The streets were quiet at this time of the morning in Times Square on a normal day, but after two days of rioting and terror attacks, the place looked like Baghdad during an air raid. No one was on the street. Derek Walsh immediately found an open deli and grabbed a couple of bagels and some coffee. That was the extent of his original plan when he left the shabby hotel, but his mind kept going over the steps he could take to help himself out of this nightmare. The marines had drilled being self-sufficient and proactive into him. Even if it wasn’t his nature, he knew now was the time to put that training to use. That was why, when he stumbled on an Internet café that had ten desktop computers with Web access for rent on an hourly basis, he didn’t hesitate to step inside and slap down twenty dollars.
The clerk behind the counter was a pretty, twenty-year-old girl with some serious tattoos and more piercings than he could count on her left ear alone. She didn’t care where he looked on the Internet or what he was doing. That was perfect.
There were five other people in the small business: a Finnish couple who were on vacation and trying to find an earlier flight home, a guy who looked like he might be homeless, and two young guys who looked like they’d been out all night partying. Whatever they’d rented a computer for, it certainly wasn’t anything legal. Walsh might not have been a cop, but he wasn’t an idiot, either.
He was surprised how fast the server was, and it only took him a moment to log into an account he still controlled that listed all of the financial advisers and people involved in banking based on their licenses. Tonya Stratford, the FBI agent, understood so much about trading that she had to have been involved in banking at some point in her life. So he took a shot and started looking through the series 7 and series 63 license holders over the last few years in New York. It didn’t take long to find her and see that she also had a series 4 license. Apparently she was interested in supervising money managers as well as being one herself.
He took the information he found on her license and made a couple of simple checks through Google and a few other Web sites. He didn’t understand how cops couldn’t catch people immediately nowadays. He found that she lived in Flushing, had been divorced for two years, and received her bachelor’s degree in finance from SUNY Stony Brook out on Long Island. He was impressed to see she later earned a master’s degree from NYU and guessed that was while she was working. He found an article that mentioned her as an analyst at Lehman Brothers, and suddenly he had a clear picture of who he was up against.
He still didn’t have the information he wanted the most. But checking on some sites that few people knew of, he found a credit application, and hidden at the bottom was a phone number. It was her personal cell.
Now the only question was if he really should talk to her.
* * *
Joseph Katazin woke with a start as pain shot through his cracked rib and welcomed him to the new day. He was alone in the king bed of the upstairs master bedroom of his Brooklyn home. He could hear his wife rummaging around in the kitchen downstairs. She hadn’t spoken to him when he slipped inside during the middle of the night. He was sure it was because she thought he had a mistress somewhere. Another time, probably. He’d had several over the years, including a secretary at the import/export business that his wife made him fire. But she had no idea what he was up to right now.
He padded down the stairs, already dressed in Dockers and a loose shirt to hide the gun he intended to carry once he got in the car. She didn’t even say good morning. Her first words were, “Can you be here for the new washer and dryer delivery this afternoon?”
“Not today.”
“Why not?”
“Busy at work, my love.” He ignored her rolling eyes and the heavy sighs. No matter what he did for the motherland, he still had a nagging wife just like everyone else. He decided to accept it and move on with his life. He was glad to hear that his daughter, Irina, had felt well enough to go to school, because he needed a few hours of uninterrupted time in his home office.
As if she were reading his mind his wife said, “Are you going to lock yourself in your room? What do you do up there? Troll for women on the Internet?”
Katazin thought about the Beretta in his car. It was a fleeting thought, but he realized it occurred to him more and more often. Aloud he said, “Why would I ever troll for another woman when I have a catch like you at home?”
He grabbed a banana and some coffee and stumbled into his office on the first floor, closing the door, but not locking it just in case his wife checked on him. He was dismayed to see all of the newscasts showing the streets quiet in Manhattan after the two days of protests and rioting. He’d already talked to his contact, who had no answers other than that many of the protesters were scared. Had the two prongs of his plan canceled each other out? Had terrorists kept the protesters out of the picture? That was the goal today: Stir up more protests.
