Laynie Portland, Spy Resurrected Page 5

  He looked downstream to his right and noted the bridge that spanned the creek and the unpaved road that wound away from the creek to eventually turn into the farm on the other side of the creek. His eyes took in the well-tended fields opposite him and, at the far reaches of the fields, studied the rustic barn and the equally antiquated house just beyond it.

  What sights have these old buildings witnessed over the many decades they have stood there? Tobin wondered. What tales could they tell of the heroic men and women who poured their lives into this land?

  KARI WENT TO HER DESK and stared out the window. She watched Tobin trudge down to the creek, place his hands on his hips, and gaze out at Søren’s family homestead and beyond. Dejection slumped his broad shoulders.

  “Marshal Tobin is hurting as much as we are.”

  Søren stood behind her and wrapped her in his arms. “As always, you are more insightful than I am,” he murmured. “You picked up on his loss. I was too engrossed in my own sorrow to see his.”

  Kari sighed. “Did I pick up on something else? That this Director Wolfe hasn’t told us everything?”

  “You didn’t get that wrong. There’s something about the ‘arrangements.’”

  Kari looked down at the clock on her desk. “Shannon and Robbie won’t be home from school for another hour and a half. And we don’t expect Gene and Polly until dinner time.”

  Gene and Polly Portland lived in the little casita behind Kari and Søren’s house.

  “I think I’d like to hear whatever else these two men have to say. Get it over with so we can be alone with our children and their grandparents . . . to grieve.” Her voice caught on the last of her words.

  Swallowing down her pain, she pointed to the tangled branches of an old apple orchard far back on Søren’s land. “Many of our family members are buried on that knoll over there.”

  “Is that where you’re thinking you’d like Laynie laid to rest?”

  Kari nodded. “Yes. She should be near us, near her mama and dad. Home. At long last.”

  “Would you like me to ask them inside again?”

  “Give me a few minutes. I think I’ll make some coffee and sandwiches for them. I need to use my hands and mind on an ordinary task. Something to ward off this terrible sense of disbelief.”

  Søren placed a kiss on the tender skin of her neck. “I married a kind woman.”

  Kari shuddered and sniffed. “What would I do without you, Søren Thoresen?”

  TOBIN WALKED UPSTREAM along the creek bank, then looked back, surveying the road they’d driven in on. It topped a bluff, then dropped away toward the creek, revealing a broad hollow on this side of the water. Although winter was already making its entrance and the land was stark and bare, he liked what he saw—the Thoresen’s house, nestled in the hollow between the creek and the bluff behind it, set apart and sheltered from the wild prairie’s expanse.

  A small structure farther up the hollow caught his eye, and he left the creek to examine it more closely.

  Why, it’s a house. A really old house, he realized. He could hardly believe that people had actually lived in such a tiny structure. Someone had added a porch to the front of the house—a porch with at least half the area as the house itself. More recently, someone had fenced in the house, not to hide it, but to set it apart.

  To cherish it, perhaps? Mark its significance?

  Tobin unlatched the gate and walked around the house. At most, it had two tiny bedrooms, tacked on as an afterthought, and he estimated the structure’s total area at less than four hundred square feet.

  My apartment in Germantown is bigger than this—and yet whole families spent their lives here. Was this part of the “generations” Kari mentioned?

  He marveled that the house was still standing until, looking closer, he saw that the foundation had been shored up, rotted posts replaced, and new shingles added to keep out the rain.

  A whistle caught his attention. Wolfe, signaling him. Tobin latched the gate behind himself, respectful of the family treasure within the fence.

  “They’ve asked us back inside,” Wolfe told him.

  KARI INVITED THEM TO sit at the family table just off the kitchen. “It’s past lunchtime, and I figured we could all do with some sustenance. We can . . . discuss the arrangements after we’ve eaten.”

  Tobin realized he was starving when his stomach knotted at the sight of hot soup, a mountain of sandwiches, and a plate of home-baked cookies. “This looks great. Thank you.”

