Exposure Read online

  "All right. I say we pop in for a visit. They don't look too concerned about security—that's a positive sign."

  Payton gave the room one last look, and then motioned Sam back to the other side of the door. "On my count."

  She lifted her weapon and moved into ready position. Pay-ton counted to three and slammed open the door. The two men at the conveyor belt looked up in surprise, their eyes widening in fear.

  "Federal authorities. Keep your hands in plain sight."

  The two men obediently lifted their hands, a third man emerging from the office rubbing his eyes. Apparently he'd been napping.

  "Here, here," he said, his voice rising with each word. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  "We have reason to believe that you may have contraband goods stored here." An understatement, but no sense in alarming what appeared to be innocent bystanders. Payton stepped farther into the room, keeping his gun in plain sight Sam followed him and then turned slightly so that her back was covered.

  "No fucking way." The man was fully awake now, but still clearly befuddled.

  "Is it just the three of you here?" Payton asked, hoping the question was out of context enough to get at the truth.

  The guy opened his mouth to lie, then blew out a breath, evidently thinking better of it. "Yeah."

  "Mind if we have a look at the shipment?" Sam said.

  "How the hell do I know you're who you say you are?" For the first time the man's suspicion superseded his fear. "You come in here, guns drawn, yell that you're the Feds and we're just supposed to believe it?"

  "I don't think you're exactly in the position to be asking questions, do you?" Payton knew he was overplaying his hand, but the guy was pissing him off.

  "Maybe not." The guy deflated.

  "Look," Sam said, ever the voice of reason. "All we need really is to understand why the shipment came here instead of going to D.C. as intended."

  "Look, all I know is that I got a call in the middle of the night that a shipment was being diverted to our warehouse, and that I was to get my people out here ASAP."

  "They didn't give you a reason?" Payton frowned.

  "Something about a hurricane. I figured it must be Eloise. I mean, the news has been covering nothing else for days. If it hits Georgia as expected then that'd affect D.C, right?" He looked at them both askance, as if he needed their approval. Smart guy.

  "You got anything to back that up?"

  "Sure." The guy was starting to relax. "A fax from the harbormaster in D.C."

  "All right. Why don't you show it to me?" Payton took a step toward the man and reflexively he backed up. Payton bit back a smile. "What's your name?"

  "George."

  "Fine, George, all you have to do is cooperate and we'll be out of your hair in no time. Your guys speak English?" Pay-ton nodded toward the two men, still standing frozen by the conveyor belt.

  "Ermo does." George nodded toward the man on the right. "Horatio's not too good."

  Payton nodded, thinking through the situation. He was beginning to believe the guy was on the level, but they'd need to check for verification, and since they were here, the shipment itself. Division of labor made the most sense, but he hated the idea of leaving Sam on her own.

  She, on the other hand, apparently had no such qualms. She was already halfway over to Ermo, her weapon still drawn but now held at her side. "You want to show me the shipment?"

  Ermo looked at his boss, and when George nodded, gave Sam a tentative smile. Despite the absurdity of the situation, Payton felt a tug of jealousy. He'd never gotten used to the fact that people responded to Sam in such a positive way.

  "Tell Horatio to come with us," Payton ordered, his tone sharper than necessary. Sam gave him a know-it-all smile and then turned to go with Ermo.

  Horatio seemed more reticent than Ermo to give in to trust, but he obeyed George's barked command and the three of them set off for the office. Once there, Payton settled Horatio in a rickety chair against the far wall, making sure that he had an angle on both men.

  "All right, so where's this fax?"

  George's hand was shaking now, and Payton had a moment's regret for scaring the shit out of the guy, but it was just part of business. Besides, it could be an act, and Payton was more the consider-them-guilty-until-proven-innocent type. "I've got it right here."

  It took three tries through a towering pile of paper, but finally George produced the document. Payton scanned it quickly, satisfied to see that it did indeed corroborate the man's story. "Looks like everything is in order. We'll just finish checking the shipment and we're out of here."

