Viking Bay (19 page)

29
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Callahan wanted breakfast, so he and Kay walked over to a restaurant on L Street where all the waitresses knew Callahan. One busty old-timer called him “Honey” and pressed her broad hip against his shoulder as she took his order.

“There were nine people, including you and me, who played a significant role in the operation, and two of those people worked together to kill the Khans,” Callahan said. “I'm going to exclude you and me. I'm excluding me because I know I'm innocent. I kind of like that: Callahan the Innocent. Makes me sound like a pope.” When Kay didn't crack a smile, he said, “I'm excluding you because you were almost killed over there and because Sterling's guy tried to kill you here.”

“Well, that's damn big of you,” Kay said.

“So we have seven suspects: Eli Dolan, Anna Mercer, Sylvia Sorenson, Paul Harris, Ernst Glardon, Steven Cannon, and Nathan Sterling.”

“Who's Harris?” Kay asked. “You just said he was working with Eli.”

“He's an engineer and he once worked for Sociedad Química y Minera
,
a company in Chile involved in lithium mining in South America. Eli trusted him and needed his expertise, so we had him sign a nondisclosure agreement and brought him in. Harris is a suspect only because he knew that we were planning to go after the lithium, but not a strong one, and the main reason why is he never knew about the money we were planning to give Sahid Khan.”

“Unless Dolan told him about the money,” Kay said.

Callahan ignored Kay's comment and continued. “I know Ernst Glardon didn't do it, because he didn't know about the money we were
giving to Khan either, and the mining operation would have benefited his company. Plus, Ernst is an idiot. If he wasn't one, Eli wouldn't have been able to assume control of his company.

“I'm also going to eliminate Cannon as a serious suspect. He wasn't at the house when the bombs went off and—”

“How do you know he wasn't on the other side of the wall that surrounded the house and detonated the bomb from there?” Kay said. “Or how do you know he wasn't the guy who blew the transformer? Everything was done with cell phones, and just because he said he was going to the dry lakes doesn't mean he really went there.”

“He
did
go to the lakes,” Callahan said. “I took a trip to Switzerland since the last time we met. That's when I found out the money never made it to Khan's bank. While I was there, I talked to the Glardon engineer who went with Cannon to look at the lakes. At the time the bombs went off, Cannon was with the engineer and miles away from the house and the substation.” Callahan laughed. “That engineer never slept the whole time he was with Cannon. They were out in the middle of nowhere in an area where the Taliban roam, and the guy was scared shitless. Anyway, I suppose the engineer could be in on this, too, and he lied to me, but that's unlikely. I also realize that Cannon could have planned this thing so he didn't have to be at the house, but I think that would be too complicated.

“So for now I'm crossing Cannon, Harris, and Ernst Glardon off my list, and we're down to Nathan Sterling and somebody working for me who knew how much money I was giving Sahid Khan. Which means Anna, Sylvia, and your favorite suspect, Eli Dolan.”

The busty waitress brought Callahan's breakfast: an omelet that looked like it took six eggs to make and with enough hash browns to choke a horse. Callahan started eating, talking as he did so.

“I have no doubt that Sterling was involved. I mean, once you accept that the Taliban and Sahid Khan's security people had nothing to do with what happened, he's the only one left who was in a position to
control things at the house where the meeting was held. And it was his guy, Nelson, who tried to kill you.”

“But you can't be sure that Sterling was personally involved,” Kay said. “Whoever planned this could have worked with some of Sterling's people, like Nelson. I don't necessarily believe that. I'm just saying, hypothetically, that—”

Callahan shook his head. “Let's say you were the person who planned this. How would you know which of Cannon and Sterling's people they'd be taking with them to Afghanistan? And how could you be certain that Cannon or Sterling would just let the guys you picked run around on their own and do things like build a couple bombs and plant one at the substation? And how would you know which of their people would be willing to do this? But Sterling was in a position to pick his people and control what they were doing in Afghanistan, so I'm positive he was involved.”

“But you don't have any proof,” Kay said.

Poking his fork at her face for emphasis, Callahan said, “You need to understand something, Hamilton. I don't
need
proof. I just need to be convinced I'm right. I'm not going to have anybody arrested. I'm not going to take anyone to court, and I'm not trying to build a legal case that eliminates reasonable doubt. I just have to know I'm right.”

Before Kay could ask what he planned to do once he knew he was right, Callahan continued. “But like I said, there was a
brain
behind all this, somebody who knew we were giving Khan the money. Sterling wouldn't have known about the money I was planning to give to Sahid Khan, either—not unless somebody working for me told him. And since I didn't tell him, and since I'm guessing you didn't either, I think either Anna or Sylvia told him.”

“How do you know it wasn't Dolan?”

“I'll tell you how I know. Because Sterling called Dolan to get him out of the meeting room.” Kay started to object, but Callahan held up a hand, stopping her. “Listen to me. First, Sterling's cell phone
records showed he called Dolan's phone, so Dolan wasn't lying about who called him. But the big thing is, whoever planned this wanted Dolan to live so he'd be a suspect.”

