Vital Force (11 page)

Cliff leaned forward and looked into the right outside mirror. “The Blazer?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

She passed a long line of cars before the highway turned from four lanes to two. Now there would be a little cushion.

The road quickly became a series of curves that would not allow passing.

“Listen,” Cliff said, “what difference does it make? So we've got a tail. What do they have on us?”

She glanced sideways at him, a look he had not seen in her before. What was it? Desperation? Concern?

When she spoke, her words were measured. “We have the DVD you just gave me. We have the transfer of money you just got. We have you not showing up for work for the last two days. And, how we sure you not get caught sending data to yourself?”

That was the only thing he was sure of, but she was right about the rest. Well, not the money. For, although she had transferred the money to his local account, he had set it up days ago to have all of his transactions, however small or large, split into fractions of one hundred. So, a transfer of one dollar would look like one cent. Subsequently, a transfer of five hundred thousand, would end up as one hundred transfers of five thousand each, keeping it well under the ten thousand dollars that would send up flags with the Feds. He smiled now thinking of his own genius. Not only would the incoming money be fractionalized, it would immediately shift before the end of business to five other accounts in various sheltered countries. And, over a period of a few days, the money would again collect in a single account in Liechtenstein.

“What so funny?” she asked him.

“Nothing. This is just getting so cloak and dagger. It's pretty cool.”

“Glad you like it.”

When a passing lane came up, she sped up and started to pass a slow-moving camper trailer. But then she slowed down when she was even with the camper. Just before the passing lane was about to end, she jammed the gas and passed the truck and camper, barely making it with the oncoming traffic honking at her. Now the line of cars, with the Blazer at the end, would be even farther behind.

She sped up and rushed toward the small town of Sisters.

●

“Damn it,” said special agent Harris. “She's on to us.”

Agent Fisher had his hand on the dash. “Looks like it.” He pulled out a map from a side pouch and opened it to their current location. “Shit. The road splits in Sisters to one twenty-six and two forty-two. Which way will they go?”

“No. The McKenzie Highway, two forty-two, is closed until June or July. But that's not the big problem. Look down the road a ways. Twenty splits to twenty-two toward Salem, they could stay on twenty toward Corvallis, or they could shoot down on one twenty-six to Eugene.”

Fisher let out a heavy sigh. “Fuck. I'm gonna guess Eugene, since Cliff has another good friend there and he went to college there. But we need to get some help on the road from our friends.” He pulled out his cell phone and punched in a Portland number.

He talked for a while, making sure there was a state patrol car watching for a white Trooper with California plates on Highway 22, Highway 20, and Highway 126, prior to any turn-offs. Once that was set, he made sure they had a Eugene police unit sitting on Cliff's friend's place there.

“Well?” she asked. “Now what?”

“We bust our ass to Eugene. We'll get no Agency help there. The entire office is in Portland at an organized anarchist rally.”

“That's right. I was supposed to be there, but got pulled off for this gig.”

“You can thank me any time,” he said. “Oh yeah, we'll need to change cars in Eugene. You don't find that strange?”

“Changing cars?”

“No. Organized anarchists. Kind of a contradiction.”

She smiled. “Guess so.”

They pushed on ahead, passing as many cars as they could at each opportunity.

Northern Manchuria

Jake had driven the taxi most of the night to Qiqihar. Since it had been so cold, with the heater barely working, they had been forced to keep their gloves on for the entire trip, which made it easy to clean up before dumping the car in front of a park some six blocks from the train station. They would have left no fingerprints.

Now they were on a rickety old train used mostly by locals or the military, judging by all those in uniform, heading farther north into the hinterlands bordering Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and Russia just a short distance over a mountain range.

Although the train traveled along a river valley, mountains rose up from the east and west and seemed to be drawing to a close ahead, Jake noticed. There were no private compartments on this commuter, only rows of shabby chairs.

The sun was rising and Su sat next to him, her head against his shoulder. She woke now and noticed Jake watching her.

“Where are we?” she whispered to him.

He shrugged. “I don't know. My map isn't very detailed.”

She looked outside and saw the sun making its way to the top of the mountain on the right side of the train. Then she looked to the left.

“Those are the Hinggan Mountains,” she said, closing her eyes slightly and yawning.

“How can you tell?”

“First, my grandfather worked here when I was a child. I came to visit him each summer. Might have been on this very train. Second, my company built a communications site on the ridge last year.”

“For the army?”

She glanced around the car at the dozing soldiers. “For our government. Why do you think I'm here?” she said more quietly.

“How far?”

She looked around and then got up, pulling Jake along until they reached the back of the car. Pulling the door open, they went between two cars. The noise from metal wheels against metal rails would drown out their voices.

Finally, she turned and said, “They're not used to hearing English this far north.”

“Hey, I'm just a tourist,” he said. “You're my tour guide.” Part of him believed that, but another part, the more realistic part, knew that the authorities in Harbin would put the word out that Su was traveling with an American man. “You're right. We'll need to get off this train soon or face a search like the last one. And this time they'll actually be looking for us.”

She looked out at the countryside passing by. There where tall fir forests, the frost glistening on the needles with the rising sun.

“There's a small village ahead. The next stop. We can get off there. That leaves us ten miles from Nenjiang. The soldiers will get off there and ride by bus to the site.”

“How far is that?”

“They go another ten miles into the mountains. They reach a...what you call it in English?” She searched her mind. “Platter?”

“Plateau?”

“Yes, a plateau, surrounded on all sides by mountains. Very isolated. Only one road in.”

“How do we get there?” he asked.

“We cut off angle from northwest, then travel over the mountain through the forest.”

Jake looked out the window. The mountains were quite snowy, but they didn't seem very tall. They reminded him of Oregon's coast range. The difference? It had to be below zero out there.

