by Dick Wolf
It was Fisk’s first time inside the tower, and he was surprised by the relative blandness of the interior, especially within the paper’s office. The open newsroom looked like a call center or an insurance agency within a generic suburban office park, its sea of repetitive office-drab gray workstations and cabinets lit by too-sharp fluorescents. On the far end of the newsroom was a conference room that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a frequent traveler’s lounge at a minor-league airport.
He made out eight-by-ten crime-scene photos scattered atop the conference room table. Like most law enforcement agents, he never liked murders, but he brightened at the prospect of working one now. In the two years prior to his promotion to Intel, at the rank of NYPD detective investigator, he’d worked primarily on homicides, but he hadn’t gotten his fill of the one-of-a-kind puzzles. Intelligence work consisted of preventing crimes, a process that lacked the game-winning-home-run rush that came with solving them. In Intel, if you do your job, no one notices; you’re more like a good umpire.
The old-school crime-scene glossies, as opposed to digital images, told him that at least one of the ten people around the conference table was a fed. Expect to see time travel before a paperless Bureau, agents there often grumbled. Their presence here signified that the crime involved spies, terrorists, hackers, pedophiles, mobsters, gangs, or serial killers.
On entering the room, Fisk recognized the man seated at the head of the table, FBI special agent Burt Weir, a balding, middle-aged remnant of a high school jock. Weir was assigned to the Bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, an organization of agents, investigators, analysts, and various specialists from other law enforcement and intelligence agencies who, alongside FBI agents in field offices all over the country, combated terrorism. Weir wore a dark suit and tie—the G’s all did—but looked out of place in anything but sweats.
Waving Fisk into the vacant chair at the foot of the table, he said, “Glad you could join us.”
Fisk took this as grudging inclusion; the Bureau wanted something from Intel, probably the contents of a secret dossier or the use of an informant. In any other city, the police would already have provided Weir whatever he wanted. New York was different, not just because of its eight million residents or the stock exchange or 9/11, but because of its singular Intelligence Division, created by a CIA deputy director of operations—David Cohen—and backed by the most potent police department in the world. Intel’s resulting autonomy often created a competition with the Bureau, bruising more than its share of FBI egos and sometimes even impeding investigations.
More often, the relationship was like a strained marriage. Federal law prohibited FBI agents from constitutionally protected arenas like religion and political speech. Forget sending plainclothes agents into mosques to gather intelligence, they weren’t even permitted to grab a bite at a place like New Persia Diner in Astoria. New Persia served a devout clientele, including two men currently suspected of administering the Jihad Joe website whose content included exhortations to join al-Qaeda in its fight against “infidels” in none other than Queens. Intel knew this because one of the rakers had secured a gig redesigning the New Persia Diner takeout menu and parleyed it into a job administering the Jihad Joe site. Two days later, at a nearby mosque, a Staten Island resident named Abdel Hameed Shehadeh told a friend about his plan to wage violent jihad and die a martyr. Fortunately the friend was an informant, recruited by another NYPD Intel raker.
Weir rattled off introductions. To Fisk’s left and right were an FBI computer forensics guy Fisk didn’t know, and FBI special agent Dan Evans, whom he did. Evans had earned quite the badass reputation while serving in the Bureau’s Las Vegas field office, cemented after successfully going toe-to-toe with a heavyweight-boxer-turned-goon. You wouldn’t guess it to look at him, though: slight of frame, clean-cut white-blond hair, the innocent face of a Mormon missionary. Together, Evans and the boxy Weir were a sight gag. They were a natural good-cop-bad-cop team, though in Fisk’s experience, they amounted to two bad cops. In fairness, their intentions were good; they just suffered from overexposure to red tape.
Also at the table were the editor of the Times’s online edition, the paper’s director of security, four representatives of the legal team, and, in the seat across from Fisk’s, Chay Maryland, who wore a no-nonsense black business suit that somehow accentuated her steely good looks. Unlike the others, who greeted him with a nod born of the exigency of getting down to business, she smiled.
