“We’re Christians, Detective Chapman. My mother’s family was Muslim, as much of that region is, but she was raised without any formal religion—like a lot of thugs—and converted to Catholicism when she married my father.”
“Has Nik ever been back to Russia? To Chechnya?”
“Not so far as I know. I mean, I don’t know what this NorthStar thing is about. Could he have gone there with that group?”
“Let me see if the lieutenant has gotten through to anyone at NorthStar,” Mike said. “I’ll be right back.”
“While you’re at it,” I said, “see if anyone has found out what part of Russia the third victim’s family lives in. Lydia Tsarlev. Maybe she’s Chechen. And I want to see a photo of Nik, okay? Bring me a copy of what the feds came in with.”
Mike left the room.
Zoya had her elbows on the table, her face in her hands. “I don’t ever want to see him again, Ms. Cooper. Not even a picture.”
“You don’t have to look at this one. It’s for me to get an image of Nik.”
“We look a lot alike. He’s taller than I am—maybe about your height. But we’ve got the same hair color, the same shape nose. We both resemble my mother.”
“She must have been very pretty,” I said.
“It’s hard for me to remember her before she deteriorated so badly. The madness altered everything, even her appearance.”
I thought I’d change the subject. “I spent some time in the tunnels this week. I don’t know how anyone finds their way around down there and stays safe. Not to mention how much all the rodents spooked me.”
“It was the same for me. I was never tempted to get off the trains and walk around. The rats never bothered Nik, though. He actually had two in his room when he was in high school.”
“Pets?” I couldn’t conceal my disgust.
“Yes,” Zoya smiled. “But he didn’t get them from the tunnels. He bought them in a shop, mostly to keep my mother and me from snooping in his room. And it worked fine. Nik used to call them the lazy man’s dogs.”
“I can’t believe pet shops sell rats. That never occurred to me.”
“It wouldn’t matter what they sold, Nik came home with some creature every time he had the chance. Gerbils, turtles, parrots, rabbits. My parents wouldn’t let us have cats or dogs, so Nik made do with everything else. I should have known he was crazy when he wanted rats. But he was totally an animal lover. I don’t think it ever bothered him to watch someone beat the guts out of another person, but talk about shooting a rat with a BB gun? Nik would make sure, one way or another, that it never happened.”
I thought of Lydia Tsarnev and the Animal Liberation Front. Was it possible that Nik had met her through an underground resistance group that trumpeted illegal means of saving animals by destroying government and private property? And that the reason he had confronted her in her apartment was to enlist her to his new cause, his apparent sudden interest in Chechen human rights violations?
“Have you ever heard of the Animal Liberation Front?” I asked her. “Is it the kind of organization Nik might have belonged to?”
“Get it through your head, Ms. Cooper. My brother Nik isn’t a very social person. I don’t think he belongs to groups and parties and liberation fronts, whatever—”
She looked up when the door opened and Mike reentered the room, handing me a Xerox of a photo of Nik Blunt.
“—whatever they are,” she said, finishing her sentence. “My brother Nik is a lone wolf. That’s what he’s always been.”
“Any sign of him yet?” I asked Mike. “Any response to Scully’s ‘give it up’ message?”
“Yeah, there’s a sign of him all right. They just found two pipe bombs, planted directly underneath Big Timber. That fancy old private varnish was about to be blown to bits.”
FORTY
I left Zoya Blunt with Yolanda Figueroa, the Metro-North policewoman, and hurried out of the office with Mike, jogging down the staircase to the lower concourse. All the shiny black wrought iron departure gates were closed and locked, except for the one farthest off to the eastern end of the terminal.
The officers were from so many different commands that the mixes of uniforms and military outfits and agents in suits was almost overwhelming.
Rocco Correlli and Keith Scully were standing with several men I didn’t recognize. Mike elbowed through the group, and I followed in his wake.
“I thought she went home,” Scully said to Mike, pointing at me.
“May I speak for myself, Commissioner? I’m working for you.”
“Coop’s good,” Mike said. “She’s getting nuggets out of the Zoya girl.”
“Pipe bombs,” Scully said. “Now I’ve got to clear cops out of here while the dogs nose around to see whether there are any more.”
Pug McBride was walking around the circumference of Big Timber. “I think it was just a subterfuge.”
“Big word, Pug.”
“I don’t even know what it means, Chapman. It’s what the Bomb Squad guys said.”
“Are they here?” I asked.
“Been and gone. Took out the first two bombs that were under this train and they’re being bused up to Rodman’s Neck,” Rocco said. “We’ve obviously engaged Mr. Blunt, but he planted blanks this time.”
“Blanks?”
“Al-Qaeda has an online program. ‘Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.’”
“Seriously?”
“I’m afraid so. Blunt must have downloaded the instructions, Alex, but didn’t have time to make these operative. It would have been pretty tough for him to get past all the devices inside the terminal that sniff for explosives, not to mention this slew of dogs we’ve assembled.”
“How did you find these,” I asked, “if not dogs?”
“Trainmen were readying to move Big Timber on its way. Spotted them on the tracks.”
