Somebody had gotten to the security videos and replaced them with one downloaded earlier. For two evenings, the thief would have had unobserved access to the storage facility.
Whoever did that had tech skills and Shaw was sure the thief had erased entry logs into the burgled offices. They also would have altered RFID information about entering and leaving the building itself.
“That’s hard hacking,” Shaw said. “Let’s focus on your IT people.”
Shaw came up with an idea for an undercover op. Marianne Keller arranged interviews between those in IT and an outside consultant hired by Harmon to consider opening an IT facility on the West Coast. For the gig, Shaw—in the role of Carter Stone—had donned the one business suit hanging in his Winnebago and a pair of glasses with non-magnifying lenses.
“I look corporate enough?” he asked Nilsson.
She replied, “Middle manager all the way.”
He sat in a bare office, yellow pad before him, and the employees filed in one by one. Shaw didn’t begin the discussion with the corporate move but let his purpose hang vaguely over them for five or so minutes as he asked about their career history at the company, where they’d worked before, if they had any complaints. Only when he sensed suspicion rising did he mention the move. He jotted their response, thanked them and then called in the next employee.
All the while he’d been gauging each man’s or woman’s reaction.
One was notably uncomfortable, his body language easy to read: guilt and worry. Shaw put him at ease right away, shifting to the relocation story. Paul LeClaire soon relaxed. Shaw stayed true to the role and, with a good businessman smile and a good businessman handshake, sent him off.
He called Nilsson. “We’ve got him. Now we need to find the trigger.”
She said, “Surveillance.”
“Right.”
Over the next couple of days they tailed LeClaire and listened to his public conversations and read his emails, as his employment contract allowed. The phone was issued by the company, but while they could geotrack it, they could not eavesdrop.
Shaw and Nilsson followed him to meetings with two men at a motel outside of town. Using a Big Ear microphone they picked up the men’s names: Ahmad and Rass, Saudi businessmen, brokers in the energy field. They learned too about the handover time and location: an abandoned factory on the Kenoah River.
Sonja Nilsson and he had taken their findings to Harmon, who was as dismayed as he was angry. “Paul? Really? We’ve been nothing but generous to him... Damn. Well, we’ve got a name, and you’ve got evidence. Now the FBI and policehaveto get involved.”
“Are you sure you want that?” Shaw had asked.
“What do you mean?”
Nilsson said, “Colter and I were talking.”
Shaw took over and offered the plan. “I think we should swap out the real S.I.T. for a fake one with a GPS chip in it.”
Nilsson added, “We let the exchange happen, then track the fake S.I.T. and find out who the buyer ultimately is.”
Harmon’s eyes had narrowed as he considered this—the sniper-focused mode. “Good. Put it together. I want his goddamn head.”
Shaw rose and stepped toward the door, trying to remember the formula for battlefield smoke.
10
Present day
We had another bidder.”
It was a half hour after he’d left Lenny Caster, following the encounter with Lemerov, aka Abe Lincoln. Shaw was once again with Marty Harmon in the man’s modest office.
They were sitting in front of the cluttered coffee table. The Swedish Alabaman security head, Sonja Nilsson, was here as well. Today in a silver jacket, black skirt, white blouse, small pearls.
The elfin man rubbed his frizzy hair and frowned. “Go on, Colter.”
“A Russian.” He explained about the attempted preemptive offer.
“How did he find you?” Nilsson asked.