Crash

by David Hagberg

  “She never has lunch at our cafeteria?”

  “I’m told not,” Hardy said. “Anyway, why do we need to make her disappear? Just asking.”

  “She knows something she shouldn’t,” Dammerman said. “And I don’t want her shooting off her mouth to the wrong people.”

  “She’ll disappear.”

  The bartender returned with their drinks, and when he left, Dammerman leaned forward.”Permanently.”

  “The Brighton Beach guys are ex–Russian Special Forces. They’ll get the job done.”

  “I don’t trust fucking Russians. They’ve got no respect for us.”

  Hardy almost laughed out loud, but he thought better of it. “Trust me, these guys are the best. Highly trained, good with explosives, weapons, hand-to-hand combat, and no conscience. They do what the money tells them to do.”

  “And afterward? What’s to keep them from opening their mouths and fucking us?”

  “When they’re done, they’ll walk away until another job comes up. They won’t want to screw up their own reputations. I’m telling you, these guys are pros.”

  This time Dammerman sipped at his drink, obviously weighing all the angles. “Any of these guys ever fuck up, go down?”

  “We busted a few now and then when I worked anti-terrorism.”

  “You’re not filling me with a lot of confidence here, Butch.”

  “The guys who went down were stupid. They made mistakes. Somebody ratted them out for chump change. Some babe they were fucking and slapped around because she pissed them off called the cops. Shit like that. But I’m telling you the people I hired are the best.”

  “I don’t want any problems coming back at us, that’s all.”

  “They won’t,” Hardy said.

  Dammerman was silent for a long beat or two, working at his drink. He was worried, and it was a rare sight to Hardy, who was thinking that he liked it.

  “What about the Levin broad, do you think she believes something is going on?” Dammerman asked.

  Something big was going on, Hardy was sure of it. But he shook his head. “She’s as clueless as all the other geeks down in the DCSS,” he said. “But I’ll tell you the one who really worries me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Julia O’Connell. I don’t think that she sees the real world for what it is. She’s another geek, and if there’s a weak link it might be her. Just saying.”

  37

  Julia O’Connell hurried out of the BP tower and crossed Broadway. Zuccotti Park was busy at lunchtime on nice days like this one, and she hoped that no one from the firm would be here to see her.

  She stopped for a moment to look for any familiar faces, but so far as she could see there were none, and that was a good thing. But for some reason Joie de Vivre—Joy of Life—the massive sculpture of two bloodred twisted steel beams, made her feel anything but joyful.

  Betty Ladd had phoned from her office at the NYSE and asked to meet at the park. Masters had just told her that Cassy was still putting the finishing touches on her anti-virus program.

  But he’d also told her that Butch Hardy had disappeared without a word, though he’d left one of his security people to keep watch on the young woman.

  All of it was getting to be too much for Julia, and in some ways she wished that she were shed of the entire Abacus scheme, but it was too late for that now. And she had a dark feeling that Betty’s call had something to do with the insane scheme.

  When she came around the right side of the sculpture, she spotted the NYSE president seated on one of the park benches, a Starbucks coffee container in her left hand, and she walked over.

  Betty looked up, a warm smile on her narrow face. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

  Julia sat down on the opposite end of the bench. “What’s up with meeting in public?”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to come to my office. I get the feeling that you’re afraid of something or someone.”

  “What makes you think something like that?” Julia asked. She was almost sorry that she’d agreed to meet.

  “Just a feeling,” Betty said. “Anyway, my question still stands. You’re afraid of something. What is it?”

  “Reid,” Julia said. She had no idea what Betty knew or had guessed, but she figured that mentioning Reid’s name might throw the woman off track.

  Betty shrugged. “You were seen on the floor this morning. You and Reid, and of all people, Spencer Nast. I want to know what’s going on.”

  Julia’s insides were churning. “I can’t discus company business, especially not with someone in your position.”

  “This is just an innocent question,” Betty said. She reached across and touched the back of Julia’s hand. “We’ve got history together. Just answer me as a friend.”

  Julia looked away for a moment. “We were supporting Rockingham’s IPO, and Reid asked me to tag along. You know, show the flag.”

  “Oh, come on. Since when is the technology director of any major investment bank on the floor for an insignificant IPO?”

  Julia had nothing to say. Betty was her cousin, twelve years older, and had been there in the early years after her parents had been killed in a car crash. She’d almost been a mother, helping with college, helping with Julia’s early career.

  “Everyone knows that Reid wants to screw Rockingham’s daughter. But I know the bastard well enough to understand that something else is going on.”

  Julia shook her head, her eyes moistening. She was afraid, but she definitely couldn’t tell her cousin what the trouble was. It was too late for that now, and she was sorry that she had come here.

  “I don’t want you to get in trouble at work. Tech and especially finance are in the men’s world. But you’ve come nearly to the top in both.”

  Unspoken was that Julia would not have gotten so far up the food chain without Betty Ladd’s help.

  When Julia was in college she’d gotten involved with a group of boys who were ace hackers. To show them up and maybe gain a little respect, she’d hacked into the local electrical power grid and blacked out the entire town for thirty minutes.

