Jeffery Deaver - Edge

A pause on the other end, which might have been a reaction to my request. Or it might have arisen because the woman in question wasn’t Joanne to him but Lily Hawthorne.

“There is absolutely no shred of evidence that he’s involved. Or anybody else that Joanne came in contact with. We’ve been monitoring the situation from the beginning.”

“Even so, I want the name.”

“I can’t do that.”

I said firmly, “I hope you understand that I have a job to do. Part of that is assessing threats on my own. I can’t just take your word for it.”

“Part of my job is keeping matters like this very, very private.”

“I know that,” I said slowly.

And let my threat register and spread. Public announcements can often be a very effective edge.

Williams sighed. “His name is Aslan Zagaev. He is a Chechnyan Muslim. Naturalized as part of the plea deal.”

“You’ve been monitoring him. Where is he?”

“At the moment? At home in Alexandria.”

“What’re his details?”

“Owns a half dozen carpet stores. A restaurant. My people have been through everything, Corte. I mean everything. Com profiles, banking accounts, travel records, corporate holdings, investments, family, brother and sisters, associates. Nothing. He’s absolutely clean.”

“Chechnyan Muslim. Does he go to the Middle East?”

“Yes. On business to buy rugs. But we don’t have GPS around his neck. The folks he was dealing with here, the couple in the deli? They were Pakistani, not Arabs. And recently? No phone calls in the past two weeks. Routine at his office hasn’t been affected, best as we can tell. Christ, Corte, we’re taking this seriously. We know what we’re doing.”

I asked, “Could he be deep cover, a sleeper?”

Williams asked, “After six years? They don’t really work that way.” He said this with some authority. “Besides, sleepers don’t volunteer at the Georgetown Islamic Youth Center. Or go near anyplace with the I word in it. He’d be at Presbyterian bake sales.”

“You have no other actors it could be?”

“That’s right.”

Presumably because they were dead.

I said, “I want the names of your security man and analyst on Zagaev.”

“Corte, what could Lily… what could Joanne possibly know that he’d have any interest in, after all these years?”

The answer seemed obvious to me. “She knows where to find you, doesn’t she?”

AFTER WE DISCONNECTED, Joanne stood for a long moment looking toward the hallway that led to the closed bedroom door behind which her husband undoubtedly was fuming.

She took several steps down the hall and then stopped and returned to the couch.

I called Williams’s case analyst. The director had given him the okay to talk to me-about the Joanne Kessler security matter only, of course, not about the Sickle part-and I got addresses and phone numbers and corporate information about Aslan Zagaev and his businesses. He told me that neither he or the security officer Williams had ordered into the field on Saturday morning had found anything linking Zagaev to Loving, confirming what Joanne and Williams had stated.

I thought, Well, obviously he’s not going to be making incriminating calls from those phones. Did they even think about prepaid mobiles? There were limits as to how much digging Williams’s people could do, sure, but these were basic elements of tradecraft.

I disconnected, called Claire duBois and explained the situation to her. “Drop everything and start running background on Zagaev,” I told her. “I want everything.”

“Shoe size to what’s on his TiVo,” she said.

“Family, employees, family of his employees, travel records. Concentrate on the past couple of days, then go on from there. Any connection to Loving, anything that could be a connection to Loving.”

I then asked her to transfer me to Aaron Ellis. I briefed him and he coughed a surprised laugh. “Joanne?”

“Seems so. At least Ryan’s cases haven’t led us anywhere. There’s one actor still around from her past. We’re going to follow up on it.”

“But Westerfield called, all excited about some D.C. police scandal. He was saying you thought that that was why Ryan was targeted. Some senior official in the department or city hall hired Loving.”

“I’d just as soon he kept thinking that, Aaron.”

Silence for a moment. “Corte… you mean the police scandal’s fake too?”

“Not fake. It was a valid theory.”

“Was.”

“Correct.”

“But by the time you suggested to Westerfield it was a possibility, you knew it wasn’t?”

“Aaron, just try to keep him off me for a while.”

“I’ll do the best I can.”

Finally, I called and briefed Freddy about Joanne’s deception.

The jokey facade was gone. “Why the fuck didn’t the bitch tell us? She didn’t have an inkling this whole tidal wave of crap might have something to do with the fact she was an assassin?”

“I don’t think they like to use that word.”

“I care?”

“This Williams-”

“Just for the record,” Freddy grunted, “he’s not as clever as he thinks he is. Or would like to be. A bunch of us know about him and his Sickle band of brothers… and sisters, I guess. We thought it was more dirty tricks. But, when you think about it, shooting somebody in the head is about as dirty as it gets. How’re you handling it?”

“Claire’s doing homework.” I debated. “I’ll need some warrants. She’ll get you the details. Who and where.”

“All right, will do.” Then he asked, “What’s Zagaev’s game, you think?”

“I don’t know. Williams said sleepers don’t work that way. But it works that way if it works.”

“Now, that’s quotable, son.”

“Think about it. Williams cleared him five, six years ago. They drop surveillance. That leaves him free to hire Loving to snatch Joanne and get all kinds of information. That sounds like a pretty successful sleeper cell to me. He isn’t exactly dripping guilt but it’s all we’ve got.”

“That’s my second fastest man theory.”

“The second… what?” I asked.

“You know how fast you have to be to outrun a bear, Corte?”

I was watching Joanne stare out the window. “How fast?”

“Just a little faster than the guy with you.” Freddy seemed to be waiting. When I didn’t say anything he said, “I mean that Zagaev doesn’t have to be a perfect suspect. He just has to be good enough.”

“I’ll have Claire call you with what she’s learned.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER Claire duBois called with information about Aslan Zagaev. This was perhaps a new record for her.

“I sent Freddy everything,” she explained. “He’s getting the warrants now.”

“Good. Brief me.”

“He was born outside of Grozny, came over here to study at American University when he was twenty-two. He did postgrad work at MIT and came back to the D.C. area. He started to spend some time at a radical mosque in our hometown, Alexandria. He broke with them-he wasn’t religious enough, apparently-but what he was good at was being an entrepreneur. With his science background and connections he made on Embassy Row and among government contractors, he found there was a market-selling trade secrets.”

“Why’d he get off with a plea?”

“The crime was industrial espionage. What he did was illegal, yes, but very clever. Technically he didn’t steal anything that was directly against national security. The Pakistani couple that Joanne and her partner took out? They were consolidators. They assembled information from Zagaev and others into something more useful. I mean, something useful in the dangerous sense. I’ve learned a lot about nuclear fuel rods. And centrifuges. Enrichment is fascinating.”