Pug pulled up a snapshot on his cell. “Bits and pieces from old clocks, a rope line of Christmas tree lights, scrapings from match heads, and leftovers from a hardware store. My tenth grader’s more dangerous than this with his chemistry set.”
“Let’s hope so.” Scully looked grim as he turned away from the platform. “I’ve got too many men inside there to take chances that Blunt’s not luring us in towards bombs that actually work. We’ll clear some of the guys out to the street for a while and leave the K-9 patrols to go through the place.”
Mike and I started to retrace our steps as I told him what Zoya Blunt said about Nik after he left the room.
“I can buy the lone-wolf thing,” he said. “I’ve just spent a month studying terrorists and this doesn’t fit any of the patterns.”
“But the feds—?”
“The FBI defines terrorism as having political motivation. That’s it. It’s the Arab Spring; it’s Hezbollah; it’s what’s happened in Syria. Domestic terrorism,” Mike said, “is more likely a result of psychopathology than politics.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“John Hinckley tried to assassinate a president of the United States, not because of Reagan’s political views, but to impress Jodie Foster. Think of the Boston Marathon bombers.”
I couldn’t remember any day, since 9/11, that I had been so heartbroken and felt so helpless as when I watched the aftermath of the bombing on television. Many of my Vineyard friends were running that race, and I scoured the crowd looking for familiar faces. The random loss of life—and the horrific injuries—were devastating.
“The Russian-born brothers who thought they were jihadists?”
“There’s not a shred of evidence that they were, Coop. They were rampage killers, is all. Losers. Mega-losers. They could have just as easily targeted a shopping mall or a crowded movie theater as they did the marathon.”
Mike still wore his Boston Strong T-shirt to Yankees g
ames and cheered the great victory—despite his fierce spirit of rivalry—of the Red Sox winning the pennant the year of the bombing.
“And we don’t have many shopping malls in Manhattan,” I said.
“So why not Grand Central Terminal?” Mike asked. “The world’s sixth-greatest tourist attraction. That ought to call a bit of attention to himself.”
We had crossed the lower concourse and mounted the staircase, headed back to the stationmaster’s office. At the top of the steps, we came to a standstill.
Scully must have given orders to move scores of the officers back out onto the streets while the K-9 teams sniffed for traces of explosives. Cops were trying to find their partners, National Guardsmen were looking to regroup with their teams, military men and women were using walkie-talkies to communicate. The terminal floor looked like rush hour on steroids.
“So Scully doesn’t want to alert Nik Blunt that he’s worried about the possibility of more bombs,” Mike said, shaking his head. “He’s not announcing the orders to evacuate on the loudspeaker. He’s just creating a little chaos.”
“You don’t approve.”
“I don’t. My bet is Blunt is in a position to be watching all this from some secluded vantage point that he knows far better than we do.”
I scanned the enormous space. I took in the entire concourse, which was slowly emptying of its uniformed crowd. I looked above us, both east and west, to the massive walls of windows—towering sixteen stories over the terminal floor—and remembered the walkways that connected them to offices in each corner of the building.
“Bombs?” I asked.
“I don’t think there are any more. I think it’s part of Blunt’s mind game with us.”
“But the Boston Marathon brothers—”
“They actually had a mother with a kitchen, Coop. A place to put their bombs together. This hump lives on the street. Or in a tunnel, right near the mole he killed.”
“So what are you worried about?”
“Guns. How many guns Blunt has with him. Handguns, like his sister saw. Automatic rifles,” Mike said, also eyeballing the enormous terminal from top to bottom.
“But he slit the throats of his victims,” I said. “He didn’t shoot them.”
“Yeah, and you don’t work for NorthStar unless you can hit a moving target from a speeding vehicle.”
We were waiting for the scattering troops to clear.
“You’ve got to think of the catalysts for radical behavior,” Mike said.
“War College stuff?”
“Yeah. There are obvious triggers that incubate this kind of behavior. On the economic side, a guy without a job and no means to support himself. Socially, a guy with the perception that he’s alienated from everyone else. Personally, the death of someone very close to him—and Blunt’s witnessed the death of his younger brother and the father he idolized, as well as his mother’s mental deterioration.”
“And he knows he’s got the same disease that ravaged her,” I said. “So he’s a poster boy for being radicalized, even if it isn’t political.”
“But every bit as dangerous as if his cause was a jihad.”
We turned the corner behind the staircase and I saw Yolanda Figueroa’s partner standing outside the stationmaster’s office. He spoke first.
“Ms. Cooper. I’ve been waiting for you. Commissioner Scully wants me to take you back upstairs to the situation room.”
“What about Yolanda?”
“She’s already gone up there with Ms. Blunt.”
I looked at Mike.
“The sister was refusing to leave until her brother’s in custody. She’s afraid because he knows where to find her. The commissioner figures she might be useful in coaxing him out.”
“I’m glad she changed her mind,” I said.
“Scoot, Coop. It’s like a bunker up there. Safest place in the building.”
“Don’t jinx it for me.”
“See you later. Keep excavating. You’re pulling great stuff from the sister.”