  Wolfe agreed. “Yes, thank you. You’re very kind.”

  The men, including Max, dug in, devouring soup, sandwiches, and cookies. Conversation among the five of them was stilted until Tobin, looking for something to cut the silence, mentioned the old house.

  “You’ve done a great job preserving that old place,” he said. “It’s just hard for me to imagine anyone actually living in it.”

  Kari smiled. “My great-grandmother, Rose, came west on the train in 1881. She had recently lost her husband and her three young children. She was thirty-three and utterly alone when she got off the train in RiverBend.”

  “Why? Why did she do that?”

  Shrugging, Kari said, “I believe she came looking for consolation, for a purpose to her broken life. What she found was Jesus.”

  Tobin’s chewing jaws slowed. “You’re saying she lived in that house?”

  Søren answered. “According to my grandfather, when she saw the creek, this hollow and the house sheltered in it, she fell in love with them. ’Course, it was springtime. The prairie really is beautiful in the spring. Not like now when everything is dead and dry.

  “Anyway, it was a vacant homestead, up for sale by its owners through the local bank. The house wasn’t in much better shape at that time than it is now, but Rose’s husband had left her some money. In fact, she was quite well-to-do. She shocked the entire community when she up and bought the homestead, the very land where we sit right now.”

  “Wait. Your grandfather told you this?”

  Søren and Kari exchanged amused looks. Søren said, “Yes, my grandfather, also Søren Thoresen. I’m his namesake. Grandpa lived into his nineties and spent many hours recounting our family’s history to me.”

  Wolfe looked from Søren to Kari. “Your families share history, then?”

  “More than that—our families are intertwined,” Kari answered. “Søren’s great-grandfather, Jan Thoresen, owned the homestead opposite us, across the creek. He was a widower, and my great-grandmother, Rose, eventually married him.” She tilted her head toward her husband. “That made Søren’s grandfather—”

  “Grandpa Søren,” Søren interjected.

  “Yes. When Rose married Jan, Jan’s son, Søren, became Rose’s stepson. Then Jan and Rose had a daughter, Joy. My grandmother.”

  “So, you two are . . .” Wolfe, confused, left the statement hanging.

  “We’re related, but distantly. We share the same great-grandfather, Jan, but different great-grandmothers. That makes us half-cousins two or three times removed—or some such thing.”

  Tobin glanced at his empty plate, then at the table. The food was gone, the remainders vacuumed up during the short conversation.

  Kari addressed Max. “Max, would you mind going to your room for a bit? Your dad and I need some time alone with these gentlemen.”

  “Sure, Mom.” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m awful sorry about Aunt Laynie. ’Specially since we just found her again. I . . . I’m glad I got to meet her. She was pretty amazing.”

  “She was, wasn’t she?” Kari sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Thank you, Max.”

  After Max excused himself, they adjourned to the living room.

  Kari looked from Wolfe to Tobin. “You wanted to discuss the funeral arrangements. What about them?”

  Wolfe nodded. “I’ve given orders for Laynie’s remains to be brought back to the US. I don’t have an arrival date yet, but I’ve asked the embassy to expedite the process. Inside
of a week, I should think.”

  “Send us the arrival information. We can take it from there. We’re going to bury her here, in the family cemetery.”

  When Wolfe did not agree immediately, Kari’s eyes narrowed. “What? Do you have an objection?”

  Wolfe and Tobin didn’t want to make things harder for this family, but they needed to speak the truth about the possible dangers still at play.

  Wolfe cleared his throat. “Not an objection. More of a concern.”

  “What concern?”

  “We think it would be very unfortunate if certain parties should connect your sister, via her death, to Elaine Granger, the woman against whom these, er, parties hold something of a vendetta.”

  Kari’s response was harsh. “You sound like a bad lawyer dancing around an insupportable argument without ever making his point, Mr. Wolfe. If my sister is dead, what does it matter?”