  As he reached out to hand the document to George, a movement in his peripheral vision sent him spinning toward Horatio. The man lunged forward, firing a gun he'd produced seemingly from thin air. The bullet went wide, but Payton's reaction was instant and deadly, the man's lifeless body falling to the floor. Payton swung back to face George, who was cowering in the corner with his hands over his head.

  "Get up," Payton barked, just as Sam and Ermo appeared in the door.

  "What happened?" Sam asked on an exhale of breath. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine. Seems Horatio here thought he could use me for target practice." He smiled at his wife, the sentiment not reaching his eyes, then swung his attention back to George. "Want to tell me what that was all about?"

  George shook his head, still huddled in the corner, Horatio's bullet lodged just a foot above his head.

  "I think maybe I know," Ermo said, his somber gaze falling on his co-worker. "Horatio was illegal immigrant. Maybe he was afraid you were ENS."

  "Sorry, Ermo. Not buying. There's more going on than that." Payton lifted his gun, taking a calculated step toward the other man. "Why don't you save yourself a world of trouble and tell me what the hell is going on here?"

  The younger man sighed, looked at George and shrugged. "We were using the shipment to smuggle heroin."

  "The three of you," Sam prompted.

  "No, señora. Just Horatio and I."

  "Who do you work for?" Payton asked.

  "Ourselves."

  "Like hell." Payton took another step, backing the man into the corner.

  "My cousin and I, we come here to make it big. To become rich Americans. Only Horatio, he wanted to do it the easy way. So he gambled. A lot. Last month he told me he was in big trouble. Debt—how do you say—up to his ass? Some connected guys from Russia. Anyway, he needed money fast."

  "So what, you made a deal with the mob that you'd sell heroin?"

  "No. I told them we'd do whatever they needed us to do to work off my cousin's debt." Ermo shrugged. "They came to me two nights ago. Said there was going to be a diverted shipment. Something to do with weather. I was supposed to make sure the heroin was placed inside the shipment. That's all I know."

  "You have a name?" Sam asked, her tone purposefully pleasant. Good cop, bad cop. Payton swallowed a smile.

  "His name was Stoeler. Peter Stoeler."

  Payton shot a look at Sam, instinct going into overdrive. "Any idea where the stuff was supposed to be going?"

  "No." Ermo shook his head. "I was only to make sure it was placed in three marked crates."

  "Show me the mark." Payton motioned Ermo toward the door, and Sam followed, George in front of her, still looking shell-shocked.

  Ermo walked over to an open crate and gestured to a pock-mark that at first appeared to be a flaw in the wood. Payton leaned closer and the burned wood took shape. A brand—an intricately linked A and K.

  Alexi Kirov.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  "THERE'S NOTHING HERE." Melissa's voice echoed Nigel's frustration. They were standing in an empty lot fronting the East River. On either side there were abandoned buildings, but the land in front of them was empty, save for a collapsed dock and a junk heap in the western corner.

  The north wind whipped across the open space, the salt-tinged air bitingly cold. Winter was coming. Nigel pulled his coat
closer, and gingerly stepped out onto the dock, testing for soundness with each step "Seems to be stable."

  "Enough for a ship to anchor?" Melissa followed behind him, her arms crossed in an effort to fend off the cold.

  "Maybe not a ship. But certainly a boat of some kind." He lifted a hand to protect his eyes as he looked downriver. Several warehouses were visible, one of them with a freighter docked off its pier. "Where did the original shipment offload?"

  "Brooklyn, according to Harrison's information." She came to stand beside him, her presence warming even without a touch.

  "So that puts it directly downriver from here."

  "Which means that it would be fairly simple for someone to take an undocumented crate and transport it here."

  "Well, if that's the case there's certainly nothing here to prove it. Whatever came here—if it came at all—could be three states from here by now."

  "Or right under our noses." Nigel turned back to the lot. "Maybe there's something over there."

  Melissa followed his line of vision. "Besides trash?"

