The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel

by Dick Wolf

  “No, no, it’s not like that.”

  He wasn’t convinced. What else could this be? His inclination was to protect her regardless. Unless getting him to feel that way had been her objective in wrangling an invitation to his off-the-grid bed? Wouldn’t be the first time in the annals of spying.

  She said, “I need to keep fighting for the constitutional protection of the communications between journalist and source. Also, if I were to hand over or even discuss documents that Merritt showed me in confidence—that would betray his trust. Why would a source ever trust me again?”

  “There’s always an escape route.”

  “Except when you’re trapped.”

  “We could work it so that a collection of the documents found its way onto the Internet. We would simply omit anything that jeopardized national security. Or better still, we could turn this into a counterintelligence coup by adding documents designed to mess with our enemies’ heads. For instance, we include an Above Top Secret memorandum about our mole at the Chinese Ministry of State Security.”

  “That would work except for one part.” She looked at the footwell. “I don’t have the documents.”

  He figured he’d missed something. “What happened to them?”

  “All of the material I ever had was excerpted in my story, the same documents Merritt simultaneously uploaded to WikiLeaks, which WikiLeaks posted a few hours after my story was published. I promised Merritt I wouldn’t reveal what I’d seen and what I hadn’t, for his protection, not until he’d uploaded everything he had.”

  “I thought you had terabytes sitting on a flash drive somewhere.”

  “Unfortunately, I perpetuated that notion.”

  “Why?”

  “Simple. To get what every journalist wants. Access. Access to you, for instance. And that sure paid off. If I don’t go up to my desk now and write a behind-the-scenes story of the Yodeler investigation that puts me on the Pulitzer short list, it will be because another enemy spy grabs me first.” She looked up, her eyes rimmed red. “I’m sorry.”

  He drew her toward him, kissed her on the forehead. “As long as you’re not in league with our enemies, we’re good. Also, as confessions go, trust me . . . that’s nothing.”

  CHAPTER 46

  At Intel, Weir and Evans, of all people, tried to convince Fisk that he’d done his job, done it well, and that the case could be closed. He’d run into them on his way in. As Weir put it, in his inimitable way, “I think you’re fucking nuts, Fisk.”

  Evans quickly added, “Burt means that in a good way.”

  “He gets it, he gets it,” said Weir, before turning back to Fisk. “I mean, here you’ve nailed this case closed, and you’re still all OCD about clues—which I’ve come around on, by the way. It gets you thinking of stuff no one else does. With Yodeler, it made a life-and-death difference. I was totally wrong about you, man.” He offered a beefy right hand.

  Moved by his contrition, Fisk shook hands. “You’re not all bad either,” he said.

  “As we just told Chief Dubin, we’re going to submit you for the Director’s Award for Excellence,” Evans said.

  The Director’s Award for Excellence, Fisk knew, was given in recognition of FBI agents as well as outsiders judged to have made an outstanding contribution to the FBI and its mission. Agents who won considered it a career highlight. Fisk was humbled.

  “But the Director’s Award’s just a trophy—looks just like the ones my kids win every year just for showing up to tee-ball practice,” Weir said. “Which is why I want to give you FBI special agent Burt Weir’s Award for Excellence, which is whatever the hell you want at Old Town. Ev and I are heading there right now for the longest lunch of our careers.”

  Fisk knew that the Old Town Bar, just north of Union Square, had been an FBI-agent favorite for more than a century. His mouth watered at the thought of an Old Town burger—maybe the best of any pub’s in the city—washed down by a Black and Tan.

  “First let’s cross Darren Draco off the bucket list,” he said.

  “His name turned up on one of our lists, but it turned out to have nothing to do with drones. So, Old Town?”

  Fisk couldn’t leave it at that. “Which list?”

  Weir said to Evans, “Put our guest of honor’s mind at ease, will you?”

  Evans checked his phone. “Using the identity of Darren Draco, Boyden had a slew of part-time chemical-plant jobs, including, this week, at an industrial-cleaning-products manufacturer in Hoboken called Bantam Chemical. So his name went automatically onto our watch list.”

