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17 -CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - 1,181^17

"Sanchez's causing problems, boss."

"What problems?"

"The others seem to be putting pressure on him. Looks like he's thinking about changing his statement concerning Kalinkov."

The boss twisted his face into a diabolic grin. It was hard to believe that the devil's mask could be so cold. "If they can put pressure on Sanchez, then we can do so also. Actually, it already worked once."

0 – 0 – 0

Angrily, Charlie hit the wall next to the blackboard. The slightly uneven surface caused a welcome pain and he repeated the movement multiple times. He dove onto the couch, sensing the pulsating throbbing on the bottom side of his fist. He still wasn't sure if he'd not done something bad to his hand, but he didn't care. He didn't care about anything. If Don hated him, the one person whose approval he had always been fighting for – then what was the sense in anything?

His calculations were useless. He wasn't getting anywhere. Since he'd left the FBI some hours ago, he had been here, though it had been of no use to him. He'd not been able to concentrate on the case. Even though both Amita and Larry had called after their lessons to ask him how he was and also to see if they could help him, Charlie had refused. He didn't want to drag them into this issue. He didn't want to endanger them. He didn't want to carry out experiments about how many times one individual could, within a few days, make a serious mistake. He had already lost one person. He didn't want it to become more.

All of a sudden, Charlie felt infinitely lonely. He had lost his brother and wasn't sure if he could ever get him back. He nearly regretted that he had refused Amita's offer to come over. Right now he would have liked to hold her in his arms. The thought of her pushed aside every number and every formula and every mobster from his mind and he was about to call her when he stood abruptly. No, he had made up his mind to keep away from her and from Larry in the foreseeable future; one, in order not to be distracted and two, to prevent providing the mafia with another target.

More determinedly than he would have believed himself capable of, he returned to the house in order to escape the confines of the garage. Though he realized soon what an idiot he was. The deserted rooms of the Craftsman didn't really help him to get rid of this feeling of loneliness inside him. Not even his father was here.

Now come on, stop it! Charlie admonished himself impatiently. He knew that he was being selfish. The people he loved had to be safe, nothing else mattered. If to ensure this he had to be alone for some days, he was willing to pay the price. He didn't mind not seeing them for a while. No, really, as long as this way they were safe.

However, Don wasn't safe.

The next morning, things had already seemed to have settled a bit. The arguments with Don had faded back into the background to some degree. They were still present (a bit too present for Charlie's taste) when he thought about them, but the right distance to realize that his brother would be safe – or at least in a safer situation – the quicker Charlie finished his analysis and the mafia members were caught.

Charlie managed to work better. The world of numbers absorbed him and he didn't take long to find his way in to the new, but well-known surroundings and to find what he was looking for. The path to the end was plastered with hints, and here and there he could even find clear clues on the wayside. Sometimes he stumbled over some evidence on the way to which he always turned around to take a closer look at.

Just as he had now.

Maybe he had made an error after all?

However, Charlie by now had been working long enough both as a consultant for the FBI and as a mathematician to know that logic was much more reliable than gut feeling. If his calculations told him something he wouldn't have thought before or even something he at first didn't understand, then this meant by no means that the numbers and formulae were lying.

Be that as it may. Charlie had to tell someone, so he grabbed the phone. Maybe the federal agents would be able to make a sense of it.

"FBI, Special Agent Sinclair."

"Hey, David. I got a result from my network analysis that made me wonder."

David didn't have to think for long who was on the other end of the line. There weren't a lot of people that would that blurt things straight out like that. And one of them was the brother sitting opposite him, after all. "Hey, Charlie. Did you find out something?"

"You could say so. As I said, I couldn't quite understand it myself, but I went over it several times and I got the same result every time. In my analysis, José Sanchez comes up."

"Who?"

"José Sanchez. I've found him in the documents you gave me. The witness who accused Kalinkov."

"Ah, right." The cogs in his brain started turning faster. José Sanchez had come up in the analysis? Was he a member of the mafia? But he was Mexican! "And... what about him?"

"I don't know for sure, but it seems as though he'd been bought."

"Bought? By whom?"

Did David really need to ask? "Well, since he accused Kalinkov and Kalinkov to all appearances is the boss of the branch mafia, I guess the big mafia paid him to divert your attention onto the sub mafia and away from themselves."

"Sounds logical. So he's not a member of the mafia?"

"I can't rule that out, but it's not very likely either. Sanchez has, according to my current knowledge, contact with only one single person from the whole network, a certain Max Bolshojov. He's probably the financial backer, and also until now only involved in this one situation with you and the sub mafia, and thus Kalinkov. Therefore I take it that he's a kind of part timer who doesn't really belong to the group."

"Okay. Thanks, Charlie. I'll tell the others."

And David had hardly hung up when he turned to his colleagues. "Guys? Listen." When he saw them twist their heads away from their computer monitors and in his direction, he continued, "That was Charlie." David decided to, at first, pay no attention to the fact that Don's face suddenly seemed much more reserved. "He's found out that José Sanchez is a part of the network. He's probably a witness bought by the main mafia."

"Was that the person who accused Kalinkov?" Colby inquired. After all the questioning of the witnesses of the past days his head was swirling from names.

"Correct. That means that Kalinkov is probably innocent of Alex's death after all."

"Don't be so thoughtless about the word 'innocent'," Don admonished him grumbling.

"Don's right," Colby joined in. "Just because the main mafia wants to divert the indications to the branch mafia that doesn't mean that Kalinkov really hasn't got anything to do with Alex's death."

