“When? I’m doing nothing.”
“Ten minutes.”
• • •
Sherwood had acafé table and was eating a sesame bun when Lucas arrived. Lucas pulled out a chair and sat. “You got anything at all?”
“No. The well is dry. I was hoping we could do some plotting.” Sherwood’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and said, “I’ve got to take this.”
He walked down to the end of the café area, talking on the phone, and was back in a minute.
“The Russian that was shot bad?”
Lucas: “Yeah?”
“Probably taken to Milwaukee. Came in the night you guys shot him up, perforated bowel, bullet under his stomach skin, like Doc Juarez said. They operated on him, sewed him up, fed a bunch of antiseptics and painkillers into him. The next morning he was moved to a private surgical hospital in a private ambulance, discharged with really good paperwork. The private surgical center never heard of him, and they don’t have their own ambulance. They did find the ambulance, with a medical service company, and the driver says they took the injured man to a private jet.”
“Man, the FBI is gonna be pissed when they find out,” Lucas said.
“Oh, they know,” Sherwood said. “They’re just not talking about it.”
“But they called you?”
“Uh, no. That was my boss. We have our sources…”
“In the FBI?”
“Wouldn’t you? In our position?” Sherwood asked.
Lucas thought about it for one second, then said, “Of course.”
“To get back to plotting….”
• • •
“First off, isSokolov gonna die?” Lucas asked.
“I’ve heard that it’s a distinct possibility. He wasn’t in great health tobegin with, he’s got type 2 diabetes. He’s still recovering from being shot, even if the slug didn’t make it to his heart, and that doesn’t help. They’re fighting it, but they’re saying he’s less than fifty-fifty to make it.”
“If he croaks, and Bernie tells the hit team, they’re gone. We gotta do something now. I think we leak the car and van descriptions coupled with everything else we have—the Identi-Kit image of the guy who rented their safe house, along with speculation that they may be staying in motels.”
“If they see the leak on the cars, they’ll dump them,” Sherwood said.
“And have to deal with getting new ones.”
“All right. Going back to your Daisy Jones friend?”
“Going everywhere. I had a child with a woman who’s a big deal at Channel Three here, that’s our major network station, and she’s still a good friend. She’ll get it on. I’ll go back to Daisy…With those two, everybody else will pick it up. It’s our best chance.”
“Then we should do it,” Sherwood said.
Lucas: “Any idea what the counter-intel people are doing with Bernie?”
“Not yet. Not sure they’re doing anything, directly. I expect they’ll have Bernie’s escort search his room…They’ll figure out some way to make it legal, being the FBI.”
“Without bringing us into it, I hope,” Lucas said.
“I don’t think they will. There’d be no percentage in doing that, and they’re familiar with percentages.”
