Class Fives: Origins (14 page)

He set the phone down carefully on the table and settled back into the chair.

He jumped. Back. But only a couple of minutes. The man had jumped back a couple of minutes.

Dan repeated the idea, running it through his mind, ornamenting it with different words, but no matter how he decorated the language, the thought itself refused to play nice with what he knew was completely and utterly impossible.

Well, he thought, folding the uncomfortable thought and tucking it away. He would need it in the morning. He was going to have another conversation with Mr. John Kleinschmidt.

5

An Interest Taken

The phone rang, a loud, jangling sound that always annoyed Anton. Why couldn’t he be issued a cellular phone, like everybody else? His cousin had a cell phone. A lovely hi tech model that could connect with the internet and even allow him to watch videos and listen to music. But then, cousin Vassily worked in the Black Market, and besides always having sufficient money to have a nice apartment in one of the better buildings, not too far from the Kremlin, he also was driving a nice car, some sleek, shiny thing from Germany. Anton still had to rely on the subway, which was getting more and more problematical with each passing day. And he still had this black lump of a telephone. With the department functioning on such a ridiculously small budget, that cellphone didn’t seem ever likely to happen.

I should have gone into business with Vassily, he told himself again as he reached for the heavy, awkward handset and lifted it from its cradle.

“License Department,” he said flatly, already irritated by whatever new load of work was about to be dumped on him.

“Anton Palyakoff, please,” the voice said.

Anton instantly recognized it by the odd accent. It was the American again. His mind became alert and he even sat up a bit straighter in his creaking chair.

“Speaking,” he responded, and noticed his mouth had gone suddenly dry.

“Greetings, my friend. Do you know who this is?”

Anton swallowed, his attention instantly directed at the large, awkward pile of documents in the far corner of his desk. He half rose, tucking the receiver awkwardly against his shoulder and reaching to half-scrape the pile of papers toward him.

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Good,” the voice cooed. “I wanted to see if everything was in order.”

“Of course, sir,” Anton replied, now using both hands to flip clumsily through the tottering pile of documents, searching for the ones he knew he would need to reference. “Just give me one moment.”

“Take your time,” the voice said soothingly.

Anton placed the receiver on the desk and quickly began flipping through the documents, his anxiety rising.

The idle thought flitted across his mind that if he had a cellular phone with the earpiece, he could even now be ingratiating himself with this clearly important man, even while he frantically flipped through the documents. At last he found the ones he was seeking and yanked them from the pile, almost causing a part of the stack to slide sideways.

He flopped back into his chair and picked up the receiver.

“Yes, I have them here.”

“All the documents?”

“Yes, sir. Transshipment clearances for the cargo, in the size and weight you specified.”

“Good. And the dates?”

Anton quickly scanned the pages.

“They become active,” he responded, “On the first of next month and are valid for a period of sixty days, just as you requested.”

He heard the sigh and ice shot down his backbone.

“Unfortunately,” the voice said, “Circumstances have changed. I’m going to need them to be valid beginning in ten days, and remain valid for ninety days.”

Anton felt his heart drop suddenly, splashing into his stomach and annoying the acid gurgling there.

“Sir,” he responded hesitantly, “I don’t know if that is possible. There are many procedures, approvals… It was only luck I was able to push them through at all.”

The voice hesitated thoughtfully, then went on reasonably.

“Would additional funds make it any easier?”

Anton almost spluttered. He had only talked to this mysterious man a few times, and although he was well aware that he had gotten himself involved in something that, at the very least, would get him fired, he had agreed knowingly. At least, he had told himself when this stranger had outlined his proposition, he wouldn’t be charged with State Treason, as he would have been in the old days. At least it wasn’t likely. And besides, if Vassily can have a nice car…

He frantically tried to do a rough estimation of the process that would have to be followed to shove the paperwork through the lumbering, creaking system that was the Russian Federation’s current government bureaucracy. Whom he would have to charm to quietly make the changes he would need, who would need to be quietly paid, and how much.

“It might be expensive,” he replied hesitantly.

“I understand that. Can you give me a figure?”

Anton swallowed dryly, thinking hard.

When he had heard the original amount of ‘processing fees’ the American had been willing to entrust to Anton, in order to secure the shipping licenses, he had been stunned. It had seemed like an incredible sum. But then there had been the considerations he had been reluctantly forced to sprinkle at each step of the process, and by the time he had at last received the properly registered final copies of the documents, there had been far less remaining for him to keep as his fee for his assistance in seeing it through. There was barely enough to buy one of the better motor scooters that were so popular these days. And you couldn’t even use those for almost half of a typical Moscow winter.

“Twice,” he said, his throat dry, “The original figure.”

“Very well,” the voice responded, containing no hint of distress or annoyance. “By the same method?”

“Yes,” Anton said, his own nerves beginning to calm.

“And when would you be able to send the documents?”

Anton thought quickly. With so much additional money he could be a bit less circumspect, a bit less cautious. What had the first time been done with much subtle hinting and gently pulling others along to see the harmlessness of what he wanted, could now be accomplished a great deal more easily. Those who had expected a consideration before would have little choice but to provide this additional assistance. Their hands already had the dirt on them from that first time. A little more would make an insignificant difference now, when it meant that when they withdrew their fingers they would be clutching something even a bit weightier than the first time. And those that had done it as a favor to him would be delighted by whatever little gift he presented to them.

And what was left over would surely allow him to buy an automobile that would put Vassily’s heap to utter shame.

“No later than next Monday. You should have them no later than the middle of next week.”

“Very well,” the American mused softly. “I will make the transfer as soon as we conclude our little talk.”