“Where are you going to be?”
Mike threw up his arms as he moved away from me. “Wherever Scully wants me.”
“Stay safe.”
“Have to. I have a hot date tomorrow night.”
“Mr. Blunt. I want you to listen up.” Keith Scully’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker from the stationmaster’s office as Mike walked away from me. “We found your toy bombs, Nik. You’re just upping the stakes every time you do something stupid like that. We know you have a gun, Mr. Blunt. We know you might have several guns. Time for the white flag. Time to surrender so we can make a deal with the district attorney’s office. It’s your best hope.”
I turned in the direction of the elevator that had taken us up to the situation room earlier.
“Not that way, Ms. Cooper. They’ve turned off that particular elevator. Scully and the FBI chief are concerned that Blunt might still have that key. We’re going up on the east side of the building. There’s an elevator in the far corner,” he said, pointing in the direction of the Lexington Avenue exit.
“Are you sure?” I asked, looking over my shoulder to see whether Mike was still in sight.
“Yes, ma’am. There are uniformed cops stationed at the elevator doors on every floor. I promise to get you there just fine.” He smiled at me, and I smiled back, despite my growing case of jitters.
“Lead the way.”
Dogs were guiding their handlers to all points on the concourse. We skirted the information booth in the center of the floor, going kitty-corner toward Lexington Avenue. I kept stride with the officer, passing the newsstand and walking through the arcade of shops that were shuttered tight, with metal gratings like those you see in third-world countries.
“You don’t think any killer’s gonna buy that, Ms. Cooper, do you?”
“What?”
“That your boss is gonna give him some kind of a deal. Doesn’t make sense to me, and I didn’t kill nobody. Kill three people and think somebody’s cutting you a plea bargain? He’d have to be insane. Forget surrender. I’d be so far away from this place you’d never find me.”
There were two NYPD officers stationed on either side of the elevator. Both were armed with shotguns, wearing vests and helmets. My Metro-North police escort held up his key, tin badge in hand, and they nodded to us as we got on the elevator.
The officer hit the button for the sixth floor.
“But it’s on seven, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, Ms. Cooper, but the only way directly to the seventh floor—to the situation room—is that elevator they shut down. We’ll walk up from six. Trust me.”
“Of course.”
The elevator moved at the pace of a machine built a century ago. I was beginning to feel oppressively confined by the time it groaned to a halt.
The small landing onto which it opened—which held the elevator as well as a wide stairwell with steps to the flights above and below—was also guarded by an NYPD officer. It was a desolate space, with chipped and grimy paint, and steam pipes running in every direction.
He held open the door to let us out of the landing. “You know how to get there?”
“Not this way,” the Metro-North cop answered with confidence. “We need to take the stairs one flight up, to the situation room. My partner’s in there with a witness.”
“Go ahead.”
I followed the cop up the double-height staircase. The door at the top of it was locked, and he used some kind of master key to open it and enter. I took three steps in his wake, and then abruptly stopped in place.
It seemed as though I was suspended in midair. There were long windows—with panes of glass more than six feet tall—on either side of me. Most terrifying of all was that when I looked straight down, I could see sixteen stories to the floor of the terminal. The catwal
k I needed to cross was made of glass brick.
“What’s wrong?” the cop said, looking back at me.
“I—I feel like I’m going to fall. It actually makes me dizzy to be up here.”
“First time is tough for everyone, Ms. Cooper,” he said, walking back to me. “It seems like nothing’s holding you up, I know that. Grab my hand and you’ll be fine. It’s just an illusion.”
I took baby steps, as though I was moving to the edge of a gangplank.
I was halfway across the catwalk, trying my best not to look down, keeping my eyes on the back of the cop’s head while he guided me across the glass floor. Pellets of rain were pounding against the windows to my left. The storm had started.
Suddenly, there was a new voice on the loudspeaker. The microphone crackled and screeched as whoever was at the controls increased the volume.
“Your turn to listen up, Commissioner. There’s no white flag in your future.”
It was Nik Blunt.
The police officer dropped my hand and pulled his gun. “Get down,” he screamed at me, as he placed himself in one of the windows, looking down over the concourse.
I followed his orders and lowered myself onto the floor, watching as he took hold of a huge metal wheel that was attached to the frame of the window and pulled on it. The glass pane next to me cranked open, almost two hundred feet above the terminal floor.
“Just so you know, Commissioner,” Blunt said. “It’s impossible to shut down Grand Central, no matter how hard you try.”
I was flat out on my stomach, peering through the glass bricks to see what was happening below. The few remaining cops were scrambling for cover, as though they were trying to figure out where this madman was.
“Is he in the stationmaster’s office?” I asked. “Do you think something happened to Scully?”
“No, no,” the cop said. “I can’t quite see him, but I know where the other loudspeaker is. He’s talking from inside the information booth.”
“You want to put cuffs on me, Commissioner?” Blunt’s voice was sharp and angry. “Come and get me, Scully. The shock and awe portion of your evening has just begun.”
Terminal City (Alex Cooper) Page 31