Midnight come again (32 page)

"Oh. Yeah. Sure. Sorry." He poured her a glass and watched her sip it painfully. "You want to go to the hospital?"

"No." He gave her an appraising glance. The sun was up, and he could see color returning to her cheeks. "All right, then. You want to go talk to the FBI?"

"I don't think there's any zirconium on that tub," Jim said flatly. They were gathered in Zarr's office, Zarr behind her desk, Kate sitting with Carroll and Casanare arrayed before her in full interrogatory mode, Jim standing in the middle of the floor with his arms crossed and a frown on his face.

"Let's ask her," Carroll said, pointing at Kate. "She was wandering around the Kosygin like she owned it three days ago. She ought to have a pretty good idea what's on it. Or maybe she can't say, because of her financial interest in its cargo."

Kate blinked at her, still not quite back in her body. She was also at a disadvantage because her throat hurt too much to talk. Mutt wasn't. Mutt didn't like her tone and said so.

"Quiet, Mutt," Jim said. "I was all over the boat the day before she was, and I didn't see a goddamn thing."

Both agents turned to stare. "Do you mean you can remember going on board now?"

"Yes." He looked at Kate, at the bruising beginning to bloom on her neck, and looked away again. "It just hit me like a baseball bat, all of a sudden, like the doc said it might. I wandered around on my own for, hell, it must have been forty-five, fifty minutes before they caught me."

"Who caught you?" Ignoring the question, Jim said, "I was in and out of every compartment in that hold, and I'm telling you there was nothing in it. Nothing, no fish, no zirconium--what does it come in, anyway?"

"Canisters with big warning labels that say, ', Toxic Substance, Do Not Lift, Filch, Pilfer, Purloin or Otherwise Steal,'" Carroll said.

Jim looked at her, and wondered what there was in the tone of her voice that was making his bullshit detector kick in. "Yeah, well, I never saw anything even remotely like that on board the Kosygin. Plus, the trim line is three feet above the water. I'm assuming this stuff is bulky and it weighs a lot, or why did they need a boat that size to bring it in?"

"It has to be there," Casanare said stubbornly. "We got a list of potential buyers out of the Anchorage data base, all of them involved in some way with white supremacist groups in Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Texas. The Aryan Nation, for crissake, is probably waiting delivery on this stuff as we speak. You think they're going to stop with the Oke bomb?"

"Will you shut up and listen to me for just one minute!"

First Sergeant Jim Chopin in full voice was enough to splinter wood.

Casanare mastered his anger and said to Carroll, "What the hell, we can listen. Doesn't mean we can't grab her up after."

Kate heard him and sat up straight in her chair.

"Thank you," Jim said with awful politeness. "Kate's found some information that I think you'll be interested in. It concerns--"

"Oh I'm sure we'll be interested in anything Ms. Shugak has to say,"

Casanare said silkily, "but if you don't mind, first I'd like to read her her rights." He smiled at Kate. It was a very attractive smile, and she decided that if she had a choice, he got to put on the cuffs. She took comfort in the weight of Mutt's shoulder, pressed against her knee.

Mutt had taken it as a matter of course that she had been invited to this interservice conference, and no one had thought to gainsay her.

The best--maybe the only--way to deal with Feds on a roll was to ignore them.

Jim didn't have that luxury. "It's a money-laundering operation."

"What?"

"They're not smuggling anything into the country except money. They're running a con through the fishing industry, money in from an overseas business run through the Kosygin's account in a local bank to a stateside outfit."

There was dead silence. Jim looked at Carrou, looked at Casanare. "It's true. I'm betting that goddamn zirconium never came within five thousand miles of the Alaskan coastline. Stealing it was probably part of the operation; hell, selling it was probably how they bankrolled it. But this part--what they're doing here in Bering right now--is about money.

It is not about weapons smuggling, and it's not about terrorism. It is about money."

"That's not all," Kate said.

"Oh, she speaks," Carroll said.

Zarr was sitting behind her desk and so far had had little to say. At this, she stirred. "Agent Carroll, let's tone it down a little, shall we? You seem to have some suspicions about Ms. Shugak's doings in this matter. You should know that she has a reputation with the law enforcement community in this state, a good one." Whereas I met you two yo-yos only last week, her tone implied.

It was a warning, however gently voiced, and Carroll wasn't so angry that she didn't hear it. She subsided, reluctantly.

Zarr said, "Ms. Shugak? You had something to say?"

"Thank you," Kate said.

She was being excruciatingly polite. Jim wondered just how hard she'd been hit.

"I went to the library yesterday." She closed her eyes for a moment. "Or was it the day before?" She sighed and opened her eyes again. "I can't remember." "How unusual," Carroll said, shooting Jim a vicious glance.

Zarr cleared her throat. "You went to the library."

"Yes," Kate said, "and I looked some things up. Some background information."

"What about?"

"Who, not what. Christopher Overmore and Michael Sullivan."

Zarr's eyebrows disappeared into her hair.

"Who's Sullivan?" Jim said.

"The owner of the local bank. Overmore you know."

"Yeah, yeah, the senator from this district, running for U.S. senator.

What's he got to do with anything?"

"I can't prove it, yet, but I think he's Sullivan's partner in the bank, or one of them."

"So what?"

"So Overmore used to be a banker, a bad one. He came this close to going to jail for fraud seven years ago."

Jim was furious. "Why the hell didn't you tell me this before?"

She looked away, an uncommon thing for Kate Shugak to do. "I must have forgotten." I ran you off, he remembered just in time, and shut his mouth.

Zarr said slowly, "You'd better know what you're talking about here.

Overmore's a big name in these parts."

Kate thought about shrugging but didn't have the strength. "Look it up for yourself. It was in all the papers. How long have you been posted here?"

