Before talking with Ro, I’d been flirting with the idea of giving Walcott a pass. I’d thought, maybe he wasn’t as bad as a guy like Madatov. Now I wondered if he was worse, skulking around in the shadows, enabling other people’s crimes, and growing fat in the process.
After the conversation I googled Walcott, so I’d seen his jowly face. That made him a tangible target. But there was nothing online about Madatov. No biography. No photograph. That made him a mystery. So that evening as I sat outside his house in Hell’s Kitchen in the van I’d stolen from Norman Davies, I willed him to come out. I wanted to put a face to a name, as if that would somehow make it easier to size the guy up.
I’d been watching for half an hour when a car pulled up outside the house. It was a late-model town car, the rounded version, in obligatory black. I reached for my camera. The front door opened, and a security guard came out. He looked up and down the street, then ushered someone out. A man. But not Madatov. It was his lawyer. Roberto di Matteo. I’d googled him, too.
After another ten minutes the only light in any of the upstairs windows went out. Then the same procedure played out with a town car arriving and a security guard checking the street. Only this time two women left the house. Madatov’s mistresses. They were both tall and blond with short mink jackets and shorter leather skirts. Their legs were long and their heels were high, and they moved with a practiced elegance.
Another hour went by, and there was still no sign of Madatov. He must have been there earlier, to meet with the lawyer. But now the house was dark. He could still be home, but asleep. Or he could have slipped out unnoticed to take care of some private business. Heads or tails…
In training at Fort Huachuca we were taught never to go into a building cold. To always wait for intel. For plans. Blueprints. Eyewitness accounts. Anything to give us an edge. But in the field, we soon discovered that intel was often wrong. Plans could be out-of-date. Blueprints, inaccurate. Accounts, false. So we learned to read buildings, and their circumstances and surroundings. Then decide for ourselves whether to go in.
This building was designed to discourage intruders. It had six stories, the same as the Masons’ building, which was the historic limit for the area. So there were no taller neighboring buildings to drop down from. The front door was modern. It didn’t match the rest of the façade. That was deliberate. It was to draw attention to the giant lock. The door glass was laminated and I’d guarantee it was real, not like at the courthouse. The first- and second-floor windows were barred. They used a subtle decorative pattern, but they looked strong. There were no downpipes to climb. No trees with convenient limbs to give you a boost. Cameras were mounted on the wall, ostentatiously angled toward the steps. There was an oversized alarm box, complete with a monitoring company’s warning signs. Inside, there were guards. Two were on duty, with maybe more stood down. The ones I could see were tall and wide. They moved like soldiers, and they were armed. They carried radios and constantly appeared busy, checking monitors and tapping away at keyboards. Their workstation was brightly lit and it was huge, like it had been taken from a major corporate headquarters.
I took in all the detail, and I was encouraged. The alarm system might alert the security guards but there was no way it would make a sound or link to a monitoring station. If Madatov was the heavyweight he was reputed to be, the last thing he’d want would be noise, attracting attention and maybe prompting someone to call the cops. Likewise, he’d want to avoid any scenario that could bring overeager rent-a-cops snooping around his premises. It would be a similar story with the cameras. The external ones would be linked to the guards’ monitors, but if there were any at all inside they wouldn’t go any higher than the first floor. Madatov wouldn’t want anyone seeing—or recording—what he was up to and who was with him. Carrick had mentioned that Madatov was the only resident, so there was no risk of bumping into a neighbor carrying a basket of clothes back from the laundry. The window bars were pointless. You’d never break in at the front, where passersby could see. You’d go for the roof. Which was no higher than the neighbors’, due to the historic limit. It was only separated by a four-foot gap. And it had a boiler house on top, which meant there was definite access to the rest of the building.
I grabbed my pack, checked my equipment, and eased out of the van onto the sidewalk. I didn’t go to the next building, because if I was handling security for Madatov I’d put a discreet camera there, too, just in case. I went to the one after that. And I went to the right, because for some reason most people default to the left.
The building was simple to get into. The door clicked open after I tried just one buzzer. I didn’t even need to make up an excuse. No one saw me on my way up the main stairs, and I quickly found the small service flight that led to the roof. Someone who lived there kept bees. There were two wooden hives, six feet high, with taps on the sides for harvesting the honey. That was a good idea. There’s a world shortage of bees. It was nice to see New York doing its bit.
I stepped across to the next roof. There were two round tables folded up on this one, ten chairs, and a propane grill under a bespoke cover. Four wooden planters overflowed with bright flowers. There was a door to the stairs, an outdoor clock, and a thermometer. I crouched near the wall and checked Madatov’s roof. It was empty. The surface wasn’t finished, just sprinkled with gravel to help distribute rainwater. I took my time, using my flashlight to methodically quarter the area and look for the glint of a tripwire or the raised profile of a pressure pad. When I was satisfied it was clear, I stepped across.