  “Why?” Fisk asked.

  “Bantam bulk-orders a number of different chemicals that can be weaponized.”

  “Was Boyden making use of his doctorate in chemistry?”

  “He’s held similar jobs at other cleaning-supply companies and agricultural chemical plants all over Connecticut. Two weeks here, two weeks there, filling in for chemical-plant and systems officers who were out.”

  “Better cooking pesticide than meth,” Weir chimed in while, pointedly, turning to go.

  Fisk wondered aloud: “Hoboken’s a haul from where Boyden lived, in Norwalk, isn’t it?”

  Evans waved away the concern. “Fifty miles, but he could have done the drive in just over an hour if he’d avoided traffic.”

  Stepping toward the elevators, Weir said, “That wacko probably was lucky to get work anywhere.”

  “I’ll meet you guys over at Old Town,” Fisk said. “I just have a couple of quick things to wrap up here.” It would be a matter of minutes, he thought, to rule out any connection between the case and Boyden Verlyn’s employment at a company that bought weaponizable chemicals in bulk. Hopefully, it wasn’t the portent it seemed.

  The two FBI agents headed off with the air of children on the last day of school. Fisk started toward his office, burning to research Bantam Chemical. Something was off. He didn’t know what, but he felt it, like a splinter in his mind.

  Dubin intercepted him and exclaimed, though no one was in earshot, “Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, the man of the hour.” He pointed Fisk to the corner office. Following him, the chief added, “I’d say you hit a home run, Detective, but it’s more than that. It’s like you were due up to bat with the team trailing in the bottom of the ninth, with three outs, meaning the game was over. But you’d seen something on the last play, and you had the umpires look at the replay, then reverse the call, letting you bat. Then you smacked the ball out of the stadium.”

  “Thanks,” Fisk said, wondering about Dubin’s true agenda now. Or, rather, the PR team’s agenda.

  Dubin dropped onto the couch. He scowled when Fisk didn’t immediately take one of the chairs across from him. Fisk sat, but at the edge of the cushion, poised to spring up and out.

  “Need a Coke?” asked the chief. “Or a seltzer, maybe?”

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  “How about lunch? You have lunch yet? Sally can order from El Quixote.”

  “Wish I had time.”

  “Got it.” Dubin tugged his shirt cuffs into alignment. “Real quick, then, about the Tel Aviv gig . . .”

  By necessity, Fisk had pushed the transfer to the back of his mind. “I haven’t had a chance to think about it yet.”

  “That’s okay. See, the other thing you accomplished with your game-winning home run was cause management to reassess sending you to Tel Aviv. They want you to stay, and the city needs you to stay. So how about it?”

  Excellent, Fisk thought. He expected that there would be a price, though. “Maybe,” he said.

  “Also I’d gotten to thinking that David Rettenmund would be the man for Tel Aviv. We could send him there to pick up tech tips from the Israelis.”

  David Rettenmund—R2—was an excellent choice for Tel Aviv, Fisk thought. R2 was young and single, would kill for the opportunity to work abroad, and was probably uniquely suited to thrive in the tech-intensive Israeli environment. Fisk had doubts about Dubin’s motivation in suggesting
R2 as the man for the job, though. Was it because the chief, aware of Fisk’s affinity for R2, sought to gain leverage?

  Fisk feigned indifference. “Okay.”

  “The Department just needs you to do one small thing,” Dubin said.

  Huge surprise. “Use the city’s box at Yankees games more often?”

  “Close. I know this isn’t your shtick, but Mayor de Blasio wants to present you with a key to the city in Riverside Park before the fireworks ceremony tonight.”

  A key to the city didn’t sound that bad to Fisk. With it, he would be like a made man in New York—able even to cut through red tape.

  But Dubin, shifting uncomfortably on the couch, had more. “There are just a few things they’d like you to say.”

  “Like what?”

  Dubin went to his desk and snapped up a printed sheet of paper. “This just came by messenger. In light of current events, the PR folks are afraid of their e-mails being electronically intercepted, so now they’ve gone old school with the commo.” He glanced at the document. “So what they want you to do is decry previous Intel policies.”

