“Yes, but the Canadian border is long, lots of crossing points,” Titov said. He checked his watch, and then glanced over his shoulder, scanning the crowd. “Three minutes, four minutes more, then I run, deal or no deal. They are waiting for me, Kat and Bernard, they’ll be suspicious if I’m too long. If Kat suspected I was talking to you, she’d kill me without a second thought.”
“Here’s what we want,” Sherwood said, moving to further block Lucas out. “We want you to separate this Kat from Bernie. We want you and Bernie to continue to the border, and we want you to send Bernie across, but we want you to come back and continue working as the sleeper. While we watch.”
Titov hesitated, then said, “I could do that, but how do I separate them?”
“How many cars are you in?” Sherwood said. “Two, three? Are you all separate, or…”
“Two,” Titov said. He checked his watch again, plainly nervous.
“Tell this Kat that you have seen police officers checking cars, and that it would be safer for all of you if you drove Bernie, and she went solo in your other car—because the cops are looking for a woman and a man traveling together, the woman with an accent. You can spot the car for us, and we’ll grab her. You and Bernie continue on to the border….”
“And I go back to Chicago to a crappy apartment and…”
“You’ll get a stipend…”
“Wait!” Titov held up a finger, pulled out an iPhone, punched an app. “I’m recording this, he said. “Tell me your name, your positions, I want Davenport on it, too.”
Sherwood puffed up his cheeks and blew air at the phone, then nodded. “I’m John Sherwood, I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency and I’ve been deputized as a temporary U.S. Marshal. I’m with Lucas Davenport of the Marshals Service. If you are successful in returning to Chicago, we will provide you with a working stipend that you can stick in a bank account that nobody knows about, and after a while, you’ll get your witness protection hideout,” Sherwood said.
“How big a stipend?”
“Jesus, man, I don’t know? Five thousand a month?”
Titov rolled his eyes. “How about ten? I stay for…three years.”
“Ten thousand a month for five years,” Sherwood said. “Five years, and at the end you can re-up for more money, if you want it. Even if you don’t, you’d have better than half a million.”
“Four years, ten thousand, now I go.” He held up the cell phone. “Call me, so I have your number.”
“Your controller may be able to access your phone,” Sherwood said.
“Not this phone. They don’t know about this phone,” Titov said.
Sherwood: “Give me the number.”
One minute later, they’d traded phone numbers and Sherwood told Titov, “When you’ve gotten out of town, when you’re well up north, stop for gas or something and call me. You gotta call me.”
Titov nodded and they were all shoving through the crowd toward the door.
Lucas grabbed White and Capslock and said, “They’ve seen me. The woman and Bernie. You have to track Titov to their cars. I’ll stay back. And Sherwood…” He tipped his head at Sherwood. “…He looks like he just got out of aGQmagazine photo shoot. He sticks out like a sore thumb, so he’ll be back with me.”
Capslock took Titov’s arm: “What are we looking for? A white van and a black Jeep?”
“White van, yes. No black Jeep, the Jeep is burned, we dumped it.” He looked anxiously at his watch. “I have to run…The other car you will see, it is a red Ford SUV. Kat will be in the Ford, after we trade cars. You’ll see it. I have to go.”
White held him for one last question: “Is she armed?”
“Of course she is,” Titov said. “She has an automatic handgun. There is also an American rifle, a semiauto, like the new Army rifles, in the van. I don’t think she will try to move it to the Ford. She is an excellent shot, I have seen her working with the rifle, but I don’t know about the handgun. The pistol has fourteen rounds, the rifle, she has a short magazine, I don’t know how many rounds. Not one of the big ones with thirty rounds. A short magazine, but it is a killer gun. If you let her get away with it, if she uses it, it could be a massacre.”
“Good to know,” White said. “If she shows a gun, we take her down.”
Lucas said to White, “Pull your ski mask up a little more.”
Titov pushed out, trailed by Capslock and White. Lucas waiteduntil they were far enough away that he thought it unlikely that he’d be seen; Sherwood, impatient, said, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”
Lucas: “Wait, wait, wait…okay…Okay. Go.”
They lost sight of Titov, but followed White and Capslock, their heads bobbing through the crowd, out toward the edge of the business district. “This is gonna work, we’re gonna pull it off,” Sherwood said. He was more anxious than exultant.
