Chapter 13

New York City

Near East End Avenue around 89th Street, a slender woman with long blonde hair walked behind Gracie Mansion along the East River. She had a light spring to her step and reveled in the unexpectedly warm and sunny days at the end of January. She loosened her silk scarf from around her collar and unbuttoned the top button of her long camel-colored cashmere coat. She revealed a scoop-necked chartreuse silk blouse, and around her neck she bore a gold pendant in the shape of a spider’s web. She reached into her oversized leather bag to take out her sun glasses to block the brilliant glare off the water, and saw the ampoule within her bag. It hadn’t been as difficult as I expected, thought Alexis. It’s really all about connections, who you know. Getting the toxin had been a bonus, how they would incorporate the toxin into their plan would take genius.

She walked down along the river until she reached a suitable stopping place and pulled out her cell phone.

“Hello, Grigory?” she said with a trace of an accent, “Da, it’s Alexis. Well they are onto the cards at this moment, but I have another treasure we can work with. Da, you heard. Uh, huh. I can meet you near the UN if you like. Da, da, okay then, I will see you in a few hours if you have other things to do in the meantime. I will go ahead. Dosvidaniya.”

She patted her purse and walked from the river west to East End Avenue. She flagged down a taxi and climbed in.

“42nd and First Avenue please, the United Nations building,” she said in her best American accent. The taxi spun around and headed up 86th Street before heading downtown.

* * *

Down in lower Manhattan near Chelsea, there was a small printing shop on the fifth floor of a medium-sized brick building. The equipment was fairly basic: a digital press, folder, cutter, stitcher and palette jacks. Primarily the shop was used to generate advertisement cards that were slipped between the pages of magazines. These were the kind of cards that advertised magazine subscriptions, insurance companies, and colognes. However, this shop had one additional feature. It had the means to integrate a scent into a card, and more specifically, had the capability to print cards that had encapsulated scent or powder that could be released when the pad was scratched with a fingernail. The ability to encapsulate a powder in microscopic particles also meant that it could be incorporated in other products as well.

Grigory Markovic moved toward several of the workers on the assembly line. He was a rather short man, with a bald head and a stern face. When he opened his eyes wide, the deep lines above his brows gathered like undulating waves while his steel colored eyes penetrated their target and created fear in those that viewed them.

“Listen up people,” he said with a pronounced Russian accent, “finish up and put all materials in boxes to be shipped to this address. We have created thousands of cards for distribution up and down the Northeast and that is just the start of our operation. I would like to send the critical people on ahead, and you, yes you,” he swept his hand towards a handful of workers, “those we just hired for the packing, please stay behind because we have plumbers coming to work on the building’s heating system and I need you to make sure everything has been cleaned up. There will be extra money in it for you.”

Markovic was currently functioning well below his level of authority. He did not like interacting with the bottom rung of the operation. But his superiors insisted he personally go to the factory to handle the situation.

“Grigory, this is our opportunity to take a big bite out of America. Why bother hijacking planes and crashing through skyscrapers? There is no need for suicide bombers and global spectacle. It takes too much energy. It’s all about everyday life in America, the comfortable life, the life that few in our world enjoy. In those seemly insignificant and most natural places—coffee shops, food marts, natural waters, magazines, program guides and flyers—poisons will be sequestered and released. We will create an uneasiness that will penetrate the American consciousness. They will be suspicious of each other, not sure if the coffee prepared by the person behind the counter is tainted or pure. Not sure if the food they eat, or the water they drink will bring sudden death. They are already worrying about computer hacks and unauthorized surveillance. A disrupted economy is much more unstable than a single terrorist act that only unites the country ready to rally the troops and fight the evildoers. And as an added distraction, we will also flood the country with illicit drugs. Already our plan on increasing the availability of heroin and cocaine has provided us with a nice profit, and the Americans with an epidemic of drug addicts. Let them burn for their hedonistic ways.” His voice was raised at the end with a chilling delivery of self-righteousness.

Markovic saw the beauty in the plan’s simplicity. There would be an underlying, ever present erosion here and there of daily American life, as distrust and poison filled the niches like water etching at rock over millions of years. Eventually there is the formation of a canyon, deep and wide enough to hold sacrificial victims thrown over its sharp, steep edge.

That night the printers were preparing their last batches of cards before they shipped everything to the designated address and moved their operation. It was a well-conceived plan promulgated by a mastermind terrorist.

* * *

The following morning, in the small brick building in lower Manhattan, the upper two floors of the printing shop were still. When the fire department was called in to investigate a faulty burner and potential fuel leak, four bodies were found on the fifth floor and two were found on the fourth floor. The medical examiner noted that there didn’t appear to be any trauma, or any signs of a struggle in the now all but empty printing room. All the deceased were cherry red in color. He took a blood specimen from each victim and would be sure to run it on the blood gas analyzer when he got back to the lab.