“Yes, understood,” the agent replied dryly, a little offended to be treated as if he didn’t know how to do his job and some civilian consultant had to spell it out for him.
Alex bit her lip. She wasn’t making any friends, that was for sure.
She stood and grabbed her empty coffee cup. “Want some?” she asked Jeremy.
“Please.”
A moment later, she was back with both cups refilled to the brim.
“Did they call yet?” Alex asked.
“It’s only been a minute,” Jeremy said. “Take it easy, will ya’?”
“Yeah, OK.”
She resumed clicking through the sailor profiles, a little preoccupied. Her mind wouldn’t focus on the work in front of her, stubbornly going over every possible scenario Novachenko could use to transport classified information out of the country. When the phone finally rang, she almost jumped out of her skin.
“Good morning, Agent… Weber,” the caller said hesitantly, “this is Shift Supervisor Davidson with TSA at Norfolk.”
“Yeah, what did you find?”
“We had to let him go, Agent Weber. We didn’t find anything wrong with him, and we checked him thoroughly. We took him in a private screening room and went over everything in detaiclass="underline" clothes, his luggage, everything.”
“Anything out of the ordinary? Anything at all? Was he nervous, agitated?” Alex intervened.
“N — no, ma’am, nothing out of the ordinary. He was relatively calm, even apologetic. Most people are a little antsy when we pull them in for private screening, and his behavior was quite normal under the circumstances.”
“Why apologetic?”
“Oh, he had a sandwich with him, and he apologized for that, said he didn’t know if that was allowed or not. We let him go; they’re boarding the flight now.”
A wave of adrenaline spiked her heart rate. She hesitated a little… What if she was wrong? Ahh… the hell with it.
“Stop him,” she yelled at the TSA agent. “Grab him, and get that sandwich. We’re on our way.”
She ran to the elevator, followed closely by Jeremy.
“Care to share?” he asked, as they were heading downstairs in what seemed to be the slowest elevator invented.
“Not really,” she said sheepishly. “Just a hunch.”
…64
Jeremy drove as fast as he could, his siren blaring, zigzagging through traffic like a maniac, and leaving behind a chorus of screeching breaks and wailing horns.
“Call your team for me, get them on the phone,” Alex asked.
“Who do you want?”
“Anyone in the surveillance lab, anyone would do.”
Jeremy told her the number and she dialed. The car’s hands-free system took over, making it difficult for them to hear over the blaring siren.
“Yeah, hi, it’s Alex Hoffmann and Agent Weber. Yeah, please go back on surveillance and look for anyone doing anything with a sandwich. What? Yeah, a sandwich. Anything… eating, buying, packing, giving, taking, just anything, any sandwich.”
Jeremy looked at her briefly, between avoiding a garbage truck and passing a cab.
She hung up the call.
“I’m starting to see your hunch,” Jeremy said, “but it’s a thin one, very thin. People eat, Alex. It’s just food, that’s all.”
“I need a mobile lab to meet us at the airport,” she continued, unperturbed. “How do I get that to happen? Whom do I call?”
“We have procedures for this kind of thing, you know,” he protested. “It’s not like a multimillion piece of equipment is at my beck and call.”
“Here’s how this is gonna go,” she said in a low, almost threatening voice. “Either you call your mobile lab to assist us at the airport, or I call a mobile lab to assist us at the airport and you foot the bill. Don’t care, really. So what’s your preference?”
He sighed, made the call, then asked wryly, “Has anyone ever said no to you and lived to tell the story?
…65
Nikolai Novachenko sat at the small table in the improvised interrogation room, courtesy of the TSA. There was one other chair in the room, empty. Both Alex and Jeremy stood, studying Novachenko closely.
On the wall at his left, there was a cheap clock, one of those $9.99 electronic wall clocks one can get from Walmart. Somehow that seemed to be the focal point of interest with Novachenko, who looked at it every minute or so.
“Got someplace to be, Nikolai?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, got a plane to catch,” he replied morosely.
“That flight is boarding now, and you’re not going to be on it,” she said. “So you can relax. The sooner you answer our questions, the sooner you’ll be on your way.”
His jaws clenched the moment he heard he wasn’t going to make his flight.
“You can’t hold me here,” he protested, starting to get up from his chair. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” he said in an escalating voice.
“Sit down,” Jeremy said, pushing him back into his chair with a firm hand on his left shoulder.
“Who is Evgheni Smolin?” Alex asked.
“Who?” Novachenko replied.
“Cut the bullshit, will you? Or else we’ll be here ’til midnight,” Alex said, feigning anger, and slammed her hand on the small table. “I’d rather be elsewhere, you know. Smolin, who is he? He lives in your house, so you better know who that is.”
“He’s my father-in-law,” Novachenko replied, stealing another quick look at the clock, and wringing his hands.
“Wrong answer, Novachenko, think again. This time why don’t you try the truth for a change? Don’t dig yourself into a bigger hole than you can manage.”
“No, I swear, he’s my father-in-law,” Novachenko replied, turning a little pale and biting his lip.
“That’s not gonna fly,” Alex replied, opening a file and reading from it. “Smolin is from Moscow and has never had any kids. Your wife is from Kiev.”
Another quick look to check the time.
“No, no, damn it, your information is wrong. I’m telling you the truth.”
“Let’s check the facts, one by one,” Jeremy intervened. Novachenko checked the time yet again and slouched a little in his chair, more relaxed.
Alex frowned slightly, then looked at the flight schedule. The flight was still boarding. Why was he relaxing now? Made no sense. She had a strong feeling that they were missing something, something of crucial importance.
“Is your wife from Kiev?” Jeremy asked, pushing in front of Novachenko a couple of pictures, one showing Olga’s graduation from a Kiev school, the other showing the frontage of a house.
“Y — yes,” he stuttered, then glanced quickly at the clock. “Yes, she is.”
He had stopped wringing his hands, and his pallor was almost gone. Either the man was an expert in dealing with stress, or something was very wrong.
“Oh, no…” she whispered, feeling her blood drain. “What else did he have on him?” she asked Jeremy with an unspoken urgency in her eyes.
“That,” Jeremy pointed at a duffel bag left on the floor, in the corner. “And some pocket change.”
She grabbed the duffel bag from the corner and made a quick hand gesture to Jeremy to follow her. As she exited the room, she caught a glimpse of Novachenko’s pallor returning, together with his upper body tension and hand-wringing habit.