Politika pp-1

by Tom Clancy

  Frowning, Nimec crouched down, reached into the pool table’s innards again, and set the balls up at one end of the table for a point-of-aim drill. The more he thought about Bashkir’s possible complicity, the greater his misgivings. It wasn’t just that the puzzle was incomplete; he felt as if he’d been given pieces that didn’t fit at all, and had been slipped into the box to confound him.

  He supposed there was nothing to do except take it one step at a time… and the logical way to proceed was to follow the explosives from their point of origin to the final point of sale.

  He put some more chalk on the tip of his stick, leaned over the table, and began firing balls into the corner pocket opposite him. First thing in the morning he would give Gordian a call. As an exporter of American technology, Roger had constant dealings with people in Customs, and one or two of them might be good for a tip. If Lian was the producer of the explosives, and Zavtra had acted as the middleman outfit, who had received them in the United States? And how exactly had they been moved?

  Somebody had completed the transfer, and Nimec intended to find out who it was.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA AND NEW YORK CITY JANUARY 8, 2000

  The moment he got off the horn with Nimec, Gordian rang up Lenny Reisenberg, who headed his regional shipping office in New York.

  “To what do I owe a call from the gantse knahker?” Lenny said, taking the call from his secretary.

  “I thought I was the groyss makher.”

  “There’s a subtle difference,” Lenny said. “The first means ‘big shot.’ The second’s somebody who makes things happen. Generally speaking, though, the terms are interchangeable, since most makhers are also knahkers, and vice versa.” He paused. “Now, on the other hand, if I were to call you an ahlte kakhker, you’d have reason to be peeved.”

  Gordian smiled tolerantly, shaking his head. He had no idea why, but Lenny seemed convinced it was vital that he learn Yiddish, and had been giving him these lessons in regular installments for over a decade. Were the best employees always so full of idiosyncrasies, or was it just that he knew how to pick them?

  “Len, I need a favor,” he said.

  “And because it’s only nine in the morning in your neck of the woods, and you’re still on your first cup of coffee, I’m assuming it’s urgent.”

  “Very,” Gordian said. “There’s a Russian exporter, the Zavtra Group—”

  “Hold it a sec, let me jot this down.” Gordian heard Lenny shuffling things around on his desk. “Okay, that’s spelled Z-A-V-T-R-A?”

  “Right.”

  “Don’t think we’ve ever done business with them. Off the top of my head, of course.”

  “That’s not important, Len. What I want are chronological records of everything Zavtra’s shipped into the New York area over the past, say, six to eight months. We may eventually have to go back further, but let’s start with that. I’ll need to know the ultimate purchaser, too.”

  “May I ask why I’m getting hold of this information?”

  “On this one, it’s better you don’t.”

  Reisenberg huffed out a breath. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do. There’s a guy I know in the customs office over at the World Trade Center. If we end this conversation in the next ten seconds I might be able to get hold of him, take him out for a bite. I’ve got just the thing to make him feel kindly toward us, come to think of it.”

  “Whatever it takes, as long as you don’t get yourself in hot water.”

  “Right, right. I’ll call you back soon as I find out anything.”

  “Thanks, Len.”

  “No problem. This is why I’m known far and wide as a stud among prizewinning thoroughbreds.”

  “And a genuine mensch,” Gordian said.

  “Sorry, don’t speak French,” Reisenberg said.

  And hung up the phone.

  * * *

  “You ask me, it’s a crying shame those antismoking Nazis made it against the law to light up anywhere in the city, including your own fucking toilet.” This out of Steve Bailey, the customs supervisor Lenny Reisenberg had mentioned to Gordian. He was sitting across from Lenny in a leather booth at Quentin’s, a British-style pub across the street from the twin towers, with a lot of dark wood wall paneling, an enormous horseshoe bar, and middle-aged waiters who had been working there long enough to recite the menu backward and forward by heart.

  Lenny gave him a noncommittal shrug.

  “There are pros and cons,” he said.

  “You going to tell me something’s wrong with restaurants having smoking sections? The way they used to before the world got taken over by prudes and sissies?”

  “Truth is,” Lenny said, “I feel sorry for the poor waiter who’s put at risk of lung cancer because of the secondary smoke he’s got to inhale on the job.”

  “Spoken like the reformed three-pack-a-day man that you are.” Bailey snorted. “I mean, the owner feels compunctions about his staff, he can go ahead and hire smokers to serve the smoking sections.”

  “Even so, Steve,” Lenny said, “what they’d do in the old days was calculate the size of the sections according to seating capacity, which made it kind of hard for the Board of Health to enforce the regulations. The inspectors would have to come in and count heads to make sure there were no violations, you know what I’m saying.” He shrugged again. “Meanwhile, the people that ran the places would cram the tables so close together, the guy at the next table practically would be sitting on your lap…”

  “Or gal at the next table, to look at the positive side…”

  “Whatever.” Lenny snorted. “The point is—”

  “That I just finished eating a delicious lamb stew, and have a fresh Macanudo tucked away in my pocket, and want to smoke it to round out my dining experience,” Bailey said, brushing a hand through his frazzle of white hair. “At fifty years old, with a prostate that’s bigger than a basketball, I don’t have many ways left of having fun. A guy deserves some slack, Lenny.”

