When he arrived on his hilltop a half hour ago, he entered the coordinates into the European-made, CIA-adapted 90 mm rocket launcher that had been left for him at a safe house in nearby Hardenburgh. He had parked his pickup, also waiting for him at the safe house, in a stand of giant fir trees near an abandoned fire tower about a mile away, and trudged in through the snow and the dark, carrying the thirty pound launcher and rocket container in a duffle bag, along with a high powered scoped rifle that he had quickly put together and that was now resting on a stump on his right.
In the right front window, a dark-haired woman stood smoking a cigarette, its hot orange tip arcing as she swept her hair back and poured coffee. Sylvana Dalessio—her picture in his pocket next to the fax—along with pictures of Johannes and his two sons. No sign of them, although a few minutes ago lights had come on briefly and gone off in an upstairs room. Nor of the bomb-maker, Adnan Farah. Was he in there? Without doubt, although the forensic people would insist on making positive IDs and combing through the rubble.
Crow set the binoculars on the stump that his rifle was leaning against, and watched quietly, as still as a buck scenting the forest air, as the North Star twinkled one last time and disappeared. He then snapped the rocket container into the back of the launcher, raised the weapon to his shoulder and pointed it at the farmhouse. As he began to pull gently on the trigger, a second black SUV, also with diplomatic tags, pulled around from the back of the house to the front, edged past the parked vehicle and began lumbering along the property’s long, rutted driveway.
Crow eased his index finger off the trigger and watched the car until it reached the paved road—Rural Route 12—and turned right, heading in the direction of the New York State Thruway entrance some twenty miles to the south. Then he took aim again, and this time pulled the trigger all the way back.
After the explosion, he picked up the rifle and watched the fireball for escapees, but none appeared.
Chapter 36
Manhattan,
Wednesday, March 4, 2009,
7AM
Matt DeMarco stood in the shadows of a narrow alley looking across the street through a sleeting rain at the dark green canopy that led to the entrance of the Oxford Apartments. His conversation of an hour ago with Jack McCann ran once again through his head.
“The mayor’s people called the justice department, Matt,” Jack had said. “They went crazy. It’s not happening.”
“I don’t get it. Why?”
“Other priorities. International bullshit.”
“Where does he live?”
“The mayor?”
“Fuchs.”
“Matt…”
“No more fucking around, Jack. I’ve had enough. I could find it out on my own.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
“Yes. He’ll let me in. I have to tell him our answer, anyway. I might as well do it in person.”
“No. I’m doing this alone.”
“You can’t hurt him.”
“I’ll try not to.”
A cab pulled up, and a moment later, a man and a woman, clutching umbrellas against the sleet, came out wheeling their luggage toward the curb. The cabbie, heavily bearded, wearing a turban and a thick sweater, hustling, loaded the luggage and they were off. No doorman, good, Matt thought, looking at his watch. It was seven AM. He had been up a long time, talking to Michael, to Jack and Clarke, to Jade, but was not tired. Later he could be tired. Matt crossed the street through the icy rain, his gloved hand on the butt of the Colt .45 pistol that Clarke Goode had handed him an hour earlier. Throw it away, he had said. It’s completely untraceable.
The lobby was small and hushed, a brass lamp on a credenza casting a square of yellow light onto a thick, blood-red carpet. On the elevator, Matt snapped the silencer Goode had also given him onto the Colt’s barrel. He found apartment 301 at the end of a long carpeted corridor as hushed and mutely lit as the lobby. He knocked and looked into the reverse peephole. No answer, no footsteps. His plan was to shoot the lock off if Fuchs wouldn’t let him in. He rang the bell on the doorjamb. No answer, no footsteps, but another sound, a rustling or tapping of some kind, a steady tapping.
Stepping back, Matt aimed and fired three quick rounds into the brass-plated doorknob, and slowly pushed. When the door did not give, he stepped back again and fired three more rounds in a vertical line above the shattered doorknob. The Colt will go through any lock, Goode had said, even a deadbolt. He was right. Stepping into a small foyer, Matt swung the door shut behind him and secured it with a heavy bronze urn that was on a small table nearby. The handle on the urn’s lid was in the shape of a small angel, its wings spread wide. The Colt up at his ear, Matt listened and waited. Nothing, just the tapping sound.
The apartment was dark, but there was light coming from a room in the back. Heading toward it, the gun still to his ear, Matt stumbled on something. Stepping quickly away, his skin began to crawl, although he didn’t know why. When he looked down, he knew. It was a body, something he must have sensed when his foot struck it: a thick-set middle-aged blond man in flannel pajamas, lying face up on the carpeted floor, his throat cut, blood slowly oozing from the long, precision-like, ear-to-ear slit. The man’s eyes—a beautiful light blue—were wide open, staring into whatever comes next.
