“The Beatles,” Sherwood said. “Haven’t thought about them in decades, but the song still plays in Russia. Okay, so if they’ve run, they’re gone. You’d be right about that.”
“If they haven’t run, if they find out Sokolov isn’t dead, if they set up for another shot at him, our best chance at getting to them is to make them move,” Lucas said. “We need to shake them out where people can see them. If they’ve got a safe house here in the Cities, people would still have seen them coming and going. It’s possible that the place out in Minnetrista was their only safe house, and they’re ditched in another motel somewhere.”
“I’ll buy that. How do we shake them loose?”
“The news people know what’s happened, but in a sketchy way, because the FBI is so tight-assed about releasing information that hasn’t been thoroughly sterilized and is therefore uninteresting. But the media is poking around, they’re looking for angles. They’ll be looking for more after today.”
“And…”
“I would suggest that I talk quietly to a friend at the BCA, which has the video taken at the motel. I get a copy of that, under the table, completely deniable on both ends, and leak it to a media friend along with some details about Sokolov’s history. That’d give people an idea of what the team looks like—body styles, height, and so on.”
“Interesting concept,” Sherwood said. “That would also be…transgressive.”
“But not stupid,” Lucas said. “One of the things that has increasinglypissed me off about cops and the government in general is that they hide information from the public, but that everybody else knows. These Russians know what they look like. The FBI knows what they look like. Putting them on TV with an appeal for information is not going to reveal any big classified secrets.”
Now Sherwood smiled. “Most intelligence work is a waste of time, and this is exactly one of the problems…People get information and then they hide it, for no good reason. I’m with you on this. How fast can you set it up?”
“Got to get that video…gonna have to talk to a guy…gonna have to talk to somebody in the media…” Lucas looked at his watch. “We need to have it organized by the four o’clock news.”
• • •
They spent anotherfifteen minutes talking about what Lucas should leak to the media, before the Uber arrived. They stayed quiet on the way back to Lucas’s house, where Sherwood picked up his car. He’d go back to his hotel to call his CIA supervisors and to tell them what was about to happen.
“If they have a problem with it?” Lucas asked, on the way out the door.
“They won’t,” Sherwood said. “They’ll ask, ‘How does this come back to us?’ The answer is, ‘It won’t, and it could shake the hit team loose.’ They’ll be fine with it, as long as nobody knows that they knew about it in advance.”
“All right,” Lucas said. “Stay in touch. If something comes up, and you want me to kill the release, you gotta call me in an hour or an hour and a half. After that, it’ll be too late.”
“Do it,” Sherwood said.
• • •
With Sherwood onhis way back to his hotel, Lucas called an old friend at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Jon Duncan, and said, “I need a favor. Not a big one, a medium-sized one.”
“Is that fuckin’ Flowers involved?” Flowers was a BCA agent and a friend of Lucas’s.
“No, no,” Lucas said. “I’ve been working this spy thing for the Marshals Service, and Virgil’s typing out another book.”
“I heard you’ve been shooting at people again.”
“And they’ve been shooting at me,” Lucas said. “You guys took video out of that motel, the shooters changing cars.”
“We did. Interesting stuff.”
“I need a copy of that,” Lucas said. “Just so you know, I’m gonna give it to the media. It’d be best if it was the raw video, not cleaned up or anything, so it can’t come back to you.”
“That could have some undesirable ramifications, if anyone found out,” Duncan said.
“Of course it could,” Lucas said. “That’s why it’s a medium favor, instead of a small one.”
“If I get fired, will you get me on with the Marshals Service?” Duncan asked.
“Probably not. We wouldn’t want somebody who leaks stuff to the media,” Lucas said.
“Thanks a lot, dipshit,” Duncan said.
“Listen, I might be able to blame the release on the FBI.”
