“I’m going to call it that this guy’s not the mastermind we’re looking for,” said Morgan. “The real big fish don’t bother with the cutesy nicknames. And what he’s getting here is chump change for the magnitude of this operation. Whoever’s really behind this is making a lot more than a couple hundred thousand.”
“You share my opinion on him, then,” said Bloch, who had remained standing up, subtly dominating the room as she usually did. “Shepard, why don’t you show Cobra what we have?”
Shepard stood up wearily under the screen with a clicker in his hand. “First bit of evidence is this note,” he said. With the clicker, he brought a scan of the note up on the monitor. “Written on a typewriter, which sidesteps printer ID altogether. Tells us we’re not working with an amateur.” Morgan had learned about that from working in intelligence. Every consumer printer always printed, with every document, a few imperceptibly small and light dots scattered around the document. While invisible to the naked eye, these could be scanned by a machine, which meant that any printer could be identified from a database.
“The typewriter is a potential lead, isn’t it?” asked Morgan, pointing to the note. “Can’t we track him using that?”
“Well,” said Shepard, “this much is true: there’s a thousand little moving parts, and the wear and tear will cause each typewriter to leave a specific signature—usually in the form of slightly, distinctively misaligned letters.” Shepard seemed more engaged, and his frame seemed to sag slightly less, as he explained—Morgan could tell he enjoyed going through this sort of explanation. “So it would be possible to match a piece of text to a particular typewriter.” He bent down at a computer and typed something into it. “But here’s the problem.”
Shepard brought up on the big screen a photo of a big, clunky machine with a dull grey plastic casing. “Analysis shows that this is the machine that the note was written on. The Underwood Touch-Master 5. An office favorite in the early sixties. You can find at least a couple dozen for sale on the Internet at any given moment. Then there are antique shops, garage sales.... There’s no telling how many of those are still out there, and it very well may be that there’s absolutely no record of this particular typewriter after it was originally manufactured and sold. Bottom line, there’s no way of identifying and finding out where it is. It’s hopeless to try to track it.”
“I see,” said Morgan. “But we still have the surveillance tapes of Stuart’s first meeting with this guy, right? What do we have on that?”
“That’s a little more promising,” said Shepard. He went back to typing and moving things around at his terminal. “I pulled whatever footage I could get of the area during the time when Stuart made the exchange, from traffic and security cameras.” He brought up a video window on the big screen that showed a view about five feet above eye level of a paved plaza with a number of regularly spaced slender trees, a thin, heavily trodden sprinkle of snow on the ground, with a sparse but steady flow of pedestrians walking left to right and a few sitting on evenly spread stone benches. “That’s Zuccotti Park, and you can see our guy there a little to the right of center.” The picture showed Stuart sitting nervously on one of the stone benches in a fancy tan overcoat with a copy of the Wall Street Journal, a large cup of coffee sitting on the stone next to him, his hand resting on a black suitcase as he looked furtively in every direction. The angle was a little above eye level, and the picture was crisp and clear enough to just make out the label on Stuart’s coffee.
“We’ve got another angle on the scene,” said Shepard, and brought up another window playing video of the same scene simultaneously, but this one from much higher up, two stories at least, and from the side rather than the front. Morgan saw by comparing walking figures in both images that they were perfectly synchronized.
“There’s our guy,” said Shepard, pointing out a man wearing, just as Stuart had described, a grey hoodie jacket and blue jeans, old white sneakers on his feet. His face was well-obscured by sunglasses and a baseball cap. He faced away from both cameras as he walked. He sat down next to Stuart.
“Watch his face,” Shepard said.
Morgan did—or rather, tried. The hat alone would have obscured it almost completely given the angles of both cameras. In addition to that, however, he managed to keep his head down, and somehow, at no point was Morgan able to catch a glimpse of anything more than his chin.
“The bastard knows where the cameras are,” he said. “He’s hiding from us.”