  She was good, even then, and had covered her tracks, except that the boys she’d wanted to impress gave her up.

  She would have gone to prison, her scholarship in computer science revoked. It would have been the end of her brilliant career even before it started.

  But Betty Ladd, who by then had been a rising star on Wall Street, persuaded the town, whose bonds her firm floated, to drop the charges as a mere schoolgirl prank. Next she talked the college into not canceling Julia’s scholarship after she pledged a substantial donation. And she’d paid for a very good lawyer to make sure that the charges were expunged from the public record so that not even a hint of criminal activity would be connected with her cousin.

  “Thanks to you,” Julia said.

  “I always know a good bet when I see one,” Betty said. “But my question still stands: What’s going on?”

  So far as Julia knew, Treadwell had no inkling that Betty Ladd was her cousin, and she wanted to keep it that way. Betty had recommended her to Treadwell’s predecessor, who’d hired her on the spot. But considering the history between Betty and Reid, if the truth came out, Julia was almost certain that Reid would dump her.

  Right now she felt as if she were the proverbial idiot caught in a bear trap with the bear closing in.

  “Reid wanted to get Seymour’s take on where the economy is heading, and he thought coming for the IPO would kill two birds with one stone.”

  “He could have called Schneider into his office after the closing bell.”

  “Seymour has a special status with us, and he hates to leave the floor, so Reid leaves him alone. Anyway I’ve never been on the floor for one of our IPOs, and I asked to tag along.”

  “Okay,” Betty said after a beat. “I’ll buy that, for now. But what about Farmer’s economic adviser?”

  Julia shook her head. “I don’t know.”r />
  Betty sipped her coffee and watched the passersby for a few moments. “I’ve heard that BP is moving into cash. That right?”

  “Above my pay grade. Right now I have my people beefing up cybersecurity protocols for our clients.”

  “A little bird whispered in my ear that you had breakfast in a private room at Kittredge, along with Reid, his lap dog, Dammerman, and Spencer Nast. What was that all about?”

  Betty had eyes and ears everywhere. “Nothing about going into cash.”

  “I didn’t ask what you weren’t discussing.”

  “It wasn’t about BP policy, I can tell you that much. Spencer is no longer an employee, and Reid would never bring up something like that in front of an outsider.”

  “Give me a break, Julia. Nast is in one of those classic Washington revolving-door jobs. Once Farmer loses reelection, Nast will come tootling back up to his old berth at BP, only with a bigger pay package. BP is like the Mafia: Once you’re in, you never leave.”

  “We talked about the ‘debt bomb,’ as Spencer calls it. There’s nothing to prevent a fed from sounding out people on Wall Street about an important issue.”

  “You make Nast sound like Mr. Nice who gives a damn about what other people think.”

  Julia noticed a large man dressed in an ordinary business suit out of the corner of her eye off to her left. When she looked at him he turned away. He was one of Hardy’s goons, checking up on her. It was exactly what she was afraid of happening.

  “I have to get back,” she said.

  “Wait a minute, please. I think Reid is trying to pull some kind of a fast move. The China situation is scary; in fact, they could be on the brink of collapse. They might even try to dump our T-bonds. That would tear the hell out of the market. And today’s Treasury auction is undersubscribed, the last I heard, which is another bad sign. I get all that. But for Reid to take BP to a one-hundred-percent-cash position is way over the top.”

  “Maybe he’s only being prudent,” Julia said. “The two of you have issues, but he’s done a good job managing the firm.” She got to her feet. “I really have to get back.”

  “Reid’s taking the firm into an all-cash position has been noticed by the bond buyers. For them it’s just another vote of no confidence.”

  “I’m a technologist, Betty, not an economist,” Julia said. She glanced to her left, but the big man was gone.

  Betty sat back. “You should talk to Tyler Wren. He’s the reporter who dug up the dirt on Reid that he wasn’t allowed to publish. In fact he was fired, courtesy of Reid. He can tell you a lot about your Mr. Treadwell.”

  “I’m going now,” Julia said.

  Betty got to her feet and hugged her cousin. “Something’s up, Julia. Be careful you don’t get crapped on. Reid has a habit of doing that to the people around him.”

  38

  Leonid got up from the dining room table where he and Valentin were playing poker with Bykov’s people. He was already up forty grand, but for now it was nothing more than play money; in the end the six of them would settle up. There was certainly enough money between them.

  He was bored, but then he and his people out at the Beach had only been doing the few odd jobs here and there. Mostly hijacking trucks of sides of beef from the farms and selling them for twenty cents on the dollar to a local supplier, who processed the meat and distributed it to grocery stores across the river in Manhattan. Sometimes they got lucky with cartons of cigarettes, and once with fur coats that went to places upstate where the anti-fur liberals weren’t so visible.

  Often some of the eleven guys would chip in and buy a couple of whores for the night, but for the past three months it had been same-old-same-old, and this half mil had seemed almost heaven-sent.