  Wolfe leaned closer and spoke softly. “Then let me be plain. While fleeing through Canada after 9/11, Laynie—as Elaine Granger—earned, inadvertently, the ire of a certain crime syndicate when their electronic financial records were swept up in an FBI raid. We’re convinced that the syndicate has copies of the records, but that’s not the point. The point is that the FBI also has them.

  “These records are encrypted, and the FBI hasn’t cracked the encryption yet, but it’s only a matter of time until they do, which is causing the syndicate a great deal of heartburn. The syndicate would like nothing better than to get their hands on the individual who arranged the FBI’s raid on their facility . . . and on anyone associated with the event. Even remotely associated.”

  “Remotely associated? What does that mean?”

  “I’m saying that this syndicate, based out of New York, is still actively hunting the individual who gave the FBI probable cause for a raid, and Elaine Granger was the reason the syndicate got involved with this individual, this hacker, in the first place. We are, of course, keeping this person, who later became Laynie’s friend, safe.”

  “Safe? The way you kept Laynie safe? I feel for this unnamed person you say was Laynie’s friend.” Anger dripped from Kari’s mouth.

  Søren squeezed Kari’s hand. “Sweetheart, let the man talk, please.” He looked at Wolfe. “Go on.”

  It was time for Wolfe to be blunt. “I’m sorry, but the Ukrainian mob won’t care that Laynie is dead. They have a reputation for visiting the sins of the fathers upon their children, and if they were to discover that Laynie had a family? They would come for you and your children.”

  Kari went deathly pale. She opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

  “You need to understand that the mob wants the person who stole their records, and they want her in the worst way. If they came here to RiverBend, to your home, you could tell them you know nothing, that you’ve never met this person. You could swear on the Bible that you don’t even know her name, and it would not matter. The mob’s thugs would feel it necessary to satisfy themselves and their bosses that none of you are holding out on them. They would show no mercy.”

  Kari began to shake in Søren’s arms. She couldn’t stop. The horrific news Wolfe had brought them was bad enough. The picture he painted of danger to her family—her children—was too much. She leaned her face into Søren’s chest and sobbed.

  Søren said through gritted teeth, “You obviously have a plan. Tell us what we should do.”

  Wolfe nodded. “I understand your family spends Christmas in New Orleans each year?”

  “Yeah. What of it?”

  “Take the family to New Orleans a couple weeks early this year. Bury Laynie in New Orleans before Christmas. Quietly. Just the immediate family. No publicity. My people will handle all the arrangements, thus keeping her name and yours apart. You’ll return to RiverBend after Christmas, and the Ukrainians will never connect Laynie to you. Your family . . . your children will be safe. I swear it.”

  When neither Kari nor Søren spoke, Tobin added, softly, “It’s what she would want you to do. She loved all of you deeply. Nothing mattered more to her than keeping her family safe.”

  Kari, her face mottled and wet with tears, acquiesced. “All right. We’ll do it your way.”

  Wolfe released his breath. “Thank you.” He withdrew a business card from his pocket. “We’ll have Laynie’s remains delivered directly to New Orleans, and we’ll be in touch as soon as we know when they will arrive. If you have any questions, call me at this number—any time, day or night.”

  Signaling Tobin to follow, Wolfe showed himself out.

  Chapter 5

  SERAPHIM, TOBIN, AND Jaz huddled around the conference room table. It was early morning, still dark outside. Wolfe had returned Tobin to Broadsword the night before. Even though the room was soundproof and Harris was posted in the living room to watch the door, the three of them kept their voices low.

  “I spoke to Director Wolfe last night after he dropped you off here, Tobin. He wants the three of us to follow up on his ‘canary trap.’”

  “What’s a canary trap?” Jaz demanded.

  “It’s a form of disinformation. In order to keep her real mission a secret from the mole high up in his organization, Director Wolfe manufactured a fake, disingenuous mission package for Anabelle.”

  “Bella,” Tobin and Jaz said in unison. They glanced at each other and shrugged.

