Free The Patrick Bowers Files - 05 - The Queen by Steven James Page A

up Ardis Pickron’s mobile phone records.

13
    Elk Ridge, Wisconsin
    From his vantage point in the log cabin nine hundred meters from the Schoenberg Inn, Alexei Chekov monitored the entrance using the US military issue night vision binoculars he’d purchased last month on the black market in Afghanistan.
    He didn’t like surprises, and he wanted to have at least a cursory idea of how many people he would be dealing with at the meeting at 1:00 tomorrow afternoon. He’d been told three, but he anticipated a lot more had to be involved, at least at some level.
    Through his sources, he knew that the team would be arriving tonight.
    To monitor them, he’d taken the liberty of accessing this cabin. It’d been empty when he arrived, and he was hoping the owners wouldn’t return or he’d be forced to make sure they would not be a problem. That might get messy, and that was a situation he would prefer to avoid.
    So far he’d seen nine people arrive at the Schoenberg Inn, a sprawling, stylish hotel that looked out of place here in the northwoods.
    All of the people he’d seen had parked in locations that allowed the lights from the front of the Schoenberg to illuminate their faces from more than one direction as they entered—an indicator that told Alexei they were either innocent civilians or, if they were operatives, they were inexperienced.
    Using an infrared camera, he’d photographed all nine and was currently running their photos through the Federal Digital Database’s facial recognition to confirm their identities. So far he’d identified four people from Eco-Tech—three men and one woman.
    Because of their carelessness while entering the hotel, Alexei was surprised someone as meticulous and careful as Valkyrie was working with them.
    Already, $2,000,000 had been wired to their account: Valkyrie had informed him of this. Alexei was here to deliver $1,000,000 more as well as the access codes he’d gotten from Rear Admiral Colberg that morning. The final payment of $1,000,000 would be delivered upon completion, after the message had been sent to and received by the US government at 9:00 p.m. Saturday night. That was all he’d been told—a message sent to the government.
    He would pick up that money from a drop point tomorrow prior to the deadline.
    When his phone rang and he saw who it was, he quickly answered.
    Nikolai Demidenko, his contact at the GRU.
    â€œIn reference to Valkyrie, all I have found, my brother,” Nikolai said, “are some suspect ties to an Islamic charity based in Pakistan. But that is all.”
    â€œPakistan?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSend me the details and keep looking. I will forward the usual amount to your account.”
    â€œYes, yes, of course.”
    Islamic charities?
    Informative.
    Alexei had been on a few cases in Pakistan himself over the years. Perhaps he and Valkyrie had associations with some of the same people. Something to keep in mind. Wait and see what else Nikolai could dig up.
    Alexei had grown used to getting very little sleep but decided he would watch the Inn for two more hours and then go to bed.
    Until then he would observe the premises, doing the job he had been hired to do.
    Simply.
    Professionally.
    To the best of his ability.

    The phone records confirmed my theory.
    At 1:54 p.m. an incoming call had reached Ardis Pickron’s cell phone.
    The conversation hadn’t ended until 1:58 p.m.
    Before the state troopers left, one of them had driven to Mrs. Frasier’s house and found out that the oven clock she’d looked at when she heard the last shot was six minutes slow, so the murders would actually have occurred at 1:54 rather than 1:48.
    Someone had called Ardis’s cell almost immediately after the murders.
    And yet, now, the phone was charging in the master bedroom.
    So the killer went back upstairs to answer the phone?
    Possible.
    The call had come from an unknown,