  "Think about it," he said, already striding toward the pile of junk. "If the R-VX was inside the crate, and if it was in fact delivered here, the recipient would most likely want to check it out and then transfer it to a more stable container. At least I know that's what I'd do."

  "Which could mean the crate is still here."

  "Exactly. And if it's here, then maybe we'll get lucky and find prints. If not, at least we'll have proof that we're on the right track."

  "Now there's the million-dollar question. The truth is that we could just as easily be on a wild-goose chase."

  "Precisely. Which is why it's best for us to sort through everything here before making any conclusions one way or the other."

  "Lead on." Her tone was resigned but determined, and Nigel reveled in the fact that he felt totally at ease with her, as if they'd been working together for years instead of a few days. Maybe Madison was right—maybe likes did attract.

  The question now of course being could they turn that attraction into a permanent bond? Melissa hadn't really committed to anything except not running away. Hell, he'd bared his heart and she hadn't even said that she loved him. But then words weren't everything. And she'd certainly shown him that she cared. And for now that would have to be enough.

  That and the fact that she was still here with him. In a garbage dump—that alone had to mean something.

  "So how do you want to do this?" Melissa was eyeing the refuse with disgust.

  "Let's break it into six quadrants. You start at the northeast corner and work south. I'll start here at the southwest corner and work norm. If the crate is here, it ought to be fairly recognizable. I can't imagine mere being time to break it down that much. And most likely it's not buried under any of this." He waved his hand toward the scattered trash. "There hasn't been time."

  "Okay." She smiled, the gesture touching off a chain reaction of heat racing from gut to groin. Lord, he had it bad.

  Forcing his attention onto the rubbish heap, he began systematically to scan the ground, occasionally stopping to kick aside a bag or box. Judging from the degree of rust and degradation, the site hadn't been regularly used for quite some time, which should make it easier to discern something recently added to the squalor.

  He finished the first quadrant with nothing at all interesting to report, and had just started on the second when Melissa called out. "You finding anything?"

  He looked up to see her standing knee-deep in refuse, sorting through a tottering pile with a stick.

  "Nothing yet. So far everything looks like it's been here awhile." He stirred an abandoned oil can with his toe. "Maybe you're right and this is a huge waste of time, but it seems like it's better to be thorough."

  She sneezed in answer and shot him a crooked smile. "At least it doesn't smell so bad here. The first quadrant I did really reeked."

  Nigel frowned. "But you didn't find anything out of the ordinary?"

  She shook her head and bent to pick something up, discarding it and then straightening. "Nothing that looks even remotely like it was part of a shipping crate."

  "Right," he said, not certain what it was that was nagging at him. The third quadrant was as unproductive as the first two. He was just beginning to think the whole thing was indeed a massive waste of time, when he picked up the smell— and it was instantly familiar.

  He was surprised that with all her war experience, Melissa hadn't sussed it out immediately. But then maybe it hadn't been as strong in her corner of the rubbish heap as it was here. Gritting his teeth and wishing he had a handkerchief or something, he rounded a tower of refuse to a semisecluded corner of the area bordered on two sides by a rickety old hurricane fence.

  The smell now was overpowering, and he fought not to gag.

  There was an overgrowth of weeds, turned brown by the plunging temperatures. Nigel pushed them aside, grateful that he was wearing gloves. The crate was nestled in the shadow of an abandoned generator, almost indistinguishable from everything else piled there.

  If not for the stench, Nigel doubted he'd have noticed it, but standing this close it was hard to ignore. Taking a deep breath for fortification, he stepped closer, pushing aside the weeds to look down into the open container.

  The rats hadn't wasted time on their early Thanksgiving feast, and it wasn't easy at first to reconcile that what he was seeing was human, but one eye was still intact, and the lower half of the man's face, his muscles contorted into a permanent postmortem grin.

  "Oh, my God." Melissa had followed, her gloved hand covering her nose. She stared down at the remains, her eyes widening as recognition dawned. "It's Ed." She turned to look at him, pain etched across her features. "Ed Wyland. My handler."

