were emerging. It would just take a little time. In the meantime, they needed to make sure McRyan and his partner didn’t find him first.
The security specialist, Foche preferred that term to describe what he did as opposed to mercenary or merc, had spent the morning trailing the two St. Paul homicide detectives. His tablet sat on the passenger seat to his right. Kristoff had forwarded him the full profile on McRyan and Lich, the two men he was tailing.
Detective Richard Lich made for interesting reading. To say the man had a colorful personal history would be putting it mildly. His professional history, however, was fairly pedestrian—a functional cop with many years on the job.
Mac McRyan, on the other hand was an entirely different story. He did not fit the profile in any way, shape or form for a cop. Summa Cum Laude from the University of Minnesota and William Mitchell College of Law. His test scores, all the way back to his nearly perfect SAT in high school, revealed a brilliant mind. His record on the force revealed an unusually high closure rate on his cases and a dogged approach to his investigations. As he read through the profile, what jumped out at Foche most was the detective’s relentless nature. It oozed out of the background information he was reading. And what this little trip to the Thomson campaign, as well as the others McRyan took this morning told him, were that the detectives weren’t buying that Stroudt’s death was a random drug buy gone bad. They were rightly thinking that it was what Stroudt did professionally that led to his death. He and Kristoff thought a killing at a seedy hotel would be met with bland indifference. Clearly this was not the case.
McRyan was, if not on the right track, at least was looking in the right direction. Providence had not smiled on them either. With McRyan’s live-in girlfriend working high up in the Thomson campaign, he was able to get quick access to the top of the Thomson campaign. After killing Stroudt, they learned that he went to law school with McCormick. It wasn’t a huge leap of logic to think Stroudt would be looking up his old law school classmate when he came to the Twin Cities instead of trying to head back to Washington DC. Thus far, based on a review of cell phone records, it did not appear that before his death, Stroudt had actually contacted McCormick.
The green glass doors burst open and McRyan and Lich strolled out the front door with smiles on their faces. Foche’s heart skipped a beat for a minute but as he assessed their demeanor he determined that the looks were more of laughter than of satisfaction. They were reliving an event as they walked to the parking ramp across St. Peter Street.
Foche waited until McRyan exited the parking ramp and pulled out onto St. Peter to follow while placing a call to Kristoff.
* * *
Henri Gerstner sat on the metal folding chair in the dank crumbling warehouse in Landover, Maryland. Behind him rested the panel van from which he and others were pulling their haul from the home of Jason Stroudt and the offices of The Congressional Page.
The expert thief was a long way from the comforts of his Zurich apartment, the warmth of the fireplace, female companionship and a bottle of red wine. The comforts of life he so enjoyed resulting from his prolific success. When he wanted, there was little in the world he couldn’t steal. All he needed was time and the tools of his trade. Twenty years of world travel stealing jewels, paintings and information left him wealthy and quite comfortable. He now only worked when he was motivated to do so, or when Kristoff called.
When Kristoff called, he answered, he always answered, for two reasons. First and foremost, he owed his life to Kristoff from long back in the day when both men were in the employ of the General Directorate for External Security for France. Second, Kristoff paid well, very well, for Gerstner’s unique services and no matter how much money he had put away, he was never one to turn down easy money. Accessing Stroudt’s condominium and the offices of The Congressional Page was extremely easy money.
Adam Montgomery’s place, however, was entirely another matter. A quick look at the condominium complex in Bethesda told him he needed some time to work his way in, it was not a one-hour take a