“Clubbing.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” Sherwood said. “I spent it in my lonely hotel room,alone, since your girlfriend Jane was sincere when she said she doesn’t go to dinner with spies.”
“Find out if Bernie was at the Nightshade. It’s a low-rent dance club and cocaine dispensary on Fourth Street. Call me back.”
“Give me thirty seconds. Maybe a minute.”
• • •
A minute later,Sherwood called back: “Goddamnit, he was at the Nightshade for two hours. What happened? What have you got?”
“Our Russian friends, the ones with contacts back in Europe, supposedly sent a girl there to deliver something to somebody. A rumor, but an interesting one.”
“What did they send?”
“They said not drugs, since you could probably buy them over the bar. I’m thinking…”
“A new burner,” Sherwood said.
“Yes. He may have a new phone, which would mean that he probably knows the feds found his old burner,” Lucas said. “That means he probably was talking to his handlers last night.”
Sherwood: “I gotta make some calls.”
“We’re pretty far down the road from a rumor that something was sent to the Nightshade, to him having a phone. If he did get one, we can probably get a look at this chick on the club’s videos, since they’ve all got them.”
“Yeah, but she could be anybody. A messenger,” Sherwood said. “The big question is, if he got a phone, what’d he tell the handlers? That we’re onto him? Is he gonna get picked up by the hit team? If that team had gone into this club last night…there were two agents there that Bernie knew about, but there were four moreoutside. This team is gonna include a countersurveillance expert, he’d spot the extra agents in one minute. They’re about as inconspicuous as a car full of refrigerators. What would they do, would they kill them? We could have wound up with six casualties.”
“Is Bernie going out tonight?” Lucas asked.
“He goes out most nights. I don’t know if he’s going tonight, but I could find out.”
“Do that. The thing is, if the hit team is going to try to pull him out, they’ll have to kill at least a couple of FBI guys,” Lucas said. “We’ve got to warn them.”
Long silence, then: “I don’t know, Lucas. I mean, the FBI set this trap. They’re looking for the hitters. They should…”
“They don’t have this specific information. They are apparently not good at this—you said a car full of refrigerators. We’ve got to tell them.”
More silence. Then, “Okay, you’re right. You want to call St. Vincent, or should I?”
“I’ll call him. I’m also going to invite myself back in.”
“And me,” Sherwood said.
• • •
Lucas called St.Vincent’s office, got his secretary, who put him on hold. St. Vincent came up a minute later.
“Lucas,” he said. “You and I, we gotta talk. This is fuckin’ ridiculous.”
“Yeah, I agree, and I’ll talk. But I’ve got something I need to pass on, and right now.”
St. Vincent knew about Lucas’s and Sherwood’s contacts with Russian immigrants, and the immigrant’s “dating” businesses. Lucastold him about the phone call from Bell, and the rumor that something had been delivered to the Nightshade while Bernie was there.
“Sherwood and I think it might have been another burner. That Bernie may know that we’ve spotted him, that he may have asked for a new phone, somehow, might have gotten one, and is talking directly to his handlers. We’re wondering if the hit team might try to pull him out.”
“Oh, boy. You think he’d have the phone on him?”