  "So what have we got here besides a hell of a mess?" Gabe asked, pacing in front of the white board.

  "Definitive proof that Wyland was playing both sides. And possibly a solid connection between Kirov and the alleged UN black-market network," Payton said, tipping his chair back against the wall. The team had reconvened in Cullen's New York offices, and spent the past hour or so trying to make sense of the various puzzle pieces, not the least being Ed Wyland's murder.

  Melissa was still reeling from the find, trying to reconcile what she knew of the man with the picture the Russian had painted. It just didn't seem to fit, but then clearly she didn't know Ed as well as she'd thought, especially considering he'd potentially had a part in the plot to kill her.

  "You don't know that he even knew about the attempt to poison you," Nigel said, his eyes dark with concern.

  "You've got to stop reading my mind." She summoned a smile, determined not to let the latest episode in this drama deal her anything more than a glancing blow. "Besides, it doesn't matter if he was in on it or not. Payton's right. The very fact that Alexi knew he could use Ed to get to me indicates that he had to be in bed with Alexi to some degree."

  "And paid the ultimate price," Sam said, looking at a forensic photo of the body.

  "Don't forget that the Russian tied Wyland to Kirov, as well," Harrison said. "I don't think there's any way around the fact that the man was double-dealing. The question is whether he had anything to do with the theft of the R-VX."

  "Doubtful." Payton shook his head. "My guess is that he was a bit player in Kirov's scheme. An insider who could provide information that allowed Kirov to stay one step ahead of attempts to uncover the network."

  "Which was doubly useful once Melissa was assigned to the investigation," Sam said, her eyebrows drawn together in thought.

  "Any chance Wyland was behind your being chosen to head the operation?" Gabe asked.

  "I don't know. I don't think so. Ed has always seemed the consummate bureaucrat to me. I thought he was more a link between me and his bosses than the one making the decisions. But obviously I didn't know the man at all." Melissa tipped back her head, trying to hang on to some semblance of normalcy.

  "I don't see that
it matters anymore," Nigel said, jumping to her aid. "The man is dead. Whatever part he played in our little drama, I think we're all agreed that he wasn't involved with the R-VX. Which leaves us with Kirov and his network."

  "And Khamis. He's got to fit into all of this somehow," Payton said.

  "What about the crate Nigel and Melissa found?" Gabe stopped pacing to focus on Harrison. "Anything there?"

  "Not a brand, if that's what you're asking." Harrison crossed his arms on a sigh. "But it is interesting that the crate was completely intact, except for a plank missing from the lid."

  "Maybe it broke when the thing was pried open," Nigel suggested.

  "Or maybe it was removed so that if it were ever discovered there'd be no link to Kirov," Payton said, reaching over to pick up two photographs. "The position of the missing plank is identical to the place on the other crate where we found the branded initials." He waved the pictures through the air for emphasis. "Might be a good idea to have Tracy's folks search the rest of the area for the missing plank."

  "Already on it," Harrison said.

  "I still don't see how any of this is getting us closer to finding the missing R-VX. Even if we assume that it was originally transported in the crate where you found Wyland, there's nothing to give us an idea of where the hell it went from there."

  "True," Sam said. "But it does establish a time line of sorts. We know when the R-VX was stolen, and we're fairly certain the warheads were in the Istanbul area a couple of days ago. Or at least still on the move through that part of the world."

  "How do you figure mat?" Harrison asked.

  "Because of the raid on Galata Tekkesi. That intel surfaced for a reason. If not because it was legitimate, then because someone wanted to create a diversion."

  "And if it was necessary to create a diversion," Payton continued, "then we were close enough to have worried whoever was behind the theft."

  "Khamis." Melissa leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand. "We have evidence that he was in Izmit, possibly meeting with Paulo Salvatore."

  "And the timing of the meeting fits nicely into our time line." Sam stood up and crossed to the white board, noting each of the events in sequential order.