I moved slowly to avoid disrupting any gravel and made it safely to the door. It was locked. It took two minutes to pick, then I slipped inside and crept down one flight of stairs to the top corridor. There were doors to two apartments. I listened at the first one. There was silence, so I picked that lock, too. I guessed the place had been rehabbed sometime in the last five years, but I’m no expert. The fittings—the kitchen, the bathrooms, the door furniture, the windows—all felt expensive. And unused. There was no furniture. No appliances. No possessions. I wondered, was it an investment in property, or privacy? Or both?
It was the same story in the other apartment on sixth, and both of them on fifth. But when I reached the fourth, I could see that something was different. The lock on the front apartment’s door caught my attention. It stood out from the others because it was huge. Serious-looking. And solid. It took three minutes to get it open, mainly because I was being so careful not to scratch its shiny gold surface.
The door opened into the living/dining room. It had a tall, wide window and I saw that one thing was true—Carrick’s building did block the view of the Hudson. There was a giant chrome telescope on a matching tripod. A dark wood floor. A pair of white leather couches, with a plaid throw on each. A wooden coffee table with a book lying open on it. A biography of Baryshnikov. There was a TV on a stand with a Blu-ray player, but no additional sound system. A stack of discs. Some books, mainly about ballet and World War II. A couple of novels. And a laptop.
I took out a black, featureless box from my bag and plugged it into one of the laptop’s USB ports. It was the same kind of machine as I’d used to clone the ISIS commander’s computer in Afghanistan back in March, so I was confident it would give me an accurate snapshot of Madatov’s data. I figured I’d have to pull some favors to read it, though, because even without password and encryption issues, any documents he created would probably use the language from his homeland. Which I didn’t know.
I left the machine to do its work and checked the kitchen. It was a clean, simple space. There was a table with three chairs. A plant. A Bluetooth speaker. A stack of freshly washed plates and pots on the countertop. And enough food in the fridge to last the better part of a week. I started to wonder who’d bought it and where, then pushed the thought aside. I don’t know why, but the idea of criminals and terrorists doing their grocery shopping like regular folk always makes my skin crawl.
The apartment had three bedrooms. The first was obviously Madatov’s. His bed was made. He had a dozen suits hanging in the closet. The size labels would put him at around six feet tall. He favored black with black shirts, and no ties. He only had black shoes. They were all a little dusty, but there was no telltale dirt on the soles.
The other two rooms belonged to the women. They each had a closet full of clothes, which looked expensive. Lots of shoes, mostly with dangerously high heels. Workout gear. Makeup, and other personal stuff. But nothing with their names on it, and only one photograph. It was in the second woman’s room, in a simple wooden frame set on the nightstand and angled toward her pillows. I scanned the background, hoping I’d be able to figure out where it had been taken, but it was no good. The image was too faded. And its surface had been damaged from contact with some kind of liquid. I couldn’t be sure what it was. But if I had to guess, I’d say it was someone’s tears.
I heard a discreet tone from the other room telling me that the cloning process was complete. I collected my machine, took a couple of final pictures, and let myself out. I checked the apartment opposite, and found it was empty like the ones upstairs. I figured the apartments on the first floor, and possibly the second, would be used by the security guys, so I’d have to stay clear of those. That just left the third. Those apartments would most likely be vacant, too. I was tempted to get out of there and find someone to start work on the data I’d just stolen, but old habits. I had to go down and check, just to be thorough.
The front unit on third was empty, as expected. But when I opened the door to the rear one, I stopped dead in my tracks. It was like finding a portal to another realm. The first thing that hit me was the stink. I could smell bodies. Cheap perfume. Fried food. Vomit. Disinfectant. And maybe a couple of other bodily fluids.
I went into the living room. There were three large couches crammed in there. They were covered with cheap blue fabric, and all kinds of women’s clothes—mainly skimpy ones—had been heaped up in precarious piles. A couple dozen shoes were strewn around, and five cheap carry-on suitcases were lined up against one wall.
I moved on to the bedrooms. There were two cots in each room. None of them had pillows or clean sheets. And next to each one was an IV stand. The fluid bags were empty, and the lines were blocked with dried, bloody residue. I’d come across scenes like this before. Once in Romania. And once in Belarus. In both cases local gangs would kidnap teenage girls. Drug them up. Get them addicted. Make them good and compliant. Then take them to their brothels and use them till they died.
I wondered where the girls who’d been in those cots were now. How long they’d been gone. How much time they had left. And I prayed there’d be a clue in the data I’d taken from Madatov’s computer. Even if it was too late for these girls, this wouldn’t be an isolated incident. It would be part of a production line. Others would be coming to take their places.
They might already be on their way.