It wasn’t a particularly welcoming or friendly smile, Fisk noted. More of an I’m-going-to-enjoy-this-more-than-you-are smile.
“Thanks to all for coming,” said Evans. “This is an unusual situation, so listen up. This is Harun Ahmed, thirty-three years old, who was shot and killed while he was jogging yesterday in Central Park, on a path through the woods approximately two hundred feet south of the reservoir gatehouse.”
He held up a photograph of the bloodied victim lying between trees beside the heavily wooded path.
“Our ballistic tests suggest that two shots were fired from a high-powered rifle. We haven’t determined the shooter’s location yet, but it was at a point of considerable elevation—one of the low-caliber rounds entered the victim’s left parietal, at the top of his skull, and drilled almost straight through the left hemisphere of the brain, starting with the parietal lobe, then the occipital lobe—”
Impatiently, Weir cut in, “The point is, it was a sniper that got him. The question is: Why this guy, Harun Ahmed, a doorman at a fancy white-glove building on Central Park South, with nothing in the way of a record or anything close? One possible answer is that his wife Durriyah’s first cousin is Mahmoud Amr, who, as of two weeks ago, is a resident of the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix.”
Fisk remembered reading about the Mahmoud Amr case. Amr bought a fifteen-year-old Chevy Trailblazer SUV listed on craigslist in New Jersey. At $2,000, he probably overpaid, given that the Trailblazer had more than 300,000 miles on it. He hollowed out the SUV’s running boards, stuffed them with $800,000 in hundreds, then resold it for $525 to a car exporter who shipped it, along with fifty-odd vehicles in similar condition, to Lebanon. There, each vehicle sold at auction for around two million Lebanese pounds, or $1,500. Amr’s thinking had been that, even if an extreme bidding war were to ensue over the Trailblazer, if it sold for a record $5,000, his al-Shabaab confederate in Tripoli would still come out $795,000 ahead.
“Other than Muslim heritage, is there reason to believe that the victim had ties to al-Shabaab?” Fisk asked Weir.
Chay grinned. “Doesn’t Muslim heritage automatically place someone under NYPD Intel suspicion?”
“Actually, Muslim heritage can get you hired by NYPD Intel—my mother was Lebanese, so I learned Arabic. Wish I could’ve told you that before your story about our racial-profiling practices.”
Weir broke it up. “Our theory is that the victim objected to al-Shabaab, but because of something he’d learned, posed a threat to an al-Shabaab operation.”
“So is that what I’m doing here?” Fisk asked. “You want our Shabaab dossier?”
“It would sure help if we could get a read on his sympathies,” Evans said.
“Then I guess the question is what I’m doing here.” Fisk indicated the newsroom with a sweeping gesture. “At the New York Times.”
Weir nodded to Ed Norman, the Times’s director of security. Even with close-cropped black hair, a gray business suit and silk tie, the stocky Norman had the windblown look of an old-time sea captain. Fisk recalled that Norman had retired from the FBI after twenty-six years, which was unusual. Most agents who’d been at the Bureau for more than twenty years hung on until thirty, for the obvious pension benefits. After that, they commonly left to cash in, as director-of-security positions like Norman’s paid two or three times the GS-15 pay grade of $99,000, starting salary, not including the annual bonus. Rumor was that Norman’s wife’s affinity for the country-club lifestyle had won out. Norman
wore a suit now that looked decent enough; Fisk had the sartorial equivalent of a tin ear, but he recognized Norman’s shoes. The distinctive boat-shaped Bettanin & Venturi loafers, handmade in Italy and fetching in the neighborhood of a thousand dollars a pair for a reason Fisk couldn’t even guess at. He’d seen them before on investment bankers, at their trials. So either Norman had materialistic inclinations of his own, or the shoes had been a gift from his wife.
“This is the reason you’re here, Detective Fisk,” said Norman, aiming his cell phone at the whiteboard on the front wall. The whiteboard filled with an all-type version of NYTimes.com—devoid of photographs or graphics. Norman scrolled to a brief Metro section story entitled “Jogger Shot and Killed in Central Park.”
