The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(44)

Jenkins frowned. “I’d like a Mercedes, but that’s not in the budget.” He smiled, as if sharing a joke. “The Hyundai doesn’t have much power, but it gets good gas mileage, and today that is more important.”

“Da,” the man said, making another face. “They say the price is going to go up another eight to ten percent because of the sanctions by the Americans.”

“Good for you. Not so good for me.” Jenkins pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “Too bad they can’t bottle what he’s putting out in there. They could run a city on his natural gas.”

The attendant laughed.

“I would let it air out before you go in there. You’re liable to suffocate,” Jenkins said, moving to the front door.

“Da. Thanks for the warning.”

Jenkins departed the store, walking casually to the car, resisting the urge to look back to see if the attendant had moved to the bathroom. His right hand ached from punching the young officer, and he wondered if he had broken a knuckle. He removed the nozzle from the car’s gas tank and returned it into the pump, using the opportunity to look inside the convenience store. The attendant remained seated, watching the television mounted above the counter. Jenkins got behind the wheel and drove across the street to the market with the red tile roof, arriving as Anna walked out the door. She carried plastic bags in each hand. Jenkins pushed open her car door.

“Hurry,” he said. “We have a problem.”





23



Alex sat at the round table in Sloane’s office going through Charlie’s laptop. Jake sat beside her, working on his own laptop, searching the Internet. Sloane moved back and forth from his desk, going over documents Alex printed out for him. They’d left CJ and Max in the lunchroom with pizza they’d ordered for dinner, a soft drink, and cable television. The boy was in heaven.

Outside the office windows, night had fallen. Streetlamps illuminated rain tapping on the warehouse roof. A loud whistle signaled the approach of another train. Alex pored through CJ Security’s credit card records and their personal credit card records, as well as Charlie’s e-mails and text messages. She’d made a list of the charges Charlie incurred while in Russia, places where he had dined, and plotted those locations on a map of Moscow she’d printed out. The charges confirmed Charlie’s second trip, but not his second stay at the Metropol Hotel.

She’d called LSR&C’s Moscow office. Uri, the head of security in that office, confirmed Charlie had visited the office twice in the past month, and that he had stayed at the Metropol on both occasions—at least that was where Uri had dropped him off and picked him up.

Someone was lying.

“How far behind in payments was LSR&C?” Sloane asked, setting down another document on his desk.

“In November it approached fifty thousand dollars.”

“Why didn’t Charlie tell me? I could have written the company a letter.”

“The CFO kept telling Charlie he’d bring us current, and he did eventually make two ten-thousand-dollar payments, but the bills and vendor invoices kept mounting.” Alex stood and walked to where Sloane sat, showing him a timeline she’d created. “Look at this. Just before Christmas, after Charlie made his first trip to Russia, we received a check for fifty thousand dollars, enough to pay our security contractors and bring our vendors current. I’m having trouble finding that check, though the increased balance appears in CJ Security’s checking account.”

Sloane studied the timeline for a moment, then asked, “And you can’t think of any business reason for Charlie to be in Russia?”

“That office has been set up for some time. It wasn’t like he was going over to get it up and running. Uri said Charlie came to discuss security measures. I think that was just an excuse.”

“Excuse for what?”

“If Charlie has been reactivated, he’d need a cover to get into the country, a legitimate reason for being there.”

“Okay, but I’m assuming that, cover or not, the Russians would have a means to detect a former CIA operative’s entrance into their country,” Sloane said.

“No doubt,” she said. “The company gave him a reason to be there, and he got in, but it didn’t mean the Russians would trust him, or accept his presence as legitimate.”

Jake lifted his head from the computer. “Locke, Spellman, Rosellini and Cooper,” he said. “That’s what LSR&C stands for?”

Alex nodded.

Jake lowered his head and continued to type, studying his computer screen.

“If Charlie’s in trouble do you have any other way to get in touch with him?” Sloane asked.

“No. And I wouldn’t. Our agreed-upon procedure was he would call you or this office. I ditched my cell phone because that would be the first thing someone would trace, if they were trying to track my location.”

“I thought so,” Jake said, sitting back. He turned his computer screen toward them. “Locke, Spellman, and Rosellini are the names of former Washington State governors.”

“Are you sure?” Sloane stepped closer to the screen. Neither he nor Alex had been raised in Seattle or knew much about its history. Jake had been raised in Seattle, at least until high school.

“Gary Locke was governor from 1997 to 2005.”