An Insignificant Case

Chapter Thirty

CHAPTER THIRTY

Henry Roman made the call on a burner phone as soon as the call with Charlie ended.

“We may have a big problem,” Roman told the man on the other end of the line.

“Calm down and talk to me.”

Roman related what Charlie had told him. “He’s going to use the information the mother gave him to get Sabatini to turn over the flash drive. You know what that means.”

“Of course I do.”

“We’ve got to stop him.”

“‘We’? Are you going to take care of the problem?”

“You mean… No. I couldn’t…”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Can you get Max to try again?”

“He’ll be reluctant after what happened the last time he sent his men after Sabatini, but he’ll have to. He’s the only one trained for this kind of thing.”

“He’s got to do it soon. Webb is going to the farm to talk to Sabatini.”

“There’s the motion hearing. Sabatini will be vulnerable going to court and returning to the farm.”

“Great idea. I won’t be at the hearing.”

“Oh. Where do you plan to be?”

“I told Webb I was going to San Francisco, but I could go anywhere that’s not near Portland when this thing goes down.”

Leon Golden called Morris West in a panic.

“You were wrong, Morris. I’m being spied on. The man you sent went over the whole house. There are taps on my phone and microphones secreted around the house.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Do I sound like this is funny?”

“Did Lucas have an idea who installed the taps?”

“No, but he said it was the type of devices the military uses, and who do we know who runs a private militia?”

“You think Max Unger is listening in on your conversations?”

“I don’t know, but his men are all over the estate, day and night. They could have done it while I was sleeping. What should I do, Morris? Is Max going to kill me? Do you think he killed Gretchen and Yuri?”

“That crazy painter has been charged with killing Yuri and Gretchen,” Morris said.

“What if he was set up? What should I do? If Max’s men are going to murder me—”

“You’d be dead by now. If Max killed Yuri and Gretchen, he’d have come after you too. Look, I’ll talk to Lucas and see if he has any idea who put the listening devices in your house. Meanwhile, try to get a hold of yourself. I don’t want someone calling me and telling me that you’re in the hospital with a coronary.”

West ended the call, and Golden stared at the phone. He shut his eyes and took deep breaths. That didn’t help, so he went to his bar and took out a bottle of single-malt scotch.

Oregon is the ninth-largest state in the United States, but its population is only slightly more than four million people, most of whom reside in Portland, Eugene, Salem, and Medford, cities that are located on I-5, the interstate highway that runs from Mexico to Canada. Once you are a relatively short distance east or west of the highway, you find small towns and wilderness.

Max Unger waited until the sun went down before driving toward the coast. Suburban developments yielded to farmland before all signs of civilization disappeared on either side of a two-lane highway that ran between evergreen forests.

After he’d been driving for three-quarters of an hour, Unger spotted the break in the towering trees and turned off the highway onto an old logging road. A quarter of a mile in, he saw a car with its lights off parked on the side of the road. Unger stopped next to the car, and the drivers rolled down their windows.

“Two days from now, there’s a hearing on pretrial motions at ten in the morning,” the man in the first car said. “They’ll bring Weiss to court. That’s your chance to grab him when he returns to the farm.”

“You have to find someone else,” Unger said. “A DA and some detectives came to National Security. They know men who worked for the firm attacked the farm, and Webb knows Henry represented me in a case. I can’t be involved anymore.”

“You don’t get it, Max. You are involved, whether you like it or not. If the authorities get their hands on the flash drive, we’re all going to prison. Once they see the movie, you’ll be an accessory to murder.”

“I’m already an accessory to murder. A second attempt on Weiss is too big a risk.”

“You don’t have a choice. No one else has the personnel to pull this off. Weiss is under tremendous pressure to turn over the flash drive. He’s only holding on to the drive because he’s crazy. If he were sane, he’d have given it up a long time ago. Webb could convince him to turn over the drive at any moment.”

“He’s got police guarding him around the clock.”

“And you can muster overwhelming force. You do this kind of thing all over the world for two-bit dictators. This time, you’ll be doing it to save your life.”