"Three years."

"Has no one ever talked about it? Twenty-three million dollars went missing, mostly from Native associations. You'd think people would never stop talking about something like that. How the hell did he get elected senator?" "Before my time," Zarr said, adding, "He's brought a lot of bacon home.

State and federal funding for sewer systems for villages in the district, funding from the FHA for low-cost housing funneled through the regional corporation, federal funding for the local hospital, things like that."

"Yes, well, this concern for local affairs is all very well," Casanare said briskly, "but in the meantime, we've got some highly toxic, very dangerous contraband to track down, and--"

"Sure you do," Jim said, "just not here. Get a warrant, get six of them, deputize every citizen of this town and storm on board the Kosygin. You won't find anything. And there is no point in waiting for a buyer to show up when there is no buyer."

"So you say."

"So I say." Jim pointed a finger at Kate. "You poked your nose into Overmore's business. Somebody saw you in the library, didn't they? Who?"

"I don't know."

"Well, we did," Casanare offered. "Or we saw her come out of it.

Followed by one of her Russian buddies." "What?" Kate said fuzzily, but they were all looking at Casanare now.

He reddened, and went on a little belligerently, "We went in afterward and tried to find out what you were up to, but we couldn't flash our badges and the librarian wouldn't play. She started reciting the First Amendment, so we left before she started singing

"My Country ' of Thee" and citing the United States versus Kramer Books."

"Good for Heidi," Kate said with a sloppy smile.

"She was looking up Overmore and Sullivan," Jim said. "Someone must have overheard her asking for help, naming the names, and got scared." He looked at Casanare.

"Glukhov," Casanare said slowly, and looked at Kate sitting slumped down in the chair. She looked dazed and maybe even a little drunk.

"You're not buying into this, are you, Al?" Carroll demanded.

"Looking up Overmore is what nearly got her killed," Jim insisted.

This earned Kate a long, skeptical stare from Carroll. "So she says."

Jim rose and strode over to yank open Kate's collar. "I don't think she tried to strangle herself. Do you?"

The bruises were going purple at a fine rate, a nice setting for the roped scar bisecting them. Zarr was the only one who stared openly;

Carroll and Casanare looked briefly and then away. "Could be a falling out between thieves," Carroll said. "It's happened before. Right here in town, four, five days ago now, wasn't it?"

"There's something else," Jim said, adding in an undertone, "I'm sorry, Kate." He turned to face the FBI agents. "A woman was killed day before yesterday, a local woman named Alice Chevak." Zarr sat up. "What do you know about that?"

"She was the head teller at Alaska First Bank of Bering. She and Kate went to school together in Fairbanks. Kate asked her to look up those accounts." Jim nodded at the papers spread haphazardly across Zarr's desk, where Casanare had tossed them contemptuously. "She died twenty-four hours later." "Coincidence," Carroll said, but she was sounding less sure of herself.

, Jim held up one finger. "Alexei Burianovich." He held up another.

"Me."

He held up a third. "Alice Chevak." He held up a fourth. "Kate Shugak.

Four murders or attempted murders--yeah, yeah, you think Kate's lying, fine. There's an easy way to prove her story--we'll drive out that damn road and find the body." He looked at Zarr. "You got somebody who can cover the post while you're gone?"

Zarr shook her head. "The sergeant's on a murder case up in Owl Village.

The two other troopers are in St. Paul on a drug bust."

"That's it? You're understaffed."

"Tell me about it." She cast Casanare and Carroll an unfriendly glance.

"I've got two cases hanging fire myself. And Chevak." He followed her glance. "They are laundering money," he said.

"They're helping fanatics build bombs," Carroll snapped.

Jim went very still. "Sorry? I thought this zirconium stuff--wait a minute. What else was stolen out of the military base in Russia?"

Casanare tried bluster as a way out of Carroll's blunder. "Zirconium is an essential rare metal in the production of--"

"You miserable sons of bitches," Jim said. Carroll and Casanare didn't precisely cower before his immense wrath, although Casanare did stealthily feel for the butt of his sidearm. "What are you really looking for, U-235? Plutonium? Did you know about this?" he shot at Zarr.

Pale-faced, she shook her head.

"You know what? I'm tired of trying to tell you people anything. You know your own business best. Fine. Meantime, I've got a friend who's hurt. I'm taking her home and putting her to bed."

"I hear that's what you do best," Carroll flashed.

Zarr stared stolidly at the opposite wall and said nothing, although a faint color crept up her neck.

Kate looked fuzzily at Jim and said with what sounded like genuine surprise, "We're friends?"

"Shugak, just stand up and start walking, okay?" "Okay," she said obediently, and they left, single file, Jim, Kate and Mutt, who bared her teeth at Casanare, just for practice.

The door closed behind them. Carroll and Casanare stared at each other.

"I don't know what the hell is going on here," Casanare said, "but whatever it is, it's starting to fall apart."

"It's the plutonium, Al, it has to be. We know Ivanov took it, and he's right here in Bering Goddamn Alaska. The plutonium hasn't surfaced anywhere else, and we would have heard by now if it had. Ivanov, Kamyanka, whatever the hell he's calling himself nowadays, he's into weapons and parts for making weapons. He's not into money, he's never been into money." She was almost pleading.

"He's had a pretty long run," Casanare said slowly. "Maybe now he's into retirement. This would be a way."

They sat in silence for a few tense moments. "All right then," Carroll said, "let's get a warrant and search the Kosygin"

"What for?"

"Whatever we can find."

"Okay," Casanare said, "and we're getting the warrant on--what grounds, exactly?"

Carroll looked at Zarr. "Is there a friendly judge in town?"

The trooper shook her head. "A friendly magistrate," she offered.