James Patterson - Judge & Jury

It was the middle of the night when I found it. I hadn't been able to sleep.

I was at my desk on my computer, going through the courthouse tape for maybe the thousandth time. I had printed off the face of the guy with the beard to show to Ogilov, running over what leverage I could apply. Which was basically none.

I'd let the tape roll to the end. My eyes were growing heavy. It was after two in the morning. I needed a little sleep. I made a move to rewind.

Then suddenly, I stopped.

I blinked. It was a eureka sensation, as though I'd just found a cure for cancer or a deadly virus. There it was.

I leaned forward, panning in with the remote on the accomplice with the beard. But not his face this time-or the gun or his watch-things that were already burned into my memory.

On the sonovabitch's shoes.

I pressed the remote, zooming in on the shoes. I was wide-eyed now. There was a distinct rubber logo above the heel.

Some kind of circle-with a wavy line bisecting it.

Jesus, Nick! Why hadn't I seen this before?

I knew those shoes.

My chest started to pound. Three years before I had made a special trip to the Middle East, to train inspectors.

The shoes were Israeli-made. For the Israeli Army. For extra support.

I had even worn them when I was there.

CAVELLO'S ACCOMPLICE had to be Israeli. I actually had something.

The frustration of losing that black Bronco was fading away.

It was almost morning. It took another cup of strong coffee to keep me focused, but I started going back through the books of terror suspects I had gotten from Homeland Security. I felt I had something to fix on. The needle in the haystack had just gotten a bit larger. Most faces appeared to be Middle Eastern, but I leafed past those. I was looking for a European. I had an approximate height and weight.

Three o'clock turned into three thirty. Then four. There were books and books of faces to scan through. Hundreds. Pakistanis, Basque separatists, al Qaeda sympathizers, FALN. IRA. All were on some kind of terror-watch radar. All had been thought to be in the country at some time. Many had explosives knowledge. Four started to bump up to five. I never even noticed when the first rays of light hit my window.

Then something made me stop. I came upon someone else. Maybe I'd passed him before. Maybe I'd passed the face a dozen times.

The man had short brown-gray hair and Slavic features, serious, slate-gray eyes.

Russian-and that wasn't all that interested me.

He was an ex-member of the Spetsnaz Brigade. Army Special Forces. He'd been stationed in Chechnya. In 1997 he went AWOL. For a long time he had simply disappeared. He was thought to have gone over to the rebel side.

Remlikov. Kolya.

I pulled out the file.

He'd been implicated in several Mafia-type slayings throughout Russia and Europe. A corrupt police inspector in St. Petersburg. A testifying gangster in Moscow. He was also being sought for questioning in the very public killing of a Venezuelan oil minister a year ago in Paris.

But what really stopped me wasn't just his résumé. Which had promise. Or even those brooding, dark eyes.

It was that he'd been wounded-in Chechnya. His right leg had been struck by shrapnel from an exploding grenade. He was thought to still walk with a slight limp.

I was thinking about those shoes.

I put the small file photo close to the screen, side by side against a frame from the courthouse tape.

Holy shit! It was a long shot, but it just could be.

I glanced at the clock. It was already after five. Nothing was going to happen here, but that meant it was lunchtime halfway around the world.

I opened my desk and leafed through packets of business cards I had held together with rubber bands. I had a number, somewhere, for the antiterror desk at the Russian Security Service in Moscow. I'd used it when we wanted to extradite a contract killer who had worked for the Russian mob and had fled back home. I frantically searched through my files and found it. Lt. Yuri Plakhov. Federal Security Service. FSS. I dialed the thirteen-digit European number. I was praying to find him at his desk. It was a prayer answered when I heard his voice.

"Plakhov, vot. "

"Yuri, hello. You may remember me." I reintroduced myself, reminding the Russian official who I was. It was a bonus to be able to keep this call this far away from the Bureau.

"Sure I recall you, Inspector." Yuri Plakhov's English was well practiced and colloquial."We tracked down that mafioso of yours. Federev, right?"

"Good memory, Yuri," I congratulated him."Now I need you to run someone else through your files." I read him off the name.

" Rem-li-kov? " He stretched it out."Rings a bell." I gave him a moment while he punched it in."A little early back there, is it not, Inspector?"

"Yes," I answered quickly, not into small talk."It is."

"Here it is, Inspector. Remlikov, Kolya. Wanted in questioning with several murders throughout Russia and Europe. Quite a dossier. Among his credits, he's suspected of taking part in bringing down an entire apartment building in Volgodonsk, in which a government official resided. Twenty-four people were killed."

My adrenaline was pumping."How do I find this man, Yuri?"

"I'm afraid I'm unable to give you his mobile number, Inspector." Plakhov chuckled."It's clear here he's used several aliases and passports. Estonian, Bulgarian. Names of Kristich. Danilov. Mastarch. We think he was in Paris last year, when that Venezuelan oil minister was killed. The trail is very gray. I doubt he is in Russia. It says he is known here, Inspector, as the eh-oop, the Eel. Very slippery, yes? I can send a facsimile of his fingerprints, if you like."

"Please," I answered. The Eel. A slimy fucking eel. Things were starting to add up."Where would I start to look, Yuri?"

The Russian paused, scrolling farther down the file."Perhaps with your own State Department, Inspector. Judging from what I see, they may be better help than us."

The State Department, our State Department."Why is that?"

"Remlikov's last-known whereabouts. He is thought to be in Israel, Inspector."

FINALLY I WAS ONTO something. The bearded face now had a name, and a history. Remlikov's prints came in over the fax a short time later, but my eyes had started to close.

I dozed off until nine. Then I shaved and showered, and called a colleague I had worked with at the FBI. I asked if I could meet him around ten.

Senil Chumra was a plump, likable Indian whose office wasn't in the Bureau's official place downtown. He was in a nondescript warehouse building up on Eighteenth and Tenth, overlooking the river. Chumra headed up a specialized area of the department we called CAF.

Computer Assisted Forensics.

These were the guys who could trace e-mails, hack into computers, worm their way through coded passwords, track the complicated movements of cash overseas. I had last worked with him tracking the flow of Cavello's union paybacks to the Cayman Islands. Senil's other talent was manipulating digital images.

"Hello, Nick." The techie lit up as I walked through the door of his lab. The technical guys always liked it when one of the so-called glamour boys showed up."Haven't seen you in a while. What have you been up to?"

"I'm good, Chummie," I lied."Busy." These technical whizzes worked in their own little specialized cocoon up here. No reason he'd know what I was up to-or in this case, wasn't. "You got that e-mail I sent over?"

"I got it." The Indian wheeled over to a Mac screen down the line, maybe a little disappointed."Got it uploaded right here."