Matt stepped over Fuchs—he was sure it was him from Clarke’s description—and quickly went through the other rooms, all empty and quiet, respecting the dead, except for the kitchen, where sleet entering from an open window was steadily striking a Formica table—the tapping sound. Matt looked out of this window and saw the top of a fire escape a few feet below. At the bottom was a small courtyard and an alley leading to 50th Street. Pulling back, Matt heard a thudding sound coming from the area of the front door. He stepped quickly into the small living room and, flattening himself against the wall near the arched entrance, listened as the bronze urn fell over and someone entered the apartment.
When the intruder walked into the living room, Matt stepped behind him and hit him full strength on the back of the head with the Colt. “Who the fuck are you?” Matt said, staring down at a black-haired young man in a pea coat of no more than twenty-three or twenty-four, not expecting an answer. But the man did answer—by grabbing Matt by the ankles, flipping him to the floor like he was a sack of potatoes, then jumping to his feet. Flat on his back, Matt pointed the gun at the man’s chest.
“Don’t move,” Matt said, getting slowly to one knee and then to his feet, keeping the Colt painted on the man’s chest. “Who are you?”
The young, dark-haired man did not answer. He was staring past Matt to the living room floor.
“Who are you?” Matt asked again.
“That is my uncle,” the man said, nodding toward Fuchs’ body. “And that is my Aunt Kat,” he continued, nodding at the overturned bronze urn and the ashes that had spilled from it covering the carpet under and around it. “I am Josef Fuchs.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I am delivering something to… to Oom Erhard.”
“Delivering what?”
“Who are you?”
“I didn’t kill your uncle, if that’s what you think.”
“I do not think that. Who are you?”
“My son got in the way of your uncle’s investigation. He’s been charged with murder. Your uncle has evidence to clear him. I got here too late.”
“I have your evidence.”
“Where is it?’
“He’s downstairs with my brother.”
“He…?”
Chapter 37
Manhattan,
Thursday, March 5, 2009,
6PM
“Mr. Crow,” Matt said. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“Bill.”
“Bill.”
>
“Would you like to see my ID?”
“No. The local field office described you.”
“Yes,” Crow nodded, his face still, his eyes flat, no hint of a smile, or of irony. “I’m one of a kind.”
Matt let this pass. It wasn’t banter. He looked from Crow’s scarred face down to his left hand resting on the varnished wood table, its pinky and ring finger missing completely, not even the trace of any stumps, just smooth reddish-brown skin at the base. The thumb and remaining fingers, all blunt-tipped and looking hard-used, formed a claw that the alleged FBI agent had used to pick up his beer glass, sip and put it down.
“They must have told you why I called,” said Matt. They were sitting in Rudy’s at the same booth Matt and Jade sat in the night Bob Davila was killed.
“Why don’t you tell me?” Crow said.
“Sure. You know about my son?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I understand the U.S. government knows he’s innocent, that they’re protecting the real killers.”
“Who might they be?”
“The Syrian government.”
“That’s very far-fetched. How did you come by this theory?”
“A man named Fuchs, who’s now dead.”
“How did he die?”
“His throat was slit.”
“Who killed him?”
“I’m guessing the Syrians.”
“He was on their trail?”
“Yes.”
“Who was he?”
“A UN investigator. He was in New York working on the Rafik Hariri assassination.”
“How did you come to meet Mr. Fuchs?”
“That’s not important.”
“It could be.”
“It’s not,” Matt said. Steady now, he thought, the jabbing’s over, this is where the real fight begins. “The thing is,” he continued, “the guys who killed Hariri also killed Yasmine. Fuchs’ people saw them go into her building just before she was killed. The Syrians tried to kill these guys, two of them, to shut them up. They got one in Locust Valley a couple of weeks ago. The other one, a guy named Farah, was holed up in a house upstate. There was an explosion there yesterday.”
“What kind of explosion?”
“The local police say it was a gas line, but it wasn’t.”
“What was it?”
“An RPG,” Matt replied, “launched from a hill nearby. Whoever did it left something behind in the snow. We’re trying to figure out who it belongs to.”
“Who’s we?” Crow asked.
“Nobody official,” Matt replied. “Just some friends.”
“Have you told the local police?”
“No, but we may.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Farah wasn’t in the house,” Matt continued. “They didn’t get their man. Very sloppy.”
Silence from Crow.
“I can give you Farah,” Matt continued. “I also have his confession on videotape. Hariri, other political assassinations—I think eleven in all—his Syrian contact, his Hezbollah contact, Yasmine Hayek, the whole ball of wax.”
“What makes you think I want Farah?”
“Bob Davila told me about you,” Matt replied, lying easily, thinking of tough little Bobby and of what he tried to do to help him, getting killed for it in front of his own house. “He said you threatened him, tried to shut him up. The next day he was dead.”
Crow did not answer immediately. He tapped the two fingers of his left hand on the table. His eyes were still flat, but different, a gleam of something somewhere in their depths. Admiration? Matt thought, is that it?
