PTSD? And that he went on a killing spree? That’s bullshit.”
“So you keep telling me, but the evidence is what the evidence is,” said Tullis.
“It’s not good. I’ll give you that. But right now it’s all circumstantial.”
“But it places him at the scene at the time of the murders. And now we have footage of him leaving the scene and ditching his phone as he does.”
“We can’t tell it’s Harvath in that vehicle,” McGee argued, defending his friend.
“You think it’s somebody posing as Harvath?”
“Maybe.”
The Chief took another puff of his cigarette. “Let’s say you’re right. Why throw the phone into the trees?”
“To set him up. To make it look like he had ditched the phone so he couldn’t be tracked.”
“But what if that’s exactly what he did?”
McGee shook his head. “That’s not Harvath. And it’s definitely not how he was trained.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If he was worried about being tracked, he would have used the phone as a decoy to send you on a wild goose chase.”
“How?” asked Tullis.
“All he’d have to do is select a vehicle going in the opposite direction. He could have found one at any gas station or truck stop. While there, he might overhear a conversation, or start one up himself and discover a driver headed to Texas or California. It wouldn’t be hard to hide a phone so that its signal could continue to ping passing cell towers.”
“And send law enforcement chasing a bogus trail of bread crumbs.”
“Precisely,” replied McGee.
The Chief took another drag of his cigarette. “Or . . .” he said, his voice trailing off.
“Or what?”
“Or maybe he wasn’t willing to go to all that trouble. Maybe he thought he already had enough of a head start. Or, after he snapped, realizing what he had done, he just ran.”
“Is that what you think?”
“What I think doesn’t matter,” Tullis remarked, exhaling another cloud of smoke. “What matters is what the AG’s team thinks. And I guarantee you, this is high on their list.”
Tullis was right. He wasn’t the person McGee needed to convince. If he wanted to help Harvath by heading off a news conference or anything else, he was going to have to deal with the AG. Or, more specifically, he was going to have to convince Militante and the FBI to deal with the AG. Absent the Federal nexus, though, it was going to be a very difficult, if not impossible, case to make.
Thanking the Chief, he stepped back inside to brief Militante. As he passed through the kitchen, his mind was going at full speed. There had to be something they could use as leverage.
Then, just as he set foot in the living room, it came to him.
CHAPTER 13
* * *
* * *
RUSSIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE
MOSCOW
Konstantin Minayev glared at his deputy for a solid ten seconds without responding. He was a terrifying man, given to fits of anger and extreme violence. Delivering bad news to him was never pleasant. Doing so any time after midmorning, when he began his drinking, was a nightmare.
The deputy stood uncomfortably on the worn carpet in front of his boss’s scarred wooden desk. The large office smelled like stale cigarettes, cheap counterfeit American cologne, and dog shit. Of course it wasn’t really dog shit, it was worse. It was a dog shit sandwich.
Minayev was an old-school Russian, proud of his peasant lineage and how he had risen through the ranks. He prided himself on his work ethic and was famous for eating at his desk, never once having set foot in the GRU cafeteria.
Each day he arrived at headquarters with a sack lunch consisting of two thick slabs of farmer’s bread and one of the worst-smelling cheeses ever produced.
The scent fell somewhere between rotting human flesh and roadkill. It was so bad that it was banned on all public transport in Russia.
Though none would ever have had the courage to say so to his face, being summoned to Minayev’s office was referred to as paying a visit to the “devil’s asshole.”
The joke had been around for so long, no one could say whether it was in reference to the odor or to the General’s temperament.
“What do you mean the plane fucking vanished?” he bellowed.
His deputy had learned early on to stick to facts. He wasn’t paid to give analysis. “It disappeared from radar somewhere over Murmansk Oblast.”
“Where exactly?”
The deputy removed a printout from his briefing folder, stepped forward, and placed it upon his boss’s desk.
Minayev reviewed the report. “Is this a mistake?” he asked, pointing to the