Steven Gore - Final Target

They sat quietly, watching the horizon drain of color. Fog wormed its way through the Golden Gate, led in by three oil tankers making for the Chevron Refinery along the north bay.

Faith spooned salad on each of their plates, then broke the silence. “Anyway, isn’t it possible that somebody in the natural gas deal was behind Jack’s shooting?”

“Others are asking the same question,” Gage said. “I returned a call to Ambassador Pougachev yesterday morning. State Security reported to him that I’d been seen with Jack in Moscow-”

“State Security?”

Gage waved off the implication. “Since the cold war ended, they have a lot of time on their hands.”

“Graham…”

“Nothing to worry about. All Pougachev wanted to know is whether Jack brought me in to fix something that was broken. He was preparing for interviews with Agence France-Presse and Der Spiegel. They weren’t satisfied with the Russian president’s answers at the press conference about whether Jack’s shooting would interfere with completing the joint venture. Winter is coming and houses need to be heated.”

“Does he think there’s a connection?”

“I don’t know. Pougachev is less interested in the causes than the effects.”

Gage cringed as the world narrowed to twin images of Burch lying helpless in the hospital and of a self-satisfied Pougachev sitting across from them in a Washington, D.C. restaurant a few months earlier, sucking on crab legs.

“Jack’s being gunned down means nothing to him,” Gage said.

“But after that dinner you two had with him, Jack said-”

“He’s never been able to understand that for the Russian elite, people are nothing more than a means to an end. He actually believed those bureaucrats from the finance and energy ministries when they expressed sympathy for Courtney and all she went through. They were really just probing for weaknesses. It was painful to watch, but I couldn’t take it away from him.”

He pointed at Faith’s plate, wanting to lighten the moment. Nothing he could say now could reverse what happened back then.

“You should have a little more salmon,” he said. “I’d hate to think this poor fish gave his life in vain.”

Faith ate a small piece, then pushed on. “Does Pougachev know that you met with organized crime bosses?”

“That’s another bit of information he got from State Security.”

“Did he ask if Jack brought you into this?”

“I told him Jack didn’t bring me into anything.”

“Did you tell him you volunteered?”

“He wasn’t perceptive enough to ask.” Gage smiled. “He doesn’t have your skills in cross-examination.” He watched Faith blush. “In any case, he knows he can’t get heavy-handed. I know too much. He tried to pursue it gently with a ‘We have our ways’ in a German accent, but ended up sounding like a cartoon character, so he had to let it go.”

“Jack’ll get a kick out of…” Faith’s voice trailed off. An image of Burch struggling for life entered both of their minds.

Gage quickly filled the silence. “We’ll tell him.”

Faith returned to her probing. “But how can you be sure those gangsters didn’t change their minds and demand a cut? Shooting Jack might buy them some time.”

“I’m not sure they’d want to raise the stakes that high. Interfering with the flow of natural gas into Western Europe right now would be seen as much as an act of terrorism as blowing up a power plant-and it would mean destroying the wall between domestic law enforcement and international intelligence they’ve always taken refuge behind.”

Faith pushed her plate away. “I don’t know, they’re unpredictable people.”

Although she was an anthropologist, she wasn’t offering a description, but a warning.

“I’ll be careful,” Gage said, reaching over and squeezing her hand. “But I’m not going to figure out who shot Jack until I figure out why. And that means retracing Jack’s steps and trying to spot whatever came out of the shadows to blindside him. If it was road rage, then the trail will end where he fell. If not…”

Gage ended the sentence with a slow shake of his head. They both knew there was no way to finish the thought, so they sat in silence, the weight of inevitability pressing down on them.

Faith picked up her wineglass again and stared into it before speaking. “In some ways I have a hard time fixing Jack in my mind anymore. He’s changed so much. Like the Afghan Medical Relief dinner last fall. Accepting an award for charity work was out of character for him. It was almost like grandstanding.”

“I asked him about it on the flight back from Moscow. Turns out he saw something Courtney wrote for her cancer support group, a phrase about invisibility being oblivion. He wanted an excuse to put her on a podium; talk about her in front of all of their friends. In retrospect, it was a very dangerous thing to do.”

“Dangerous?” Faith said, glancing over, her eyebrows raised. “The dinner was in the grand ballroom of the St. Francis Hotel, dear, not at some falafel stand in Baghdad.”

“Not that kind of dangerous. He risked drawing attention to the offshore bank accounts and front companies we used to smuggle medical supplies through Pakistan, and those are exactly the kinds of deceptions the U.S. Attorney might accuse him of using in SatTek.”

Gage flashed on an image of Burch and him sitting with a Pashtun jirga near the Afghanistan border three years earlier; Burch extending his hand holding a hundred thousand dollars of his own money, the first of a series of payoffs to tribal leaders so they’d let the material pass unmolested through their territories.

“To say nothing of currency smuggling and bribery.”

“But that wasn’t part of any fraud,” Faith said, voice rising in their defense. “Just the opposite.”

“But it was fraudulent. And we could’ve gotten twenty years in Lompoc.”

Faith flinched. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

“Sorry. As Jack would say, no worries. No U.S. Attorney would dare go after us for what we did over there. Anyway, SatTek may be the case that proves the rule.”

“Which one is that?”

Gage reached for Faith’s plate, set it on top of his, then looked over and winked the same exaggerated wink with which Jack Burch always preceded his punch lines. “If they ever get us, it’ll only be for something we didn’t do.”

M r. Hackett, there’s a Mr. Peterson on line one.”

Daniel Hackett hesitated before picking up the receiver. He lived for these calls, but despised them all the same. He knew he’d get what he wanted; it was just that the whole thing made him feel like a weakling and a fraud. Peterson had the power, so he could play it and Hackett however he wanted. And the only way to keep his dignity was to sign on, join the team, ally himself with the prosecutor against his own client.

“I think we can do a deal,” Peterson said. “I’ve talked it over with the case agent. We’re convinced Matson can give us Granger and Burch, and I know you won’t let him keep talking for free.”

Hackett adopted a firm tone; his first move in a fox-trot where Peterson had already taken the lead. “You got that right. I think I’ve let him say as much as I should without something on the table.”

“But there’s too much money involved to let him walk.”

“I warned him that would be your position.”

“It’s not my position,” Peterson said. “The Corporate Fraud Task Force wants everybody in this case doing jail time.”

Hackett knew that Peterson really meant it wasn’t the task force’s position alone.

“So what’s next?” Hackett asked.