  Lenny looked at him. He figured that was about as perfect an opening as he could have asked for in a million years.

  “That reminds me.” He reached into a pocket of his sport coat, pulled out a slim envelope with the Madison Square Garden logo on it, and slid it across the table.

  Bailey stared down at it, keeping his hands under the table.

  “Jesus,” he said. “What the hell’s that?”

  “A little gift, Steve. From the New York Knickerbockers to me, and me to you.”

  “The Knicks?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Jesus.” Bailey swallowed, one hand appearing and reaching for the envelope. He picked it up gingerly, almost as if it were hot to the touch, then lifted the flap with his fingertip and peeked inside.

  His eyes widened.

  “Jesus,” he repeated for the third time, his head wagging from side to side. “This is a goddamned season pass.”

  “Well, partial season, technically, being as it’s already January,” Lenny said. He glanced at Bailey. “Why’re you shaking your head?”

  “I’m not shaking my head.”

  “You are,” Lenny said. “If you don’t like my gift…”

  “Of course I like it, you know I do, how the fuck could I not? But being that Christmas is over, and you don’t know my birthday, there’s got to be some other reason you’re giving this to me, and I’m not sure I want to know what it is.”

  “You wound me, Steve.” Lenny used his fork to slice off a wedge of the blueberry cheesecake he was having for dessert. “The pass is yours free and easy, just because we’re friends.” He grinned. “Of course, now that you mention it, there is something you…”

  “I didn’t know I’d done that.”

  “Done what?”

  “Mentioned it.” Bailey stared ruminatively at the envelope, seeming to weigh it in his open palm. A few seconds later he grunted and stuffed it into his pocket. “But now that you’ve gone and raised the subject of
how I can reciprocate, please feel free to give your suggestions. Bearing in mind I try to be a law-abiding fellow. Whenever possible, that is.”

  Lenny nodded, ate the slice of cheesecake, and wiped his lips with his napkin. Then he leaned forward and told Bailey what he wanted.

  “I’ll take anything you can get me,” he concluded in a hushed voice. “Cargo manifests, bills of lading, authorization documents — you name it. The more, the better.”

  Bailey looked at him. “This Zavtra outfit in Russia… is it an air or sea carrier?”

  “Could be both for all I know. Does it matter?”

  “Only insofar as it’d make my life easier. I mean, ninety percent of import and export transactions are filed electronically these days, which makes the info I pull out of my computer practically up-to-the-minute. But there are different systems depending on the method of transport.”

  “Don’t they interface?”

  “Sure they do. Like I said, it’s no big problem to run a global search. I’m just trying to cut down on the time involved.” Bailey scratched behind his ear. “How soon you need this stuff, by the way?”

  “Five minutes ago,” Lenny said. “And that was pushing things to the wire.”

  Bailey ballooned his cheeks, slowly let the air whistle out.

  “Do you always lay this kind of fucking bullshit on your wife and kids when you give them presents?”

  Lenny shook his head.

  “The love I’ve got for my family is unconditional,” he said. “I only associate with foul-mouthed sports fans like you out of necessity.”

  Bailey grinned.

  “Hurry up and ask for the check, asshole,” he said.

  * * *

  “Michael Caine!”

  “No, it’s Tom Jones.”

  “Tom Jones is a singer. The question was what British actor worked in a coal mine before he was famous.”

  “I seen him act in that movie about the Martians attacking, Boch—”

  “That was what they call a cameo, which ain’t the same thing. And besides, Tom Jones was a fucking grave digger—”

  “No, no, I’m telling you Rod Stewart was a grave digger, Tom Jones…”

  “Look, stunade, I don’t wanna hear no more about Tom Jones, okay? If it wasn’t Michael Caine it’s gotta be Richard Harris…”

  “Who the hell’s Richard Harris?”

  “Jesus Christ, what planet you from, anyway? He’s the guy who—”

  “Hey, Boch, how you doing?” Lenny Reisenberg interrupted from the entrance to the Quonset.

  He had been freezing his rear end off for the past five minutes, listening to Tommy Boccigualupo, the dockyard foreman, argue with his pal about a question that had been posed on the quiz show they were watching on Tommy’s small color TV. Behind him on the Twelfth Avenue wharf, hydraulic winches hissed and forklifts clanked as cargo was shuttled between ship holds and wide-load semis. There were a couple of pigeons squabbling with a dirty seagull over a pizza crust near the piles to Lenny’s right. Beyond them, the sky and the river merged in a smear of gray.

  Lenny heard a jubilant commotion of bells, whistles, and contestant screeches from the television. They seemed to jangle off the corrugated walls of the hut. Somebody on the program had apparently won something.

  “Aw crap, Len,” Boch said. “You made us miss the answer.”

  “Sorry.” Lenny gave the coil heater beside Tommy’s chair a longing glance. “It all right if I come in?”

  “Sure, mi shithole es su shithole,” Boch said. He motioned to a sofa with sunken Herculon cushions. Lenny remembered having dumped one just like it around 1974.