  “Decry?”

  “Not my word.” Dubin lowered himself into his desk chair, slipped on a pair of reading glasses, and scanned the memo. “They want you to quote from the Declaration of Independence as a way of condemning the spooky tactics and gadgets we’ve gotten flak for. Do you know the part where Thomas Jefferson talks about what happens when government becomes destructive of people’s unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”

  Fisk knew the opening of the Declaration of Independence by heart—unfortunately to the tune from the Broadway musical 1776, of which his music teacher at the American School in Abu Dhabi had been the world’s biggest fan. Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.

  “My only problem with that is I don’t think we’re doing anything wrong,” Fisk said. “I wish New Yorkers could leave their apartment doors and windows open when there are strangers in town. But until we can trust the strangers—”

  Dubin raised a hand, like an ax, poised to cut him off. But he didn’t. Instead he tugged at his own lip. Fisk had seen this before—albeit rarely. The chief was taking something he’d said into consideration.

  “You know what?” Dubin said finally. “Why don’t you say what you just said?”

  “I wouldn’t get the key.”

  Dubin rose with energy Fisk hadn’t seen from him in a long time. He balled up the printout and jump-shot it at the corner wastepaper basket, missing badly. “The memo got lost. They should have e-mailed it. All you need to say is the Department’s going to continue to protect people. We’re fucking spies, not marketing executives.”

  Fisk was glad Dubin had come around. The sentiment was diluted, though, by his nascent theory of what Boyden Verlyn had been up to at Bantam Chemical.

  CHAPTER 47

  Darren Draco is a terrific chemist,” said Sol Bellinger, the silver-haired founder and longtime owner of Bantam Chemical. “He’s a genius.”

  Bellinger had come to work at the Hoboken plant today so that his foreman could take his children to a July Fourth parade. Hearing that, Fisk liked Bellinger. Also there was an undeniable geniality etched between the seventy-year-old’s jowls, which, like his ample belly, spoke of a predilection for comfort food. His sharp eyes were full of a certain reassuring gravitas.

  Bellinger added, “I would do just about anything to get him to come to work here full-time.”

  Fisk saw no reason to explain why Darren Draco—aka Boyden Verlyn—would never be coming to work at the plant again. Purporting to be here as part of a routine security check, Fisk followed the old man out of an elevator and onto the uppermost of four tiers of catwalks circling a chemical mixing room that reminded him of a giant diesel truck engine. Glinting beneath dim fluorescents stood fuel and oil centrifuges, cylinder heads, alternators, air reservoirs, turbochargers, camshafts, crankcases, pumps—at least that’s what Fisk thought Bellinger was saying. He could barely hear him over a gargantuan turbine that, in combination with the other machines, filled the air with the whine of thousands of vacuum cleaners gunning at once. Yet the air was stagnant, heavy with oil, and searing—easily 110 degrees. Fisk was relieved on several fronts when Bellinger led him into the vast soundproofed and air-conditioned control room overlooking the works.

  Bellinger gestured to the bank of controls that were part late-twentieth-century computer and part World War II submarine. “This is where the magic happens.”

  “What exactly does Darren do?” Fisk asked.

  “He’s a chemical plant and systems officer, like Priscilla and Jim here.” Bellinger gestured toward a man and a woman sitting at clusters of instruments and computers across the room. Each looked up from their monitors to exchange a quick greeting with Bellinger. Jim was a big, bearded, studious-looking African American man of about fifty, who wore a bow tie under his white lab coat. Priscilla was perhaps ten years younger, a trim and attractive redhead, making the dark circles under her eyes all the more jarring. She looked to Fisk like she’d been sleeping even less than he had lately.

  Returning his attention to Fisk, Bellinger said, “Chemical plant and systems officers use all of these gauges and readouts to ensure that your chemicals are mixed in the right order, that the reaction rates, temperatures, and other variables are on target.

  “Why?”

