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  Casey looked over and saw that his pick-up was, in fact, parked on the side of the house. Anton had delivered on his promise. It’s good to have a cop on your side, Casey thought. “No,” he said. “Sorry to disappoint you. I had an accident at work and was in the hospital until this morning.”

  Vince placed both hands over his mouth and gasped. “Oh my God! Are you all right?” If the comment had been made with the same animation from anyone else, Casey would have thought they were patronizing him. Vince, however, was deeply concerned with the well-being of all of his friends, and most of his acquaintances. He saved his hatred for gay-bashers and child molesters. Casey agreed with Vince, at least on that issue. Although Casey harbored a deep resentment for others, as well.

  “I’m fine. Just a couple bruised ribs and a headache that won’t seem to go away. Doc says that’ll be the case for the next few days,” Casey said.

  “Well, you better get some rest then,” Vince said. “And don’t you worry about dinner, honey. I’m gonna make you a nice green bean casserole tonight and bring it right on over. Already cooked and everything, so you don’t have to even turn on the oven. I’m gonna go get started right now. I’ll have Allen pick up some fresh bread on the way back from work, too. Don’t you worry about a thing,” he jabbered on as he started back across the street, “Vince is gonna take care of you. If you need anything...Pepper! Get away from that dog shit! You have food in the house if you’re that hungry, stupid bitch...if you need anything, just holler, okay? Bye now. Pepper, c’mon!” Casey laughed as Vince’s dog gobbled up the last of the dog droppings someone else had left by the side of the road to bake in the sun. Mid-morning snack finished, Pepper turned in a blur and took off after her master.

  At least he didn’t have to cook tonight. Casey went inside and put his hospital paperwork on the kitchen counter. He opened a drawer and removed a pair of scissors to cut the emergency room identification off of his wrist. When he closed the drawer the phone rang, as if on cue. Casey picked up the receiver and answered. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Shenk, uh, Casey?”

  “Yes?”

  “Hi. This is Susan Williams, we talked on the phone the other day.”

  “I remember you, Susan. I don’t get many women with Master’s Degrees in Iranian Studies knocking down my door,” Casey quipped. Despite his bravado on the phone, Casey was actually slightly nervous. He didn’t get any women knocking down his door, as K-Mart Mary so aptly pointed out to him, let alone intelligent women. So the fact he talked to the same girl three times in one week was something, wasn’t it? “What can I do for you?”

  “Actually, I have information for you,” Susan said. “I found out where the threats on your website came from. Not who sent them, but at least where they originated.”

  Casey had forgotten about the threats. After the past thirty hours, the comments on his blog seemed a lifetime ago. “Really? Where were they from?”

  “Russia,” Susan said. “Specifically, Saint Petersburg.”

  Silence.

  “Casey?”

  Casey was trying to figure out the significance of the location in his head and forgot Susan was on the other end of the phone. “Sorry. So what does that mean? The Russians sending me threats?” Casey sat down on the sofa to relieve the pressure on his insides.

  “It means you were right. At least something you said in your post about the Baltic Venture was right.”

  “Wow.”

  “You thought you might have been wrong about the Russians chasing down stolen missiles?” Susan asked.

  “No, not that. I’m just surprised someone from Russia actually reads my blog. I thought maybe we were dealing with some overweight shut-in from North Dakota,” Casey laughed. “So, who do you think wrote the comments?”

  “I’m not sure,” Susan said. “It could have been anybody, but it was obviously someone with a vested interest in keeping the missile shipment quiet.”

  “The sellers?”

  “Or maybe the Russian government,” Susan said. “Maybe they didn’t want the world to know they can’t control their own weapons inventory. Just like you said.”

  Casey smiled at that possibility. Not only was he able to put together the truth by reading between the lines of the open sources, but, for the first time, someone actually acknowledged it. Unfortunately, in this case, it wasn’t a TV news magazine or the Wall Street Journal.