“What?”

“The first time I met with you after you got back from Afghanistan, I told you I thought that maybe the Khans had told somebody about the meeting and whoever they told turned one of Khan's bodyguards to kill the Khans. And that's what the person who planned this
wanted
me to think. But then you convinced me that Ara and her dad wouldn't have told anyone. Which made me wonder: Why did they wait until the money was transferred before they blew the bomb?”

“Yeah, I wondered the same thing.”

“Then I found out, just like you did, that the money was stolen. I think whoever planned this was hoping that I'd never find out the money was stolen, but in case I did, she wanted to give me a suspect. And
that's
why they saved Eli, because he'd be the logical suspect.”

Kay had to admit that he had a point. But Callahan wasn't finished.

“And you can't ignore the fact that Eli had no motive,” Callahan said. “The money sure as hell wouldn't have been a motive for him. The only reason he's allowed his net worth to dwindle to a mere twenty million is he's been too busy working for me. With his smarts and connections, he could go back to Goldman Sachs anytime he wanted. And I can't think of any political reason why he'd want to kill the Khans or destroy an operation that he'd been working on for a year.”

“Yeah, maybe you're right,” Kay said. “Although . . .”

“You just can't admit you might be wrong, can you?” Callahan said.

Kay decided to ignore that. “So if it wasn't Eli, who was it? Sylvia or Anna? Personally, I have a hard time seeing Sylvia as the person behind this.”

“A lot of people have made the mistake of underestimating Sylvia. They didn't make her a commander in the United States Navy for being a wallflower, and I hired her because I was aware of the work she did
when she was at the Pentagon. When it comes to doing her job, Sylvia can be as tricky and cutthroat as any lawyer you've ever known.”

“Yeah, but is she capable of cold-blooded murder?”

“I wouldn't have thought so,” Callahan said. “But then, I can't imagine Anna being a killer, either.”

—

CALLAHAN RAISED A HAND
to get the check and the blond waitress brought it to him. She placed a hand on the back of his thick neck, ruffled the hair hanging over his collar, and asked if he'd enjoyed his breakfast. Callahan left a tip that Kay figured was fifty percent of the bill. It was no wonder the waitresses all loved him; nor was it any wonder that he was almost broke.

As they were walking back to the office, Kay said, “We need proof, Callahan. We need evidence. Maybe not enough to take to court, but we need something. And although you might be right about Eli—and I'll admit you could be—we need something more.”

“We're not going to get any evidence from the crime scene, because the crime scene's in Afghanistan,” Callahan said. “We're not going to get evidence off Eli's computer, because it was destroyed when the bomb went off. There's no money in anybody's bank account we can find, which also means I can't prove anyone's richer than they should be.”

“Have you looked at phone calls?”

“No, and I'm not going to waste time doing that. All the people involved are smart enough not leave a communication trail.”

“Then polygraph them,” Kay said. “Polygraph them all: Eli, Anna, and Sylvia.”

Callahan laughed. “I can't polygraph Eli, because he quit. Sylvia gets so nervous when she's hooked up to the machine that it looks like she's lying when she's asked if her name is Sylvia Sorenson. As for Anna, she had training when she was at the CIA to beat a polygraph test, and she's good at it. If I test her, the results won't mean anything.”

Kay didn't say anything for a moment as she walked along beside Callahan. She noticed he was breathing way too heavily for the short distance they'd walked. He needed to lose weight and stop smoking.

“If you're right about Eli,” Kay said, “then there's another player involved in this. I mean, if Eli didn't program his own computer to steal the money, then somebody else did. So unless you think that Anna or Sylvia have the computer skills . . .”

“They don't,” Callahan said. “Someplace out there is a computer guy who helped with all this.”

“Or computer gal, Callahan. I mean, if you think it was a woman who betrayed you, you shouldn't be such a sexist.”

Callahan laughed.

“How would Sylvia or Anna have found the computer person to help them?” Kay said. “Do you have people on retainer?”

“Now, that's actually a damn good question. We don't have people on retainer, but I have access to some of the best computer people in this country, including some five-star hackers, but I'm the
only
one that has access to them. Sylvia and Anna would have to find somebody, and they sure as hell didn't place an ad in the Help Wanted pages.” Callahan smiled at Kay and said, “I'm going to do the same thing one of them did to find a guy who could snatch money out of thin air.”

“Which is?”

“Don't worry about that. I want you to go home and rest up. If I can get a lead on the computer guy, I'm going to have you run him down and deal with him.”

“Deal with him how?” Kay said.

Instead of answering her question, Callahan said, “And watch your back, Kay. Somebody's tried to kill you twice now. They could try again.”

That was the first time she remembered him calling her Kay.

30
|
Callahan left a message for Smee, telling the weasel he needed to talk to him. An hour later, he met with Smee in an office near Dupont Circle that had a
FOR
LEASE
sign in the window. He told Smee what he wanted. He'd used Prescott's people to do the financial reviews and to answer the computer questions, but now he wanted Grayson's folks to help him find the computer guy. Grayson was in the right organization to do that.

