That had never been how Williams’s brain worked. Threads of information twisted through his brain like DNA strands, looking for points of overlap, the foundation for a plausible scenario to begin to emerge.
It was still too early to find a structure built on two dead Ukrainian spies, a former American ambassador, a virtual-reality training program from Stanford, a new Russian outpost, and Vladimir Putin’s designs beyond Crimea. And that was assuming they were all interconnected. Williams’s instincts told him they were, and his job now was to determine whether that was true … and figure out the next steps. As a result, his mind was a place of unrest, part of it chewing and processing, another part seeking more information—any scrap, any shadow, any anything. It wasn’t a panicked reaction any more than a marathon was a panicked run. The process just burned through a lot of internal resources.
As a result of external input and internal data-crunching, revising and refining his thoughts, it had been a bear of an afternoon for Chase Williams—beginning with the summons to the Geek Tank and Aaron Bleich’s excited words: “New York doesn’t have this yet.”
Williams had gone over to see what New York didn’t have. Aaron was like that; a lot of twentysomethings were: “You have to see this!” Williams wondered what elementary-school classrooms were like at a time when it was all about “show” and rarely about “tell.” He adjusted to the Millennial way of doing things better than most forty-and-overs; he had to. It was also exciting, in its own way, to see the next generation of intelligence worker being crafted less by need than by tools. The United States had made a mistake in the 1980s, when it began dropping human assets in favor of electronic spyware—when even that word had a different meaning. A friend at NASA said the same thing about space exploration: when you send robots instead of people to Mars, it takes billions of dollars more, years longer, and a limited ability to correct mishaps to get the same result. In Williams’s line of work, that kind of delay cost lives. The intelligence communities got back into the game of having eyes on by paying foreign nationals and dropping Special Ops teams into L&S—locations and situations—that required judgment rather than data.
Now we’re going in the other direction again, he thought as he reached the Tank. He called it CPI: couch-potato intelligence. After putting his operations director through a little bit of a wringer about going to New York, Williams quickly understood why: he was jealous that Brian Dawson was on his way to do fieldwork, legwork, to get his hands dirty with reality instead of pixels, to improvise rather than calculate. As director, that was an indulgence Williams couldn’t really allow himself.
Arriving at the Tank, Williams discovered that the brilliant but often jovially vague Aaron had been referring to two things New York didn’t have: the technology and the particular results it had achieved.
Chase Williams followed the young man to the station where the thirty-four-year-old Tankster Kathleen Hays worked. Beside her, young meteorologist Gary Gold remained slumped in his seat, though he did brush the crumbs of peanut shells from his lap.
Hays was a short raven-haired woman with a pale complexion who lacked the tools of social interaction with outsiders, as did most of her colleagues. She was a former computer-graphics artist for DreamWorks specializing in quadrupeds. Aaron had recruited her after meeting her at New York Comic Con the previous October.
For Op-Center, she created a matrix that she called 4DT: four-dimensional triangulation.
“We got all the footage NYPD Counterterrorism has of Fedir Lytvyn’s run from the Ukrainian Consulate to Grand Central Terminal,” Aaron said as he and Williams walked to Hays’s station. “So, all the intelligence agencies have these bits of video, and pretty much the same facial-recognition software, but the program that Kathleen wrote allows us to study all these images of Lytvyn in four dimensions: length, breadth, width, and, most important, time. Using those measurements, and applying them to the position of the man’s head relative to impediments like people and cars and lamp posts in front of him—watching how his head moves and weaves while his body charges ahead—we can tell exactly where he was looking. In every frame, at every angle.”
“So within each view you can also tell who he was looking at,” Williams said almost reverently. “Brilliant.”
“It is, and we got him,” Aaron said. “We got the bad guy.”
The young man pointed at the screen. In seven different views of the thirteen on hand—those that featured Lytvyn and his target—she had constructed eye-line contact with a figure in a blue windbreaker whom Lytvyn was undoubtedly following.
“Incredible,” Williams said again. “Any idea—”
“Chief,” Aaron interrupted, repeating excitedly, “We got the bad guy!”
Hays played the file that contained the FRA—facial-recognition analysis. There were six relatively clear images of the man in question, and they matched a black-and-white passport photograph taken in South Africa in 1988, as well as a color image snapped by routine surveillance of the Russian Embassy in London in 1990.
“His name is Andrei Cherkassov,” Aaron said, limning a bad Russian accent. “Well, I guess you got that from the passport. The guy was Spetsnaz in Afghanistan—nasty dude, if the number of citations and complaints he received from fellow soldiers is any indication.” The documents gathered on the screen. “They’re in Russian, obviously, but blue with an eagle is probably good, and I’m guessing that red with no eagle or flag isn’t so good.”
Kathleen brought up a CIA dossier. No one there, or at the FBI, had logged in to look at the very slim Cherkassov file since May of 2012.