“I will begin right now,” Anton countered.

“Thank you, Anton,” the American said, his tone crisp and business-like. “Then this should be the last time we speak to one another. I thank you for your assistance in this matter.”

“It was entirely my honor, sir,” Anton gushed. “And if in the future you should require some additional service – “

But at that moment the loud noise indicating a dead connection began to bleat, and Anton had to jerk the receiver away from his ear to prevent it from deafening him.

He slowly hung up, his mind gathering the collection of thoughts like a sheaf of papers and tapping them into a stack for him to examine.

He could get into so much trouble, he told himself. Endless difficulties. But as he’d already reasoned after the first time he’d talked to the American, life in Russia was always fraught with difficulties. Always had been, going back to the time of the Tsars and beyond. At least in this instance he was going to see some consideration for himself, instead of feeling like a meaningless serf doing tedious toil for unseen masters. And if he was exposed, then he would deal with that as well. He didn’t know how, but his entire life had been a slow, grinding slog from one anxiety to another, one problem to the next. And he had always managed to find his way around them, or at least endure them.

He glanced at his watch. He just had time to make it to the bank and get enough cash to begin running the papers through the process again today. And tomorrow he would devote his entire day to seeing them through, from office to office, gift to gift, consideration to consideration. He could do it. The American would have the shipping allowances in his hands just as Anton had promised.

He scooped the papers off his desk and rose.

I will get myself one of those four wheel drive vehicles, he thought. Something big. Impressive. And he might even run Vassily’s little shiny shoebox of a car over with it.

Anton left the office wearing a wide, smug smile.

He had no way of knowing that, on the day he went to the office of the international shipping company to post the documents to the American, he would be shot through the head just before reaching his destination and the documents would be stolen. The sole witness, a vagrant digging in a trash can in the alley behind the building, would report seeing a bald headed man walking briskly away into the nearby parking lot at that same time, some kind of package tucked under his arm.

Dan knew something was wrong the moment he entered the hallway that led to the operations division at the precinct. There was that uncomfortable hush that always fell over the place when word circulated that an outsider, one with power, was on the premises.

One of the uniforms moving past him down the long corridor shot him a sidelong glance, the eyes screaming a silent alarm.

Feds, Dan wondered? And if so, from what? DEA? FBI? ATF? One of the other myriad alphabet soup of agencies, departments and bureaus that Washington seemed to spit out with such regularity whenever they decided they needed additional watchdogs to watch the watchdogs who were already watching the other watchdogs.

A chill swept over him when it struck him it might be the department's own Office of Internal Affairs. Even if a cop was completely clean, dedicated to following all the rules, all the regulations, the thought of the pure power held by those who policed the police was disturbing. And if they focused on someone, there really was no such thing as innocent. Everyone was human and everyone had something that could wind up hanging around their neck like a stone. And if I.A. couldn’t nail someone for what they might suspect them of doing, they would sometimes be just as happy to nail him for something else. And everyone had a something else. Even Dan. Hell, he realized, especially himself. Falsifying a report. About a certain accident.

He steeled himself to keep calm, and swung into the doorway to the large squad room.

He stopped and swept his gaze over the sprawling space. The multiple desks, piled high with files, folders and the bits and pieces cast off by a day’s work all seemed intact, so there hadn’t been one of the anxiety-producing seizures where a desk was swept clean, the computer was boxed up and everything taken away to be picked carefully over in some private nest of some other department.

And no one seemed to be missing, at least that he could tell. And there were no knots of officers standing around, muttering earnestly in low voices and casting sidelong looks toward –

Dan’s eyes snapped to the Lieutenant’s glassed-in office and he stiffened.

He could see the squadron commander standing behind his desk, and the two other men standing off to the side. Dan took them in quickly. One was older, his hair a gleaming gray, his face long and thin and carrying a serious expression. The other was slightly shorter and clearly much younger. If they were partners, Dan thought, the younger one would most likely handle those moments when persuasion was required, whatever that might entail. And they both were dressed in an almost identical pair of plain black suits, complete with white shirts and narrow, black ties.

But Dan’s gut didn’t clench until he spotted the form seated across from where the trio stood, confronting the man, and recognized him. It was Jim, his partner. And he was fidgeting in the chair. A very bad sign.

Dan managed to pull himself away from his stony stillness and move, with even, measured steps, over to where he and Jim shared a desk.

Roberts and Anderson were standing nearby, each hefting a paper cup that surely contained the product of the squad’s aging coffee machine. He shot another glance toward the Lieutenant’s office and turned to them.

“What’s going on? Who are the stiffs?”

“Dunno,” Roberts said. “But somebody, that’s for sure.”

“Carter says he heard they were Homeland Security,” Anderson added.

“Homeland Security?” Dan queried, a bit startled. “What does Homeland Security want with Jim?”

“Dunno,” Roberts said, “but I’d watch my step if I were you.”

The pair turned and moved off, but at least Dan didn’t get the sense that they were deliberately distancing themselves from him, merely heading off to finally start doing their jobs for the day.

He turned back to regard the Lieutenant’s glassed-in office as he settled down behind the desk.

The motion must have caught the Lieutenant’s attention because Dan saw him nod and move toward the currently closed door of the office and reach for the knob.

“Sinski?” the Lieutenant called across the squad room.

Dan looked over and gave a flap of his arm in acknowledgement of the summons, and moved in that direction.

The Lieutenant stood back to allow him to enter and then closed the door behind him.

“Sinski,” he began crisply, “These are Agents Jones and White from Homeland Security. They’ve got some questions about that accident you were first response to the other day.”