3 - Buffalo Mountain: Ike Schwartz Mystery 3 by Frederick Ramsay

anxious to get an edge.”
    “They want to find out your weak spots so they can pull you down.”
    “Yes. And that leads us to Kamarov.” Ike unwrapped his biscotti. The rattle of cellophane drowned out Charlie’s words. “Do you mind, Ike?”
    “Sorry.” Ike slid the biscuit from its wrapper and tentatively dipped it in his coffee. “Go on.”
    “Okay, to Kamarov. He was not eliminated as we believed. He went to some place in Siberia called Novosibirsk and then disappeared from there. It looks like someone over here spent some serious money and committed their Russian assets to get him and squirrel him away. You know black programs?”
    “A black program…funding not logged in on anyone’s budget. Strictly ad hoc and not accountable to Congress, the Administration, or even God. Whose?”
    “We don’t know. We’re guessing FBI, but it could be anybody, Defense Intelligence Agency, White House, or one of the really deep units that we know for a certainty exists only by the footprints they occasionally leave behind.”
    “Kamarov could hardly tell them anything about the old Soviet intelligence that we don’t already know, and it’s all dated anyway.”
    Charlie did not seem to be his usual composed self today and Ike wondered why. Not a good sign. Charlie never seemed to worry about anything. “He came here, I’m guessing, at great expense because they think, or he convinced them, he could tell them secrets about us.”
    “Not us—you, the Agency. I don’t work there anymore, remember? Look, surely whoever is running the black program can find that stuff without him. I know half a dozen senators on the Intelligence Committee that would happily leak it.”
    “What if he had knowledge of 9-11?”
    “He couldn’t know anything about the Agency or 9-11. He’d already taken up residency in the frozen tundra by then.”
    “Suppose they didn’t know that. Let’s say he’s approached by whoever is behind this and let’s say all they want is some information about CIA operational failures in the past. They promise to send him to some place warm. But Alexei wants more—a lot more—so he increases his value by hinting he knows things about 9-11, never says he does or doesn’t, just intimates and…”
    Ike scratched his head and watched as the end of his biscotti detached and sank to the bottom of his cup. “Okay, he bargains his way into their program. The testimony from a spy of his caliber, whether true or false, would kill you. But what happens when they finally figure out he doesn’t know anything?”
    “They get rid of him and dump him on you—a little joke.”
    “Or, he goes snooping around and actually finds something that is, if not as valuable as 9-11, worth keeping him around for.”
    “Like what?”
    Ike tried soaking the biscotti again. Timing seemed to be everything. “I don’t know. By the way, what are your people doing up at Callend College?” Charlie’s normally ruddy face faded to off-white. “Uh oh, do we have a problem? And here’s another thought. One of your people recognized him. He’s living down near Floyd, for God’s sake. What knucklehead put him there, I wonder? And the suits in DC are told and they order him terminated. End of story.”
    “Or, going back to your first thought, his new employers discover he’s useless and drop him themselves.”
    “It would be easier to just retire him to Miami Beach.” This time the biscotti end fell into Ike’s lap on its transit from cup to lips.
    “…or Rio de Janeiro, Ike. Until we know for sure, we have a serious problem. He’s dead. He’s in your jurisdiction. Why is that? Did someone find out about…Peter? Is someone sending you a message?”
    “Are you absolutely sure the Agency didn’t put him there?”
    Charlie looked down at the table’s surface. “Ike, I honestly don’t know.”
    “They left his driver’s license like they wanted whoever found him to believe he was Harris. Well, maybe not…you