The Alpha Deception

by Jon Land

  “Just the crystals?”

  “Because of their potential as one-of-a-kinds, I kept them in a separate place.” The old man shook his head. “My security was antiquated. The door we passed through was added after the robbery. My first, you know, in all these years.”

  “And ten days or so after that you started feeling you were being watched.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll need Lydia Brandywine’s address.”

  Earnst jotted it down in a large scrawl and handed it over. “Why bother?” he wanted to know.

  “Because I don’t believe in coincidence. I want to follow these crystals and see where they lead, so I’ll speak with Mrs. Brandywine. If I get nowhere, I’ll start over somewhere else.”

  That set Earnst thinking as he sat back down. “It’s strange.”

  “What is?”

  “The man who supplied me with the crystals requested their return shortly after the robbery. He sounded quite agitated, even frightened, when I told him they had been stolen.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “He’s a Greek named Kapo Stadipopolis. He’s a prime dealer in artifacts and gems sometimes obtained through shady means. All merchants depend on the black market from time to time, including me.”

  “That’s not the issue here, Mr. Earnst. Your safety is.”

  “Stadipopolis has a shop in Athens, on Monastiraki Square. He’s good at what he does, seldom makes a mistake. But he claimed he shipped me the crystals by accident. Said he needed them back desperately.”

  “In your mind, what were they worth?”

  “Whatever the market would bear for one-of-a-kind items. Believe me when I tell you, Mr. McCracken, that I had never seen anything quite like them before. A woman like Lydia Brandywine, well, there’s no telling how high she might have gone for something no one else had.”

  “She was no stranger to you then.”

  “Hardly. All the merchants know her. She is always in search of the unusual.”

  “So the crystals were worth stealing.”

  “Even more so because they were untraceable. Once remade and refined into stones for setting, they wouldn’t even resemble what I obtained from Greece.” Earnst looked impatient. “I still don’t see what this has to do with my being watched.”

  “T.C. also said you felt your life was in danger.”

  “An old man’s exaggeration.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m … not sure.” He hesitated, groping for the words to express what he felt. “I can feel them out there waiting; for what, I don’t know. A few times I walk to work, and I see faces I shouldn’t recognize but do. My apartment building has a new doorman—all of a sudden. The guard service sends a new man to watch the—”

  The intercom on Earnst’s desk buzzed. “Yes?” the old man said into it.

  “Mr. Obermeyer’s man is here with the delivery, sir,” a clerk’s voice came back.

  “Hmmmmm, early. Send him up.” Then, to McCracken as he started for the door, “Forgive the interruption.”

  But Blaine reached out and restrained him by the arm, his mind working in another direction. “The fact that he was early bothered you… .”

  “Yes, but—”

  “It’s not the routine. How early, damnit, how early?”

  “An hour, perhaps two.”

  “And who would check his papers?”

  “The guard at the main entrance, of course.”

  “The one your security service replaced,” McCracken said softly, recalling the man’s difficulty in finding the button beneath his desk.

  Earnst nodded slowly, fear filling his eyes as he realized the same thing McCracken already had.

  “What do we do? What do we do? They’ve come! Oh God, they’ve finally come!”

  “They’ve done us a favor, Mr. Earnst, because they don’t know I’m here, and even if they did they couldn’t know who I am. What’s the procedure?”

  “A clerk will escort the delivery man to the security door.”

  “And then?”

  “I open it and let them in.”

  “Follow the procedure.”

  “But—”

  “Trust me, Mr. Earnst. I’ll be right behind you all the way. But we’ve got to move now. Quickly!”

  McCracken crouched low as soon as he was back in the corridor, and moved quickly to the security door so he couldn’t be seen through the window two-thirds of the way up. When the old man was five yards away from the door, a face appeared against the glass.

  “My clerk,” Earnst said to McCracken who was now poised low against the wall adjacent to the door, so that when it opened it would obscure him.