He was wearing short hiking boots; more like high top basketball shoes with deep treads. Those wouldn't work under these conditions.

“I need some different clothes,” he said.

“I've got that covered,” she assured him, smiling.

They went back into the car with the soldiers and took a seat.

A short while later the train slowed and came to a halt in the small village. As suspected, the soldiers stayed put while Jake and Su casually got off the train and walked into the little town. The air was bitter cold, with a slight breeze sweeping down from the mountains to the west. There was no real downtown. There was a small restaurant attached to a tiny market where, invariably, most people in town would get their food. There was one gas pump that sat alongside the road, and, according to Su, a man would come out from his house when the rare car needed fuel.

They walked along trying not to stand out, but not being able to hide Jake much. He was, after all, wearing clothes that would never be found in that part of Manchuria, and Jake assumed he was probably at least five or six inches taller than the average man there.

He was freezing. The wind whipped right through his thin clothes as if they were made of rice paper.

“What about a change of clothes?” Jake asked her.

She didn't lose stride. Instead, she lifted her chin slightly and said, “Just ahead.”

They were almost out of town now and Jake noticed the train pulling away, steaming toward the north.

Su turned down a small road that lead to a single house with smoke streaming from a chimney. When they reached the front door, she hesitated, glancing sideways at Jake.

“What?” Jake said.

She sighed. “I'm afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

She thought for a moment. “They found my friend. What if they know about this place?”

“Could they know? Did you plan on coming here?”

She shook her head.

“Did you tell your friend about this place?”

She shook her head again. “No. But he did know about it. It's my uncle. I talked about him, but we weren't supposed to come here.”

“Then you should be all right,” Jake said.

Reassured, she knocked lightly on the door. Nothing. She was about to knock again, when the door swung open. Standing there was a man in his early sixties, with hair to his shoulders. His mustache, gray and black, hung down to his chin on both sides. Surprisingly, he was as tall as Jake.

There was a long series of conversation as the man escorted them into his house. They took chairs near the fireplace, and Jake could finally start to feel the skin on his face. In a moment, the conversation seemed to move toward him, since Su was looking at him with her arm extending toward him.

The old man reached his hand out toward Jake and they shook briefly, which Jake knew was out of tradition for China. Then the uncle got up and went to a small kitchen area, leaving the two of them alone.

“Does he speak English?” Jake asked her.

“Not a word,” she said smiling.

“What did you tell him?”

“I said you were an old college friend. You wanted to see my homeland, where I spent much of my youth. He's very happy. They don't see Americans here.”

“That could be a problem. You'll have to tell him not to mention us to the people in town.”

“I didn't think about that,” she said. “Problem is, most of the town probably saw us come here.”

The drive from sunny Central Oregon had gradually turned to sprinkles and then to a steady downpour by the time agents Fisher and Harris had reached Eugene.

An Oregon Highway Patrol officer, sitting among the thick forest on a side road, had spotted the white Trooper with California plates five miles east of Springfield and had followed it at a distance into Eugene, where they had turned it over to an unmarked police unit. That car had followed the Trooper to the western edge of town to the home of James Patterson, an old college friend of Cliff Johansen. An office worker for the Agency's Eugene office had delivered a brown Ford Taurus to the agents, taking the Chevy Blazer in return.

The two of them sat now in the Taurus two blocks down from Patterson's house in a subdivision of newer homes watching the driveway through a rain-smeared windshield.

“What are we doing?” Harris asked, running her hands through her hair to remove as much rain as she could. “You see, this is why I live across the mountains.”

Fisher's eyes remained on the white Trooper. “I thought you were from Seattle originally. Should be used to this shit.”

“Doesn't mean I have to like it,” she said. “Now what?”

“Now we wait.”

Fisher's cell phone jangled a familiar song from the 80s, so he quickly flipped it open and said, “Fisher.” He listened carefully for some time. Then he said “Thanks,” and slammed it shut. He looked across at Harris, who had a quizzical expression. “What?”

“Barry Manilow?” she said, smiling.

“I've been trying to change it for weeks. Do you want to know what Portland has to say?”

“Yes, please.”

“Cliff got a large transfer of money from a Cayman account.”

“How much?”

“Half a mil.”

She let out a little whistle. “Let's go. We've got him.”

“Maybe. But the money disappeared.”

She looked confused. “What?”

“The money was there, and then it wasn't. They say it was split into pieces and sent elsewhere.”

“How many pieces?”

“At least a hundred.”

“That's proof enough,” she said. “He's trying to hide it.”

“Right. We can get him on tax evasion a little over a year from now when he fails to report the income. But first we'd have to find it and put all the pieces back together again. Damn it!” He shook his head and stared at the rain hitting the windshield.

“I thought he wasn't this smart,” she said.

“I never said that. I said he had left a trail...not a huge trail, though. I guessed he was in it for the sex. Now I'm not so sure. But he is a brilliant programmer. There's no doubt about that.”

“So, where will the money end up?”

He shrugged. “I would transfer it into another currency or buy up gold. Maybe bonds. Have it held in Europe.”

“The Swiss are out. I'd guess Luxemburg or Liechtenstein. They're less obvious.”

He smiled. “Or he could have it routed right back into the same bank in the Caymans. Regardless, they'll track it down.”

Harris leaned forward to wipe the windshield where fog had built up. “I say we haul his ass in. Let me take a shot at that geek.”

“We have nothing on him officially.”

“Bullshit! The guy takes off from work for two days without mentioning it to his boss. We know someone transferred some data for at least thirty seconds. Then we have Cliff taking half a million bucks and trying to hide the money. Damn. That's more probable cause than we had on Walker.”