by Dale Nelson
Jack sat. Someone had filled his water glass for him.
Like many buildings in Europe, this one had been designed without central air in mind. The conference room was sweltering and the air stale.
“Ok,” Danzig announced to the room. “We’re going to take a thirty-minute break.” She stopped the recording. To Jack, she said, “The guards will take you to the facilities if you need them.” She turned to Castro. “I’d like a conference room.”
Castro took them to a room down the hall, but in the opposite direction than the restrooms. This room was small and stuffy, but it had a window that faced the compound’s inner courtyard. Castro opened the window though there was no breeze to circulate the stagnant air in the room.
Danzig and Reed sat. Castro walked around to the other side of the table but remained on his feet.
Burdette was desperate.
He wouldn’t have contacted her otherwise, using Robert Deutsch, better known as “Rusty” and his somehow still active bureau contacts to find out Danzig’s cell phone number.
“I can call in for coffee if anyone needs it,” Castro said.
“I’m fine,” Danzig told him curtly.
The question before her wasn’t about the kind of deal Burdette would get, it was whether there would be one at all. She had Burdette. She had him. After all those years of chasing him, she’d finally gotten him in real custody and in the position to make an arrest, and yet it didn’t feel like a victory. Burdette turned himself in. This wasn’t the result of a months or years long investigation, his wits pitted against hers. This was nothing more than criminal Darwinism.
Burdette wanted to take out a rival and saw this as a means to do it.
Danzig deserved better.
Danzig deserved more.
Then she checked herself.
That’s exactly the thinking that got her here.
It was her single-minded pursuit of him that had derailed her career. Perhaps she didn’t “deserve” more than this. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being somehow robbed of a victory.
Burdette came with evidence of a major crime in exchange for his freedom. The Justice Department had an obligation to help its Italian partners in this. God alone knew how much “cooperation” the U.S. Government had exacted from its allies in the last twenty years in the pursuit of global terror. But that didn’t mean Danzig wanted to cut a deal with him.
Even to stop an immanent bank robbery, it still felt like he would skate.
Burdette had dodged every other investigation so far. Now, they could place him in Paris, tenuous as that might be, and in exchange he ratted out a rival that was threatening to kill him. In Burdette’s mind, he walked. That didn’t feel right to her. There was another angle, here, that she wasn’t seeing. There had to be. Why had Burdette come forward? It wasn’t just that he was a born-again good citizen. Maybe the part about being afraid for his life held some water, but that couldn’t be all there was to it. If he was truly scared of this Andelić, Burdette would just disappear again. She knew he had access to multiple expertly-forged passports and dark money. Burdette could be anywhere in the world in just a few hours, so why turn himself in? This is what she needed Castro for.
But he’d become distracted and unfocused since they’d gotten Burdette into custody. She couldn’t figure out why.
Castro took to pacing the room like a chain-smoker an hour past his fix.
Though she’d been after him for the better part of fifteen years, Danzig knew Burdette as the subject of an investigation, as a quarry. Castro knew him as a man, and once as a friend. That knowledge might be dated, but it was the only real chance they had at intuiting Burdette’s intentions.
“Problems, Giovanni?”
“No, why?” he said and stopped midstride.
“I need you with me,” she said. “You know Burdette better than I do, know him as a person. Help me understand.”
Castro was silent for a moment, and then he turned to face her, nodding. His countenance changed. Care lines smoothed, and his eyes took on their typical sharp focus.
“Ok, first question is, do we believe him?” Danzig said, directing her question mostly to Castro.
“It’s a lot to make up, if he’s lying,” Castro said.
“Say more,” Danzig prompted, her expression blank, clinical.
“You and I are both cops. Our job is to put the screws to people and find out where the holes in their stories are. Jack will also know that. If he’s lying, it’s a very desperate gamble. He’ll know we’re going to come at him from many directions, have him tell it over and over until it breaks down. Knowing him, this is most likely some truth mixed with bullshit.”
Danzig nodded, agreeing with the logic, though she was having a hard time conceding that it applied here. “I’m with you, Giovanni, that Burdette would know this is a gamble. Let’s say we trust his story, what about his intentions?”
“I don’t follow,” he said.
“Why is he coming forward? Why now? I’m not going to make some deal with him that just removes a rival at the government’s expense. What’s his aim here?”
“I think he’s scared,” Castro said. “Whoever this Andelić is, I think he has gotten to Burdette. The notion of extorting him to rob a bank for him,” Castro paused his pacing. “On the surface it seems farfetched, but I think I’m inclined to believe it.” Castro put both of his hands on the table. “We need to find out what he knows. Frankly, I don’t care what you need to offer him, but we must find out what Andelić is planning—when and how.”
“I understand your position, but it’s not that simple,” Danzig said.
“I don’t see the problem,” Castro replied. “Jack just said that Andelić wants to rob the Commerce Bank. We have to find out what Jack knows, and we need to know now. I’m not letting him out of this building until I do, and that means you need to offer a deal.”