  “Chemistry is science, of course, but on the industrial scale, it’s an art, and like painters or sculptors, plant and systems officers need to know everything about their materials, especially how they react under all sorts of conditions. Take moisture content: it completely varies depending on the weather. Computers can help you, but in the end it comes down to the skill and judgment of the operator, and, in some cases, like Darren Draco, artistry. He’s as good as they come.”

  “Why wouldn’t he want full-time work?”

  “Good chemists can make more in two days as a freelancer than they can in a week full-time, because of the union caps. If a plant and systems officer is going to be out, you have to replace them. Otherwise your operation comes to a standstill. When a plant and systems officer misses work unexpectedly, the subs have you over a barrel.”

  “Is that what happened last week?” Fisk asked.

  “Well . . .” Bellinger hesitated.

  “You don’t need to tell me the specifics of Draco’s contract.”

  “No, it’s not that.” Bellinger shot a quick glance at Priscilla, who appeared absorbed by her work. With a look of relief, he hurried to an exit door, pulled it open, allowing Fisk to pass through, then followed him into a tall concrete corridor with heavy acetic fumes like those in a hair salon. Pulling the door shut behind him, Bellinger explained, “Priscilla had to miss a few days because of her father’s death. I told her to take all the time she wanted, but what she really wanted was to be back at work, to take her mind off it. Horrific business. Her father was Walter Doyle, one of the drone victims.”

  Shock buffeted Fisk. He tried to hide it. So, Yodeler/Boyden’s claim that he would kill people in New York City at random had been a cover. And likely Boyden killed Walter Doyle with more in mind than getting a gig as a substitute chemical plant and systems officer.

  Fisk asked, “Are there any chemicals you work with here that they wouldn’t commonly have in plants in Connecticut?”

  Bellinger offered a one-shouldered shrug as he gestured with his other arm for Fisk to precede him around the corner. “We make industrial cleaning fluids and sewage treatment products, so we don’t have anything that’s very sexy.”

  Fisk started down another corridor, wrought in bare concrete, leading to the supply room. “What about chemicals that can be weaponized?”

  “What chemicals can’t be weaponized? Your basic drain cleaner and rust remover contain nitric or sulfuric acid, like H2SO4, which is required to mak
e the high-order explosive nitroglycerine. The little engines in the model rockets that my grandson’s Boy Scout troop build run on nitro-methane, CH3NO2, which is a chemical with explosive properties greater than TNT, and when you mix it in with an oxidizing agent like a basic ammonium nitrate, NH4NO3, which many agricultural companies use in fertilizer products you can buy at any garden store, the explosive power is even greater.” Bellinger stopped by the supply room door. Signs warned away unauthorized personnel. Opening the door required entering the proper code on the numeric keypad as well as a fingerprint scan. “Here we have a lot of concentrated hydrogen peroxide, H202, which we use in our sewage treatment products, and it’s the same stuff my wife picks up at the drug store to sanitize various things in our bathrooms and kitchen. However, as I’m sure you know, Detective, H2O2’s gotten a bit of a bad rap in your world lately.”

  Al-Qaeda’s favorite impromptu high explosive of late, triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, could be made using concentrated H2O2—hydrogen peroxide—which was available in most pharmacies and hardware stores. A small quantity of “Mother of Satan,” as terrorists called it, could produce tremendous destructive force. It was famously used in 2001 on a transcontinental American Airlines flight by passenger Richard Reid, subsequently known as the Shoe Bomber. The ten ounces of the explosive he’d packed into his black suede sneakers could have taken down the plane. Fortunately a flight attendant first noticed Reid trying to light one of his sneakers with a match.

  Fisk winced at the thought of the damage Boyden Verlyn could cause with a quadrocopter and a four-pound TATP payload if the quad were to land on a city street. Conservatively, everyone within 1,000 feet of the blast would be a potential casualty—the standard Manhattan city block was 264 feet long. The blast itself could cause eardrum damage and lung collapse and, of course, hurl people to more severe injuries or death. And high-velocity flying debris was the biggest threat in such explosions—shards of glass were responsible for 40 percent of the casualties in the Oklahoma City bombing.