Shattered Lies
Chapter 14
Behind her desk at the precinct, Kate pulls headphones over her ears. She listened to the recording back at the loft but hadn't taken down the emphasized words. Kate is running the sound clip laboriously through her computer now to make her notes. Castle wanted to come work with her, but she knew he had a chapter to finish and after getting up to make sure both Alexis and Kate had breakfast, looked like he could use another couple of hours of sleep.
Kate promised him that they could get together for lunch. With any luck, she'll have something by then. The detective had always thought of her Russian as pretty good, but listening for nuance is different than participating in a conversation. If she has to go syllable by syllable she will.
Carefully she makes a list of words in the order she hears them. They make no sense at all. Of course, it wouldn't be as straightforward as stringing them together for a message. Looking at a translation would help, and she starts to make one, humbled by needing to type several words into the Google translation application.
Castle walks off the elevator just as she finishes. "Any blinding flashes of Beckett brilliance?" he inquires.
"No, but you look cheerful - or proud of yourself."
"Perhaps a little of both. I'm ahead of schedule on the new Derrick Storm, and I made it through the exercises my physical therapist gave me without groaning once."
"Are you sure you followed instructions?"
"Kate, I'm wounded! Wait, that's true. I'm insulted. I followed them to the letter. I'm just glad to be making progress."
"More than I can say." She rolls her eyes as she passes him her list of words.
He scans down the column in English. "It looks like one of those word scrambles that come in those fun books Mother used to give me to work in when we were traveling cross country between theaters. I had to figure out what order the words went in."
"That's the problem, Castle. Russian has fewer grammatical rules than English, and the words don't have to be in as precise an order. In some ways that makes it easier to learn, but it makes this harder to figure out."
Castle runs his finger over the list. "Kate, how old did the people in that club look to you?"
"My age, maybe younger."
"So there's a chance that some of them were born here, rather than in Russia, and might just have Russian parents or grandparents."
"It's possible, Castle, but I don't see what you're getting at."
"Kate, that rapper is pretty young, at least from my point of view as the aging father of a teenaged girl."
Kate trails her finger over the skin revealed by the unusually sagging neckline of Rick's shirt. "Castle you're not that ancient."
"My point is that the rapper is young enough that he might think in English, not Russian, even if he raps in the language of his forbears. So the Russian words could be in the order they'd appear in English. Let me play with the English version and see what I get - after lunch - or better still, over lunch. I often think better in a convivial atmosphere."
"I'm almost afraid to ask. What convivial atmosphere are you talking about?"
"Hands Across the Table."
"You mean that place where they put all the food on one side of the table, and you sit on the other and have to reach for it?"
"It can make for some interesting collisions, don't you think?"
"Or be like eating in a college dining hall waiting for a food fight to break out."
Castle cups her cheek. "Come on Kate, it will be fun - and I've always loved food fights."
Kate covers the upward turn of her lips with her fingers. "Yeah, me too. But I think I'd better change first. I was wondering why you were wearing that shirt."
Kate by now you should know, I come prepared."
When Rick offers to lick the guacamole off her arm, Kate wishes they weren't in the middle of a crowded restaurant, but in between tries to satisfy his lust for oral gratification, he has been working. He's putting words together in ways that are starting to make sense as clues to places and times. He's also pointed out an undercurrent of threat. Trust a writer to detect that, but then he was the one who picked up on the messaging theme, to begin with.
By the time Kate pops the last pita dipping chip into his mouth, Rick's almost finished untangling the riddle. He gives her a list of three places to stake out and the times when something may go down. She's more grateful than ever for the extra resources Montgomery and Murphy have been able to put at her disposal.
From what Castle has so far, nothing is due to happen until the next day. She can catch up on writing her reports at the precinct. Maybe she'll even get a little help from her favorite wordsmith.
Jackson scans the readout on Russian operations in New York. Typically, he wouldn't be concerned with it. Domestic crime is the FBI's business; the company is more interested in national security. But Rick's name pops out at him. His son was at the epicenter of activity. And so was Kate. Of course. Rick is following her around like a puppy, the way he has for the past two years, except when he played guard dog. Jackson pages through the full report. A minor player was murdered, apparently for defying the will of Glava - or maybe the crime boss who fancies himself a potentate just had a temper tantrum. According to what Jackson's reading, there have been quite of few of those in the past few months, generally ending in violence, but nothing that garnered police attention.
The FBI, in the person of Kate's new boss Murphy, has been keeping an eye on the situation. Until the discovery of a body, nothing happened that was worthy of more than a notation in one of the FBI's voluminous files. But now Kate and Richard are involved. That bears watching.
If Glava is behaving irrationally, that makes him more dangerous, and if the kids are wading into that mess, anything could happen, and whatever does is unlikely to be good. Hunt could send Glava straight to hell easily enough, but that would prompt attention from overseas, possibly creating a worse situation. The Kremlin's boys are nastier - and more competent - than the Brighton Beach lackeys.
If Glava gets too out of hand, it's possible that the FSB will decide to take him out themselves. That could give the company a new handle on at least one of their operatives. Maybe Jackson's son and his girlfriend have opened up an unexpected opportunity. But if the FSB is involved, the couple may also be walking into a lot more trouble than they bargained for. Hunt can contact the listening post that intercepts FSB communications. If the Russian CIA decides to make the misbehavior of Glava their problem, they'll know about it. Jackson may have to step in, and the real games will begin.