  He sat. Springs creaked, groaned, and poked into his bottom. The armrest felt as if it had absorbed a large quantity of used motor oil at some point in its long life. Still, the warmth from the heater had quickly taken the chill out of his bones, and he couldn’t help but be appreciative.

  “How’s the son?” Boch said, rotating his swivel chair toward Lenny.

  “He took the purple streaks out of his hair last week, started wearing what they call dreadlocks instead. Like those guys in Jamaica.” Lenny spread his hands haplessly. “Gets straight As in school, though, so what can I say?”

  Boch grunted his commiseration, smoothed his palm over his brilliantined hair. “My oldest daughter, Theresa, she’s pregnant with her second. Husband’s a slacker, capisce? I don’t know whether to congratulate him or break his fucking kneecaps.”

  Lenny leaned down and wriggled his fingers in front of the heater.

  “Kids,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Kids,” Boch repeated. He sighed. “What can I do for you, Len? ’Cause if this is about another rush job for UpLink, you’re outta luck. The Port Authority’s been wrapping the red tape around my balls since the bombing…”

  “Nothing like that.” Lenny gave him a significant glance and tipped his head toward the other man in the Quonset, who was still watching the game show.

  Boch nodded. “Joe,” he said.

  The guy wrenched his eyes from the tube. “Yeah?”

  “Get out there and check on that shipment from Korea,” Boch said, pointing out his window at the dock. “Remind the boys I want it at the warehouse before they knock off for the day.”

  “Sure,” Joe said.

  “And Joe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Then go get us some coffees.”

  “Sure.”

  Joe buttoned his mackinaw and left.

  Boch waited until he was out of earshot and turned back to Lenny.

  “So,” he said. “Talk.”

  “Friend of mine in Customs tells me an outfit called Mercury Distribution has a lot of merchandise come in at this yard. Received a shipment from Russia maybe a month, month and half back.”

  He paused. Boch made an indeterminate sound, gestured for him to continue.

  “I need the skinny on Mercury,” Lenny said. “It legit, or what?”

  Boch looked at him. “Why you asking?”

  “Because my boss asked me to ask,” Lenny said.

  A moment passed.

  Boch kept looking at him.

  “They been saying on the news it might be Russkies did that number in Times Square,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And now you come in with your questions about Mercury.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” Boch said.

  “Me neither, but I swear I don’t know any more than I’m telling you,” Lenny said. “I’m doing this on faith, Boch.”

  There was another silence. Boch meshed his knuckles on his lap, glanced down at them, cracked them.

  “Mercury’s run by a hood name of Nick Roma,” he said, finally. “Don’t let the handle fool you, he’s no goombah. Can call himself anything he wants, still stinks like fucking borscht to me.”

  Lenny nodded. “What kind of stuff he import?”

  “Ain’t my lookout,” Boch said. “I got to stay healthy for the wife’s sake, you know?”

  Lenny nodded again, rose from the couch, moved toward the entryway, turned to face Boccigualupo. Though he was still inside, he could feel the cold seeping back into him as he moved farther from the emission of the heater.

  “I owe you one,” he said. “And FYI, the answer to that question on the game show was ‘Richard Burton.’ ”

  “Thanks, I’ll make sure Joe finds out,” Boch said. He chewed his upper lip. “And you tell your boss to be careful, Len. These are dangerous people he’s messing with.”

  Lenny took a step closer to the door, then paused half in and half out of it. On the dock, the seagull had won its competition with the tag team of pigeons and was triumphantly shaking the pizza crust in its beak. The sky seemed a little grayer than it did before.

  “I’ll tell him,” he said.

  * * *

  Gordian buzzed Nimec in his office at three P.M.

  “Good news,” he said. “I just heard from
our man Reisenberg.”

  Nimec’s fingers tightened around the receiver.

  “He’s got the material?”

  “Scads of it. Or so he says,” Gordian said. “You want me to have him FedEx it to us?”

  Nimec considered that a moment. FedEx was normally reliable, but even they had been known to misplace the occasional package — and this was one shipment that couldn’t afford to go awry. Nimec didn’t know where Lenny had gotten the information from, but he knew someone would be in trouble if word got out that he or she was leaking information like this. Besides, he thought, if he was going to have another sleepless night, he might as well spend it packing his travel bag.

  “No,” he said. “I think I’d better fly into New York tomorrow morning.”

  There was a brief silence before Gordian commented.

  “Something tells me you’ve been wearing out your carpet again, Pete,” he said.

  Nimec stopped pacing.

  “Goes to show how little you know about your employees,” he said.

  Gordian grinned, but sobered quickly. “Is your team ready to go, Pete?”

  “Always,” Nimec said. “On a moment’s notice.”

  “Good,” Gordian said. “Because a moment may be all we get.”

  Nimec nodded. “I’ll put ’em on alert,” he said. “And then I think I’ll go pack.”

  Pressing the button on his phone, he disconnected from Gordian and then punched in the first phone number.

  TWENTY-SIX

  NEW YORK CITY JANUARY 16, 2000