“That depends on the question.”
“How did you find me?” asked Sanderson.
“You really want to know?” said Pushnoy. “Sometimes the truth hurts.”
“I just lost most of my organization on a remote island in the middle of the Atlantic. People I’ve known for years. People I’ve trained personally. I can handle the truth.”
Pushnoy briefly explained how they had acquired the information regarding Sanderson’s presence in Argentina, and that it had been his idea to lure Sanderson’s people away to Africa.
“You expect me to believe that you didn’t know who you were talking to on the other side?” said Sanderson. “Just an anonymous email exchange?”
“What did it matter?” said Pushnoy. “We vetted the information provided to our satisfaction. They upheld their end of the bargain. Speaking of bargains. Reznikov?”
“Well, that’s where this gets really interesting. I have reason to believe he’s in the United States — by invitation.”
“From whom?”
“From the same group that used the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service to cripple the only force capable and willing to rescind that invitation. A group with quite a stranglehold on things in my country right now.”
A pause so long ensued Ardankin nearly broke the interminable silence himself.
“I’m listening,” said Pushnoy.
Sanderson explained his theory and the early stages of a plan to track down the scientist. Pushnoy listened, his face never changing. When he finished, Pushnoy agreed to Sanderson’s truce and gave him contact instructions to use if the American unearthed evidence to support his theory. The director replaced the handset and rubbed his chin while Ardankin waited patiently for instructions.
“Still silent?” said Pushnoy. “There’s hope for you yet. Get Osin and Colonel Levkin’s Spetsgruppa out of Argentina immediately.”
“Yes, Director,” said Ardankin, starting to get up.
“Did I say I was finished?”
“No, Director.”
“Send part of Levkin’s team to Ciudad Juarez. I don’t care how you do it. I want them standing by to assist General Sanderson with the elimination of Anatoly Reznikov.”
“You trust this Sanderson?”
“I trust he wants to find and kill Reznikov. That’s all that matters to me.”
Chapter 59
Ryan Sharpe pressed the microchipped ID attached to the lanyard around his neck against the card reader and waited for the adjacent fingerprint scanner to activate. A few seconds later the biometric security device confirmed his identity, permitting him to open the windowless metal door to the National Security Branch section of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
He navigated the expansive maze of fluorescent-lit cubicles and dark conference rooms, glad to find it still empty. He had about a half hour before it started to fill, the sound of ringing phones, clacking keyboards, and voices rising to a crescendo shortly after that. Then Assistant Director Fred Carroll would arrive, and Sharpe wouldn’t get a minute to himself until he left twelve hours later. He needed this hour to clear out any unfinished business from yesterday and make some progress on longer-term tasks that would undoubtedly get pushed further behind once the section rolled in.
When Sharpe rounded the corner that led directly into the cluster of cubicles and windowed offices that defined the National Security Branch’s “executive suite,” he was surprised to find Dana O’Reilly’s office door open and brightly lit. Maybe she forgot to turn off her light last night. She had planned on staying another hour to tie up the quick investigation into Berg’s mystery group. He hadn’t wanted her putting any more time into it.
She’d quickly verified what Berg had passed along. While intriguing, it didn’t warrant continued FBI attention. Brown River definitely had personnel and accounting problems, something that Treasury would find interesting given the billion-dollar scope of the issue. Then again, Sharpe wasn’t sure how he could pass the information along to Treasury given that the files were obtained illegally. He could give them a nudge through one of his contacts and let them sort it out.
And what about Berg’s phantom army? Ajax Global solely existed as a paper corporation based in Delaware, which wasn’t uncommon. Delaware and Nevada had some of the most flexible business laws, plus no state corporate income tax. A publically available record search yielded a short list of corporate officers, all fictitious names from what O’Reilly could determine. Once again, not exactly a surprise, but more importantly, none of their business.
Berg had no doubt stumbled onto something strange. Sharpe just didn’t see how or where the National Security Branch, or the FBI in general, could get involved. The two kidnapping attempts referenced were FBI business, but the FBI field office determined by regional jurisdiction would handle that. Sharpe could call over to check on the progress and stress the importance of the investigation to NSB, but that was pretty much the extent of his influence in that matter.
“That you, boss?” O’Reilly called out well before he reached her door.
“Yes. The evil boss,” he said, poking his head inside. “Please tell me you didn’t come in early to work on that project.”
She had that look he had come to recognize over the years. Sharpe knew her next words before she spoke.
“I found something,” she said. “Been here all night, actually. Take a look at this.”
“All night?”
“I left to grab dinner and slept for a few hours on the couch in the break room.”
He took off his jacket and threw it on a low filing cabinet next to the door. “What the hell did you find, O’Reilly? Things tend to get crazy when you find things.”
Sharpe stood behind her desk and leaned against the windowsill, glancing at a digital map on a flat-screen monitor. The second screen immediately to the right displayed a detailed list, resembling the payroll file sent by Berg.
“Taking a few last glances at the payroll file, I noticed a pattern that Berg’s people might have missed or perhaps they purposefully withheld. I almost missed it myself,” said O’Reilly.
“Why would they withhold anything?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they wanted us to find this on our own. Generate an aha moment. Or like I said, they just missed it, like I almost did.”
“They’ve been poring over this for longer than you have,” said Sharpe.
“Either way, it’s interesting, if not disturbing. The addresses highlighted by Berg are all P.O. boxes, which we already knew, and that’s not exactly unusual for people in the Brown River line of work. I do find it a bit odd that all of the employees suspected of being part of Berg’s phantom army use P.O. boxes. I found that roughly seventy percent of Brown River’s non-phantom army employees have personal addresses listed. Odd, but nothing earth-shattering.”
“Let’s move on to the earth-shattering part,” said Sharpe.
“I started to see some repeat P.O. box locations, so I mapped a sample of two hundred mystery employees, finding this,” she said, clicking her mouse button.
Tight clusters of icons appeared across the United States, centered on a few dozen major cities.
“People come from all around,” said Sharpe, not fully vested in his counterargument.
“Then I mapped a thousand more. This takes time, by the way. We need a software upgrade,” said O’Reilly.
“I’ll get right on that,” said Sharpe. “Well?”
She clicked the mouse, and the identical pattern remained, with another dozen clusters appearing in some less populated cities. If Sharpe had to roughly guess, the clusters appeared in forty to fifty cities. He could immediately see a direct relationship between the number of icons appearing in a city and its population, with a few notable exceptions like Fredericksburg, Virginia, which had a disproportionately high number compared to New York City or Los Angeles. The picture represented a purposeful distribution.