  “She didn’t like being called Anabelle, Seraphim,” Tobin said softly. “She preferred Bella and asked that we call her that.”

  Seraphim nodded. “I’ll try to remember, but our priority is uncovering the mole in the director’s organization and plugging the leak right here on our team.”

  “Understood,” Tobin replied.

  Jaz said nothing. Her grief had progressed to the anger stage, and that anger smoldered not far under the surface.

  Seraphim, one cautious eye on Jaz, said, “About the trap. The director sent an email to five high-level deputies in his organization outlining Ana—I mean Bella’s—mission parameters.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jaz said. “Why would he give away operational details?”

  “He wouldn’t, of course. Like I said, it was a ruse to keep their attention off her actual operation, but it was also a means of smoking out the mole. Bella had garnered something of a reputation as a renegade, someone who would bend the rules, even defy orders and work outside her mission parameters. The email stated that Bella had again disobeyed orders. In the email, the Director gave instructions that any agent in the field who spotted her was not to intercept her, but was only to surveil and report her actions. He varied the faux mission details slightly in each of the five emails, added that his instructions were need-to-know only, and sent the emails out.”

  “Varied the details how?” Jaz asked.

  “Different destination cities and arrival times. Varied descriptions of Bella. We put five female agents on the ground, one in each city at these arrival times, all of them tall and slender. In each email, we varied Bella’s hair color and style to match the female operative’s color and style and described the clothing she would be wearing. Then we put eyes on the agents and waited.”

  “Waited for what?”

  “For someone to disregard the email’s instructions and, instead of reporting Bella’s movements, try to capture or take her out. We had the agents covered, of course, and would have taken whoever was sent to capture or kill her. The point was, if one of the agents were to be attacked, we’d have narrowed down the pool of suspected moles.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. That’s the problem. Our people were in place to follow the five fake Bellas at all five destinations, but no one made a move on her. Wolfe wants to know where we messed up.”

  “That’s easy enough,” Jaz snarled. “Our own precious mole right here managed to obtain the real scoop on Bella’s destination and mission. Whoever it is? He or she fed it to their superiors, which warned them off the trap. It also painted a bullseye right on her!”

 
“Mind your temper, Jaz. I can’t have you going all shirty on us.”

  “What the *blank* does that mean?”

  Tobin gently lowered his palm to Jaz’s arm. “Jaz, ‘shirty’ is Brit talk for keep your shirt on or calm down.”

  “How I act doesn’t change the facts one iota. Someone here is responsible for Bella’s . . .” Jaz couldn’t finish.

  Seraphim leaned her forehead on clenched fists. “You aren’t wrong, Jaz. The task force has six other members. One of them leaked Bella’s mission and as good as killed her.”

  “Eight,” Jaz ground out. “You’re leaving off Bella’s protective detail. Lance and Sherman.”

  “Okay. You’re right. Eight possible moles.”

  Tobin’s brow furrowed in concentration. “How. How did they pass the info? If we knew that, we’d have the mole.”

  Jaz’s rage bubbled closer to the surface, reddening her complexion. “Well, I can’t exactly go back in time and figure that out now, can I?”

  Seraphim asked, “No, but . . . what if we gave the mole something new to report? Could you be ready then?”

  Jaz considered the questions, a little of the heat leaving her face. “Maybe.”

  “We need better than ‘maybe,’ Jaz, if we’re going to set another trap.”

  “No restrictions?”

  “No. None.”

  “Yah, okay. I can do it. Give me . . . give me a couple hours.”

  FOR A SECOND TIME, Collier dialed the number his “guest in the shadows” had given him. The call rang eight times before it was picked up.

  “Wolfe here.”

  “It’s Collier, Director.”

  “Report, please.”

  “Sir, it took a couple days to cut through the red tape—I had to obtain the local health officer’s release form—but I claimed your friend’s remains. I personally oversaw them being placed in the burial casket and sealed and the casket placed in a shipping container. I accompanied the remains to the airport and booked them through to their destination—exactly per your orders.”