Last Chance to Die by Noah Boyd (good books for 8th graders TXT) 📕

“What are you going to tell them about why we were looking for him?”

“We’ll tell them it’s a terrorist investigation. Very hush-hush.”

“You know there are laws about lying to the police, even here in Washington.”

“With these guys’ caseloads, do you think they’re going to worry about whether it was terrorism or counterintelligence? They’re probably trying to figure out how to get fifteen minutes’ more sleep a day.”

After the homicide interviews, it was almost one o’clock by the time Vail and Kate arrived at the bank in Vienna. Bill Langston and John Kalix were already there, waiting for them in the parking lot. While she got out and went back to talk to Langston, Vail opened the trunk and loaded his briefcase with evidence gloves and envelopes. Kate came back and handed Vail the court order, which he also put in his briefcase. “Did Kalix have any trouble getting it?” he asked.

“Some. The whole thing is a little more complicated because of the secrecy angle. And you’ve got to admit that we are reading the tea leaves as far as what that message says. It could be an entirely different code. But I guess John finally wore them down.”

“It’s going to be embarrassing if we’ve come up with the wrong person,” Vail said.

“Don’t think that hasn’t crossed my mind. They’re going to wait in the car so it doesn’t look like the FBI is overrunning the bank,” she said.

Behind closed doors Kate and Vail explained to the manager about the need for confidentiality due to national security. He seemed to take the warning seriously. The bank computer revealed that an Alex Markov had rented safe-deposit box number 74 with a second name on the account of Yanko Petriv. The bank manager printed out all the account information and gave it to them.

For employment Markov had said that he was a correspondent for the Moscow newspaper Izvestia. For his phone number, he had given the same one Vail and Kate had called at the Russian embassy to receive the clue to Spy Number Two’s identity. Vail thought it was a nice little touch by Calculus to tell them they were on the right track. Apparently there was an Ariadne thread after all.

Vail also suspected that the name Markov was another false identity that Calculus had used to open the account. The bank box was smart, a way to transfer money and documents without the risk of being seen together. At least that’s how Calculus would have sold the idea to Petriv. But now it looked as if Calculus had done it to set him up. It was an easy way to plant and protect evidence that, because Petriv’s name was the only true name on the box, provided irrefutable proof of treason.

Now Vail needed to determine if Yanko Petriv was the mole’s real name. His employer was listed as the U.S. government. The phone number had a Virginia area code. “Can we get into the box without anyone else knowing?” Vail asked the manager.

“Sure. Just let me go tell my assistant that the boxes are closed for the next hour due to a lock malfunction. Then I’ll take you down there. We’re going to have to break into the box. If either of the box holders wants in, they won’t be able to access it after we replace the lock. By law, the next time they try to access it, we’ll have to tell them that the FBI was here and that a court order was served.”

Vail wrote down his cell-phone number and handed it to the manager. “If either of them shows up, call me immediately.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, let’s open it.”

After the manager oversaw the drilling of the lock on box 74, he led Kate and Vail to a small room and left them, closing the door behind him. Kate said, “Think Markov is Calculus?”

“You recognized the phone number, too. If he is, that should mean that whatever is in this box has a lead to the next name.” He lifted the lid, and they both put on evidence gloves. Inside were banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills. A quick count revealed almost forty thousand dollars. There were also a number of documents, most of which had CLASSIFIED stamped on them. Other pages included some handwritten lists, which were mostly names and phone numbers. Underneath them were two passports, one Czechoslovakian in the name of Lev Tesar and a Hungarian one with the name Oszkar Kalman. Kate opened them both and saw that although the hair color and length were different in the photos, it was the same individual. She said, “Looks like part of Mr. Petriv’s compensation package included escape plans.”

“Notice anything else about this?”

“What?”

“If they were using this box as a dead drop, there should be only money in here, or documents, not both.”

“Which means what?”

Vail studied the account printout the manager had given him. “Two weeks ago there was activity four days in a row. Petriv came the first day to put documents in the box. Markov—or Calculus, if you prefer—came the next day to remove them and leave money. The third day Petriv comes back and verifies the payment and moves almost ten thousand to his checking. On the fourth day, Markov makes sure some of the money is still there and puts back the documents, or probably copies of them, for us to recover. He knew that Petriv wouldn’t go back into the box until another exchange was set up. That left everything there for us to find.”

“Which we hope means that Calculus hid a clue to the next name in this pile of documents,” Kate said. She examined the papers more closely. “According to some of the stampings on the pages, I think these might be NSA reports. I’ve seen similar ones. If they are, maybe this is the intelligence agent that Calculus was referring to. Maybe there were only two spies he was going to give us.”

“Maybe,” Vail said. “Let’s pack everything up.