  Blaine motioned him to open the door, whispering, “Move toward me quick as you can when it gives.”

  Earnst punched a coded sequence into a keypad. The door snapped open and began to move inward.

  The rest unfolded too fast for the old man’s eyes to follow, but McCracken grasped it all. The clerk’s frame shoved against the door and through it into the hallway with a large man behind him. There was a fssssssst and the clerk went down. Blaine noted the strange-looking pistol in the man’s hand and sprang into action.

  The man was going for Earnst, bringing the pistol up again, never seeing McCracken until he was upon him. Blaine used the man’s weapon against him, turned it back into his gut and jammed the trigger. A second fsssssssst split the air and the man stiffened immediately.

  “My God,” muttered a trembling Earnst.

  “Just tranquilizers,” McCracken explained, jamming the strange pistol into his pocket and sealing the door again. “Whoever it is must have wanted you alive.” He grabbed the old man and led him back down the corridor. “But now we’ve changed the rules on them, which might change their plans. They still want you and there’ll be more of them, the guard downstairs for instance. Is there another way out of the building from this level?”

  Earnst nodded fearfully. “My private elevator connects with a common exit for mine and four other stores.”

  “Fine. Your office first and then we’ll make use of it.”

  They reached Earnst’s office. Blaine eased the old man inside and steered him toward a display case set against the wall. It was filled with small, unfinished diamonds.

  “Grab as many of those as you can.”

  “What?”

  “T.C. sent me here to keep you safe and alive and that’s what I plan on doing.”

  The old man moved to the case and drained a measure of its contents into a small black jewelry box. “But the diamonds, why?”

  “Insurance,” Blaine replied and led the way back into the corridor, eyes peeled toward the security door. “They want you alive. We can make that work for us.”

  The elevator was located at the opposite end of the hallway from the door. Earnst could barely fit his security key in the special slot to activate it. McCracken helped him and eased the old man in first.

  Blaine drew his gun and had moved ahead to shield Earnst by the time the doors slid open again. The lobby before them was empty. McCracken wasted no time, grasping the old man gently once more.

  “Let’s go.”

  Blaine led him forward toward a set of glass doors which opened out onto 47th. He held the gun low by his hip, partially hidden by his sports jacket. Earnst gripped the jewelry box with both hands to his chest as he moved behind Blaine out the door and into the street.

  “Stay by my side,” McCracken whispered and swung right, walking east.

  West 47th was a snarl of pedestrians and vehicles. With the city clogged by the lunchtime rush, packs of humanity squeezed past each other, spilling into the street to merge with the gridlocked traffic. Horns blared. Tires went through a series of crazed stops and starts.

  Blaine led Earnst on, moving with the flow of the crowd. A chill crept up his spine, warning him to beware of adversaries closing in even now, searching them out—but from where?

  Up ahead the reason for the traf
fic tie-up became clear. A moving truck had wedged itself into an impossible position across the street. The slightest acceleration would crumple a car on one side of it or the other. Several individuals were helping the driver with his delicate maneuvers. Blaine slowed.

  “What’s wrong?” Earnst wondered.

  “That truck up there, I don’t like it.”

  “How can you tell? How can you know?”

  Blaine’s response was to grasp the old man’s arm at the elbow to urge him to go faster. The gnawing feeling of an attack soon to come was tight in his stomach. Yet from where would it come? Who might the assailants be, if there were any here at all? Everywhere he turned another shoulder brushed his own. Too many to be sure of anything. But as long as they wanted Earnst alive, he—

  Through the cool spring air, Blaine caught a sound. It was faint but terrifyingly distinct: the clang of a machine pistol bolt being yanked back followed by a sudden click.

  Alive, damnit, you’re supposed to want him alive!

  From tranquilizers to real bullets. Something had changed. The drawing-back of the bolts meant the gunmen had spotted them and were closing even now.

  Wait! The crowd! There was a way he could make use of it!

  They were halfway to Fifth Avenue now. Just ahead a temporary scaffolding was in place for construction on the upper floors of a building.

