Джеймс Паттерсон - Target - Alex Cross

“It’s Gabriel,” Cruz said, also in Russian. “I want payment.”

A pause. “Are you insane? We had a deal. You were to wait until things cool down. Then you’ll get exactly what we contracted for. Where are you?”

“If you don’t put the money in my account, I will come find you,” Cruz said, and he hung up.

He looked at the couch in the vet’s office and almost lay down.

But then he retrieved the little black book from his dry bag and made one more call, this time on the desk phone. A woman’s automated voice answered and prompted him to enter a series of codes and passwords.

There was a short delay before a woman with an Eastern European accent said, “Universal Rescue. How may I be of assistance this evening?”

“I need full service. These coordinates. Medical and relocation specialists.”

She was silent. Then: “Given your location and the current circumstances thereof, that will be quite expensive, I’m afraid.”

“Two, six zeros, in BTC?”

After a longer silence, she said, “Three point five, six zeros.”

“Three.”

“Agreed. Make the transfers. Expect delivery shortly after your curfew lifts.”

In the hangar at Joint Base Andrews, I glanced at the clock, saw it was almost midnight, yawned, and contemplated another strong cup of coffee.

My cell phone rang. It was Bree.

“Hey, you,” she said, sounding bushed herself. “Coming home soon?”

“Looks like I’ll be bunking here tonight. They put up a tent city for us in an adjoining hangar. Think I’ll catch a few hours right now.”

“Me too. I’ll miss you, but sweet dreams, and I love you.”

“I love you too, baby.”

I carried the warm memory of her voice over to the hangar next door and found a cot in the corner. After a few prayers, I lay down. I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow and slept dreamlessly until Mahoney shook me awake at four a.m.

“He’s here,” he said. “Viktor Kasimov.”

Ten minutes later, I was drinking coffee once again and listening to the brief on the suspect awaiting us in the same room where we’d spoken to Morris Franks.

When the briefing was finished, Carstensen said, “You ready, Dr. Cross?”

“Yes,” I said. “Cameras?”

She nodded. “Running on the other side of the mirror, trained tight on his face. If the body-language experts catch anything, we’ll call it in to you.”

“Translator?”

“There will be one in the booth with me, but you’ll find he’s fluent in English.”

In both English and Russian, Viktor Kasimov told us he was spitting mad when Ned and I entered the interrogation room and found him manacled and chained to the table.

“You!” Kasimov shouted at me and Mahoney. “You two think crazy imbecile thoughts! Invent these things!”

“I could say the same about you, Viktor,” Ned said, unruffled.

Kasimov looked like he wanted to rip both our heads off, but he took several deep, trembling breaths before saying, “I am a Russian diplomat, an envoy of the Kremlin, and there will be serious repercussions if—”

Mahoney cut him off. “We don’t care about your bona fides or your diplomatic passport.”

I said, “We’ve gone far beyond the normal rule of law here, Mr. Kasimov. Martial law allows us to do pretty much whatever we want. And I can tell you that there could be painful and perhaps deadly repercussions for you if you don’t start helping us right now.”

“I have no idea how to help you,” he snapped.

“Tell us about Sean Lawlor.”

There was a twitch at the corner of his lips before he said, “Who?”

Over the earbud I wore, I heard Carstensen say, “That’s a lie.”

I said, “Lawlor, Sean. The former SAS sniper you hired to perform at least three murders in the past four years. Your name turned up in his Scotland Yard file after he was killed following the assassination of Senator Walker. But of course you know all that.”

“I do not know what you’re talking about.”

Mahoney said, “You understand that by refusing to cooperate, you are aiding forces hostile to the sovereign security of the United States?”

“I am not cooperating with any—”

“You could be taken out and shot or hung, Mr. Kasimov,” I said. “It’s not what we want, but it is what could happen if you don’t start speaking truthfully.”

When Kasimov glared at us, we both returned flat gazes.

“Okay,” he said finally. “I did know this Lawlor person. He did two jobs for me, not three. Both domestic affairs. Russian domestic affairs.”

We asked him how he’d contacted Lawlor. Through a middleman, a number he called when he needed such work done. He agreed to give the number to us but said the access code was usually changed every six months, and he hadn’t needed any such services in more than a year.

“Beyond that, I tell you for certain, and on my mother’s grave, I know nothing more,” Kasimov said.

“I think you’re in it up to your eyeballs,” Mahoney said.

The Russian threw back his head and laughed. “I am not that smart or cunning or ruthless, Mr. Special Agent of the FBI. Believe it or not, I think we should all coexist in peace. I mean, who needs war?”

“Right,” I said, “who needs war if you can achieve the same ends through political assassinations?”

Kasimov sighed. “Whoever are these masterminds you look for, they are playing games with you, I think. Yes, they are theorists, like the chess player. You know, somebody who thinks ahead twenty, fifty steps, this is the kind of person you search for, Dr. Cross. Me? My mind is simple. I do what I’m told.”

“Unless you’re raping women,” Ned said.

He gave us a weary expression. “I don’t know how these lies follow me.”

I decided a different route might be more helpful. “So what else do you think was behind the assassinations? Hypothetically. What’s the purpose? A takeover?”

Kasimov perked up, thought about that, and then shook his head. “If it was to be an attack on your shores, it would have happened already.”

“We had multiple cyberattacks coming out of your country and China and North Korea in the immediate wake of the assassinations,” Mahoney said.

“Just what you’d expect,” he said dismissively. “The sudden shift in power leaves a vacuum and gives an excuse and opportunity to look around, to — how do you Americans say it? To see what’s what? The U.S.A. would do the same thing if the situation were reversed. Look, in my humble opinion, the money is where you should focus your attention. The whole Russia thing? It’s a dead end, I tell you. What did your Watergate Deep Throat teach you? Follow the money.”

It wasn’t a bad idea, and I was thinking Bree had better get back on the phone with her contacts at Scotland Yard to find out if they’d managed to track down Lawlor’s bank accounts. But then there was a knock at the door.

In my ear, I heard Carstensen say, “Who the hell is that?”

I got up, opened the door a crack, and saw Rawlins standing there.

“Keith, I’m in the middle of—”

“Take a break,” he said. “Your trap? It caught a bug, maybe two.”

When I looked up from the screens and data the FBI consultant had been showing me, it was 5:21 a.m. on Sunday, February 7, two days after President Hobbs and the others were assassinated.

“Do that second sweep we talked about, and I’ll be right back,” I said, and I ran to the booth outside the interrogation room where Kasimov was still talking with Mahoney.

I knocked sharply, stuck my head in. “Madam Deputy Director, I need to show you something ASAP.”