FBI Boston field office—around the same time
“So we just release him?” Hightower held her palms up.
“Yeah.” Jenkins leaned back in the chair. “I guess.”
“What does he do for the CIA?”
Jenkins shook his head.
“You know . . .” Hightower’s voice trailed off. She put her forefinger to her right temple and rubbed in a circular motion, as if she were turning a wheel there. “I wasn’t sure about this guy when you brought him in. But now . . . There has to be some connection with the mob. It makes sense.”
“Yeah.”
“You have a name, you can flesh out his background, get to work on that.”
Jenkins gave her a sardonic smile but kept himself from telling her that he knew how to do his job. It had been a long night for her as well.
It wasn’t bad enough that the CIA had ordered Jenkins to let his only suspect go. His boss’s decision to forbid him to use Massina was even worse. And he wasn’t going to be able to explain it fully to Massina either.
Hey, my boss thinks I was using you to do illegal hacking. We didn’t go that far, no way. I was on the right side of the line. I think. But now we have to play by my boss’s rules.
Well, to some extent. But I can’t get you into trouble. So . . . hasta la vista.
Right. That would be some conversation.
“When are you going to tell him he’s free to go?” asked Hightower.
“Would you do it?”
“Me?”
“I’m not sure I can trust myself not to hit him,” Jenkins confessed. “Or pound the wall on his way out.”
Told he could go, Tolevi walked out of the interrogation room and down the hall to the lavatory, moving as deliberately as he could. He guessed that they would still be observing him. This release might even be a trick.
Standing in front of the men’s room mirror, he tried to smooth the wrinkles from his jacket. He combed his hair straight back, patting the sides. He was due for a cut.
I look like I have two black eyes.
More than likely Johansen had gotten him released. Though it was possible this whole thing was part of an elaborate plot to pressure him into doing whatever job the CIA officer was pushing.
Whatever that was. It had to be big for Johansen to meet him in person. And not even on a train.
Tolevi’s thoughts turned to his daughter. She’d be getting up soon, to go to school. He needed to get home and talk to her before then, find out what the hell she was doing.
Had she stolen an ATM card? He didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but there seemed to be no other logical explanation.
What was the punishment for that? Grounding for a year?
What if she just found the card? Or told him that. What would he say?
She’d broken curfew, so the card was irrelevant. That definitely earned her a punishment. A stricter curfew and, better, loss of computer privileges, except for homework.
That was the Achilles’ heel—homework. The teachers assigned every damn thing on the Internet. You’d think they never heard of libraries, let alone pencils and paper.
Tolevi continued to brood on what to do about Borya as he collected his suitcase and left the building. The real solution here was to hire a full-time, live-in babysitter; the “nanny” he was using to check on her was clearly ineffectual.
And what would a new babysitter do? Put her in chains?
Maybe that was the best way.
The suitcase bumped along after him as he strode toward the front hall. Tolevi stopped and examined it. One of the wheels was chipped.
I oughta send these idiots a bill.
Once, ten years before, Stephan Stratowich had blown off a speeding ticket in Florida, figuring that by the time the police caught up with him, he would be out of the state, immune to anything they could do.
And he was—until two years later, when he was stopped at a routine DWI checkpoint in Illinois. He’d passed the breathalyzer test easily—Stratowich touched alcohol only on his birthday—but then was detained on a warrant check: the Florida court where his ticket was answerable had filed a bench warrant when he failed to show.
That experience weighed on him now, pushing him to settle the speeding ticket he’d gotten the day before with a quick visit to city court. He was hoping he could plea-bargain the damn thing in person that morning. If that didn’t work, then he’d pay the damn thing and be done with it. He couldn’t afford to take any chances.
One of his “uncles” could probably get him out of it. But he was already deeply in debt, and he didn’t need to add another favor to the fifteen grand.
Stratowich quickened his pace as he neared the FBI building, which happened to be on his way. If he was paranoid about speeding tickets, he was absolutely on alert when it came to the Bureau. Yet it held a certain fascination. You had to know the enemy if you were going to conquer him.
He had just decided to cross the street when he saw the door to the building open. A man was framed in the light behind him.
Gabor Tolevi.
Tolevi?
Stratowich froze. He couldn’t imagine what Tolevi might be doing there.
Before he could decide whether to approach him or not, a black Uber car drove up and stopped a few yards from the building. Tolevi—it absolutely had to be him, pulling a suitcase and carrying a briefcase—stepped out into the street, asked the driver a question, then jumped in the back.
Stratowich stepped back into the shadows, shielding his face as the car passed. He caught a bit of the passenger’s profile, enough to confirm, at least in his mind, that it was in fact Tolevi. Though he couldn’t for the life of him imagine why Tolevi would be talking to the FBI.
His uncle might. Perhaps this might be worth shaving a little interest off the debt.