  “Open your box of diamonds,” McCracken whispered to Earnst.

  “What?”

  “Just do as I say. And when I tell you, fling the contents up in the air.”

  The old man gawked in disbelief. “Are you crazy? Millions of dollars, you’re talking about. Millions!”

  “Still not worth your life. There’s no time. They’ve got us. This is our only chance. When the excitement starts, mix with the crowd and disappear. You’ve done it before. You can do it again.”

  “The killers will still chase you.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  Somewhere behind him, Blaine felt footsteps pushing forward. Their pursuers were about to strike.

  “Now!” McCracken ordered.

  The old man lowered his eyes and hesitated. McCracken was about to knock the diamonds upward himself when Earnst flung the contents of the jewelry box back over his shoulder.

  The diamonds flew into the air, shimmering in the noon sun. The entire street seemed to come to a halt; the gems cascaded down, as if from heaven. Then the chaos set in.

  Men and women clawed past each other. Some lunged into the street or toward the sidewalk in pursuit of the slightest glimmer. Others dove around or through bodies for stones far smaller than a pinky fingernail. All was bedlam, screams, shouts of anger, threats. Bodies piled atop each other. Stronger men peeled them aside to clear a path for their arms.

  Blaine helped Earnst move to the edge of the chaos and then took off against the flow, smacking into people rushing back toward the frenzy. He gazed to his rear and the sight stunned him.

  Four men in the black garments, beards, wavy side curls, and homburgs of Hasidim had yanked machine pistols from beneath their overcoats. The Hasidim were fixtures on this street, but not normally with guns in their hands. Their first bursts split the air in Blaine’s direction. Bodies collapsed with bloody punctures dotting their flesh. The screams intensified.

  Blaine gnashed his teeth at the carnage. His strategy had exposed the gunmen all right, but now several people were dead as a result of it. He continued to run, blending with the crowd rushing from the gunfire and colliding with pedestrians who had stopped to gaze back toward the excitement. He sped under the scaffolding and past another delicatessen, heading for the street comer.

  At least the killers were known to him now. Once through the scaffolding, he would draw them into the open. Any fire then would be clear of innocent bystanders, and Blaine would be able to take on his assailants commando-style. It wouldn’t be easy; their silenced machine pistols attested to their professionalism, but—

  A woman smacked into him from behind. The impact knocked his arm against a street lamp, and the gun went flying under a sea of rushing feet.

  Behind him the four black coats loomed closer. Blaine had no choice but to run; escape was his only option.

  But not at the expense of more innocent people. With that in mind, he darted straight into 47th Street, zigzagging through traffic in a diagonal toward Fifth Avenue; the subway perhaps, a cab or bus. Bullets chewed the air. Screams tore at his ears, joined now by the shrieks of brakes and the crash of steel on steel as cars swerved sharply to avoid him. He sped onto Fifth Avenue with the awareness that the gunmen were very close and a continued flight by him would almost surely claim more innocent lives. He had to narrow the battlefield in order to gain the advantage.

  The service entrance to a spanking-new building at 590 Fifth Avenue had been propped open by deliverymen, and Blaine sped through it up a wide set of stairs. He heard what must have been singing and had climbed three flights before a collection of crates deposited on the landing blocked his way further up. He had no choice but to go through a door that brought him to the origin of the singing.

  He was on the dais of a synagogue that occupied the second and third floors of the building. A robed man, apparently a rabbi, was standing next to a young boy, while a man in different robes, apparently a cantor, chanted from a scroll. Few others were present. It must have been a rehearsal, a rehearsal for the boy’s upcoming Bar Mitzvah.

  “Get out!” Blaine shouted, as he rushed forward, but his warning was barely complete when two of the Hasidim charged onto the dais after him. One stumbled and slipped but the other came straight for McCracken. The man aimed his machine gun.

