Something about that whole weapons check-through procedure was tugging at the back of Lightstone's brain, but he didn't know why, and then Jennifer Alik interrupted his thoughts before he could figure it out.
"Anything else I can help you with?" the young Eskimo woman asked.
"Well, for the next twenty minutes or so," Lightstone said, "why don't you show me how you really would have inspected a shipment from Flight Ninety-nine had that tip come from a more reliable source."
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Thursday September 15th
At exactly one o'clock that Thursday morning, Special Agent Henry Lightstone went through the motions of suddenly remembering that he had a flight to catch. The assistant manager at the Alaska Cargo office-who was apparently willing to do just about anything for Jennifer Alik-stepped in and offered to drive him out on his baggage cart to the loading ramp for Alaska Flight 394.
Entering the plane via the emergency access stairway, Lightstone managed to bypass the surveillance teams that FBI Agent A1 Grynard had placed at the security checkpoints.
Eight hours and twenty minutes later, at precisely 10:20 a.m., after passing through one time zone, and two more security checks without incident, Lightstone approached the Budget rental-car counter at San Diego International Airport. He signed for a small sedan in the name of Henry Allen Lightner, using one of his undercover credit cards that he hadn't gotten around to canceling.
Forty-five minutes later, Lightstone entered the Federal Building on "C" street, took the elevator up to the seventh floor, and walked into Dwight Stoner's office… completely unaware that he had been followed all the way from the Budget parking lot.
"Henry Lightstone. I'm here to see Dwight Stoner," he said, holding out his badge and credentials for inspection by the young blond receptionist.
"I'm sorry, sir," the young woman smiled apologetically, "but Agent Stoner left the office a little while ago. Was he expecting you?"
"Uh, no, not really. Do you know when he'll be back?"
"No, I don't. He received a call from an informant, and then he left right away."
"An informant?" Lightstone blinked. "Are you sure?"
"Well, uh, yes, I guess so. I mean-"
"When exactly did he get the call?"
"Oh, uh, earlier this morning," the receptionist said, looking flustered.
"I mean, what time?" Lightstone said impatiently.
"Oh, sure, let's see here," she said as she turned back the top page in her telephone memo book. "Yes, here it is. The call came in at exactly nine forty-six, a little over an hour ago."
"Did you happen to get the name of the informant?" Lightstone asked as he tried to read the barely legible script upside down.
"No, I didn't. She wouldn't give me her name. I asked her twice, but she said that-"
"She?" Lightstone's head came up. "Are you sure it was a woman?"
"Oh, yes, it was definitely a woman's voice," the young woman nodded. "She had a real strong accent. Sort of Germanic, I think."
Lightstone forced himself to remain calm. "Do you remember what was it, exactly, that she said to you?" he asked, feeling his blood pressure starting to rise as he remembered A1 Grynard's words: And Scoby hasn't checked back in from a routine contact with a female informant somewhere in southern Arizona.
"Well, let me think. Humm, first of all, when I asked who she was, she said that she didn't want to give me her name because it was not a big deal and she didn't think-"
"Listen, uh, Tracy," Lightstone interrupted as he quickly read the nameplate on the front of the desk, "this is very important. Do you have any idea of where Agent Stoner was to meet this informant?"
"No, he didn't say, but he might have written it down in the notebook on his desk. He usually-" she started to add, but Lightstone was already sprinting to Stoner's small office, where he rummaged around the top of the cluttered desk and then in the lower file drawer.
"Uh, sir, I'm really not supposed to let you do that," the young woman said as she came in through the doorway with a determined look on her face. But Lightstone already had the spiral-bound notebook opened to the last entry. A moment later he was out the door and running down the wide corridor to the elevator.
At six-foot-nine, and three hundred and ten pounds, Special Agent Dwight Stoner had long since become accustomed to the fact that his presence tended to intimidate people.
And while that sort of thing was perfectly okay when facing down defensive linebackers like Lawrence Taylor and Carl Banks, or malicious biker punks like Brendon Kleinfelter, it was often a disadvantage when the formidable special agent tried to interact with the general public.
Thus, when Dwight Stoner saw the momentary look of fear in the very attractive young woman's eyes, he immediately tried to compensate by relaxing his guard.
"I didn't mean to frighten you, ma'am," Stoner said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile as he held out his badge and credentials. "I'm Special Agent Dwight Stoner with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I believe you called me this morning about an illegal rack?"
"Oh yes, Officer. Please come in." Carine Mueller said in a shaky voice, genuinely startled by the immense size of the federal agent. She decided immediately that she wouldn't let Sonny Chareaux draw the game out with this man the way he wanted to. "I was afraid that you might have changed your mind."
"Had to stop for gas, and then I made a wrong turn back at the junction." Stoner shrugged his massive shoulders apologetically. "Took me a while to find somebody who knew this part of the country well enough to give me directions."
"It was very kind of you to drive all the way out here," Mueller said as she led him in through the kitchen and out the back door, then started walking toward a large, decrepit barn at the far corner of her acre-sized lot. "My neighbor was so frightened."
"Is that Mr. Nakamura?" Stoner asked, observing the slender, nervous-looking Oriental man who stood next to the partially opened side door of the barn.
"Yes," Carine Mueller nodded. "He's such a nice man, and he and his wife are wonderful neighbors. But they haven't been in this country very long, and he was afraid that he'd be arrested if he kept it at his house. And he didn't know what to do, so I told him that he could keep it in our barn until you got here."
"Mr. Nakamura, I'm Special Agent Stoner, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service," Stoner said as he walked up and slowly extended his large hand.
"Yes, I thank you very much that you come to help me," Kiro Nakamura-a Shotokan fourth-degree black belt-said in broken English, taking professional note of Dwight Stoner's limp as he returned the agent's handshake with his deliberately relaxed right hand.
"I understand you had a run-in with a poacher out here?"
"Yes," Nakamura nodded with wide-eyed enthusiasm. "He say that for very little money, I can have big animal trophy and family name in record book. I say yes, but now he want more money, and I not want," Nakamura stuttered, forcing his lethal hands to tremble visibly. "I am visitor in your country. Not want to go to jail."
"It's okay, Mr. Nakamura," Dwight Stoner said soothingly. "I'm here to help you, not to arrest you, okay?"
"Yes, okay, I like that." The Oriental man smiled happily as Stoner turned back to Carine Mueller.
"You said the rack is in the barn?"
"Yes, let me show you," Mueller said as she led the way into the dark, cobwebby barn that was filled with stacked boxes, trunks, gasoline cans, and a vast array of farm equipment that looked like it hadn't been touched in years.
"Ugghh, this place gives me the willies," she shuddered as she fumbled around in the semidarkness. "I almost never come out here. I hate spiders, and I can never remember where the light switch is."