“There may be some things Jack wants to talk to you about once you get settled up at the cabin,” she said.
“Did he tell you what they were?”
“He tried, but couldn’t find a way to say what he meant. I think he needs to talk it all through with you in order to figure it out.”
CHAPTER 81
Burch and Gage stared at the flames consuming oak logs in the fireplace of Gage’s cabin. Burch’s walker stood next to the rocking chair where he sat with a glass of bourbon in his hand and with his legs covered by a plaid wool blanket. Gage reclined on the couch, feet up on the coffee table.
The midnight forest was finally quiet except for an owl hooting in the distance.
“Matson is absolutely certain that Gravilov was behind all the violence,” Gage said, after recounting his surrender of Matson to Peterson.
“That explains Fitzhugh. It must’ve been that fellow Razor. But what about me and Granger?”
“Matson said he had nightmares starting the moment he met that monster Kovalenko at Northstead Securities.”
Burch caught his breath. “Kovalenko? It was Kovalenko?”
Gage shook his head. “Not him. He doesn’t match the description. He probably brought in some East Coast enforcer from his Goldstake days. But we’ll find the guy. It’s just a matter of time.”
Gage rose, then grabbed the poker and repositioned the logs, buying time to think. In saying those words he grasped that he’d adjusted to Burch’s fragility in the two years since Courtney’s cancer, accepted it, maybe even contributed to it-and he’d just done it again.
Gage turned to face him. “Sorry, champ, that’s not true. We’ll never get past Kovalenko to catch the guy who shot you. The Kovalenkos of the world don’t break, and they don’t make deals.” He paused. “I was just trying-”
“To protect me.”
Gage shrugged.
“I know. It took a couple of slugs to help me figure that out.” Burch looked past Gage toward the fire. “I’ve had a lot of time to think.” Then back at Gage. “You know what I realized? That I’ve misunderstood myself all my life. I thought I was like you, but I’m not. I should’ve learned that lesson in Afghanistan. I spent the two weeks terrified and bewildered. You didn’t need me there at all.” Burch set down his glass. “In all the things I do. Sailing. Skiing. Even work. I’ve always oriented myself against a predictable kind of resistance. Ocean breezes, gravity. Then, whenever I felt constrained, I became reckless.”
Gage nodded. He hadn’t thought about it that way, but Burch was right.
“But when Courtney was diagnosed, the wind just stopped. I felt completely helpless. Adrift. After I got shot, lying there in the hospital, I realized that you had always been protecting me, insulating me. Even when we were in Moscow. I sat in that conference room, forehanding contract provisions back and forth in a contained little space for gentlemen who accepted all the rules. I even saw you going out to meet Slava Akimov and the others as just one more step in an orderly process-risky, but constrained by rational people pursuing their long-term self- interest.”
“Does that mean you would’ve done it differently?” Gage asked, dropping back onto the couch.
Burch shook his head. “I just would’ve understood it differently. Truthfully.” He fell silent and slowly rocked back and forth in his chair. “That’s what I’ve needed all my life.”
Gage stared at the fire. There was no reason to say anything more. Burch had arrived where he needed to go.
They sat silent for a few minutes. Then Burch looked over.
“I don’t understand how Matson got involved in selling those devices to Ukraine in the first place,” Burch said. “Arms trafficking just doesn’t seem like something he’d do. When he first came to see me, he seemed like no more than an earnest salesman.”
“It didn’t happen all at once. Gravilov led him along. First they tried to slip high-power devices into Ukraine labeled as low-power. A woman at SatTek named Katie Palan found out about it. I talked to her parents while you were in the hospital. She’d written an anonymous letter to the FBI, but-”
The word caught in his throat.
Burch squinted toward Gage. “But what?”
Gage pulled his feet off the coffee table and then sat up.
“But SatTek self-disclosed…claimed it was a mistake.”
“What’s wrong?”
Gage rose and paced in front of the fireplace, trying to order the images and sequences clashing in his head.
“Something doesn’t make sense. The timing isn’t right.”
He stopped pacing, then turned toward Burch. “Katie Palan’s car accident was more than a year before the grand jury started hearing the case. Right in the middle of the scam.”
“You lost me.”
“I thought the leak was from the grand jury. So did Peterson. He sent Zink to investigate it. Somebody was tipping off Gravilov. Your name came up, you got shot. Then Fitzhugh. And when Granger decided to cooperate, he got hit.”
Gage walked to the kitchen counter and picked up the telephone. “Maybe I underestimated the guy. Maybe everybody did.”
He called information, then dialed an Oakland number.
A woman answered, “North County Jail.”
“I’d like to know if you have a federal prisoner there, Stuart Matson.”
“You have a DOB?”
“No. But he’s mid-forties.”
Gage heard keystrokes against the background of light jazz.
“There’s no Stuart Matson in custody.”
“Maybe he just came in.”
“Hold on.”
Gage heard the clerk set down the phone, then the sound of footsteps followed by distant voices. “Vernice, is there a Stuart Matson waiting to be booked?… What’s the name?…Matson… You got somebody calling?…Yeah… The name’s familiar but it’s not in my paperwork…”
Gage heard footsteps approaching the phone.
“No. He’s not here…hold on…Matson, yeah…That was him?…You still there?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a runner. It was on the radio.”
“He escaped?”
“Five or six hours ago. From an FBI agent driving him over from San Francisco. Hijacked right at the bottom of the first Oakland off-ramp. A stockbroker or something, right?”
“Sort of. Thanks.”
Gage set the phone back into its cradle and turned toward Burch.
“Gravilov had someone snatch Matson.”
A squeak of a porch board broke the forest silence, followed by four hard raps on the front door. Gage peeked through the curtain, then opened the door. Zink was standing on the bottom step, his badge extended in his right hand toward the light emerging from the cabin, while the other rested on his gun.
“I tried to call,” Zink said, “but there’s no cell service out here and the cabin phone is unlisted.”
“Come on in.”
Zink climbed the last three steps, then crossed the threshold.
“Aren’t you supposed to be chasing down Matson?” Gage asked.