Castro sounded frantic, almost desperate to Danzig’s ears, and it dawned on her that they hadn’t interacted much in the last ten years. Apart from the sharing an email or two, usually about a thief they were both acquainted with, “Hey, look at this asshole,” they didn’t speak much. She wondered how well she knew him now and if she could count on him.
But Castro was also correct. Burdette was in the Italians’ custody, not hers.
“Giovanni, as I said, I understand your position, and I want to help you. If I can, I will, but there’s more at play here than just the bank. Burdette is an American citizen with a long record of unpunished criminal activity, which you are well aware of. I’m not willing to blank slate this. Allison, what are your thoughts?”
“Well, top of mind for us is stopping a crime in progress. Second is showing our friends in French government that we take this matter seriously. I’m with Inspector Castro. We need to make a deal, and do it quickly.”
Danzig didn’t know Reed. They’d only met today. The attorney looked young, but Danzig’s years as an investigator told her not to judge people on face value. Motives were what mattered. Reed was looking to score fast points. Danzig was concerned that Reed wasn’t fully considering all of the angles. She wanted an easy kill case that would bring a headline. Danzig guessed that she was young and looking to make her bones or a fuckup looking for salvation. Having made the same mistake on both sides of that equation, Danzig understood Reed’s zeal and would temper it with caution. If the attorney would only listen.
Reed didn’t appreciate the history because she hadn’t lived it.
Fifteen years it took Danzig to get to this point, and it very nearly cost her everything. Now, she was just supposed to let Burdette walk? Her career was so far off the rails, she’d need a map to get it back on track, and all because of Burdette.
No, she admitted again. Some things needed reinforcing. Not because of him. Because of me. She overreached, she embarrassed the bureau, and she betrayed the trust placed in her by a mentor. For years, she told herself that her aims were pure an
d that justified the failure. They were originally, of course. Her pursuit of Burdette began as most noble quests do, in the best of places, pursuing true justice. But as the years wore on and Danzig found herself trading good time for bad, leveraging her future at the expense of the past, Danzig’s ends became less pure. It became about the glory of landing a major grab, about justifying the time spent chasing him. It became about getting back what she’d lost.
No arrest, she knew now, would do that.
Danzig checked herself again, recognizing how easy it was to spiral into negativity. She reminded herself that she was an FBI agent, the apex predator of law enforcement and Gentleman Jack Burdette was nothing more than prey.
Their shared history was immaterial, irrelevant. You have to treat every case like it’s day one, an academy instructor told her once. The lesson was about using multiple angles to bring criminals down, about how you sometimes needed to make several passes at someone before you arrested them and, more broadly, about teeing the shot up for other agencies when the situation called for it.
“Here are the options,” Danzig said, standing. She liked to lead investigative teams collaboratively, in front of a whiteboard, pulling the best ideas forward. It was clear to her, though, that in this case she was going to have to pull her collaborators along for the ride. Both Castro and Reed were viewing this through their own myopic lens. “The Hôtel Ritz robbery isn’t going to stand up in court for long. I’ve seen the evidence, and it’s sketchy. A good lawyer gets that thrown out. The one good card we have to play is that Burdette doesn’t know that yet, so I think this is still on the table as a viable trade. We’re giving up little, ultimately.”
“I’m sensing a ‘but’ coming,” Reed said.
Danzig considered her for a moment.
“Nope,” she said curtly.
Danzig didn’t know Reed and didn’t know if she could be trusted, but her gut told her that she couldn’t be. Best that she not know the full plan. Reed was here as an advisor and liaison anyway. Danzig could still get to prosecution without her help.
She’d known since Paris that Burdette was going to walk on that robbery, even if the judge hadn’t folded. But passports. Danzig was confident they could get him on fraud, which would likely mean ten years. To say nothing of the call she put into the IRS’s Criminal Investigative Division, people she knew well from her time on the Miami task force. Burdette was looking at twenty years for that, and he’d have an easier time dodging a bullet than he would the IRS. It wasn’t stolen jewelry, and it sure as hell wasn’t the Carlton InterContinental, but it was justice, and maybe that was good enough.
Danzig felt better, but the one thing gnawing at her was still Burdette’s motives. Again, if he was truly afraid of Andelić, Burdette could just disappear. He’s proven that time and again. What did his coming forward now truly signify? Danzig found herself not concerned about what happened when they made the deal, it was what happened next.
Jack Burdette had an angle here, he always did. The fact that Danzig couldn’t see it made her nervous.
“Giovanni,” she said, “before we break, I want to circle back to the question of motive. Do you have any insight into why he came forward? Why now?”
“I don’t know,” Castro said flatly. “I knew him as a kid. He was in his twenties. He’s not the same man now.” A faraway look came into Castro’s eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was different, harder. “Neither am I. However, I’ll share this one fact. When he was a kid, an organized crime outfit in Chicago threatened to murder his family. That was something he never forgot, and Burdette is fiercely loyal to people he cares about. Andelić, through Ozren Stolar and Milan Radić, murdered two of Jack’s friends. He’s coming to us because he wants Andelić to spend the rest of his life in a cage thinking about him every goddamn day of it.”
