The NYPD chopper camera zoomed in to the max on the bridge, but it was too little, too late. There were no men with ski masks to be seen. Just a sea of runners everywhere.
Blackwell smiled like a defeated man who recognized his adversary’s superiority.
When the four escaped fugitives had touched the ground on the bridge, they must have removed and discarded their clothes. Underneath their disguises, they were probably wearing marathon outfits to blend with the crowd, complete with bib numbers. The real runners who were already on the ground would have made way for the descending men, and not one of them would have been fazed by the absurdity of four masked men falling from the sky. It could have been a publicity stunt or a viral video in the making. No one would stop to question the men or to notice their faces. Each runner was self-absorbed in the Herculean task ahead of them, and would just elbow away from the four most wanted fugitives in the city.
§
The last of the four men to get down to the bridge looked up at the NYPD helicopter trying to pinpoint him and his men amidst thousands of bodies. The police chopper’s efforts would be of little consequence. He and his men had blended in like four drops of water in an ocean.
No longer Seth, he ran his fingers down the side of his left arm to feel the long scar from his shoulder to his elbow. The tingling sensation of this six-year-old wound helped reboot him.
He touched the tiny bag around his waste camouflaged in the same color as his shorts. What it held it was the second most important thing he had worked so hard for.
The real prize, however, were the two men waiting for him.
Nabulsi and Madi.
Free at last.
TWENTY
Sunday, November 6, 2011—2:07 p.m.
Manhattan, New York
No matter how exhausted Blackwell felt after a hostage negotiation, he always went back to the scene of the crime right after the hostages were released, a tradition from which he rarely veered. Blackwell found catharsis in seeing where the hostages had been held. Especially if it had ended well for them. There was never an obligation to do so. A negotiator’s role ends once the crisis is defused.
There was something instructional about occupying the same space an abductor or a hijacker had used to execute their crime. Sitting in their chair, gazing out from their vantage points, and pacing around the space where they had confined themselves and their victims. Reliving their final showdown was about the closest he could get to inhabiting their minds.
The emotional rollercoaster of his confrontation with Monica had overdrafted his energy reserves and he contemplated faltering on his tradition. But this was one hostage scene he needed to see.
Seth hadn’t just beaten them at their game, he’d hustled them like a pro and gotten exactly what he came for, challenging everything Blackwell thought he knew about the psychopathic mind.
Like no other criminal he’d negotiated with in the past, at no point did Seth yield the upper hand. Blackwell never even came close to his mind, let alone invade and manipulate it as he was trained to do. Right when they thought they could cage him, Seth slipped away like a ring of smoke ascending in the sky, leaving nothing except unexplained vestiges at the scene of the crime that shed no light on his real motives.
If Seth was a killer, he hadn’t planned on exercising this vice on any of his hostages. The NYPD bomb squad’s advanced imaging devices mounted on the window-cleaning elevators, their mechanical scent detection robots placed at the entrance of each floor, and the sniffer dogs for good measure all failed to find any trace of explosives. Just decoys planted around the perimeter of the thirty-ninth floor to reinforce terror in the hearts of the hostages.
Even though NYPD’s bomb squad was one of the finest in the world, the FBI sent in its own explosives experts. If they couldn’t actively contribute to the operation, they would at least learn from it. The elaborate setup Seth had left behind was a treasure trove of deception, a live case study, better than anything taught at the FBI academy in Quantico.
With little doubt the entire setup was bogus, the Exertify hostages were evacuated to a secure federal facility nearby in Jersey, where special agents would interview them for evidence, before handing them over to victim assistance counselors. Cleared of civilians, the building was then tested for latent chemical or biological agents, ahead of a specialized team from the FBI’s Hazardous Material Response Unit on its way from Quantico. A preliminary sweep for anything connected to a delayed release device aimed at ambushing the first responders.
Although nothing came up, during this search the HRT unit stumbled upon the supplies room all locked up. Exertify staff said it was odd the room was locked, so the HRT refrained from forcing their way in. The cardinal rule of first responders was to keep locked rooms locked until the HAZMAT crew arrived.
Between them the HRT operators and the NYPD bomb squad had the technology to check from the outside of the supplies room for explosives using remote scent detection, but not for hazardous materials. A shut door could be a trap for victim-triggered pathogens or chemical agents. Without the benefit of the appropriate HAZMAT protective gear, one wrong step and a silent invisible spray could penetrate the human body via the skin or the respiratory system with devastating effect.
By the time the HAZMAT team had arrived, the building was swarming with various species of FBI personnel. Evidence response teams, latent fingerprint experts and other special agents assigned to secure the scene.
The HAZMAT unit worked three different sections of the building concurrently. A few hours later they too concluded there was no credible risk of nefarious chemical or biological agents lurking in the building, let alone on the thirty-ninth floor. And what they found in the locked supplies room left Blackwell even more confounded.