“Right,” said Shepard. “He keeps it up, too. Not one good frame. Look,” he said, pointing. “Here is where he passes the note.”
“How about face-recognition software?” Morgan asked
In the video, Len Stuart got up nervously and walked away, leaving the suitcase behind.
“Never even registers as a face at all,” said Shepard. “I ran it three times, just to be sure. See, this is when he gets up.” Shepard pointed at the videos with two fingers on his right hand. Perfectly synchronized, the figure in both videos got up, grabbed the handle of the suitcase, and wheeled it away.
“I managed to follow him through various video feeds along a couple of blocks.” Shepard brought up a new window with video from a different camera that showed the man as he turned a corner. He navigated around pedestrians, walking quickly. His pace was brisk, though not quite athletic. In fact, his step was graceless, almost mechanical.
“And this is where we lose him.”
The man walked into a deli, pulling the suitcase in behind him.
“He doesn’t come out,” said Shepard. “Not out of this door, not unless he’s heavily disguised. Our best guess is that he walked out into the back alley.”
“Has anyone been down to check out the deli?”
“I sent Bishop,” cut in Diana Bloch. “No security cameras inside, and nobody remembers anything, except one thing: they found an empty black suitcase in the bathroom. Nobody remembers who left it there. And it seems the door to the back alley is easily accessible, so it’s plausible he slipped out without anyone noticing. The question,” she continued, “is, what next?”
“What’s the status on Stuart?” asked Morgan.
“We’ve got Rogue, from tactical, tailing him,” said Bloch. “Plus the surveillance you installed in his apartment and taps on every piece of electronic equipment he owns. He’s not squealing.”
Morgan ran his hands through his hair as he thought. “Len wasn’t our only lead to this guy,” he said, looking at Karen O’Neal, who was still standing against the wall fiddling with her tablet.
“We’ve got four more names at the moment,” she said.
“Which means four more people who made trades,” said Morgan. “Four more meetings where this guy might have made a slip and showed his face. Four more meetings to establish a pattern, and maybe triangulate his position in the city.”
“All that may be true and still not worth the risk,” Bloch said, staring pensively at the screen. “Targeting more of his buyers makes it that much more likely that we’ll tip this guy off. We can’t afford to spook him. He’s our only connection to all this now.”
“You’re saying we wait until the next drop-off?” said Morgan. “Just sit on our asses until it happens?”
“That’s the long and short of it,” said Bloch, shooting Morgan a stony, superior look. “What would you have us do?”
“Attack this with everything we’ve got,” said Morgan.
“Of course,” she said wryly. “What else would you suggest?”
“Get each name on that list and extract every drop of information that we can from them,” he said, ignoring her comment. “We hit him fast and hard. We’ll be on him before he has any idea we were even aware of his existence.”
“Every person we contact is another possible breach,” she said. “If our man Moriarty catches wind that we’re on his tail, he’s going to drop everything and we’re back at a dead end.”
“He gave Stuart the information on the
last attack less than a week before Paris,” Morgan insisted. “If we don’t go all out now, we won’t be able to stop the next attack. Damn it, Bloch, people’s lives are at stake!”
“Do you think you need to remind me of that?” snapped Bloch, uncrossing her arms. She raised her voice in anger. “Do you think I don’t know what the stakes are here, Cobra? Every day that passes means we’re one day closer to the next attack. The clock’s ticking. I haven’t forgotten. I couldn’t if I tried. But every single lead we’ve had has slipped through our fingers. I don’t intend to let the same happen with this one.” She took a few deep breaths, and then sat down heavily on the nearest chair. “I apologize for that outburst,” she said. “Your input is appreciated. But we need to be cautious here. We don’t know how long this pattern will go on. We focus on the big picture. Getting whoever is behind this. If that means risking letting another one happen, well.” She gave a rueful pause. “That’s a risk we need to take.”
“Am I hearing this correctly?” he said, standing over her. “You’re actually going to risk people dying because you’re too timid to act? Bullshit. You’re weak, and your weakness is going to cost people their lives.”
