“If you’re wondering why he’d kill his old man…I’ve started to wonder if Sokolov is really his father. Could be, but the kid looked a lot like Martha—Masha?—but not at all like his father. If he isn’t, and he knows that…”
“Sokolov believes he’s the kid’s father,” Sherwood said. “I’ve been around them or reaching out to them for most of two years. I’ve never had a hint of anything different.”
“If it’s Bernie, I wonder about motive,” Lucas said. “We know he had the opportunity.”
“Money. Sokolov didn’t come to the States to be poor,” Sherwood said. “He brought a lot of things with him, documents and photos, or Masha did, on a thumb drive that he sold us. He’s got five million in the bank. His will leaves half to Martha, half to the kid, but if Martha predeceases him…is that right,predeceases?”
“Yeah, dies first.”
“If Martha predeceases him, the kid gets it all. Invested, that’d be a quarter million a year, after you take out a kilo of cocaine and a Ferrari.”
“All right. Motive and opportunity. Do we tell St. Vincent?” Lucas asked.
“I’d prefer to work with the Marshals Service,” Sherwood said.“We don’t need an investigation and arrests, we need a location and a takedown.” He added, “What we need is, we need to get Bernie to visit Sokolov, so while he’s gone, we can get into his room and luggage and see about a burner.”
“Search warrant or black bag?”
“Let me call home. If a black bag were needed, would there be a local resource who might provide us the necessary tools?”
“Possibly,” Lucas said.
• • •
Bernie was stillat the apartment building where his father was shot. Lucas and Sherwood went back to the briefing room and made separate, careful inquiries about security arrangements around him. As it happened, Sokolov himself was being guarded at the hospital around the clock by six agents, and Bernie was being guarded by two more—and the two traveled with him.
At the end of the PowerPoint presentation, Lucas asked a casual question on Sokolov’s condition, how soon he’d be able to move on to Washington, this time with better security, and whether he was able to talk. Sherwood, sitting on the other side of the room, asked if Bernie had seen his father yet.
St. Vincent said, impatiently, “He can talk, but that’s not important—I mean, what’s he going to say? He doesn’t know as much as we do. Bernie’s being annoying. He’ll visit the hospital if we take him, but he seems to be more interested in hitting a couple of downtown clubs. We’ll swing him by the hospital this afternoon. We’re discouraging him about the clubs…”
“That’s good,” Lucas said. “Put a couple of FBI suits in most clubs and it’d clear them out in a hurry.”
Another FBI man said, “We’re discouraging him, but he’s pretty intent. It’s all he’s interested in…”
St. Vincent was looking at Lucas, visibly fuming: “Do you have anything serious to contribute?”
“Maybe later,” Lucas said.
“How about you?” St. Vincent snapped at Sherwood.
Sherwood raised both hands overhead, in a surrender. “Just watching the professionals do their stuff.”
“Keep hanging out with Davenport, you might get the wrong impression.”
After a moment of restrained silence, working up a burn, Lucas said, “David, you’re a fuckin’ cheese-eating bureaucrat. You couldn’t find your own ass with both hands and a searchlight. Ah, fuck it, I’m out of here.”
“You’re out of here,” St. Vincent shouted, and Lucas was out of there.
• • •
A half hourlater, Sherwood wandered over to Lucas’s Porsche, where Lucas was reading the operating manual, and knocked on the window. Lucas looked up from the manual, dropped the window, and said, “I’ve got a Wi-Fi hotspot. Right here in the car.”
“They’re taking Bernie out of the condo after lunch, for a visit and maybe a little shopping. I don’t know exactly what that means, but it’s not long from now. We can’t actually kick the door…”
“Do you know which door?”
“I do,” Sherwood said. “There won’t be anybody watching it, because nobody thinks the Russians want to kill Bernie.”
“Good. I wanted to talk to you before I left, but I have to see a friend about a tool, and you can’t come. Go get a coffee or something, I won’t be long.”