  His two biggest problems lately were keeping the crew reasonably sober in case something did come up, and paying the increased hush money the local cops were demanding. He wanted to kill a couple of the bastards, but that would lead nowhere except jail.

  In the kitchen he got a bottle of Evian from the fridge and brought it to the kitchen table, where he had a drink, then took out his 9mm Steyr GB, unloaded it, and began checking for any signs he’d left lint behind after the last cleaning. The Austrian double-action automatic pistol, with its eighteen-round detachable magazine, was an old friend. He’d taken it from the body of an American Special Forces guy he’d killed behind a bar in Kabul about ten years ago.

  After he was posted back to Moscow when his eighteen months of undercover work were done, he’d bought a suppressor from a dealer of weapons used by American soldiers.

  Bykov came in, grabbed a carton of milk from the fridge, and sat down across from Leonid. “I haven’t seen one of those guns in a long time,” he said.

  Leonid handed him the pistol butt-first, and Bykov held it in his right hand, getting a feel for the weight and the grip. “Supposed to be a good weapon.”

  “It tolerates bad ammunition and even a bit of mud and sand now and then.”

  “As long as it hits what you point it at,” Bykov said, handing it back.

  “Hasn’t failed me yet, though it hasn’t got much use lately.”

  The two men were silent for a bit, until Bykov leaned back. “How’s it going over here for you?”

  “Tolerable,” Leonid said. “But I think it’s getting to be time to bail out somewhere.”

  “Any place in mind?”

  “My French isn’t bad.”

  “Marseille?”

  “It’s an idea,” Leonid said. “How about you? What brings you to this side of the pond? Something interesting?”

  Bykov shrugged. “Not really. But our employers have deep pockets.”

  “I’d say. Five hundred large for a simple street grab is good. What about afterward?”

  “This one’s going to be short and sweet, and we’ll be home before the dust settles. Could be something else in the works in Saudi Arabia I might be able to use a little help with.”

  “What about this crew?”

  “There’ll be plenty of work for all of us.”

  “Can you give me a clue?”

  “It’s an op in the desert outside Medina. A cousin of MBS is evidently about ready to try a power grab with the help of an American crew. We’d be there as backup.”

  “For the cousin or the prince?”

  “The prince, naturally. And this one could have the backing of a player in Moscow. The president would love to get a foot in the door over there, maybe steal a few jet deals from the Americans.”

  “Power politics,” Leonid said. “Dangerous.”

  “Lucrative,” Bykov replied.

  Leonid worked the Steyr’s slide a couple of times, then seated the magazine and jacked a round into the firing chamber before laying the pistol on the table. “My guys like it here.”

  “It’d just be you.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  39

  Bykov went back into the dining room and gestured for Zimin to break off and join him at the front door. The bomb expert folded his hand and came over.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re driving across the river first thing in the morning, and I want to make one last check of the van,” Bykov said.

  “As you wish.”

  The two of them took the elevator straight down to the underground parking garage, turned left, and walked down the ramp past a dozen cars, finally coming to the plain white Mercedes transit van they’d rented from an agency on the Upper East Side two days ago.

  Zimin would be doing his business in back once they arrived at the travel agency in the morning, while Kolchin would be behind the wheel waiting until the detonator circuit for the explosives was set and the two of them could get out and walk one block around the corner.

  Alexei Mazayev, driving the backup Mercedes C300, Bykov riding shotgun, would be waiting for them to show up, and from there drive directly out to JFK for their flight home.

  The final payment would not be deposited
to their offshore account unless the bomb actually went off and destroyed the entire building, so Bykov wanted to make sure that everything was as it should be.

  He unlocked the doors, and they got in. Zimin went into the back first while Bykov locked the doors and then joined him.

  The cargo space was crammed floor to ceiling, left to right—with only a narrow crawl space in the middle—with fifty-pound bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer stacked on top of long narrow cylinders of nitromethane gas and several tubes of Tovex, which was like dynamite.

  The gas, which was normally used to power racing motorcycles, had been bought from a supply company in Queens, the fertilizer from a farm supply in a small town twenty miles from West Point, and the Tovex they stole from a construction company’s warehouse up in Danbury.

  When the detonator circuit was activated, an electric signal would be generated that would ignite the Tovex, creating a massive explosion of the fertilizer and Tovex. It was the same combination that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had used in ’95 for their attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed or seriously wounded nearly nine hundred people.

  This time the casualty list would be much smaller, but the NYSE’s backup computer would be completely obliterated.

  “Once the countdown clock is set, we’ll have five minutes to get out of the blast zone,” Zimin explained.

  “Tell me again why we just don’t use a cell phone signal to set the thing off.”

  “Be our luck that someone makes a wrong-number call while we were close. This way is better.”

  “What if we’re delayed?” Bykov asked. He had been around high explosives all of his career, long enough to respect their power and yet not be frightened if the proper procedures were followed. Yet he’d also had experiences—all of them had—with shit happening by dumb luck.

  “We shoot our way clear, unless we want to become martyrs.”

  At this moment the timer was set to zero, and the positive lead on the battery was disconnected.