“You guys are seeing our internal version of the paper, what we call the backstage. Reporters file here, editorial goes over copy here, and, after the piece goes live, moderators come here to choose which reader comments to post.” He lowered the cursor to the comments box, where, beneath each incoming reader comment, there were two buttons, a green one labeled APPROVE and red, DISAPPROVE. Settling on a comment awaiting moderation, he read aloud:
Greetings, so-called authorities. I am Yodeler. I have been watching you, watching your campaigns of propaganda and disinformation, watching your suppression of dissent. You have used deception to gain the trust of our citizenry. I have decided to dismantle that trust, starting with the two Hornady 9mm Makarov bullets fired from an AR-15 at the runner at 2:18 yesterday afternoon. For the greater good of the citizens of America, each and every day I shall sacrifice one person in New York City chosen completely at random.
Evans shook his head, bewildered. “See, here’s the thing. None of the articles or news coverage anywhere said a word about the bullets.”
“Except that the victim was shot,” added Weir.
“Do we have any idea where the comment originated?” asked Fisk.
“Every comment comes with communications metadata, which our system records,” said Norman. “We have this Yodeler guy’s IP address, and we have the data center his comment was passed through. Apparently he used a Verizon cell phone in midtown Manhattan.”
So they had next to nothing, Fisk thought. From time to time, a perp kept a disposable phone on him, or in his car, mistakenly believing that if the device were powered off, it couldn’t be tracked. If Yodeler were at all clued in, he would have dedicated a burner phone to his single New York Times comment, then flung the thing into the Hudson.
“So is Yodeler right about the bullets?” Fisk asked. Makarov 9x18mm pistol and submachine-gun cartridges had long been a standard Russian and Eastern Bloc counterpart to the Western 9x19mm Parabellum, and they were widely available everywhere in the world. They were designed to kill at relatively short range, fifty yards or so, but a sniper firing from a longer distance in an urban setting might prefer such a low-caliber round for noise reduction. “Could be difficult to trace. Dozens of manufacturers produced 9mm Makarovs.”
“The slug recovered largely intact from the dirt near the victim weighs ninety-five grains, or .217 ounces.” Evans looked up from the ballistics report. “Usually Makarovs are ninety-four grains, but Hornady’s are ninety-five.”
“What about rifling marks?” Fisk asked. Rifling is the process of cutting helical grooves in the barrel that impart a spin to the bullet to increase its accuracy. Rifling marks left on a slug—the bullet minus the casing—permit the identification of the gun manufacturer and model.
Evans read, “Clockwise twist of one to twelve.” One to twelve meant the bullet needed to travel twelve inches to complete a rotation.
“So we’re talking AR-15?” Fisk asked. AR-15s are assault rifles so common that popular belief has it that AR stands for assault rifle, but in fact AR derives from ArmaLite, the corporation that originated the weapon.
“Yes, sir,” said Evans. “Colt AR-15 Sporter, a civilian model.”
Turning to Fisk, Chay asked, “Can’t you search the NYPD’s database of recorded signal traffic and map where Yodeler was before and after he submitted the comment?”
A complete fishing expedition on her part, Fisk suspected, which possibly explained her presence here. “The Electronic Communications Privacy Act applies to us the same as it does to any government agency. Unfortunately, we need to serve a warrant to Verizon before we can get that sort of data.”
Chay uncapped a pen and put it to the legal pad on the table in front of her. “Why ‘unfortunately’?”
Fisk smiled at her gesture—as though a paper and pen could intimidate him. “It’s an ordeal to get the data. The Department or the Bureau needs to draft a National Security Letter, and then have it printed out and served to Verizon’s legal department. Which is the easy part. The providers send back CDs loaded with ‘toll records’—lists of calls to a phone, calls from it, texts, and Internet usage.”
Weir chuckled. “We call the CDs ‘haystacks.’”
“If we could mine the data now,” Fisk continued, “it could mean the difference between life and death if Yodeler intends to make good on his threat. If he had that phone on him or in his car while he was near the victim’s place of work or the crime scene, we’d be halfway home.”