"That's right," David pointed out, "but now we have to go over all the circumstantial evidence against Kalinkov again. Who knows how many other things the main mafia might have manipulated. If Charlie's right in saying that they have the same aim, then it's clear that they want to play off against each other. Probably half of our information is wrong."

"Great. How nice to know that everything is always that simple. Anyway. I'll check the remaining circumstantial evidence we originally had against Kalinkov then. But even if he didn't pull the trigger himself that doesn't mean that he didn't at least give the order."

"So we at least won't get bored," David sighed while Colby stood up from his chair to gather further files.

David also rose from his seat. He wanted to head for the kitchen to go get his fourth cup of coffee for today and before that he wanted to ask Don if he too needed something. However, when he glanced at the man's thoughtful and bitter features, he spontaneously changed the words that were already waiting in his mouth to tumble out, "Hey, Don... what about... do you maybe want to talk about it? I'm just saying... You should take care not to lose the ability to speak."

Don stared at him gloomily. Then, however, he noticed David's hesitant confidence, and how his colleague tried to make him talk without it ending in shouting. The care and the courage it took to do it touched him because... hold on a minute, why was he doing it? Because... indeed because he cared for his boss?

"I miss him," Don wanted to say, though managed not to leave himself that wide open. Oh no, he damn sure wouldn't sob his heart out to David about his little brother. And David wouldn't understand anyway. Of course it wasn't long ago that Don had seen him, but after all it wasn't the physical presence Don was missing. Though nobody understood except for himself.

Don was longing to talk to someone about it, and at the same time found the thought disgusting. He was afraid of how the others might react to such behaviour from him. There were but two people on this planet with whom he could talk about things like these, and one of them was currently on the opposite side of the country. And the other...

A cynical voice piped up, Of course, talk about it with Charlie. It'll surely be a wonderful chat.

Don snorted slightly. He knew damned well why he preferred not showing his feelings. After all he was perfectly able of making an idiot out of himself on his own. The more the others knew about him, the more people could hurt him and that was something that Don wasn't keen on at all. He looked up again at David, making his gaze grimmer and shook his head. David understood that he wouldn't get off that easily another time and hurried into the kitchen.

0 – 0 – 0

Again the room was darkened, again it was only the perpetual street noise that disturbed the silence of the night; again it was as if it was in a bad crime story. This time, however, Malenkov was not in the right mood to sneer. He was unnerved. Nothing was happening. It seemed as if the others were in a better position than themselves and would be able to reach the goal more easily.

They, in their turn, just couldn't get out of trouble. Constantly there were obstacles that were keeping them from their goal. They weren't advancing and right now they were stuck. There was simply nothing happening.

"What about Sanchez?"

"We're making progress. I guess we'll soon have it at the point where he'll change his statement." And it's about time. It was only a matter of time before the cops would get in their way again because they wanted to arrest Kalinkov.

"And progress concerning the mission?"

"It's going fine," Malenkov answered, "at least for us." It was a hidden question. Malenkov hoped to get to know how the other departments of the organisation were advancing, how far away they were from their goal. For one thing was clear to all the members of the mob: it was the boss who pulled all the strings.

"So, we only have to wait for Budanov and his team."

Malenkov was satisfied with himself; he'd gained his information. Thus, he belonged to the circle of the confidants, the bosses. Nice to know. So he wouldn't be forced to leave and go his own way. He would also get a fair slice of the cake – always assuming that they would finally manage to make it.

"And now what about the cops?" It would mean a lot if they could only wipe them from their lists of ingredients.

The boss nodded slightly. He too had already thought about it. "We should once more concern ourselves with them more thoroughly. Watching the enemy. We have to know what they're doing. Or..." he paused; an apparently magnificent idea had crossed his mind. "Or we'll make sure that they do only what we want them to."

They locked stares not having to say anything. Malenkov had understood the order nonetheless. He'd been given free rein and it was good that way. He always worked better when he didn't have to bother about regulations. Or without any kind of scruples.

0 – 0 – 0

Charlie was again standing in front of the blackboards in the garage. After he had called David he had made relatively good progress. True, he hadn't achieved maximum performance since then, but that hadn't been necessary... at least he hoped so. Momentarily, his greatest fear was that he was missing something important because he wasn't fully on the case with his mind.

Charlie was annoyed, mostly with himself. Before, he'd always been able to concentrate fully on mathematics; why couldn't he do so anymore? Why was his mind so occupied with other things?

He closed his eyes. If, to add that, he was now beginning to argue with himself he wouldn't advance at all. His feelings had to stay out of it. Emotions and logic didn't fit together. If he now, on top of everything else, got upset, then in his mind it'd be mainly the ventral prefrontal cortex that would get stimulated, not the gyrus angularis, and if the distribution of energy looked that way, then he wouldn't be able to think, just able to feel, and then he wouldn't be able to find out what the mafia was planning and then they wouldn't advance and furthermore there'd be people in danger, and he would again screw up everything, and Don would continue to not talk to him...

Bang!

The still slightly blue-greenish side of his fist had again made contact with the wall extremely violently. But now it was really enough. It couldn't go on like this.

Charlie inhaled deeply. Concentrate. Concentrate on the case.

And then he was back again. He was again the mathematician for whom nothing seemed impossible. He calmly calculated, focused and without blinkers. He would finish this. He would find out which member of the mafia was responsible for what, what their original goal was, who belonged where.

Charlie didn't even realize that was dawn breaking as night gave way to day over him and the Craftsman. His hand automatically switched on the light before it got back into its position, becoming again a part of the calculating machine that Charlie was now. He was again deep in thought; everything was again the way it should be, at least for the time being.

Suddenly a hand was put over Charlie's mouth.