Page 48 of Poison Evidence

“Thanks, Rudy. I’ll see you when you get there.”

Traffic was heavy—as usual—through Georgetown, but it cleared as soon as Curt left the city. He wished he could bring Mara along for this, but if he wasn’t officially invited, sure as hell the DIA didn’t want Ivy’s boss present. Mara had been livid at the way they’d manipulated and used Ivy. She was only marginally less angry at Curt for telling Ivy to cooperate with Veselov.

But really, what choice did they have at this point? Attempting to flee from the spy would have left her vulnerable to the Syrians. If she hadn’t been with Dimitri, she might have been taken.

He finally reached the Northern Virginia offices of the Defense Intelligence Agency and was admitted through the layers of security, his ID subjected to thorough scrutiny even though the guards greeted him by name before he even pulled out his government credentials.

The meeting was well underway by the time Curt entered the room. No one dared question how he’d known about the meeting, considering he should have been the first one notified and everyone from the general at the head of the table to the lowest-ranked officer in the room knew it.

In a firm voice, Curt asked to be brought up to speed on what he’d missed.

General Ellis cleared his throat and offered a tight smile. “Of course, Mr. Dominick.” He nodded to the analyst working the digital projector.

The analyst tapped his keyboard, and the images projected onto the screen at the front of the room changed in rapid procession. Curt recognized Parker Reeves from various points in his Coast Guard career, along with some candid snapshots Curt’s team had gathered when they investigated Reeves last fall. His office had given the DIA all the data they’d gathered.

Not everybody, it seemed, was in the mood to share.

“Have you had any luck determining if Veselov is working for the GRU?” Curt asked while the analyst found his starting point.

“That remains unclear,” General Ellis said. “But then, the man we knew as Parker Reeves was never confirmed to be from GRU.”

A fact that kept this investigation in intelligence circles and out of the State Department. For now. But the situation grew more volatile each day.

At last the images stopped on a shot ofLiberty, Veselov’s boat. Curt recognized the image from Keaton’s charter tours website. The analyst cleared his throat. “The boat is legally registered to Jack Keaton, with a license filed in December, but tracing the history of the vessel prior to that was a stumbling block. We started by working backward with known vessels that fit the basic description—of which there are hundreds in that part of the world. But we caught a lucky break when we cross-referenced with Russian owners.

He clicked a button, and the image changed to a blurred photo of an older man with a hard look about him.

“This man was the head of a Bratva group. What’s known as the Pakhan. Word has it he was getting too powerful and not paying the kickbacks that usually flowed up government channels. Last September, he disappeared. Not long after he went missing, Russia made it known to the new Pakhan—and the other Bratva groups—that the problem had been taken care of by the Hammer, a known Russian enforcer.”

“An assassin,” Curt said as his belly rolled. He did not like where this was heading. This could explain why they’d been unable to confirm Reeves was GRU.

“Yes, a government assassin. The Hammer has at least a dozen suspected kills, all Bratva who wouldn’t play nice with official channels and were seen as getting too big or greedy to contain.”

“Is there meaning behind the Hammer name, besides the obvious, I mean?” another man asked.

“At first we thought it was because he was old-school—from the hammer-and-sickle days of the Soviet Union—but another story has come our way. It seems that the Hammer’s first kill didn’t go smoothly. He and his target fought. The victim was finally taken out by several blows from a ball-peen hammer to the skull. Word is the crime scene was…brutal.”

Curt winced.

“The hit took place in Japan, and it’s the only incident in which investigators believe DNA from the killer was collected,” the analyst continued. “We’ve requested they provide the data for comparison to blood on the clothing of the men who attacked the president of Palau in the ballroom, in case some of the blood belongs to Keaton.”

“How long until we’ll have the results?” Curt asked.

“Unknown. The request was submitted less than two hours ago.” The man hit the button, and more faces appeared. “These are other kills attributed to the Hammer. We’re cross-checking with dates for when Parker Reeves was on leave from the Coast Guard, although it’s difficult, because like the first victim I showed, most simply disappeared. No precise date, just a range in which they went missing.

“Liberty—as she is now called—was in the Philippines at the time of the Pakan’s disappearance. The boat disappeared in December, which, as you all know, was after Parker Reeves also disappeared. We believe he had it repainted, numbered, and named. He then sailed for Palau and set himself up as charter captain Jack Keaton. His paperwork for entering the country was pitch-perfect. The guy knows boats and port protocol, and acquired every special permit he could get his hands on for his charter business—which gave him the perfect cover to search Palauan waters and islands for the missing Russian AUUV.”

It went without saying that having served with the US Coast Guard for five years, Parker Reeves likely knew boats better than he knew cars.

“There are various descriptions of the Hammer that have surfaced.” Next came the series of slides of Parker through the years. “But there was never anything specific—at least, outside Bratva circles—we believe a handful of Bratva know what the Hammer looks like, but they aren’t sharing that information. Our search on the name Veselov, however, produced one interesting result. The name was associated with a hit in Moscow. But the first name wasn’t Dimitri, it was Sophia.”

“Sorry I’m late, what did I miss?”

Curt turned to the door to see Rudy Fredrickson looking anxious and irritated. The man must’ve broken speed records to get here so soon. Curt didn’t meet his gaze, not wanting to offer a hint of who had informed him of the meeting.

“Nice of you to join us, Fredrickson,” someone snickered.

“Fuck you, Pfeiffer, I have a four-year-old at home who I couldn’t leave alone.” He took a seat at the table. “Some of us give a crap about our kids.”

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