Gagged, tied, drugged, but not dead, Albert Voss and his three men were found lying amidst the shelves of the supplies room. They had been shot with tranquilizer guns and kept incrementally unconscious with intravenous drugs long enough for Seth and his men to escape the building.
The shots Blackwell had heard and assumed had killed these men were blanks, their shells lying on the floor in mockery of the FBI.
News of Voss and his men being found alive caused an eruption of elation across the FBI. Monica broke down in tears as she and Nishimura hugged. The heaviness and despair in Blackwell’s chest gave way to a wave of relief expanding fast.
In the small meeting room Seth had used to negotiate with the FBI away from the ears of the hostages, Blackwell stood a few feet away from forensic agents lifting prints and DNA evidence from wherever they could get it. Including an out-of-place item on the the glass table at the center of the room. A copy of an Eminem CD.
“May I?” Blackwell slipped on some latex gloves and inspected the CD briefly before the forensics men bagged it. Who brings their own music to a hostage standoff?
The CD was a brand-new copy of the UK version of Marshall Mathers: Explicit, Eminem’s third studio album. The price tag revealed the record was purchased along with another title at the Oxford Street HMV in London, two for ten pounds.
The image of Eminem chained to a windowsill on the cover reminded Blackwell of the day he’d purchased a copy of that same record at a small music shop in Brooklyn. Something seemed odd about the copy he was holding. All the tracks were scribbled over with a permanent marker except the last one, “Kids,” which had a smiley face scribbled next to it. Blackwell didn’t remember this track being on the original album, so he checked online on his phone and confirmed there were only eighteen songs on the original version. “Kids” was a bonus track for the UK market.
What does this mean?
He closed his eyes and thought hard about the cryptic message.
Kids singled out. Everything else, permanently deleted. Eminem What’s special about him? He’s a white rapper, but not the only one. He’s angry, but all hip hop p
erformers need to project some level of rage to maintain street credibility. He came from poverty. That’s practically a given for most performers. He’s from Detroit.
Detroit!
Blackwell stood in the room, his body glowing with light and his head flooded with a rush of chemicals. He had cracked it.
“He only booby-trapped the Detroit day care as a showpiece,” Blackwell mumbled to himself at first before he turned to address the other people in the room. “The only real explosives, the ones in Detroit, were just a decoy, to show his resolve.”
Monica, Nishimura and Slant were standing next to Roger Barrett, the HRT’s lead operator. Only Natasha Shaker and Eddie Grove were absent, having joined the team debriefing the released hostages at the FBI’s secure facility in Jersey.
Nishimura moved closer to Blackwell to find out more.
“He left an Eminem CD with a track called Kids singled out. Eminem is originally from Detroit. Seth wanted to tell us not to bother looking for the other day care centers wired with explosives. There aren’t any.”
The group of FBI forensic agents dissecting the building was expanding like an invading alien race. When they were done collecting evidence from the conference room, Monica convened there with Blackwell and the rest of her team, along with Roger Barrett. Unable to maintain eye contact with anyone for too long, Monica’s shoulders sagged, reflecting not just defeat, but utter humiliation.
The only thing they could do now was to wrap their heads around all the unexplained benevolence left behind by Seth. Fake bombs not intended to kill or maim hostages. Spared lives of HRT operators thought to have been murdered in cold blood. And a final enigmatic message on a CD suggesting Seth had only wired the Detroit day care with explosives, but not three others as he had professed.
At least in terms of pure firepower, in retrospect, they could have sent in a few NYPD rookies right after Seth had first invaded the building. He wasn’t armed and didn’t have any “explosives” with him yet. They could have taken him down and freed the hostages.
But then there was Julia Price, his biggest and only real leverage. Without her in the equation, he wouldn’t have been able to get this far. The children at risk were purely for Blackwell’s benefit. The only way to drag him from Anguilla. And the VitaCull life-perception vest as additional leverage was a touch of genius that sealed the deal.
You bastard.
No one said it out loud, but Blackwell knew the FBI would have some explaining to do about how Seth had managed to play them like a troupe of first-class imbeciles. If the White House and Department of Justice didn’t shred the Bureau first, it would certainly come up at the next periodic review by the FBI’s internal inspection division. Two convicted terrorists were now free roaming the world, in total contempt of the justice system and all victims of terror act.
Nishimura was the first to speak. “Julia Price. That’s how he screwed us.”
Monica bit her lips, raised her eyes and spoke softly, “Yet just like everyone else, she’s still alive. We’re missing something here.”
Seth’s real identity was the most vexing aspect of the case. They still had no suspect to chase after. The wild-goose chase in Palmdale for the only credible lead had only yielded salacious sex photos of the wrong guy and his lover, the Imam Hassan Ghazawy. Pictures the FBI would surely use against the hate-inciting cleric to ensure he would no longer spread venom and intolerance. Maybe even get him to finally admit and preach that people were ‘born this way.’
Slant seemed equally confounded by the events of the day. “Well, here’s a guy who must’ve flunked the terror madrasa. What do we have to do to get him to kill anyone for his cause?”