It also could be the fact that Americans had such short attention spans. They were like little children. Only CNN had mastered the art of manipulating them. They knew what stories to pump and when to move on. Protests were the best video for them until there was a terror attack. In this case, the attack at Disneyland had drawn reporters like shit drew flies. Even Katazin thought that the attack had gone too far. How could the jihadists risk children’s lives like that?
First, he would go meet with his contact who organized the protests, then he was on to real business: He would deal with Derek Walsh.
* * *
Mike Rosenberg worried he was paranoid. He checked for surveillance all the way from his house in Bethesda to his office in Langley. He felt nervous greeting the security guard at the gate whom he spoke to every day. He purposely left his cell phone at home. He decided he would call Derek Walsh when he got home. It was only an extra twenty or thirty minutes. And he had a lot to do before he could knock off for the day.
He made it to his office and was scurrying around, gathering information for his regular duties as well as looking at some of the reports about the money transferred from Thomas Brothers Financial to the bank in Bern, when his boss stuck her head in the door. A CIA lifer who had worked in the Far East, she wore middle age well and presented the ultimate professional demeanor.
“You’re here early this morning,” she said.
“I’ve got a lot going on today,” he replied.
“Any idea what the protests are going to look like across the country? You think they’ll pick up speed again or die out?”
Even though that was one of the issues he was supposed to be working on, the question caught him by surprise. He hesitated, then finally said, “Right now I’m looking at the money transfer that started the protests in New York.”
“The one from Thomas Brothers?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The military in him would never be completely gone.
“Why? We have people who specialize in that sort of thing.”
He knew it was time to dive in. “Just a hunch. I’m good with making connections between events. It all ties together somehow. I just haven’t figured it out yet.”
“I need you on the protests.” That was the end of the conversation. She turned and was headed toward her office before Rosenberg could appeal.
Now he really would be working off the grid. Great.
* * *
Anton Severov stood on a small, quaint bridge and looked out at the running stream the road passed over. It was late afternoon, and the sun made the water glisten like diamonds. All he was really doing was keeping his mind off of other things. He recognized that Fannie had been dragging the trip out as long as possible. They were still an hour from the border and had been driving most of the day. He appreciated the fact that she wasn’t ready to let him go. He wished he had more time with her, too. Maybe after this operation was over they’d be able to see each other. If they weren’t on the opposite sides of some kind of jihad.
He felt the beautiful French woman next to him, then looked up quickly to make sure her little Iranian friend, Amir, was nowhere around. He could see the dark-haired young man standing by the hatchback parked on the side of the road away from the bridge. It was one of the few moments they’d had alone all day.
Earlier, when Severov asked Fannie what kind of trouble Amir could cause if he told people they had slept together, she downplayed the issue. But it had stuck in his brain, and he was worried about her safety. Now he took her in his arms and gave her a kiss and held her at arm’s length and said in a serious tone, “Really, what will happen if Amir opens his mouth about us?”
She paused, and that didn’t ease his fears at all. Finally Fannie said, “It really depends on who he talks to. Some of the more enlightened men in our cause, let’s say men educated in London, might understand and just have a stern discussion with me. Others, some of the old guard, will take it much more seriously. I could try to explain that I was using you, but they wouldn’t believe me.”
“Were you using me?” He almost melted when those wide dark eyes looked up at him and glistened with a tear. All he said was, “I already know the answer.” Then after a moment longer he said, “So what do we do about Amir?”
Fannie shrugged her shoulders. “You’re not talking about killing him, are you?”
“Would anyone miss him?”
“There would be a lot of questions.”
“Maybe we can be more creative.” He felt a pang of guilt talking so callously about a man who technically was helping in their preparations for war. Then he heard the little shit yell from the car, “Let’s go. There is much to do.”
Severov smiled, thinking, Yes, there is.