Boston—roughly the same time
“This is his bag,” said Jenkins, pointing to the suitcase that had been recovered from the Uber driver.
“Can we look inside?” asked Hightower.
“Not according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Not without a warrant. Or his permission.”
“But you’ve already looked, right?”
Jenkins didn’t answer. He was starting to like Hightower. A lot.
The office he had borrowed was small, used by two lower-echelon agents. He would have to give it up in a few hours when they came in for work. After that, he’d have to camp out upstairs in one of the empty interrogation rooms.
Or maybe a closet. He didn’t want to bring Tolevi to his own headquarters. If the guy was a master hacker, he’d learn too much about the operation just seeing it.
If.
Doubt had started to creep in. Tolevi had some sort of sketchy connection to the Russian mob, but it wasn’t at all clear. The phone call he had made was not to an attorney, or a known mafya connection for that matter, but to a Virginia-area cell phone. The message he had left—Jenkins had been close enough to “inadvertently” hear—gave nothing away:
I’m being questioned by the FBI in Boston. I have no idea why.
The number belonged to a prepaid cell phone apparently purchased for cash; that certainly fit with a mafya or underground connection, but it didn’t give Jenkins any real information to work with.
The U.S. attorney wasn’t sure they had enough to go on yet for a warrant. And because she was so cautious—anal might be a better word—Jenkins couldn’t even examine the ATM without a warrant. They might be able to get one, but only by laying out a lot of their theory of the case in court, which would give Tolevi or anyone else involved a map on how to clean up the evidence. Not to mention that he would be opening himself up to potential Fourth Amendment complications, which would throw out everything they’d found.
So he wanted, needed really, Tolevi to voluntarily let them examine it. And once he did that, then by extension they could look at all of its transactions, because what else did looking at the card mean? He’d win without a warrant, and without any worries about using the information in court, let alone tipping their hand or telling the world where they got their information.
Always a dance.
“Did you check on Amsterdam?” Hightower asked. “The hotel he claimed he stayed in?”
“They said he checked out yesterday, which matches his story. They wouldn’t give out any other information.”
In fact, Jenkins had only gotten that much through subterfuge, claiming to be a friend trying to track him down. The hotel’s night manager had rebuffed the FBI’s formal request, telling Jenkins’s assistant that the request would have to come through channels and be made during the day.
“Just an overnight bag to do business in Europe?” asked Hightower. “I don’t know . . . I think I’d take more luggage than that.”
“Thin,” said Jenkins.
“You have anything else?”
Jenkins shrugged. “Let’s play that angle. And ask if we can examine the card. Then Dryfus can analyze it.”
Tolevi focused his attention on his hands, staring at his fingers as if he had never seen them before. It was a technique he had learned in college, from an alleged “mind master,” a sort of discipline guru who claimed to have wormed eternal wisdom from a Zen master in Tibet. The man was later unmasked as a fraud, something Tolevi had suspected from the speed at which he bedded female devotees, but the technique itself was a good one. Focus your thoughts so they do not stray—a good strategy in many situations.
His knuckles seemed particularly large and wrinkled. That was where age showed, in the hands. Even the hands of a man such as Tolevi, whose last stint of heavy physical labor dated to a construction job in his early twenties, bore the marks of time.
Breaks as well as wrinkles. A torn ligament. Even now, stiffness that would surely grow as time moved on.
The door to the interrogation room opened and Tolevi’s interrogators reentered. Tolevi thought of the airport in Crimea and what might have happened if the SRV agents had understood what to look for—the flash drive embedded in the handle. But these two were even more clueless.
Perhaps. It could easily be an act.
Don’t underestimate your enemy.
“So, Mr. Tolevi. You’re Russian?” asked Jenkins.
“I’m an American, as you can see from my passport.”
“But you’re of Russian extraction.”
“And Ukrainian,” added Tolevi. “What’s your background?”
Hightower ignored the question. “Did you visit Russia?”
“Did you visit Russia?” asked Hightower.
“I told you my entire itinerary,” answered Tolevi, trying to puzzle out where they were going with their questions.
“A week in the Netherlands,” said Hightower. “Nice.”
“You’ve been?” Tolevi asked.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. I rode my bike there.”
Tolevi remained silent. She didn’t look like the bike-riding type, or a person who exercised fairly regularly at all.
“There are a lot of things to see in the Netherlands,” continued the female agent. “And places to go.”
“You smoke pot?” asked Jenkins.
“Do I look like someone who smokes pot?”
“What does that look like these days?” said Hightower. “I think just about everyone does.”
“I do not.”
Tolevi wondered if they were going to set him up—plant marijuana in his bag and hold him on a bogus charge. But wouldn’t they have done that at Customs?
Nothing about this was making sense. What exactly were they up to? And where the hell was Johansen?
Maybe behind the glass, gauging his responses.
Tolevi lowered his gaze, looking at his hands again.
“You didn’t take much clothes for a week’s stay,” said Hightower.
“You’re detaining me because I didn’t pack an extra pair of underwear?”
“Why did you stop at that ATM?” Jenkins’s voice was sharp; he was back to playing bad cop.
“Why does anyone stop at an ATM?” asked Tolevi.
“Tell me about that card,” said Jenkins.
“It’s a bank card.”
“What’s special about your card?”
“Nothing.”
“Would you mind if I had it analyzed?”
“Go ahead.”
“Thank you.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” said Hightower.
One of the agents poked his head inside the room.
“Mr. Jenkins, you’re wanted on the phone.”
Jenkins paused inside the observation room to watch Tolevi before picking up the phone. He was a cool one, unshakeable. But it figured that a mafya member would be like that. They had no conscience, which made it easy for them to lie.
Still staring at Tolevi through the two-way mirror, he picked up the handset. “Jenkins.”
“Agent Jenkins? This is Yuri Johansen. I’m with the Agency.”
“What agency?” asked Jenkins. He’d thought it was a call from one of his people back at the Watertown site.
“Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. Jenkins. I understand you’re questioning a Gabor Tolevi.”
“That’s right,” said Jenkins.
“What exactly has he done?”
Jenkins hesitated. Was this really a CIA agent on the line? He thought of tracing the call, but there was no one else in the room he could ask to initiate it. And the phone set didn’t include a caller ID screen.
“I’m not understanding why it would be your business,” said Jenkins.
“The Agency is very interested in everything Mr. Tolevi does,” said Johansen matter-of-factly. “So what has he done?”
“We’re—he’s part of an investigation.”
“I gathered that. Into what, exactly?”
Surely this must be a member of Tolevi’s mafya clan, posing as a spy to try and get him off. That was a good thing—he could get this asshole, too. Surely he’d be easier to break than Tolevi, who right now was staring blankly at the mirror.
“I’m not going to discuss this over the phone,” said Jenkins. “If you want to come down and talk about it in person, I’d be happy to share what I can.”
“I’m afraid it would be difficult for me to do that. I’m in Europe at the moment.”
“Well, I guess that’s that, then.” Jenkins hung up.