Jack was escorted to a bathroom and then taken back to the conference room. Though the call was still active, he texted Hugh, not wanting to say anything that would be on the recording. He asked how it was going, and Hugh said he didn’t know.
Danzig returned, and she announced on the recording that the deposition was resuming, citing the local time.
“Mr. Burdette, in exchange for the information you’ve provided and your cooperation in the ongoing investigation, the US Government is prepared to offer you immunity for your involvement in the robbery of the Cartier jewelry boutique located in the Hôtel Ritz, Paris. Further, you agree that you will act undercover so that agents for the United States and Italian governments can apprehend Aleksander Andelić and his associates.”
Alison Reed looked like it bothered her.
Danzig would get to roll up a Pink Panther network, plus whatever she and the Italians could get out of Aleksander once he was in custody, as well as prevent them from robbing a bank. The FBI would score solid points with the Italian government. They would also be able to solve a nearly twenty-year-old robbery for another ally. That seemed like a solid trade and would go a long way to erasing the black mark on Danzig’s career.
Jack agreed.
The parties on the phone and in the conference room agreed, in principle, and Danzig stated that the Department of Justice would send the agreement to all parties for signature as soon as it was approved. Until that happened, for the purposes of exigent circumstances, they would proceed as though it were signed. Just in case Andelić forced his hand. They wrapped the call at three p.m. local time.
Danzig’s expression was unreadable.
Jack was surprised she agreed this easily.
Twenty-Two
“There’s something we need to talk about,” Castro said after everyone but Danzig and Jack had cleared the room.
Danzig’s expression darkened. “Giovanni, anything we discuss has to be on record at this point.”
But Castro just shook his head. “I’ll explain,” Castro said, “but it’s not getting documented.” He paused again, as if searching for the right words in English. “This is a highly embarrassing thing for my country, and I’m not going to expose it like this. I’ll help, but we’re going to keep this quiet.”
Danzig and Jack were both entirely confused.
“The Commerce Bank of Rome is a legitimate financial institution; however, the mafia has an interest in it. They use it primarily for money laundering. And they use the safe deposit boxes as a place to facilitate payments to people on their bankroll, including judges, policemen, and politicians.”
“I don’t like where this is going,” Danzig said.
“If we were to arrest Andelić and his gang right now, there is a very good chance that the mafia would have this buried. They would make sure that either a policeman or a judge on their payroll buried the case, and they would just handle the matter themselves. Do you understand?”
“Jesus Christ, is there any country in Europe that doesn’t have a bent judge?” Danzig said, clearly exasperated.
Castro looked embarrassed.
Danzig apologized. “So, I gather what you’re saying is that we need to catch them in the act so that there is no possible way of burying it.”
Castro nodded. “A judge can maybe keep jewelry store quiet, but not so much with a bank.”
Danzig turned to Jack. “This means you’ll have to be undercover the entire time. I’m assuming there’s no way Andelić will allow you to skip out on this, so you’ll have to go into the bank with his team.”
“I understand,” Jack said.
Danzig paused a moment, thinking through options. “Ok. I’ll talk to the LEGAT here and see if he’s got any agents he can spare for a few days. I’ll also see if we can use DSS. This will be specifically to protect Burdette. Giovanni, I expect you’ll handle this on your end. You’ll have your SWAT or hostage response teams, or whatever.”
Castro nodded.
“We’ll have you wired up. You’ll signal us once the crime is in progress, and we’ll come in. That’s slightly higher risk than what we were originally proposing.”
“Burdette, I need to advise you that you cannot commit a crime while acting as a confidential informant, not even to preserve your cover. It’s illegal.”
“I get it. Just pretend to rob the bank,” he said dryly.
“This is serious, and you need to understand. You cannot commit a crime to preserve your cover. You can’t threaten anyone or use violence. If it isn’t happening, you need to find a way to get out. That’s FBI policy. It’s to protect us and the case as much as it is supposed to protect you.”
“I understand.” A voice in the back of his mind was screaming to get Hugh back on the phone, but Jack also knew that there was no way he’d go for this. He’d argue for Jack to pull out of this immediately, for them to find another way. But Jack knew there wasn’t one. If he didn’t wrap Andelić up here, Jack … and Megan … would always be in danger.
“Okay. Do you know for a fact that Andelić is in Rome currently?”
“I know that he was. He flew me here on a chartered plane. I assume that he’s staying here until the job is finished.”
“Okay. We need you to figure out where he’s staying in the city. I’m sure he won’t be on hand when the bank job goes down, so we’ll need units on standby to roll to his location as soon as we know they are inside the bank.”
“Can I have my things back?”
Danzig motioned to Castro, who got up and handed him his phone and wallet. Jack checked it. The Swiss driver’s license was gone. They kept his passport too. Jack didn’t need to look through his backpack to know they’d taken his other two.
Danzig read his expression with a satisfied smile. “Can’t have you running off on us, now can we?”
Jack had the cops drop him at the first metro stop they came to, which as it turned out was just three blocks away. He rode the Linea A to the central train station and then ascended, up a broken escalator, back to the city. There were three missed calls from Aleksander and two from Coughlin. Jack called Aleksander first.