Callahan returned to his office, poured a cup of coffee, then tipped a little bourbon into the cup.

Sylvia or Anna? Which one had killed the Khans?

Sylvia was the person who had the most motive, a lot more motive than either Eli or Anna. Callahan didn't know anyone personally who lived in more miserable circumstances. She'd been caring for her sick mother seemingly forever—and Callahan knew her mother was a sharp-tongued, complaining, ungrateful hag. She didn't have a husband, because what man would want to marry into a situation where he would become a full-time nursing partner? She made over two hundred grand a year as his top lawyer, but lived in a shitty apartment, drove a shitty car, and dressed in shitty clothes because her mother's medical expenses had bled her dry. When she took vacation time, she did so when her mother was hospitalized for one reason or another. If Callahan had been in Sylvia's situation, he would have smothered the old bat with a pillow years ago.

So did Sylvia do it? Had she finally been pushed over the edge? Had she finally decided it was time to live not just a normal life but a
better-than-normal life to make up for all the years she'd sacrificed? Callahan had no doubt she had the brains to steal the money and plan the operation. And if she had the money she could escape from her mother and assuage her conscience by putting the old woman in the finest medical facility in the country. But kill five people? Would Sylvia do that?

No. She wouldn't do that. And the reason he knew this was the sacrifices she'd made for her mother.

It was Anna who had betrayed him and killed Ara Khan—and admitting this just broke Callahan's heart.

—

FOR SOME TIME,
Callahan had sensed Mercer's growing bitterness—which really wasn't at all unusual for people like her when they reached middle age. People who have spent their entire careers serving the U.S. government—the people at the top, the admirals and generals, the intelligence people who protect the nation, presidential appointees responsible for billions of dollars managing federal programs—rarely made more than two hundred grand a year. So it wasn't unusual at all for these senior people to grouse about the fact that Wall Street bankers, who had nowhere near their level of responsibility, made multimillion-dollar salaries. All senior civil servants, at some point in their lives, can't help but think how much more they could have made had they taken their ideas and ambition to the private sector.

Some of these people, however, could at least take solace in the fact that the citizens they served knew who they were and what they did, and admired them. When a man said he'd been the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, director of the CIA, secretary of defense or state—people knew that he'd been somebody who mattered. And these people, because of their fame and their past positions, were usually able to get lucrative private-sector jobs after they retired. Most civil servants, however, including Thomas Callahan and Anna Mercer, had no claim
to fame. Nobody could tell you who had been the deputy director of some agency or the undersecretary at another. From the standpoint of public recognition, they were nobodies.

Callahan could see that all this began to grate on Mercer. Not only didn't she make the kind of money she could have made if she'd taken her talents to Exxon or Pfizer or Morgan Stanley, the worst part was, she'd always been a second banana. She'd always been somebody's deputy—as she was now Callahan's. Moreover, because she worked for the Callahan Group, she wasn't even allowed to tell folks what she'd accomplished; there'd be no book deals for Anna Mercer.

Callahan figured that sometime in the past year, Mercer decided that if she was going to be an invisible servant to an ungrateful nation, at least she was going to be a rich one. She was not going to settle for a time-share in Fort Lauderdale that she visited two weeks a year. She wasn't going to drive a car until it had two hundred thousand miles on the odometer. She was
not
going to fly fucking coach.

Instead, she decided to steal fifty million dollars the government could never report as having been stolen. She wouldn't get all the money, however—she'd have to share part of it with her cohorts—but Callahan was betting that she'd kept the lion's share for herself. If she only kept thirty of the fifty million. . . Well, thirty million wasn't chicken feed.

If all she'd done was steal the money, that would have bothered Callahan, of course, but she'd done more than that. What really bothered him was the reason she killed Ara Khan. She didn't need to kill Ara to steal the money—she killed Ara because Ara's death was all part of the smoke screen that Anna had to create to hide her involvement and make him think that the Taliban or someone in Kabul had planted the bomb.

Like he'd told Hamilton, Anna had been hoping that no one would be able to penetrate the secrecy and security of a Swiss bank and discover that the fifty million never made it into Sahid Khan's account.
She had to kill the Khans, because if they called their banker the day after the meeting, then they—and Callahan—would know the money had been stolen. So in case Callahan did learn that she'd stolen the money, she'd arranged things so Eli Dolan became the primary suspect. He felt bad now that he'd ever suspected Eli; he imagined Hamilton did, too.

So he knew it was Anna—but he didn't
really
know. Like Hamilton had said, he needed proof, at least a little. But until he had some proof, he had to make sure that Anna didn't run. As smart as she was, if she ran he might not ever find her.

Callahan's thoughts were interrupted by an e-mail ding from his laptop. The e-mail was from Amazon; he'd bought one book from them two years ago and now he got six e-mails a day from a company that was trying to take over the world. The e-mail said his order would be shipped at six p.m., which meant that he would meet again with Smee at six to get the information he'd asked for.

He pondered what he was about to do next for a couple of minutes, then picked up the phone and asked Mercer to come to his office.