get.”
“Maybe,” admitted Nuri. “But Moreno paid a hell of a lot more than this.”
“Maybe their agent takes a cut.”
“Hefty cut.”
“Subject Mercedes sighted,” reported MY-PID.
Nuri hit the keys on the laptop and pulled up the image, which was beamed from the fire hydrant. The car turned left instead of right — away from the house.
“Love to bug the car,” said Nuri.
“Oughta bug the Russian spymaster’s house instead,” said Danny.
“Probably already is.”
Nuri looked up at Danny.
“Shit,” he said. Then he grabbed his sat phone to see if he was right.
21
“I didn’t mean to have an argument with you,” Zen told Breanna after they put Teri to bed.
“It’s OK,” said Breanna, sitting down on the couch. The flowers he’d bought were sitting on the coffee table.
“You’re under a lot of pressure at work. I know. It’s gotta be — it’s a difficult assignment.”
“Mmmmm.” She picked up a magazine and began leafing through it.
Zen recognized her mood. It was as if she was bruised all over, and touching her anywhere would hurt. Yet he felt compelled to do something, to reach across the distance between them.
“I had lunch with Daly and Sullivan today,” he said, searching his brain for some anecdote that might be even distantly funny. “The dynamic duo. Sullivan was eating this bacon cheeseburger. Didn’t he vote in favor of the fat tax last year?”
Breanna shrugged.
“I think he did. His party suggested it,” added Zen. “What are you reading?”
Breanna held it up so he could see the cover. Traditional Home.
“In the mood for some decorating?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“The hallway could use a new coat of paint.”
She didn’t answer.
“Remember when we painted the apartment?” he asked.
It was a preaccident memory, which put it in a special category, potentially touchy for either one of them. But it was also a happy memory, the two of them working together at a time when they were both very much in love — way beyond that, completely infatuated with each other, unable to get enough of each other’s words and bodies.
“Jeez — what was the color?” he said, growing nostalgic. “Peach or something? Mauve. Something that I would have never thought would be a good color.”
“You’re not really much on color.”
“I don’t have your color sense,” Zen admitted, trying to push through the small opening. “Not at all.”
Breanna put down the magazine.
“You’re still going to Kiev?”
“Well, yeah,” he said.
“I have to go to Brown Lake at the end of the week. Did you remember?”
Brown Lake Test Area was the Technology Office’s facility at Dreamland, part of the expanded complex there. Dreamland itself was an Air Force command; the Technology Office was both a contractor and a customer, and kept a small contingent at leased space there. Zen guessed she was going for the demonstration of one of her projects, though she kept the actual identity of the project itself secret, even from him.
“Sure,” he said, though in fact the date had slipped from his memory. “Are you taking Teri with you?”
“I can’t. You know that.”
“She can come with me, then,” he said.
“Jeff—”
“Actually, I had a thought about leaving a day or two early and stopping in Prague—”
“Prague?”
“There’s an air show. Teri’ll love it.”
“You can’t take her, Jeff.”
“Why can’t I?”
“She has school.”
“Ah, school.”
“It’s too dangerous — didn’t you hear anything I told you the other day?”
The last thing he would ever do was put his daughter in danger. The suggestion that Teri go with him was just a spur of the moment thought, something that just popped into his head. Had he thought about it, he might have rejected it himself. But Breanna’s sharp retort put him on the defensive.