“You watch your mouth, Morgan,” she said. “I’m still your superior here, in case you’ve forgotten. The final decision is mine. We wait.”
“You’re making a mistake,” he said.
“It’s mine to make,” she said. “Until you bear this level of responsibility, you’ll have no idea what it means to make the tough call.”
“You’re the boss,” he said with a cold, controlled fury. Without taking his eyes off her, he pushed his chair so that it flipped onto the floor and slid to O’Neal’s foot. He stormed off without another word.
“Yes,” she said quietly, bending down to pick up the chair. “I am.”
CHAPTER 19
New York, January 19
Moriarty. It was a bold choice. Pretentious, Marcus Lee would be the first to admit; but he was a dreamer, a true visionary, so why settle for less? After all, hadn’t he figured out the scheme, the game, the master plan? Wasn’t he exploiting it, right under his employer’s nose? The scheme was making him millions on top of millions, and this was only the beginning. He’d hardly broken a sweat. It’s all up from here, baby.
He clutched his briefcase tightly in his right hand as he exited the subway into the icy Manhattan air, wincing in the sunlight while, with his left hand, he played with the ballpoint pen in his pocket—a pen that concealed a two-inch knife. He had taken to carrying it with him wherever he went after he read about it in a self-defense book. Whenever he sat down alone, he would practice removing the cap and drawing it until it became one fluid motion.
He dodged pedestrians on the sidewalk, power-walking toward the designated rendezvous point. Lee would readily admit to himself that he was enjoying the hell out of this cloak-and-dagger business. Who’d have thought that scrawny little Marcus Lee, the same little Asian kid who’d spent his graduation stuffed in a locker, the quiet nerd who had never even held hands with a girl until he was nineteen, would be getting away with this? He couldn’t help but grin at the thought.
At the moment, he was on his way to meet with the man who had started all this. The man with the plan. The man with no name.
He’d emerged on the corner of Broadway and West Fiftieth Street. and stood there as instructed in front of the Gershwin Theater, squinting as he looked around for the man he was supposed to meet. His eyes scanned the passing tourists and natives, pedestrians waiting at the crosswalk, the customers in line at the hot dog cart. He’d been told to wait here and nothing else, so he didn’t know who was coming to meet him or from where. He was startled but not entirely surprised when a limousine pulled over and, from the open window, the man without a name said, “Get in.”
Lee opened the door and sat on a seat upholstered in white leather. The boss was sitting across from him facing backwards, placidly cross-legged, in a sharply tailored navy pinstriped suit. His bony face had a flat expression as always. Next to Lee, taking up well more than his half of the seat, was a huge man with a goatee and a thick neck who looked like he could be a football player, which by itself was enough to make Lee nervous. He was in a black suit, and suddenly Lee was feeling underdressed in his khakis, polo shirt, and puffy down jacket.
“Is this really necessary?” asked Lee, motioning with his head in the direction of the bodyguard.
“You’ve been dodging my calls,” he said, ignoring the question.
“Busy,” said Lee. “You know how it is when you get in the zone with something. . . .”
“Right. In the zone.”
“But I wouldn’t want you to think I’ve been ignoring our partnership.”
“I certainly hope you haven’t been prioritizing side projects over our objectives,” he said.
Lee couldn’t help furrowing his brow at this, but caught himself and resumed a neutral expression immediately. Did he know? Could he know? Or was it a harmless throwaway comment? “My priorities are with our work here. That was the deal, wasn’t it? While working with you, I work only with you.”
“Yes, that was the deal. And if I recall, there was more to that deal. Do you have it?”
Lee opened his briefcase, and felt the bodyguard tense as he reached into it. “Easy,” he said to the mountain beside him. He pulled out a manila folder. “See? Nothing sinister here. Just paper.”
The bodyguard grunted.