“But wait, there’s more,” Aaron said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at a station where a tall, cherub-faced man sat wearing earphones and a look of intense concentration. “Dick Levey there checked plane reservations on all the computerized systems. Our man Cherkassov frequently traveled with a lady named Olga Iudov, a human-resources director at large for the Moscow diplomatic corps, who also traveled separately with a guy named Dimitriy Arsky. His passport was scanned by MI6 in London, which reveals him to be—”
An already familiar, scowling face appeared on the monitor.
“Andrei Cherkassov,” Williams said.
“Correct. And Arsky was in Crimea when a journalist was killed there a couple of years back. Not just killed: his throat was cut with an MO that exactly matches what happened to Ms. Petrenko.”
Williams rose slowly as his phone pinged. An update from Anne contained a first filing of raw eyewitness accounts from Grand Central Terminal. Seven people had come forward so far. Five recalled seeing the dead man hugging a woman. One said a man had joined them. There was not yet a statement from the young couple who had found the body; the men had been taken to Bellevue Hospital for sedation and were presently at the Midtown South precinct being interviewed. The NYPD’s preliminary situation assessment was that the victim had been “directed to that specific location for that specific result.”
“Chief?” Aaron said, his voice a respectful nudge.
“I’m with you,” Williams replied, and his eyes shifted back to the monitor.
“Here’s Olga’s picture,” Aaron said.
It showed a middle-aged woman jogging by the Pearl Street Playground in Lower Manhattan. The time stamp was 11:55 that morning. That was roughly where and when Galina was killed.
“Has either of them shown up anywhere else on the grid?” Williams asked.
“We only have access to what the NYPD has pulled from surveillance,” Aaron replied. “We can’t just go hacking them like they do on TV.”
“No, but can’t the NYPD do live looks using facial recognition?”
“It would have to be a pretty narrow area unless you have a few thousand eyeballs, but yeah.”
Williams clapped Aaron on the shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. “Fine work, Kathleen.”
“Thank you, Director Williams,” she replied, turning and flushing.
Williams hurried back to his office
, swinging through Anne’s door on the way. “Would you please get me the counterterrorism bureau chief in New York. Iris…?”
“Irene Young,” she said affirmatively.
“Right,” he said. “And stay on the call,” he added as he continued to his office. He closed the door and dropped behind his desk.
“She’s in with the mayor and the police commissioner,” Anne said via the intercom on the landline. “Do you want to talk to the chief of department?”
“I don’t,” Williams said.
“Should we try to get word to her?”
“Can you text her directly?” he asked.
“I can.”
“Good,” he said. “Ask her to call back as soon as she can.”
There had been a very public outcry when veteran Alphonse Spigoni and several other chiefs had been leapfrogged over by the commanding officer of Patrol Borough Manhattan South, a junior female who had distinguished herself during the World Trade Center attacks. Most of the complaining had come from Spigoni and his staff, including the chief of Citywide Operations, who would have risen had Spigoni been promoted. Williams didn’t know Irene Young well—couldn’t exactly remember her name—but he had met her at a symposium on international counterterrorism and she had impressed him. Ambassador Flannery was safe for the moment, and his own team was working the problem and also en route to the scene; he was comfortable waiting. More comfortable than trusting an untrustworthy lieutenant.
Williams listened as Anne relayed the message. She requested, strongly, a priority return call as soon as possible.
The audio channel was always open to the deputy director. Those were the rules, that she be fully informed in the event that Williams was gone from the office or incapacitated. Placing calls for him wasn’t in her job description, but that was the beauty of being under the radar: they had fallen into the relationship they had, where Anne took care of the vertical details while Williams played with his tic-tac-toe board of information. Any kind of oversight from any form of human resources would have pointed out—in the form of a reprimand—that Anne was not a secretary. Williams would have been the first to agree. The truth was, she really ran the place. In effect, he just played in her sandbox.
Williams eyed the still uneaten apple and hesitated to take a bite; that’s when she would jump on the call.
She didn’t. He had over an hour to work on the daily business of Op-Center: reviewing Anne’s alerts, returning calls and emails, discussing other operational, budgetary, and personnel matters. He didn’t feel the need to dive back into the Ukrainian matter at any point: time away brought clarity, which itself was often the best way to serve an active investigation.
Williams had just begun to clear through the backlog when he turned back to the apple … and Irene Young phoned.
“Director Williams, sorry to keep you waiting,” she said in a voice that was smooth as poured milk. “The Ukrainian ambassador was Skyped into the meeting, and then there was the press—who are still waiting.”
“I know that drill,” Williams said sympathetically.
“Tell me you’ve got something.”
“We do,” Williams replied. “We think we know who killed the Ukrainians.”
Instead of asking who, Young’s first question was: “Threatcon?”
“Alpha, as far as New York is concerned,” he said, referring to the lowest of the four levels.
There was an audible sigh. It meant there was a general threat against personnel, institutions, and/or installations, the nature and extent of which was unpredictable but apparently limited.
“Thank you, Mr. Director,” Irene said. “Please—go on.”