  Blaine grasped the heavy wooden ends of the Torah scrolls and swung the heavy object like a bat as he lunged toward the gun-wielding “Hasid.” The sacred symbol cracked into his face and tore his feet out from under him as the second “Hasid” regained his balance and a third came through a door at the front of the synagogue.

  McCracken dove to the floor of the dais and rolled. He grasped the machine pistol of the downed “Hasid” and fired a burst at the second man now charging toward him across the dais. The bullets caught the man in the gut and sent him careening into the Torah stand. The stand toppled to reveal the terrified boy who had sought cover behind it.

  The third assassin’s bullets flew wildly across the dais. A man screamed, then a woman. The boy crouched in fear.

  Blaine leaped to cover the boy as the third “Hasid” fired a fire spray over the area where the boy had just been. The leap had separated Blaine from his gun and he swept the floor for it frantically. He found it just as the costumed killer, snapping a new clip into place, was charging up the synagogue’s center aisle. Blaine fired at motion more than shape as the front door crashed open and the fourth “Hasid” burst through.

  The third had stopped and crumbled in his tracks. Blaine twisted to train his machine pistol on number four. He fired a split second before the last gunman and sent the man over two sets of seats. He was dead when he landed.

  McCracken kept the boy tight beneath him as he checked the dais. A young woman was holding her arm. The rabbi was bleeding rather badly from a leg wound. Blaine eased the terrified boy gently up at the shoulders.

  “Now,” he told him, “you can live to become a man.”

  Chapter 6

  “BLAINE, WHERE HAVE YOU been? What happened? I’ve been calling the parlor and—”

  “Never mind, T.C. Your grandfather’s safe, but it was close. I don’t know what he’s gotten involved in but it must be big. And unless I miss my guess, it’s got something to do with some twice-stolen crystals.”

  “Crystals? You mean gems? Stolen? Blaine—”

  “Listen to me. I’m not sure what these crystals are but they’re part of the mystery and they’re the only trail I can follow. But somebody might not want me to get very far, and it might not take them very long to put the pieces together. Just stay put at the Waldorf until you hear from
me.”

  “No, I want to—”

  “You’ll do as I say,” he insisted firmly, then lowered his voice. “I’m going to tell you how to reach an Indian friend of mine in case something happens to me. You’ll be safe. He’ll make sure of it.”

  “Blaine, you’re scaring me… .”

  “I just want you to appreciate me more when I come to pick you up.”

  McCracken rented a car at Hertz’s midtown depot and headed out toward the home of Lydia Brandywine, which was in Woodmere. He wasn’t sure how she connected with all this but a connection was plain; the robbery had occurred days after she had examined the crystals. So she had alerted someone, the force behind the “Hasidim” perhaps, to their existence. Whether she had done so on purpose or not Blaine didn’t know. He intended to find out.

  Lydia Brandywine lived in a large house, not quite large enough to be a mansion, off Chester Road. It was painted white, and its facade was dominated by a trio of pillars. The grounds were spacious, and a circular drive fronted the entrance. McCracken parked directly before it and climbed the steps. He rang the bell, waited a few seconds, and then rang it again. He heard locks being turned and then the door swung open.

  “Have you seen my cat?” an old voice asked him through the crack left by the chain. “Have you seen Kitty?”

  “No,” McCracken said, flashing his best smile. “Erich Earnst sent me. He’s recovered those crystals you were interested in, and he sent me out to inquire about possible settings for them.”

  She gazed beyond him. “Has he recovered my cat? She’s disappeared before, though. Always comes back. Wants to eat.”

  “May I come in, Mrs. Brandywine?”

  “Why?”

  “To discuss possible settings for the crystals.”

  “Oh, yes.” She started the door inward to unfasten the chain. “Certainly.”

  The door open, she bid Blaine to enter. He saw she was frail and wrinkled, her body hunched over. She was hardly the type he’d expect to be a second-floor customer of Erich Earnst and well known in the diamond district to boot. She wore a long dark dress with a shawl covering her shoulders.