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Arseny Stepashin gotthe warning and called Volkov, who was staying at the Peninsula Hotel, not far from Step’s guesthouse. “We’ve lost our surveillance asset at least temporarily,” he said, in Russian. “The FBI is raiding him right now.”
“More evidence that the Americans are doing something... complicated, cooperating with these hackers,” Volkov said. “Will they jump from your asset to you?”
“No. I warned him not to keep records of our relationship and I believe he complied, for both our sakes. His difficulty, though, becomes our difficulty, since I have no other way to gather the intelligence we need to spot the hacking group.”
“Then I’ll give you some intelligence,” Volkov said. “This just came in from upstairs, after I requested help. The day that Loren Barron was killed, he made a number of calls to a Benjamin Able. Able also made a call to Barron just a few minutes after he was killed. The Able person, I’m told, is a computer hacker. We need to find him. We are also looking for this Craig Sovern.”
“With my asset gone...”
“We have other assets. One of them is the license plate reader system used by the Los Angeles Police Department. We are inside it and we are watching for Able’s license plates.”
Step did a quick calculation—always good to hold back information that can be used later, when needed, and he’d done that—and said, “That license plate thing... I have two more names for you: Michele Obermath and William Orleans.” He spelled the names. “I’m not one hundred percent sure of the connection, but they may be involved.”
“This is good. As soon as we start tracking them, you need to be ready to move.”
“You prefer using my men?”
“For now. For reconnaissance. They’re familiar with Los Angeles. Mine have more limited uses, after we find the people we’re looking for.”
Twenty-Two
Cartwright came back with a shopping bag of datable clothing—nothing spectacular, a short green dress that picked up on her eyes and showed off her legs, a light linen jacket to conceal her gun, linen shoes that went with the jacket, a leather clutch purse just big enough for her ID, her federal carry permit, her phone, and a credit card.
“I am going to have a good time and I haven’t had a good time in a long time,” she told Letty and Baxter. “Don’t wait up for me.”
Letty went back to season 4, episode 9, ofJustified. That was about as much as she could take, and she clicked over to CNN, where she found the full set of talking heads jumping up and down: the Russians had invaded Ukraine.
And she said, “Ohhh... no.”
Letty watched for the rest of the evening, although relevantinformation was sparse—not that the sparseness made much difference to the talking heads, who interviewed a selection of retired generals and retired intelligence bureaucrats, who knew almost nothing but were willing to speculate endlessly.
Still, it felt like a historic moment. When Cartwright hadn’t shown up by one o’clock in the morning and the information from Ukraine didn’t seem to be improving in quality, she went to bed. When she got up at eight, Cartwright’s bed was still empty. Cartwright finally showed up at nine o’clock, looking wrung out. She said, “I feel like a chippy.”
“There’s a word I haven’t heard since, oh, about the nineteenth century,” Letty said.
“Well, it was worth it,” Cartwright said.
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. I don’t have to worry about sex for at least six months. Maybe eight.”
“Where’s Sovern? Is he still alive?” Letty asked.
“He’s fine, but he doesn’t talk in the morning,” Cartwright said. “He says he’ll be over when the first people start coming in.”
“What do you think about Ukraine?”
“What about Ukraine?”
Letty, open-mouthed: “Jesus, Barb...”
“Don’t tell me I missed it,” Cartwright said, fists on her hips. “I haven’t seen a television since yesterday afternoon...”
Letty picked up a remote and turned on the TV. “Watch,” she said. “Europe’s got a full-scale ground war.”
The coders began arrivingbefore noon, dragging duffels and roller bags and bulging computer packs. Everybody was talkingabout the war, and cranked up every television they had access to, to watch the Russians turn apartment houses into smoking ruins. Prime-time war; almost as good asIron Man.
And most were fascinated by the jets taking off and landing down below their windows.