Williams explained what the team had uncovered, though he declined to say how. A very real and unfortunate area of responsibility for the director was making sure that Op-Center had enough funding to keep the lights on. That meant holding tight to proprietary technology, as long as the findings themselves were made available to other services. He also went back and forth on whether to tell her that Dawson and Volner were headed to her city. He decided against it; he didn’t want any jurisdictional bad feelings, and he didn’t want to lose eyes-on in the arena.
“Is there anything you can share?” Williams asked when he was finished.
“Something that actually got me out of the press conference early,” she said. “We had the Flannery connection through Galina Petrenko, and we also had repeat business in the area around his place of employment.”
“Repeat business” was when an individual kept showing up at or around a crime scene. Williams was suddenly very alert, since that was where his team was headed.
“We had a fuzzy image of a man at the intersection of Water Street and Maiden Lane ten minutes after the Petrenko murder. The same face showed up in the Lytvyn pursuit. And now he’s been spotted by camera in Bowling Green, a two-minute walk from where the ambassador works, and moving in that direction. We’re in the process of extricating Mr. Flannery.”
“You’re escorting him out?”
“Two members of my personal detail are taking care of it,” she said. “They’re going straight from Police HQ a few blocks southeast, then back again. Low-profile operation. Given the narrow, twisting streets around the ambassador’s office, we don’t want to risk remaining blocked or static.”
Williams didn’t know how he felt about the plan. A line of black SUVs, patrol cars, and a phalanx of no-nonsense cops might be enough to stop Cherkassov and Olga—but two officers alone? A classic quick extraction if no one expected it. But so far the Russian seemed to be on top of everyone.
Thanking the deputy commissioner and agreeing to exchange whatever new information he had, Williams hung up and immediately called Brian Dawson.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
New York, New York
June 2, 6:03 PM
The York Organization’s offices were on the quiet side of 77 Pearl Street. That was the side that actually overlooked the street, a very thin, elongated crescent that, before landfill, was once the eastern coastline of Manhattan. The odd angle of the door—facing slightly west where the rest of the building faced southeast—was an effort to thwart the sustained winds that still blew in from the harbor. Dormer windows circled the building, the back of which was on the noisy side of the block: Coenties Alley was filled with tables and covered with a festive array of restless banners. For nine or ten months of the year, it was alive virtually around the clock with clients of the many eateries that occupied the ground floor of the old structure. When the new owners first brought Flannery to the offices, he responded enthusiastically to the site. On most days, it was the yin and yang of diplomacy—soft and loud, a perfect place to do the Jekyll-and-Hyde work of gentle coercion and unyielding stubbornness.
But this had not been most days.
Rattled by the events of the past six hours—had it only been that?—Douglas Flannery had tried to concentrate on the handful of guests who lingered after the symposium—those few scholars, journalists, and diplomats who had not come for lunch, as Galina had insisted. Though shaken inside, outwardly he’d been able to maintain a calm, attentive manner as he chatted with the last of the guests. With an eye on his watch, he made sure all of them were gone well before Brian Dawson was due to arrive.
The call from the office of the police commissioner, and the subsequent arrival of her two-man detail, happened so suddenly that Flannery had no time to think or to prepare. He did not mention that Op-Center had a representative en route—a seasoned diplomat, he had a sense of what would cause conflict and what would create calm. Introducing the fact of outside conversations, which he would be asked to divulge, would be clumsy statesmanship. It might also create intermural problems for Dawson and Chase Williams. He would have called Dawson but for the sudden arrival of the two officers.
The officers were in uniform and on alert. The receptionist, Irina, had called Flannery to her desk to look at them on the security camera. The Pearl Street entrance was the on
ly way in from the street, and the ambassador could see the NYPD squad car parked behind them. One man was facing the door, the other looking around behind them. They weren’t carrying assault rifles and their weapons weren’t drawn; they could have been stopping at the corner pizza shop for dinner to go.
“All right,” Flannery instructed Irina.
She buzzed the two men in. They heard the buzzer and the distinctive, hollow click of the awkwardly positioned door echoing up the staircase. It was followed by the tromp of shoes on the old wooden steps, the sound of big men weighted down by Kevlar tactical body armor.
One man appeared at the frosted glass door and Flannery walked over to admit him, placing himself between the entrance and Irina.
“Ambassador Douglas Flannery?” said a man whose blue eyes were made paler by the dark blue of his uniform. His badge was colored in gold-and-blue enamel.
“I am he,” the man said, nodding.
“I’m Captain Jacoby, this is Lieutenant Foster.” He indicated a man who was still at ground level, watching the street. The man raised a hand in acknowledgment but didn’t turn around. “We’re here to escort you to One Police Plaza.”
There was no room on the tight staircase to step aside, so the captain entered the office to let Flannery pass. Foster didn’t exit; the ambassador realized, with sudden horror, that if these men were killers there was nowhere for him to run. His heart began to slam against his ribs on all four sides.
It seemed to take forever for Foster to crack the front door. Flannery exhaled loudly when he did so.
And then he heard two things that caused him to freeze on the bottom step.
* * *
Tom Clancy's Op-Center--Dark Zone Page 10