  “So should I take these threats seriously?” Casey asked.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Susan offered. “If it was anything more than just some comments sent over the internet, I may think differently, but right now I’d say no. Sticks and stones, and all that.”

  Casey gingerly stroked the bandages around his torso and wished his work truck had only called him names. “Alright, then. I’ll just leave it alone. At least until a Russian goon shows up at my door and beats the crap out of me. Then all bets are off.”

  “Well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen. For your sake and the Russian goon’s,” Susan laughed. “But I would be careful what else I put on my blog about the Baltic Venture, since we know they’re reading it. The Russians anyway,” she added, echoing the warning of Phil’s CIA friend. After a night to sleep on it, Susan thought he was probably right about Casey’s blog posts maybe bringing unwanted trouble to his door—Russian goon or otherwise.

  Casey detected a slight hesitation in Susan’s speech before her last statement. “What? You think somebody else besides someone in Saint Petersburg might be reading my blog?” he asked her.

  “You did bring Israel into this, didn’t you?”

  “No,” Casey fired back, “they brought themselves into it. I just brought the probability of their involvement out into the open.” Casey was impressed, and flattered, that Susan had apparently read his blog again. This chick must dig you, man, he thought to himself.

  “But the Israeli prime minister? And the Russian president? You called them by name, Casey. You don’t think somewhere, somebody might not want that information getting out? They’ve obviously tried to keep their parts in this whole thing secret up to this point, as you have also pointed out.”

  This not-so-veiled reprimand made Casey rethink his earlier impression of Susan’s desires for him, putting his ego in check. “Are you scared something bad’s gonna happen?” he asked. “Hell, I presented the case that justified Israel’s actions. Netanyahu doesn’t want Iran to have nukes, and he damn sure doesn’t want them to have a missile system like the S-300. That would add a medium-range layer to Iran’s air defenses which consist mainly of old batteries of Russian Tor-M1 missiles. Do you think Israel, let alone the U.S., wants to face those nets if they go the route of pre-emptive air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities? Hell no. Netanyahu’s just keeping his options open, that’s all. They found out about the Russian missiles on that ship and they just want to take them out of the loop before they become an issue. Iran has attempted to buy these missiles legitimately before and the Russians caved into peer pressure and wouldn’t sell them. Israel was betting on Russia not having a change of heart—meaning he thought the sale probably wasn’t legit—so the prime minister had a nice chat with the president, and now five Russian ships are in the Atlantic to try and clean up the mess. Simple.”

  “I understand all that, Casey” Susan said, “but there may be others who don’t. What if you get more threats? Serious threats?”

  “So?”

  “I’m just saying be careful, that’s all. You don’t stir up a hornets’ nest just to see if you might get stung,” Susan said. “Chances are, you will.”

  “Nice,” Casey laughed. “You sound like a football coach. I appreciate the concern, really, but I don’t think anybody could hurt me more than I am right now.”

  Susan’s building anger with Casey quickly subsided before she lost her temper and said something she might regret later. Instead, she asked, “What happened? Are you saying you’re injured?”

  “Yeah,” Casey
smiled. She actually sounds concerned, he thought. Maybe she does dig me after all. “It’s not that bad, though,” Casey lied. He thought he would have been better off taking a few hits from a Russian mobster, given the choice. “I got into an accident at work, that’s all.”

  “What kind of accident?” Susan asked.

  “Rolled my truck into a tree.”

  “What?”

  “My vending truck,” Casey said. “I fill vending machines from a piece of shit truck. The brakes decided they didn’t want to cooperate yesterday morning, so instead of broadsiding a station wagon or wrapping horns with a semi, I opted for the tree. Wouldn’t have been so bad if the damn truck didn’t tip over on its side in the process.”

  Susan truly felt sorry for him. Even though they had only consulted on the Baltic Venture case over the phone once or twice, she was starting to like him. She almost felt like he was a co-worker, but not one of the ones she despised at her office. “So how bad is it?”

