The mother lode, she’d said. And that was how Boldt thought of it.

Most of Seattle’s former canneries and icehouses, the brick boathouses and sail-making workshops, had long since been razed and replaced with co-op housing, restaurants, or tourist traps. A few structures remained, some rusted, some crumbling, the majority along the northern shore of Lake Union’s ship canal, the last salty smell and briny taste of a history that would never return. Computer chips had replaced tins of smoked salmon; software, for soft-shelled crabs. Boldt rode in the passenger seat of John LaMoia’s Jetta as LaMoia turned down an alley. The southernmost boundary of Ballard was a seawall containing the canal and the seagull-white-stained wooden pilings supporting it. The empty lanes of litter-encrusted blacktop running between vacant buildings were reminiscent of the tumbleweeded streets of the Old West. The wind that rose off the water whispered like sirens in Boldt’s ear.

“That’s the place.” LaMoia pointed out a set of barely legible numerals above a rust-red door on the side of a corrugated-steel building with a tin roof.

Boldt removed his department-issue Glock, a weapon that had replaced the Beretta 9mm two years earlier. He checked out the gun, an uncharacteristic act.

LaMoia had spent the ride over going on and on about his terrorism seminar, part of a continuing education course, once again expressing his concern over the devices believed to be in terrorists’ hands. Nearing the end of the course, he had one last session late afternoon that he described as a “field trip” to watch demonstrations of some of the explosives and triggering devices. “But the weirdest weapon puts out something called Electromagnetic Pulse, EMP.” LaMoia’s enthusiasm could make anything sound interesting.

“You tried to explain this before,” Boldt interrupted. He was interested in technology only if it fit his own needs-he didn’t need to try to understand everything that was out there. He dumped water on LaMoia’s flames before suffering an explanation of EMP. Thankfully the water rolled off LaMoia’s back.

“Liz was sleeping with this guy David Hayes,” Boldt said. “Six years ago, when it all fell apart on me? That was Hayes. There’s a videotape. A sex tape. This guy, Svengrad, may have it. So if that comes up in the discussion, that’s why. I don’t want you looking surprised.”

LaMoia sighed, glancing away uncomfortably.

“You’re allowed to be surprised now.”

“I am.”

“It would be nice to keep it off the Internet, off the evening news, out of the bank’s next board meeting.”

“I imagine it would.”

“And you might think that’s why we’re here.”

“I might.”

“It isn’t. We’re here to bring Alekseevich in for questioning. We have a partial-never mind that it’s inadmissible.”

“Doesn’t bother me.”

“We not only have a Russian brand of cigarette but, as it turns out, S &G, Svengrad’s company, has the exclusive import contract for the entire West Coast. What we want, what we need, is to put a pack of those cigarettes into Alekseevich’s pocket. That, and the partial, give him to us.”

“He might come voluntarily.”

“Right,” Boldt said with a snort. “That’s a strong possibility.”

“If things go south in there?”

“No matter how badly this goes, we talk our way out. We walk out. The people behind this-and maybe that’s Svengrad-have gone to great lengths to avoid class A felony charges. That speaks volumes, I think. They’re not going to hassle two cops. They’re extremely careful. We do our job. We grab up Alekseevich if he’s in there, and we leave.”

“Not my style,” LaMoia said. “I’d rather shoot it out.”

Despite the various burdens weighing on Boldt’s shoulders he found room to laugh.

“You’re a bundle of laughs, Sarge.”

“That’s what they say.”

“No… that’s not what they say.”

Boldt flashed him a look. “Then what do they say?”

“I think I’d like to keep my job.” With that, LaMoia popped open the door and headed toward the building.

As they approached through a light drizzle, Boldt said, “Seventeen million reasons for lying to us, don’t forget.”

“You think?” LaMoia asked, wondering if the embezzlement trail led to this rusting building.

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

LaMoia knocked and they entered a small office area containing a pair of ancient gunmetal-gray steel desks loosely shaped into an L, a woman receptionist in her late forties with big hair and red nails, some whiteboards on the wall scribbled with colorful reminders, and four large color posters, all showing busty women with pink tongues. Caviar ads, but oddly targeting readers of Playboy. The receptionist called through on the telephone. Boldt could hear an extension ring out back.

“Silicon Valley,” LaMoia said, pointing to one of the girly posters, a nearly naked black woman barely out of her teens working a jackhammer on a city street. The implants grafted to her chest accounted for LaMoia’s comment. She wore a yellow hard hat that bore the American flag. The words above her read: “If it smells fishy… ” The jackhammer aimed into the seam of a superimposed can of caviar, beneath which it read: “… you’re in the right place-Svengrad, Beluga Negro.”

They were admitted into a cool warehouse that smelled sour with fish. Their escort was a well-dressed, darkly complected man in his early thirties with a fairly thick accent. Not Alekseevich, according to the sheet in Boldt’s inside coat pocket.

Steel mesh shelving was crowded with carefully arranged cardboard boxes. The shiny gray concrete floor was marked with bright yellow lane lines courtesy of OSHA, while overhead mercury vapor lights lent human skin a sickly green tinge. To Boldt’s disappointment, the warehouse was quiet, void of human activity.

“It isn’t every day we get a visit from Seattle’s finest,” their escort said.

He had the right lingo and had done a good job of wearing down the edges of his accent, all of which told Boldt he’d probably been in the States for some time. The nice suit was somewhat unexpected though not surprising, given Beth LaRossa’s description of the two who had pressured her husband. The man led them across the warehouse floor to a glass box of an office from where a muffled recording of a soprano’s voice carried. Boldt liked opera.

Their escort opened the door for them but did not enter himself.

The office reminded Boldt of his own-a space within a space, and little more. It was a place of business, heaped with paperwork. The man behind the desk was broad-shouldered with pinprick black eyes, a barroom nose, and a salt-and-pepper beard, carefully trimmed. He too wore a dark, tailored suit, but a pair of more workmanlike, rubber-soled black shoes revealed themselves from below the large, leather-top desk, a piece of furniture incongruously out of place. Boldt knew better than to automatically assume this man was Svengrad. A manager perhaps. An employee.

Fan lines edged his eyes as he rose and introduced himself. “General Yasmani Svengrad.” He made no offer for them to sit down, and remained standing himself. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’ve lost something.”

Boldt picked up a trace of British in his speech. The man sucked air between his two front teeth-either a tic or an attempt to fight a painful tooth. Boldt felt taken aback and slightly intimidated, not an easy feat. Svengrad was a perfectly proportioned, enormous man. He stood six foot four or five, with hands like baseball mitts. But where some men looked big, Svengrad’s proportions confused the eye. A trompe l’oeil of a man, like someone from Alice in Wonderland.

But it was more than the personage. Prior to coming here, Boldt had taken what little had been passed him in the men’s room and had dug first into S &G Imports and then into its notorious owner, quickly reading up on the man courtesy of the Internet. The picture that unfolded explained OC’s desire to turn an employee as a state’s witness and catalog the steady flow of information that resulted. Yasmani Svengrad would not fall easily.