Monica took issue with that. “The threat of violence is a primary implement of any terrorist. The fact he didn’t or couldn’t kill doesn’t make him any less of a criminal.”
Monica’s words rammed into Blackwell’s brain, cracking it open.
“What did you just say?”
“I said this love-fest of fake bombs and saved lives doesn’t make him any less of a criminal. He’s just a scumbag like the worst of them.”
“A criminal. That’s what he is. A criminal!” Blackwell’s excitement must have seemed disproportionate. Predictably, Nishimura took the first punch.
“Yeah, we sort of figured that a little while ago. The hostage taking was the huge giveaway. But thanks for the groundbreaking analysis, former Special Agent Blackwell.”
Blackwell ignored him and pushed on. “Don’t you see what’s happening here? It’s the first time we’ve looked at him from the wider prism of being just a criminal, rather than a terrorist.”
He jumped to his feet and Slant followed.
“Alex is right. We assumed this was all ideological for him, because he led us to believe that. We concluded he was Jihadist Joe by the actions, demands and rhetoric he fed us.”
The tingling of a revelation in the making vibrated through Blackwell’s body.
“What if this guy isn’t a terrorist at all. Just an everyday opportunistic criminal? What if Nabulsi and Madi don’t mean a damn thing to him and were just a means to an end?”
Slant stood a few feet away from him now.
“Or he could have been hired by someone else to break them out. Maybe he’s just a mercenary given a bundle of resources to get the job done and paid a lot of money for his services.”
Monica, Nishimura and Barrett were all blank-faced and clearly hadn’t yet latched on.
Slant’s spin sounded good on the surface. Seth could have been a professional mercenary who for some reason or the other didn’t like blood on his hands. His execution of the operation was flawless and he had outsmarted them, proving he had the brains and the balls to be a successful soldier of fortune.
Blackwell wasn’t convinced this was the only explanation. Nabulsi and Madi were held in Egypt. If it was Blackwell in Seth’s shoes, he would have extorted the Egyptians directly. It would have been as risky and would have required less resources and planning. No possible rationale could explain why he brought the fight to American soil, broke into Exertify, and locked horns with the entire might of the US government. All of that could have all been done on the cheap in Egypt.
Unless there was something else.
Slant remained firm in his position, waiting for a verdict on his theory.
“Could very well be, Bob, but that alone doesn’t explain why he came here. Think about it, he wanted to be here. He wanted this.”
Nishimura jumped up and started pacing around, like he too had been infected by the frenetic mental processing Blackwell and Slant were exchanging.
“Why are we thinking either-or?”
“What do you mean?” Monica said.
“What if he wanted to do both, free the Jordanians and—”
“Barrett!” Blackwell interrupted Nishimura. “How much of the building has been cleared by HAZMAT?”
“All of it, you guys wouldn’t be standing here otherwise.”
Blackwell then turned to Monica. “How about forensics?”
“We have three teams. One dedicated to this floor, and the other two are working from the bottom up and from the roof down. What’s going on, Alex?”
“We’re so stupid. He wanted us to think this was just about Mark Price and Exertify because of the Julia connection. I’ll bet anything Liam’s right. Seth wanted to free the men and he was looking for something here. Not necessarily in this room, and not necessarily on this floor, but in this building.”
Nishimura pounced on this. “I’ll pull out the list of tenants.”
Monica was nailed down at the center of the room, eyes wide.
“Wait—are you saying it’s a fucking heist?”
Blackwell did not respond to her but kept his eyes fixed on Nishimura, who was scanning a list of tenants on his laptop. They had gone thr
ough it at the onset of the investigation. Most of 200 Park Avenue was occupied by the insurance company that owned it. The other major tenants were a couple of overseas bank offices, a handful of investment management companies and numerous law firms.
There were also three small boutique companies that weren’t typical of the building’s profile. Exertify was one of them. A second one was an Australian property and infrastructure company, Ray Black and Young, and the third, a Delaware-incorporated offshore trust, Balmoral Westwood, LLC.
Barrett scrutinized what appeared to be a provisional report on an iPad and then turned to Blackwell. “The insurance company, the banks, the finance companies and the law firms all locked down their offices before the evacuation. None of them were breached during the siege, according to their security logs.”
“How about the two other smaller companies?” Monica said.
Barrett set down his iPad. “Neither one keeps logs. We’ll have to check their offices ourselves.”
“Ray Black and Young are on the seventh floor. We could start there,” Nishimura said from behind his laptop.
Monica thought for a beat then shook her head. “No. Forensics has already scanned the seventh floor.” She checked her phone for an updated report. “They’re up to the twelfth now. If they had found something they would have told us.”
Everyone in the room fixed on Nishimura for the answer to the question they all wanted to ask.
Blackwell said it first. “How about the third company?”
“Balmoral Westwood shares a tiny office on the forty-first floor with another company not officially on the rental agreement, but listed as a co-tenant—the Aswan Group.”
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