“What do you think? Did he sell us out?”
Grafton took his time with that question. “Surkov was living very well in the U.K., even for an expatriate with serious connections, making serious money. It’s possible he was selling information to anyone with cash to buy.”
“To al-Qaeda? Abu Qasim?”
“Perhaps. Or he may have sold information about Tchernychenko’s business to one of his boss’ competitors. Or to the Russian government. In any event, he deposited a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in his London bank three weeks ago, a check drawn on the account of a shell corporation based in the Seychelles. The check was good.”
“How likely is it that the Russians poisoned him?”
“The two men who ate dinner with him are the most probable villains, but one wonders if the orders really came from Moscow.” Grafton told Molina about his meeting with Janos Ilin as Sal finished with one of the tricycle’s rear wheels and began on the second one.
“The amazing thing,” Grafton concluded, “is that I had a man watching Surkov when he was poisoned. That is, assuming the British police’s theory that he was poisoned at the restaurant holds up.”
“You had a tail on Surkov?”
“We couldn’t watch him around the clock — we don’t have the resources — so we were doing the best we could with what we had. We monitored his landline and cell phone. Tommy Carmellini bugged his apartment and his car. Tommy was also keeping a discreet eye on who he met.”
“Why?”
“We lost two men last month. One of them and his girlfriend were tortured, then murdered. They took down Abdul-Zahra Mohammed, who had been running a money-laundering operation through a Russian company Tchernychenko has a finger in. The al-Qaeda guys aren’t stupid. Sooner or later they are going to investigate that connection, and Surkov, the greedy hustler, would be a logical place to start.”
Sal Molina shook his head and tossed the pliers into the toolbox. “Jake, this takes the cake. If Ilin learns that one of your men saw Surkov eat it, he’s going to smell a dead rat and get curious.”
Grafton was undaunted. “Oh, I suspect he already knows.”
“Did he mention it?”
“Oh, no. Yet look at it — Surkov is murdered in London and isn’t even in the ground before we have a senior Russian intelligence officer looking up a senior American intelligence officer to pass on a back-channel message. ‘We didn’t do it,’ they say.” Grafton threw up a hand. “There are U.S. ambassadors all over the globe, the Russians could have made a beeline for the State Department, the Kremlin could have called our president on the hotline. Why me?”
“I’m with you,” Molina muttered.
“Ilin must know that a man who normally works for Jake Grafton was present when Surkov went down. He then assumed that the CIA is or was interested in Surkov. So I took Tommy Carmellini, the op who was watching Surkov the night he was poisoned, to meet Ilin, who looked him over and told him he had heard his name. That convinced me I was right. Guys that senior normally ignore the grunts.”
“If the Russians didn’t kill him, who did?”
“That’s the problem — it could have been anyone. One of his dinner companions, someone in the kitchen or serving, Marisa Petrou — who may be Qasim’s daughter and was right there eating dinner — or anyone else in the restaurant. Carmellini was there observing, but he didn’t make a note every time someone passed that table. For heaven’s sake, they sat there on and off for almost three hours.”
Sal Molina finished the tricycle and levered himself off the floor. He sat down in a chair facing Grafton.
“Do I understand this correctly? You think it’s possible that Surkov sold out the Winchester group for money and someone killed him?”
“Yes.”
“One of the group, or the person he sold them to?”
Grafton shrugged.
“Proof?”
“I’m not in the proof business,” Grafton said testily.
“What does Winchester say about all this?”
“I’ll find out tomorrow. I’m seeing him then.”
“He may be having some serious second thoughts,” Sal Molina mused.
“Too late for that,” Grafton snapped. “I tried to tell him, and you, that once he was in, he was in until the crack of doom. As they say in Vegas, he and his friends are all in, with everything piled in the middle of the table.”
Molina rubbed his forehead. “Everything else going okay?”
“Jerry Hay Smith, the Mouth That Roared, is writing a book about the conspiracy.”
Molina closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he eyed Grafton. “Is it any good?”
“Fair. Not much dialogue and it’s short on action, but it has its moments.”
“Is the president in it?”
“Only by inference. Winchester has kept his mouth shut, which is a minor miracle.”
“I’m not going to ask how you got hold of it.”
“That’s good. You should take care of your blood pressure.”
“You in it?”
“Yep. I can’t decide if he thinks I’m the hero or the villain. Could go either way, I suppose.”
“He know you’re CIA?”
“Yes. I had to tell them.”
“Terrific.”
“I thought so, too.”
“Sheikh Mahmoud al-Taji, the London cleric — what do you know about him?”
“He’s a terrorist,” Jake Grafton said curtly.
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as you can be about these things. We have two informants in the mosque, and they tell us al-Taji is not only preaching, he is recruiting terrorists, using donations to help fund weapons acquisition and training, and meeting with various like-minded souls to discuss possible terror targets in Britain. Our spies don’t know what targets they’ve picked or how close they are to doing something. They’re not yet in the inner circle.”
“The British know this?”
“We’ve shared everything with them. The crown is prosecuting him because he’s a public nuisance and questions were asked in Parliament, but MI-5 isn’t sharing intelligence with the prosecutors. They couldn’t use any of it at his trial, of course, without betraying our people inside the mosque. They’d be dead within an hour.”
“Why not pull these people out first, then put the sheikh away in a drafty old English prison?”
“I’ve talked to the head of clandestine ops about that, and he’s talked to Bill Wilkins. Ethnic Middle Easterners who speak the language, have the guts and smarts to go undercover and are loyal Americans to the core are hard to find. We hoped these guys would help us catch bigger fish. If we pull them out and then help convict the sheikh, they’re finished as undercover men. Even worse, it will be literally impossible to ever get another man into a London mosque.”
“Okay. What does your friend in London say about the Brits’ dilemma?”
“He says the government doesn’t want any more London subway attacks or anything along those lines. They want the sheikh out of the country or silenced.”
“Silenced how?”
“Not murdered. That would inflame British Muslims. My British friend is sort of hoping, off the record, of course, that the sheikh will have a fatal accident or die a natural-death.”
“A natural death would be best,” Sal Molina said, nodding.
Jake Grafton shrugged.
“Can we help with that?”
“Perhaps.”
Hunt Winchester and Simon Cairnes had lunch with Jake Grafton in the dining room of Winchester’s yacht club