Lee handed the folder over to his boss. “Here you go. A complete investment plan for the next . . . event. Like the other ones, but better. I think you’ll find this one particularly inspired. Subtle, I would call it.”
The man opened the folder and calmly leafed through it.
“Not that it was hard,” Lee continued. “But it’s no simple matter not to be obvious about it. You know how it is.”
The boss gave him a pointed look. Lee knew he must be sweating. His hand unconsciously played with the pen in his pocket.
“This actually just might be my best work yet. Really complex mix of stocks, futures, swaps, and forex. No obvious shorts. Guaranteed undetectable. Just a well-balanced portfolio that any investor might put together.”
The man across from him continued to peruse the document, flipping through the pages at a measured pace. “This is looking good,” he said. “Even at a glance, I can tell this is top-notch work.”
“Thanks. Sir.”
“Looks like I picked the right guy for the job, didn’t I?”
“Not to blow my own horn . . .”
“But doing it just the same. You talk too much, Lee. Has anyone ever told you that?”
There was a moment of silence when Lee just stared at the man, and the man stared back. What was he saying? “What-what do you mean?”
“It’s a weakness. This need to fill the silences. This fear of empty spaces. It means you don’t have a quiet mind. You’re not listening when you have to, not even to your own thoughts, let alone paying attention to where you are and what you’re doing.”
“You should write a self-help book,” Lee told him. “I know a lot of people who just eat that stuff up—you know, that silence talk, the empty spaces and all.” He knew he was making a fool of himself and wearing his anxiety on his sleeves, but he couldn’t stop babbling. “Real deep stuff, yeah.”
The man just looked at him stolidly, with his brown eyes looking dead and emotionless.
Lee chuckled nervously. Best to play this off. “You know, for a minute there, I thought you were insinuating that I had talked, you know. Blabbed. About this.”
“Oh, of course not. Because flapping your mouth is for lesser men. Biting off more than you can chew and stupid mistakes are not worthy of an inspired criminal mind. That’s amateur stuff. And I guess you’re too smart for that, aren’t you, Moriarty?”
Lee’s eyes went wide, but before he could react, he felt something cut into the skin of his neck, squeezing his windpipe. The bodyguard was
using a garrote, he realized, pulling back and cutting off his air. Without thinking, Lee slipped his hand into his pocket and out came the pen knife. Quick as lightning, he plunged it as hard as he could into the bodyguard’s thigh.
The man let out a roar of pain. Taking the opportunity, Lee lunged for the door, pulled the lock, and pushed it open. Cold air rushed into the limo. The car was moving at about twenty-five miles an hour, with traffic all around them. With no time to hesitate, he leapt out the door, rolling as he hit the pavement. He hit it hard. Even though his jacket broke some of the impact, he still felt pain in too many places to count. Just as he came to a standstill, on his hands and knees on the cold road, he heard the screech of brakes as a dark blue Chevy sedan stopped inches from his face.
With no time to even take stock of the damage, he got up, shoes scraping the pavement. He dashed onto the sidewalk, dodging confused onlookers, and ran without looking back.
CHAPTER 20
Andover, January 21
Morgan drove up along the dirt road and spotted Alex’s car parked ahead. On either side of him was forest, the evergreen foliage, covered with light snow, too dense for him to have any kind of visibility, even though they were so close to the highway he could hear cars passing by. Intermittent gunshots rang out in the white and green wilderness, three all together as he approached. He parked behind her, still looking at the map on his smartphone that showed the red dot where she was, a few dozen feet away.
Morgan had feared the worst when he had noticed, some twenty minutes before as he brought his breakfast into his study, that one of his guns, his silenced M&P Series Smith and Wesson, had gone missing. He had figured that Alex had taken it, but he had no idea what for. Given the strange way she’d been acting lately, he didn’t know what to think.
Snow crunching under his feet, he walked toward a clearing in the forest where the GPS indicated she would be and found her aiming at a collection of cans and bottles, placed a few feet apart from each other. It appeared that she hadn’t hit any yet.
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