“How can this help unless he used the phone during that time?” Chay asked.
“Fortunately we do have the Domain Awareness system surveillance cameras. On Central Park South, even within a block of the victim’s building, we can reasonably expect to see footage of five hundred people snapping a photo in the past week, it being Tourist Central and summertime. If the phone Yodeler used for his message to us were to have also transmitted from Central Park South, we would know which of the five hundred people to talk to, because taking photos is classic pre-operational reconnaissance activity.”
Chay looked at her pad and jotted something down. The fact that she said nothing suggested that Fisk had made his point.
“We’ll NSL Verizon,” Weir said.
“What about F6?” Fisk asked, on the off chance that the Bureau had some in with the service that the Department didn’t. F6 was the code name for the Special Collection Service jointly run by the CIA and NSA. In the way the CIA or MI6 intrigued ordinary citizens, F6 appealed to those in law enforcement—those who knew about the service. The Special Collection Service’s sole responsibility was getting information no one else could. In the field, its operators bugged places that had been deemed impossible to access by other agencies. And in cyberspace, the F6 techs were on a level of their own in STG—SIGINT Terminal Guidance, SIGINT in turn short for “signals intelligence”—monitoring, intercepting, and interpreting electronic communications. They ran a battery of proprietary surveillance applications like XKEYSCORE, CADENCE/GAMUT, HIGHTIDE/SKYWRITER, and WIRESHARK that allowed them to search—without FISA authorization—through vast databases containing e-mails, online chats, and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, often in real time.
“Does F6 even officially exist?” Chay asked.
“It officially exists,” said Fisk with a grin and a glance at her legal pad. “But its existence is classified.”
Evans flashed Fisk a look of rebuke. “What would be beneficial, at this point, is for us to work up a background on the victim.”
“Any reason to think he wasn’t chosen at random?” Fisk asked. “Investigating victims’ backgrounds is standard operating procedure. We never take a killer’s word that his victims have been selected at random. Some make that claim simply because it terrifies more people than if they were to say they had a specific target, like world leaders. Some make the claim purely as a diversionary tactic. And often the common denominator among victims makes no sense to a rational thinker, but yields a method to the killer’s madness.”
“We’re not buying his ideologue act,” Weir said. “If that’s what you mean.”
Checking his notes, Evans explained, “When Yodeler writes, ‘I shall sacrifice one person in New York City chosen completely at rando
m,’ there’s reason to think the ‘chosen completely at random’ is a compensatory construct. Also we suspect that ‘citizens of America’ is a clue that he isn’t American, or at least he’s not from here, since we always say ‘U.S. citizens.’”
Weir cut in, “No one here calls New York ‘New York City.’”
Evans went on. “Also we have reason to suspect Yodeler is a reference to the Austrian yodeler who was imprisoned a couple years back for a mocking version of the Muslim call to prayer. He’s come to represent Western intolerance. You’d think Yodeler would be the last screen name he’d use if he were a member of, say, al-Shabaab, and he was trying to deflect blame for a hit.”
“Sure,” said Fisk. “Unless he wants to send the so-called authorities on a wild Muslim chase.”
“What’s that mean?” asked Weir.
“Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen—Arabic for ‘Mujahedeen Youth Movement’—originated ten years ago as a Somali cell of al-Qaeda before growing into a full-fledged terrorist organization in its own right. More recently al-Shabaab has initiated recruitment and fund-raising within the United States, but the group had never engaged in terrorism here. And al-Shabaab never use snipers, favoring less subtle methods of execution.”
“Such as?” asked Chay, as Fisk knew she would.
“Literally tearing victims limb from limb.”
Weir didn’t like Fisk’s answer. “Nothing gets crossed off the list until it gets crossed off the list.”
Fisk suspected al-Shabaab had nothing to do with this case, which meant that the FBI had brought him in for no reason.
Didn’t matter now. He was in.
“Why don’t we ask Yodeler what he wants?” he said. He took in the roomful of blank looks. A start, he thought. “He wants something.”