“My honor?”
“That’s exactly right.”
“Where’s Ehrmann?”
“Unavailable.”
Marquez looked at Peres. “Are you part of the undercover team watching Weisson’s? I feel like I saw you in a window.” Peres stared hard at him. “Am I right?”
Peres turned to his companions. “The only safe thing is to lock him up until this is over. We’ve got him up on a levee road playing James Bond, and I don’t want to take this risk. Let’s find her and let’s hold him.”
“You’re making the risks,” Marquez said.
Peres turned to the balding agent. “Who is this horse’s ass?”
But the balding agent had a question now for Marquez. “What do you mean you saw him in a window?”
“He didn’t see me,” Peres said.
“We saw a surveillance team, and Peres here looks like the guy that was in the window. I looked at him with binoculars, but I could be wrong. We were checking out everything surrounding Weisson’s because we’d followed two suspects there.” The balding agent nodded. “Look, I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have met with her, but we’re still trying to crack this poaching ring. She told me she had information on the poachers she’d give me today and I bit. I should have called you first.”
He realized he’d started to get through to them and continued talking. The balding agent was Stan Sullivan. He introduced the crow. “This is Special Agent Walker,” and Marquez gathered that she was out here from the East, possibly Quantico. She was dead serious as she faced him again.
“We have significant charges we’re prepared to file against a number of people. I don’t know the details of the promise made to Burdovsky, but I’m certain we haven’t reneged on anything. We wouldn’t do that. That’s all I can say about it. I know about Seattle, and despite what you may believe, the Bureau is very sympathetic to what you are trying to do.”
The door opened, and Douglas walked in. He took a seat and looked across the table at Marquez.
“John,” Douglas asked, “did she tell you anything else?”
In this room full of people Douglas focused on him, was trying to communicate with him. He waited for Marquez to respond to the cue. Marquez told the story again. Left out nothing, added what he was saving for Ehrmann, that she’d asked him not to stop her from trying to get away.
“Why wouldn’t you stop her? She burned you.”
“She was three steps and in the water and there were two blacked-out Suburbans closing on me. I didn’t see any reason to chase her.” Then the last thing, what he was saving for Ehrmann. “She said you have another source inside this Eurasian crime ring and that you don’t need her.”
“She told you we have another source?”
Marquez nodded, added that he’d been waiting for Ehrmann to arrive.
Marquez heard Peres to the crow, “What did I tell you?”
Douglas silenced Peres with his hand.
“Did she name this other source, John?”
“No, and she didn’t say any more than that.”
“That’s disturbing.”
The room was quiet. The crow’s stare had turned opaque. But the balding agent seemed to understand his holding out for Ehrmann.
“How soon is your bust?” Marquez asked.
“Too soon to have her running around.” Douglas looked from Marquez to the balding man. “We need to get Ehrmann right now.”
36
He was another hour at the Sacramento Field Office, and when he walked out he was no longer angry that he’d been hauled in. He knew what the hours before a bust felt like, the countdown after the hour was picked, the premeetings done, the safety talks, warrants in place, everything ready to go. Then something unexpected happens and you don’t really know what to do with it, par t icularly at the Federal level where the momentum is harder to start and stop. Momentum acquired its own life as a big bust neared, and in the hyped-up, sometimes near paranoid state before a significant takedown anything could rattle you.
But he was disturbed by what he’d learned and what he was piecing together. They hadn’t found Anna and were frustrated and surprised she’d eluded them. Ehrmann had walked into the room where Marquez sat with Douglas and asked, “Where is there to hide out there? There’s nothing there but vineyards and orchards. There aren’t six buildings on that levee island. Is she scuba trained? Is it possible she swam out underwater in the slough? How could we lose her out there?”
Now darkness was coming. Ehrmann had made it clear they were going forward with the bust, and Marquez had guessed that explained Douglas’s presence in Sacramento. Not even Douglas would tell him when the go hour was, but it wasn’t hard to figure out it was within twenty-four hours.
He drove to the safehouse and continued on to Bell’s house. Everything was in place for Ludovna’s visit. Roberts would be his wife for the night. She had put on bright pink lipstick and cut up celery and emptied bags of baby carrots and potato chips onto a platter. There was a sour cream dip.
“I’m in here, honey,” she called, and he heard Cairo laugh. “Would you bring me a martini?”
He walked into Bell’s study, and they were arranging fishing trophies and had hung photos. In a loose way they’d decorated the house for the guy he was. Roberts smiled and batted her eyes at him.
“I forgot the martini.”
“That’s okay, sweetie, but do you think everything looks nice? Should I run out to the market and buy more potato chips, and do you think your friend will go through more than one bottle of vodka?”
“He might but we’ll pour champagne first. He told me he’s bringing some caviar.”
“That’s too bad, I thought we should poach our own sturgeon. I thought that’s why you’re late. Wouldn’t the party be more fun that way?”
He smiled at her. “You look nice. I’ve been with the Feds and that’s why I’m late.”
“I went all out,” she said, and she wore a tight black dress, her long legs stretching from underneath it. “I bet I know what you’re wondering,” she said. “You’re wondering where my gun is.”
“You’re not wearing it.”
“Not tonight. I have it here in the kitchen and I could change, what do you think?”
Alvarez would be on the street and Marquez wasn’t worried, but he was jittery. He tried to lighten up and hook into the banter, but his mind was on the FBI bust. Ludovna connected to Weisson’s via the sturgeon and that got talked about in the FBI Field Office. He’d sat an hour with Ehrmann at the long table there and ticked off the names again of the suspects in their sturgeon poaching investigation. Ehrmann had acknowledged that the Bureau suspected Ludovna was trafficking in caviar. But he wasn’t concerned about Ludovna’s animal trafficking. That was Marquez’s to deal with. The conversation was all about Anna.
Marquez sat with Roberts before Ludovna arrived. He told her what had happened today, told her about the call from Anna, meeting on the slough road, the questioning at the FBI Field Office.
“They’re getting ready to make a bust and they’re not saying where or when, but it’s very soon. I saw an FBI SWAT commander that I recognized come through the Sacramento Field Office while I was there, and they all have that feel to them. They’re gearing up. What I’m not clear about is Anna’s role. I think they were hoping she’d get some particular bit of intelligence for them. They hoped and she didn’t deliver, and now they’re not sure what side she’s on. She’s stopped cooperating with them. They’ve threatened her with new charges and that’s frightened her even more. And, because they didn’t find her today, they think she had help escaping.”
“What do you think?”
“She might have had help. My friend Douglas showed up and that calmed things down, but they’re wired up and ready to go.” He paused. “I made a mistake meeting her this morning without calling Ehrmann first.”