Ben had gone about as far as he could go without something from Chip, who had been busy at his laptop from the moment the copilot had given them the go-ahead. Ben had replayed Cassy‘s phone call again, focusing on Butch Hardy’s name. Cassy had called him a fucking idiot. But his was the only name at BP she’d mentioned.
He got on his phone and brought up a directory for the bank. Working down from Reid Treadwell, the CEO, he found Butch Hardy under the title chief of security. He speed-dialed the number.
A man with a gruff voice and a New York accent answered on the first ring: “Hardy.”
“Mr. Hardy, my name is Ben Whalen. I’m a friend of Cassy Levin’s. She’s been a little under the weather for the past couple of days, and when I tried to reach her number at the bank there was no answer.”
“I’m chief of security, not a babysitter.”
“I understand. But I was calling you just to confirm that nothing might have happened to her.”
“Look, pal, I’m chief of security. Now, if there’s nothing else I can do for you, I suggest you postpone your love life until after business hours.”
“Before you hang up, may I be straight with you?” Ben asked.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“I’m a former Navy SEAL.”
“So?”
“And the one thing you never want to do, Mr. Hardy, is piss off a SEAL. Do I make myself clear?”
Hardy laughed.
“I have a very good reason to believe that she’s been kidnapped by two Russians who were driving a Cadillac.”
“Kidnapped?” Hardy shouted. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’ll be landing at LaGuardia, and the first person I’m going to talk to is you.”
“Good luck, because I’m going to be out of the city through tomorrow afternoon. Now, get the fuck out of my hair, because the one thing you never want to do, SEAL, is piss off an ex–New York City gold shield.”
“I’ll find Cassy, and when I do I’m coming after you,” Ben said. “Count on it.” He hung up.
Chip had looked up from his laptop. “I assume that was the bank’s chief of security, but I thought you weren’t going to call him.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Well, it didn’t sound good to me. What’s the upshot?”
“He was lying.”
“If he was involved in hiring some Russians to kidnap her, you can bet that he’s on the phone right now telling them that a pissed-off SEAL is on his way.”
“I hope so.”
“Are you considering the possibility that they’ll just kill her and dump the body somewhere?”
“Not until they find out what she did with the flash drive,” Ben said.
“Are you really going to the bank to confront him?”
“He’s a start,” Ben said. “But what have you come up with?”
“Not as much as I wanted. But the plates on the Caddy are of a sequence assigned to Brighton Beach, so at least we’ve confirmed what we already thought we knew. But the time of the ambulance didn’t pan out, though it got me thinking about her friend that you’ve told me about.”
“Donni Imani.”
“They’re close?”
“I think so.”
“But I was thinking that maybe she and her friend left work together, and maybe she gave him the flash drive when she realized what was going down.”
“It’s possible.”
“But while you were talking with Hardy, I got on the bank’s directory and came up with Imani’s and Cassy’s workstation addresses. I tried messaging them both, but neither answered. Next I tried their phones, but again got no answer.”
“Cassy’s gone, and maybe Imani was taking a break.”
“I called his immediate boss, a guy by the name of Masters. I told him that Donni was an old pal and we were supposed to have lunch together. He told me that Imani had already left the building.”
“What are you driving at?” Ben asked.
“I demanded to know if he left alone or with Cassy Levin,” Chip said. “And the guy was a natural. He said he and Cassy left the building practically hand in hand.”
“Proving what?”
“Like I said, when she realized something was going down, and why, she passed the flash drive to her friend and told him to run.”
“Okay, assuming Imani has the flash drive, where’d he take it?”
“To the morgue,” Chip said.
“How do you know that?”
“I checked for emergency calls in the vicinity of where they grabbed Cassy. There was no nine-one-one mention of a woman being kidnapped, but there was a fatality about that time a block and a half away on Broadway. When I checked the morgue with Imani’s name I got the hit. His body is there, and I’m betting the flash drive everyone seems to want is with his things.”
“What about the Russian Cassy caught on her phone?”
“I sent his picture to Niklai Radchenko, who’s one of the neighborhood coordinating officers in the section of the NYPD’s Sixtieth Precinct that covers Brighton Beach. I got a hit almost immediately, and he wants me to call him on his direct line.”
“I don’t want to involve the cops.”
“I sent the pic in the blind,” Chip said. “The decision is yours, but I’d like to call this guy to find out what he knows.”
Ben didn’t like it and he was about to say so, but Chip held him off.
“I’m doing research on the Russian mob for The New York Times, and all I want to know is if he’s connected.”
“He’ll check your background, and he’ll want to know how you got the picture.”
“It only took a minute to set up a newsroom address that’ll come directly to me. But right now we’re only stabbing in the dark. We need a location.”
Ben looked away. “I’m afraid for her. Afraid that she’s gotten in over her head. Butch Hardy seemed like a scumbag.”
“Your call, Ben. All I can do is provide you with decent intel.”
“Do it.”
“Guys, we’re about twenty minutes from landing,” the copilot called back. “I’ll need you to shut down your computers and phones in about ten.”
“Got it,” Ben said, as Chip brought up the cop’s number on his phone in speaker mode.
The cop answered on the first ring. “Radchenko.”
“This is Chip Anderson, I’m the one who sent you the photo.”
“I know, I checked you out. How’d you get the shot, and where was it taken?”
“Downtown, and I took it. I just want to know where I can find him.”
“Why?”
“I want to trade him the picture for his story.”
The line was silent for a couple of moments. “I would advise you against trying to make contact with him. He’s about as bad as they come, but he’s well connected and for the moment we can’t do a thing. No proof.”
“Nonetheless I’d like to try. Guys like that sometimes are in love with the media if they think they’ll get a fair story—some publicity.”
Again the cop hesitated.
“Look, I’ll share whatever I come up with with you. Who knows, maybe he’ll slip up and give me something you can use.”
“Your funeral, Anderson,” Radchenko said, and he gave an address. “His name is Leonid Anosov, and he doesn’t work alone.”