“My idea was to look for commonalities in and around these areas,” I said. “Phone numbers used or large data transmissions going to a specific site.”
“And?” Carstensen said.
Rawlins said, “The algorithm found nothing unusual in Texas, around Senator Walker’s home, by the DC arena, near the gangbanger scene, or around GW Hospital. But...”
He typed again, and a new file came up. He tapped on an international phone number: 011-7-812-579-5207.
“This number was called from inside or near Lawlor’s death scene well before discovery of the body. The number was also dialed on Skype from inside the Mandarin Oriental hotel in DC two days before the assassinations, and on a phone in Lower Manhattan shortly after Abbie Bowman was shot.”
“The Mandarin Oriental,” Carstensen said. “Kasimov is lying. He is the mastermind.”
“Or someone else staying at the hotel or working at the hotel was involved,” I said, thinking about Dr. Winters and wanting to go back to ask Kasimov about the makeup and masks the doctor had seen.
“Whose phone number is that?” Mahoney asked.
“Someone in St. Petersburg, Russia,” Rawlins said. “Beyond that, I don’t know yet. If we could get some cooperation from the Russians, it would be a bit easier.”
“Fat chance,” I said. “Did you do that second sweep we talked about?”
“I started it but haven’t taken a look at the results yet.”
The FBI contractor pivoted in his chair and started typing. Carstensen and Mahoney were puzzled.
I said, “I asked him if he could look for that phone number being used in any call coming to or leaving the continental United States in the past ten days.”
“Bam!” Rawlins said. “Look at that!”
The map of the U.S.A. now showed five glowing blue pins. One was in West Texas, not far from the burned-down cabin. Another was close to Varjan’s motel in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The third was near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The fourth was well south of Washington, DC, near I-95 in Ladysmith, Virginia. The fifth pin was not far away from the fourth, near rural Storck, Virginia.
“Can you give us the times with the locations?” Carstensen asked.
Rawlins nodded and gave his computer a command.
The screen blinked and showed dates, times, and whether the connection was incoming or outgoing beside the blue pins.
There was a call from the Russian number to a burn cell in rural West Texas that had occurred late in the afternoon a few days before.
There was a call to the Russian number from near Varjan’s motel that was made the evening before she almost blew us up.
The call near Lancaster was also to the Russian number and had occurred the day before that in the afternoon. The fourth call was from the St. Petersburg number to a burn phone several hours later.
“Look at the one near Storck, Virginia, though!” I said. “My God, that was outgoing to St. Petersburg last night! Less than seven hours ago!”
Chapter 88
Seventeen Minutes later, along with eight heavily armed and experienced agents in full SWAT gear, Mahoney and I boarded an air force helicopter. We were all harnessed into jump seats, radioed up, and in direct contact with Carstensen and Rawlins, who’d identified the final phone number as that of twenty-two-year-old Jared Goldberg, a resident of Stafford, Virginia.
“I wonder what Jared’s doing down in Storck?” I asked.
Carstensen said, “We’ve got agents working on Mr. Goldberg right now.”
“Any luck getting us a tighter location on the call? Or Goldberg’s phone?”
“I’ve got you down to a five-mile radius,” Rawlins replied. “Sorry, there are only two towers in the area. Meantime, I’ll try to ping the phone.”
“Can you send that radius superimposed on sat images?” Mahoney asked.
“Already on its way to the pilot and to your e-mail accounts.”
We lifted off. Mahoney had an iPad, and he called up Rawlins’s link. The screen launched Google Maps and showed the circular search area, which was bisected by Virginia State Route 17, a four-lane highway.
Storck itself didn’t look like much. No stores. No gas stations. It was all farmland, small subdivisions, and dense forest.
“I pinged Mr. Goldberg’s number three times,” Rawlins said. “It’s been turned off.”
“We’re going to need him to turn it on and make another call or we’re looking for a needle in a haystack,” Mahoney said.
I said, “Rawlins, can you further refine what we’re looking at? Show us property ownership?”
“Give me a few minutes.”
The first gray light of a winter day showed in the east as we hurtled south beyond the nearly empty Beltway and over suburban sprawl that soon gave way to leafless wooded lots, farms, and the odd tract-home development. Shortly after 6:30 a.m., we passed Fredericksburg and flew over Civil War battlefields and then large stretches of forest broken up by farms.
“We’re three minutes out from the perimeter,” the pilot said.
“What are we looking for?” one of the SWAT agents said.
“Something out of place,” Mahoney said. “If we don’t see it from the air, I’ll fly in twenty agents and we’ll hit the pavement and knock on doors until we find something.”
That didn’t seem to satisfy the SWAT agent, nor did it satisfy me. Goldberg, or someone using Goldberg’s phone, had called that number in St. Petersburg not eight hours before, and...
“Rawlins,” I said, triggering the mike. “Can you do another sift? Seven to nine hours ago, any other international calls out of the Storck area?”
There was a pause before he came back, sounding stressed. “You’re next, Dr. Cross. Sorry, this map’s being a pain.”
We flew over Route 17 and headed west toward Storck. Out both sides of the chopper, I saw farms and cows and then, near the exit to County Road 610, a small business of some sort with a large steel building and a smaller structure set near a large paved parking lot.
There were two vehicles there. A wine-colored sedan was parked nose in to the smaller building. A tan panel van was parked a few feet away, pointing nose out. Its rear doors were wide open to a walkway and front door.
That was all there was to Storck. If I’d blinked, I’d have missed it.
We kept flying above the highway until we reached the southwestern edge of the search area. The pilot turned south, meaning to trace the perimeter so we understood the full lay of the land.
Our radios crackled.
“Link to the map with property owners on its way,” Rawlins said. “And, Dr. Cross, yes, there was a call from a phone near Storck a few minutes following the one made to St. Petersburg. That second call went to Pretoria, South Africa.”
“Pretoria?”
“Affirmative,” he said. “I’m trying to get a reverse ID on both the—”
Carstensen cut him off, excited. “Stafford police just called our hotline. The owners of a marina on the Potomac there found drops of blood on their dock and no sign of their young security guard, Jared Goldberg, or his burgundy Toyota Camry.”
“The Frogman got him!” Mahoney said.
“There’s a wine-colored car back there at that exit north of Storck,” I said, and I swiped Ned’s iPad with my finger until I could see the parking lot and the buildings and the name of the property owner.
“If he’s wounded, he’s in there!” I said. “It’s an animal hospital!”
“That is where the second call came from,” Rawlins said over our headsets. “Kerry Large Animal Hospital.”