  “The truck? I’d say it’s finally time to put it to pasture,” Casey said.

  “No, asshole. I mean, how bad are you hurt?” Susan asked.

  “A couple of bruised ribs and a hell of a red mark the shape of a seat belt on my shoulder and waist. Nothing a little convalescent time off won’t cure.” Casey’s bosses gave him the next week off. They paid for the hospital bill and promised to get a new truck. They also vehemently insisted he rest up and get healed. His health was the most important thing. Casey knew they were sucking up to him to avoid a lawsuit. That seemed like a common theme with the company. They thought Casey might get a lawyer who would argue that Casey had, for years, brought to the owners’ attention the shoddy state of the Vandura, yet in order to save money, they willingly put their employee’s life at risk by insisting that he continue to drive a vehicle that was only a hair’s breadth, or brake pad, away from killing him.

  What his bosses didn’t know was that litigation would have never even occurred to Casey. He thought people in America were too willing to sue each other in order to bank enough cash so they wouldn’t have to work for the rest of their lazy lives. Casey wasn’t one of those people. In his mind, Casey truly believed that shit really does happen, and then you die. It was just a matter of whether you chose to wallow in that shit, or dust yourself off and keep going.

  “So you fill vending machines?” Susan asked, taking advantage of Casey’s openness to try and find out a little bit more about him.

  “It keeps the lights on,” Casey said. He wondered if she might think he was beneath her, just because of his present occupation.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to imply anything,” Susan said quickly. She was afraid Casey might have gotten the impression that she thought he was beneath her, just because of his present occupation. “I just never would have guessed you filled soda machines.”

  “And snack machines. I’m multi-talented,” Casey joked. “I didn’t always have this job. It’s just something I fell into. It lets me set my own hours pretty much, and, like I said, it pays the bills.”

  Susan was relieved that Casey took her comment in stride. She decided to steer the conversation away from what was turning into an uncomfortable line of question and answer. Truthfully, she didn’t care what his job was. He was obviously smart, and he had certainly helped her out this week. “Well, I hope you get to feeling better soon,” Susan said. “But listen, reading your blog postings about the Baltic Venture...I hope you don’t mind if I go back to that subject.”

  “No, not at all,” Casey said. He was also relieved that they were no longer talking about his employment situation.

  “You always seem to come up with the right questions. More importantly, you seem to have an answer for each of those questions. But something is still bugging me about the whole scenario.” The more Susan had poured over Casey’s, and by association, her theory about the hijacking, she felt a nagging question lingering in the back of her mind. She wasn’t able to articulate it until last night. “Who told the Israelis about the arms shipment?”

  Casey hadn’t thought about that aspect. He was quick to deduce, through circumstantial evidence, mostly, that Benjamin Netanyahu went to Russia to tell Medvedev about the stolen missiles and the plan to sell them to Iran. But Susan asked an important question. Who told Israel?

  “I don’t know, really. I just assumed the Mossad or Aman had their fingers on the pulse of anything being sold to Iran,” Casey said, referring to the special operations and military intelligence branches of the Israeli Intelligence Community. “I guess I never really thought about it.”

  Susan was selfishly glad that Casey didn’t have that answer, too. But she also wanted his help to try and come up with at least a plausible answer. Now she felt like an analyst again, or even like an investigator, and she needed to bounce ideas off of a colleague to solve the case.

  “That’s not a bad assumption,” Susan said. “The Mossad, in particular, takes great pains to know everything about Iran’s military activities, sanctioned or not. And that especially includes the addition of anything to their military arsenal.”

  Casey slowly got up from the couch and brought the phone with him to the refrigerator. He retrieved a Diet Coke from the door and went over to his computer. “Okay, if we agree the Mossad found out—I’m not even going to guess how—the riddle is solved, right?” Casey woke his computer from hibernation and watched the headlines scroll slowly by on the news ticker at the top of the screen.

