“Calling St. Vincent?” Sherwood asked.
“No. Louis Mallard,” Lucas said.
Mallard picked up and said, “Davenport. Is your nose still in this?”
“I wasn’t looking for it. It started when an informant called out of the blue, I swear to God, and gave me some information you need.”
“What is it?” Mallard asked.
“Did St. Vincent tell you I called this morning and told him that Bernie took a mystery delivery at the Nightshade club last night?”
“Yes. You think it was a phone, some of the agents here think it might have been drugs. If it happened at all.”
“It happened, and it was almost certainly a phone. We got video of the delivery, and Sherwood sent it off to the CIA photo department, whatever that is, and got still photos made. Then he sent those off somewhere else, and it turns out that the delivery woman is a clerk at the Russian embassy. You can get the details from the CIA or from Sherwood, but your counter-intel people need to know about the woman, and everybody has to stop talking about her. This could be a big score for the FBI, a Russian courier.”
“Give me the details. What’s her name?”
Lucas gave him the name—Sherwood spelled it out—and said, “We know that Bernie almost certainly has a new burner, and is talking to the hit team, or maybe to people at the embassy or in Moscow, for all we know. We don’t know the phone number.”
“I will pass this along,” Mallard said.
“Tell me this, Louis,” Lucas said. “Is the hit team still in town? As far as you guys know?”
“Until you called me just now, I’d have no idea. But think about it, Lucas: who would Bernie be calling, if they’re not still in town? The burner is a serious danger to him, if we found it. He wouldn’t bechatting with some guy in Moscow about the weather. It’d only be of use to talk to somebody on the hit team, or somebody who can talk to the hit team, and how they might cooperate.”
“Cooperate to do what?” Lucas asked.
“I don’t know. Pick him up? Make another run at Sokolov? Hire a lawyer?”
“Okay.”
“Lucas, we got this,” Mallard said. “Bernie’s in the middle of two bodyguards and four very competent agents that he doesn’t even know about…”
“As far as you know, he doesn’t know about them,” Lucas interrupted. “If the hit team doesn’t have a good countersurveillance guy, who’s already spotted them.”
After a lingering silence, Mallard said, “Look, Lucas. If you want to hang around the edges of this, I’ll clear you with St. Vincent. But don’t butt in. Stay out on the edges. I’ll tell St. Vincent not to mess with you.”
“I’ll think about it,” Lucas said. “We’d need some minimal information, like where Bernie goes at night.”
“Keep your phone in your pocket,” Mallard said.
• • •
Off the phone,Sherwood said, “What do you mean, you’ll think about it? We’re in.”
“Not really. Bernie knows both of us,” Lucas said. “If he spots us hanging around, he’ll figure something’s up.”
“We’ll stay back. What we need is a good, well-connected surveillance guy who can talk to us in real time.”
His words hung in the air for a moment, then both Lucas and Sherwood said, simultaneously, “Del.”
• • •
They drove backto Lucas’s house and found Sam, Ellen—the girlfriend candidate—and Weather in the heated garage, the Porsche 911 backed into the driveway, while the three of them practiced slapping balls into a net with hockey sticks. They left Sam and Ellen and went inside to tell Weather what they were doing. “I needed to tell you that I’ll probably bag out in the guest room instead of waking you up,” Lucas said. “We’ll be out late. Like three o’clock. Maybe four.”
“It’d bother me more if you don’t come to bed than if you do,” Weather said. “I’d wake up to see if there was a text from an emergency room.”
Capslock pulled into the driveway, and when they told him what they wanted, he said, “Sure. I stay out late anyway, but I’m thinking it’d be nice if there was somebody to help out on the surveillance.”
