Dale Brown - Puppet Master

Russian mob. Had to be.

“You want a lawyer?” Hightower asked when she was done.

“Not unless I need one,” said Tolevi.

“Oh, you definitely need one,” said Jenkins. “And a good one.”

“Why is that?”

“What were you doing on Warren Street?”

“I think you already know I was at the ATM.”

“How did you get there?”

The question took Tolevi by surprise. Why were they asking about the ATM? Surely they were here for something else.

Did they know he had dealings with the SVR? Were they upset about that? But if that was the case, why hadn’t Johansen mentioned it — or simply taken him in Bucharest? It could have been easily arranged.

The key now was to stay calm until he figured out what the game was.

“I had a car drive me to the ATM,” said Tolevi. “What’s the big deal?”

“Who drove you?” asked Jenkins.

He said it so quickly that Tolevi suspected he already knew the answer. There was no sense lying, anyway.

The one thing he wanted to do, however, was leave his daughter out of it. He didn’t need the FBI — if these guys were really FBI, not CIA pretenders — scaring the crap out of her.

Though that was tempting, in a way. Whatever the hell she was up to — maybe a little tough love would straighten her out.

No, foolish. They would harm her. Best to leave her out. And yet he wasn’t sure exactly how he could do that — lie, and they’d use that to pressure him somehow.

“An Uber car picked me up at the airport. They just started doing that,” he added. “I find it useful. Usually a little cheaper than a service.”

“And you went straight to the bank machine?”

“No, I was going home and then decided to go there.”

“Why?”

“Why do we do anything?” He turned and looked at the woman. She had a sympathetic smile, but of course that was an act.

You have to watch the sweet ones.

“You stopped at home, then went to get money?” she asked.

“We almost stopped. Then, you know — I changed my mind.”

“Aren’t there more convenient ATMs?” asked Hightower.

“Why are you so interested in my banking?” A strategy started to crystalize. Tolevi would push them a bit.

If they were FBI, they would be looking for a payoff — that would be proof he was working with the Russian spy agency.

They could look for that all they wanted. And ultimately, if — or rather when — he went back to the CIA, he would easily explain that: the only way to get access in Crimea was to deal with them. It was impossible not to.

Surely Johansen knew that, even if he didn’t know the extent.

“Tell us about how you skim the ATM machines,” said Jenkins.

“Excuse me?” asked Tolevi, taken off guard by the question. It seemed a non sequitur, out of left field.

“Your scam on the ATM machines.” Jenkins smirked. “Tell us about it.”

Tolevi glanced at Hightower. She had a slightly distressed look on her face; he guessed that meant that the other agent had gone off script.

But what the hell did that question mean?

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Tolevi told them. “Skim? How?”

“Don’t bullshit me,” said Jenkins. “Who do you work for? Or do they work for you?”

“You’ve lost me,” said Tolevi. “Explain what you’re talking about.”

Jenkins reached into his jacket pocket and took out a baggie. Inside was the bank card Tolevi had taken from his daughter. “What’s this?”

“An ATM card.”

“What about the coding on it?”

Did they think he was passing information with a bank card?

No. This was some sort of ruse or plan to get into his house and unlock his safe, where he had the machine he used to make false IDs, including the credit and bank cards.

Keeping it there hadn’t seemed like that big a risk; he wanted to be able to move quickly in case there was trouble, and the CIA knew he used phony identities, so the machine wasn’t particularly incriminating.

But they were obviously going to use it as if it were.

Time to call their bluff.

“I know nothing about coding,” said Tolevi. “I believe I’m entitled to a phone call, am I not?”

Flores and the others had to secure the van and check in back at the task force headquarters, so Chelsea went alone to the bar, a place on Tremont Street. She’d never been there before — not unusual, since she was hardly a partier.

She’d expected a fairly rowdy place, given the way Flores and the others had talked about it — a sports bar maybe, or a place the Dropkick Murphys would call a second home. But Ike’s was far more upscale than that, loungelike, the sort of place you might find on the roof of an upscale hotel, except it was in the basement, and the images that were being projected on the fake windows at the side were just that, images piped directly from video cameras on the roof. The music was cool jazz, late 1950s-early ’60s vintage, a very sophisticated vibe that Chelsea never would have associated with the Bureau guys she’d met, and certainly not with Flores.

But they were all here, a dozen of them, all in their late twenties to early thirties. Two were women, which she hadn’t realized from the radio transmissions. Only one was black, a tall, football-player type who said he came from Nebraska when they were introduced, then shyly moved away, talking first to the man he’d partnered with, then to the bartender and waitress at the far end.

Most of the agents were not from the Boston area. They had volunteered from different offices across the country, expressing a variety of reasons — boredom, said one outright; the others laughed, though Chelsea guessed they were only surprised at his candor.

Dryfus, the head of the tech team, came in about forty-five minutes after the others. Chelsea was just finishing her beer and was thinking of leaving. He convinced her to stay, asking about where she’d gone to school, what her majors had been.

“And how did you end up in the FBI?” she asked him.

“Ah — I was in the Army, as an E5, which is a sergeant, and I was repairing combat networks. A lot of wires,” he laughed. “I left a year after the Gulf War, got my BS at RIT, and… here I am. In Miami.”

“This doesn’t look like Miami,” said Chelsea.

“Ssshh, don’t tell him,” said Flores. “Let him figure it out on his own.”

“I’m assigned to Miami. Although I don’t think I’ve spent more than a week there in the last two years.” He took a long sip of his drink, a Dewar’s on the rocks, then pushed it toward the bartender for a refill. “I got out of Rochester because of the snow. They assigned me to Tulsa first. Took me almost four years to get to Miami, and now look where I am.”

“Where the action is, baby,” said Flores. He slid his empty beer bottle onto the bar.

He was a little tipsy, but then, so was Chelsea. Not used to drinking, the beer had started to go to her head. It didn’t help that she had not eaten dinner.

They ordered some wings. Chelsea had another beer. Somehow she found herself talking to Flores about baseball.

Mostly, she listened, watching his eyes. They were very blue.

“I always thought blue eyes went with blond hair,” she blurted.

“Huh?”

“Your eyes. They’re blue.”

“All my life.”

They moved to a table. Another beer appeared in front of her, then another. She felt warm and a little sleepy, as if there were a fire at the far end of the room.

“What do you think?” Flores asked, putting his hand on hers. “Time to go?”

“Where’s your apartment?” she asked, surprising herself.