  “I suppose,” Susan said, disappointed. Some riddle. She was hoping to add something to unlocking the intrigue that surrounded the Baltic Venture hijacking. What she believed was another unanswered question ended up being a question not worth asking in the first place. The answer was obvious, and really didn’t matter. She looked at the small digital clock on her desk and then again at her watch, in case there was a time difference. Both confirmed that it was already almost eleven o’clock. “I guess I should get back to work,” she said. “Look, Casey, thanks for all your....”

  “Wait a second,” Casey interrupted. He was about to say goodbye as well, when a headline on the ticker grabbed his attention. He moved his cursor over the moving link, opening the story in a new window.

  “What is it?” Susan asked.

  “Hold on.” Casey quickly scanned the article. The meat was in the first two paragraphs, and the remainder was background and history. “This article from the BBC service says the hijackers of the MV Baltic Venture just demanded a 750,000 euro ransom for the return of the ship and her crew,” he told her.

  “You’re kidding,” Susan said. “Why now? It’s been, what, two weeks? Two weeks since the hijacking?”

  Casey read the first part of the story again. He was trying to reconcile this new development with his theory of a stolen shipment the Russians wanted back quietly. He thought for sure he had figured it all out, but he hadn’t counted on a ransom demand. Not this late in the game. “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s talk this through,” Susan said, also wondering what the significance of the ransom demand was, if any. “Maybe it doesn’t change anything. Think about it. You asked the question yourself in the first post. Who were the hijackers? We still don’t know. The article doesn’t say anything about them does it?”

  “No. Just that a ransom demand was received by the ship’s owners,” Casey confirmed.

  “Okay, so we know the ship was hijacked, and the parties responsible waited two weeks to demand anything in return for the ship’s release. No one ever said they had to be smart hijackers. Anyway, they’re making a demand now, so that still doesn’t change the fact that the Russians are on their way with three warships to get the Baltic Venture back—and with it, their stolen missiles. Nothing is different, except now the hijackers want money,” Susan concluded.

  “But why now? Why not two weeks ago? One week ago?” Casey had a problem with essentially throwing out this new piece of the puzzle. He was determined to make it fit. He just didn’t know how.

>   Susan thought maybe she was too quick to dismiss the ransom demand after hearing Casey’s reluctance to do so. Still, she focused on what they knew up to this point, and she would have been content with sticking to those facts, but Casey thought there was something else they were missing. She decided to go along for the ride. Or at least play devil’s advocate.

  “What if the hijackers had communications issues and couldn’t get a ransom demand out until today?” Susan offered, though she didn’t buy that excuse herself.

  “Not likely,” Casey said.

  “What if the hijackers just discovered the missiles? Maybe they had other plans until they saw what was onboard and then decided to go for the money, instead.”

  “Even one S-300 battery is worth five times that much, isn’t it?” Casey asked. “Wouldn’t they ask for more? No, I don’t think they even know the missiles are there,” he reasoned.

  A thought suddenly came to Susan’s mind. She surprised herself with the seemingly illogical idea, but shared it anyway. Before she had completely worked it out in her head. “What if the hijackers knew the missiles were there all along?”

  “How so?” Casey asked.

  “Okay,” Susan said. “What if the hijackers knew the Baltic Venture was going to be transporting a cargo of contraband S-300s and pirated the ship before it could get to its intended destination?”

  “Algeria,” Casey said.

  “Whatever. The point is, they waited this long because they only wanted to stop the shipment from reaching the Iranians. They never intended on ransoming the ship for money.”

  “So why demand a ransom now?” Casey asked.

  Susan ran her fingers through her hair and then massaged the bridge of her nose. “Fuck, I don’t know.” She thought she had been on to something, but the ransom demand actually did throw a monkey wrench in everything.

  “Well, hold on. Don’t give up yet,” Casey said. “So the hijackers only wanted to stop the shipment. Forget about the ransom demand, we can come back to that. What we need to know first is: who would go to the trouble of hijacking a ship carrying arms for Iran, just to keep those arms from ever getting to Iran?”