“And in return?” Crow said, finally.
“I’d want all the charges against my son dropped, and a public statement that he was wrongfully arrested and charged.”
“Where’s Farah?”
“Do you want him?”
“I guess you think you’re a tough guy, DeMarco,” Crow said, “because you got away with killing your DI at Parris Island, then you were a boxing champion.”
“What about you,” Matt replied. “What’s your story?”
“My story?”
“Yes, your story. You’re a caricature of something, I don’t know what. The strong, silent killer, the scarred anti-hero. Something like that.”
“I haven’t been insulted to my face in a long time.”
“Since you were a teenager on a reservation someplace?”
Crow’s face contorted into what Matt realized after a second or two was a smile, grim but not without a certain brutal charm.
“I get it,” the contract op said. “You’re trying to provoke me, to get me to do something stupid. Like in the movies.”
“Do you want Farah?” Matt said.
“What if I don’t?”
“Do you know a journalist named Christopher Hatch? The one dying of cancer? He’s been following the Hariri case, writing about it. I’ll give him access to Farah, the video. He’ll die knowing he broke the biggest story of the twenty-first century. The United States sucking up to the Syrians, arranging it so they get away with murder. I’ll put you in the middle of it, too. You know, the diversity angle, the rainbow coalition.”
Crow smiled that crooked smile again. “I guess you think you’ve got all the bases covered,” he said.
“Do you have a son, Bill?”
“No.”
“Any kids?”
“No. But your son might be in danger. You missed one of the bases.”
“How?” Matt replied, not skipping a beat, not revealing by tone of voice or cast of eye the deep grinding of gears that had just taken place in his head. If this had been a fight, either on the street or in the ring, either he or Crow would be dead in the next ten minutes.
“If he’s dead, the New York DA can close his file, not pursue anyone else.”
“There’s still Farah,” Matt said.
“He’s a dead man,” Crow replied.
“Are you sure you’re an American, Crow?” said Matt.
“I try to think like the bad guys.”
“Who are they?”
“Not redneck drill instructors, not amateur boxers. I hope you’re following me.”
“Do you want Farah?”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Good. Here’s my number.” Matt slid a scrap of paper across the table. “How do I reach you?” he said.
Crow glanced at the number on the paper Matt had flicked toward him, tore it in half, then took a pen from his jacket pocket, scribbled a number on the clean half, and pushed it back to Matt.
“OK,” Matt said, glancing at the number. “One more thing.”
“I’m listening,” Crow said.
“The NYPD has lost two detectives in all this,” Matt said. “They want to help.”
“Anybody in particular?” Crow asked.
“No,” replied Matt. “All of them.”
“I don’t need their help.”
“You don’t have a choice. From now on forty thousand New York cops will have your back. You’ll be watched over by a lot of good friends.”
“So?” Jack McCann said.
“He’ll let me know.”
“You gave him the number?”
“Yes. And he gave me his.”
“Don’t answer your other phone if he calls on it,” Jack said.
“Or if you don’t recognize the caller,” said Clarke Goode.
“Was my buddy right?” Jack asked. McCann had called his Army friend, who had made his way pretty high in the FBI, to get information about Crow. The yield was skimpy, as it would be with all covert freelancers, and there had been no warranty of accuracy that was delivere
d with it.
“Yes,” Matt answered.
“Did it help?” Jack asked.
Matt nodded. “I think so,” he said. “He’s a hardass with a hardass life behind him.”
They were sitting across from Matt on the bench seat Bill Crow had just vacated. McCann had been at the bar, Goode at a booth toward the rear.
“Is that his glass?” Goode asked, pointing at Crow’s still half-full beer glass.
“Yes,” Matt answered, “but he wiped it down just before he left.”
McCann nodded, in silent acknowledgment of Crow’s craft. “I’ll take it anyway,” he said. A paper napkin in his hand, he picked up Crow’s glass at its base and put it gingerly into a baggie he pulled from his jacket pocket. McCann and Goode were wearing the same off-the-rack sports jackets and low-key ties—the classic do not stand out detective’s uniform—they had worn the night they appeared in Pound Ridge to arrest Michael. Matt had on the thick navy sweater and jeans that were his steady winter garb, except sometimes he would switch to a black sweater.
“What now?” Matt asked.
“We drink,” McCann said. “And wait for Crow to call.”
“I thought you quit,” Goode said.
“I started again.”
“Why?”
“The caribou theory.”
“The what?” Matt asked. Goode was rolling his eyes.
“I’m culling weak brain cells to make the rest stronger.”
“If you say so.”
“The way wolves will cull the stragglers in a herd of caribou. It strengthens the herd.”
“So it’s the caribou theory of drinking?” said Matt. “The alcohol kills the weak brain cells. You’ll get smarter, your memory will sharpen.”
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