The Newsmaker (Volume One Book 1)

by Tom Field

  Fulken rolled his eyes. This man was clearly no warrior or a man in tune with being involved in a big operation. His references on the phone to martyrs would be picked up by anyone scanning the airwaves and lead to problems. He made the decision that when this was done, he would kill Al Holami for his incompetence.

  “My brother,” he said, “Refrain from using certain words on the phone. Speak like a businessman.”

  “I am so sorry to offend you. You are right. Please forgive me,” Al Holami replied nervously.

  “You have a nice place prepared for me?”

  “Yes. The place is on West 8th Street. There is a recording studio there called Chiming Recordings. Next door is the safe house, apartment block 50, number 22 on the fifth floor.”

  “Good,” Fulken replied.

  “That is your safe place and I have staff in there waiting for you and they will source and acquire whatever you need to make your stay with us successful,” Al Holami said, with a tone of voice that showed he was clearly pleased with himself for embracing the game and talking like a businessman.

  “You have done well my brother. I shall see you there in thirty minutes. I need to finish reading my newspaper first,” he said and then hung up.

  I am definitely going to kill that fool, Fulken thought to himself. But for now, I will tolerate him, and probably his people too. I cannot leave any lose ends. The voice may not be able to get to me but he and his people know where all of my family are.

  He thought back to the first contact that they made with him fourteen months ago when they gave him an opportunity to escape his captors, an opportunity that he took with both hands. The day after they had set him free, they had shown him the pictures of his family; the family that he had hidden so well, who he truly believed were untraceable, going about their normal everyday business. He had agreed to their plan, and with the money that he was being paid, he could move them all to a new country to start again. All in all, he concluded, all of this had worked out very well. One part left to complete and he would be free of them forever. Then they could never bother him again.

  EIGHTEEN

  Ward and Gilligan drove to Nicole-Louise’s and Tacklers in silence. Ward sensed that there was something bothering Gilligan.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong. Why do you think there is?” Gilligan replied.

  “Because we’ve been in the car for ten minutes and you haven’t made one wisecrack yet.”

  “OK,” Gilligan said, “When we were in the building on East 3rd Street, and I took that guy down as we were walking up the stairs, I was thinking what if I hadn’t of been walking backwards?”

  “But you were walking backwards,” he replied.

  “I would have been a sitting duck,” Gilligan continued, “And my two boys would have no daddy coming home tonight.”

  “Wouldn’t happen,” he said dismissively, “People like us don’t survive through luck.”

  “Luck is just luck,” Gilligan replied with a sigh.

  Ward paused for a few moments and then spoke,

  “We get by on instinct. You instinctively walked backwards, in a split second you had assessed the situation, carried out a mental risk assessment, and got in the right position. You didn’t think about that. You just did it. You always will,” he said.

  “You’re right, I know you are. Just with it being my boy’s birthday tomorrow, it kinda gets you thinking about things like that.”

  Ward could see how much being a family man and a father meant to Gilligan. At that moment he envied him more than anyone else in the world. He had it all. He also gave a thought to Gilligan’s kids waiting for their giant of a father to come home, all excited. He imagined Gilligan picking his boys up, one in each arm, and them laughing. It made him feel a little guilty for telling Gilligan that for the next few days, his life belonged to him.

  “Here’s what we will do. We have a lot of people to see today but we will be done by 10pm. Tomorrow, have the morning with your boy on his birthday and we can go hunting the bad guys after that. I’ll meet you at twelve wherever I am.”

  Gilligan’s face lit up. It warmed Ward,

  “You sure? Honestly, you don’t mind?” Gilligan asked.

  “Yes I’m sure. And anyway, I’ll probably get further without you,” he replied with a smile.

  “Thanks. I mean it.”

  “No worries, Marvin.”

  They arrived at Nicole Louise’s’ apartment fifteen minutes later. Tackler answered the door.

  “Hey. Come in,” he said.

  Ward and Gilligan walked in.

  Nicole-Louise was sitting at her workstation.

  “Do you have anything for me?” Ward asked.

  “Yes we do,” she said. “This studio that you wanted us to look into and the surrounding buildings brought up something interesting,” she replied.

  “Such as?”

  “Pretty much the whole block is owned by a guy called Sameh Ismail. He’s a former Afghan national who came here under direct supervision of the CIA and then became a U.S. citizen and totally legit businessman just six months later. There is no reference about him in any CIA databases anywhere,” she said in her efficient tone.

  Ward looked at Gilligan, “He must have a handler. Can you find out who?” he asked him.

  “I have a few friends who work in off the record operations, I’ll see what I can do,” he said as he walked to the side of the room and took out his cell phone.

  “That’s not all,” Nicole-Louise continued, “It seems from the really, really hidden stuff that I found, that he used to be on one of the agencies most wanted lists.”

  “Why?” Ward asked.

  “I can’t find that information anywhere.”

  “What do you have on Al Holami?”

  “A lot,” she replied, “And that’s the problem. We didn’t even have to try too hard to find it. We have been doing this long enough to know when information is hidden not to be found and when it is put there to be found.”

  “So you think that Al Holami is a simple patsy? That Sameh Ismail is the real threat and Al Holami is a simple runner?”

  “Yes I do,” she replied.

  “So can you build me up a picture of Ismail and get me an address for him?” Ward asked.

  “We can do anything. It will just take time.”

  “Time is something we don’t have.”

  “That’s odd,” Gilligan said from the other side of the room. They all looked at him.

  “What?” Ward asked.

  “According to my source, and he’s very reliable, Sameh Ismail is dead. He died fourteen months ago.”

  “That can’t be right. His bank accounts, his business and all of his bills are live and being used, even today,” Tackler shouted, looking over his shoulder.

  “Used for what?” Ward asked him.

  “Hang on, I’ll go back and look,” Tackler said, as he spun around and got to work on his computer.

  “Where are you with the list of potential bomb makers and likely suppliers of explosives in the New York area?” he asked Nicole-Louise.

  “There are three likely people. Two bomb makers, one supplier,” she said as she hunted around for a piece of paper. “Here it is.” she said after ten seconds of searching, “The two bomb makers are Ahmad Saleem who lives in Hell’s Kitchen on West 46th Street, and Ali Yassin who lives in Midtown East on East 55th Street. The supplier is Osama Ayad who is in Kips Bay on East 29th Street. Their addresses are written down here,” she said as she handed Ward the piece of paper, “I have pictures of Saleem and Yassin but nothing yet on Ayad. I will e-mail it as soon as I have it,” she added, passing him two crystal clear printed sheets with the two men’s pictures on it.

  “So,” Ward said, “Al Holami isn’t the support here, Sameh Ismail is but he is dead so he can’t be the one and the CIA have no record of him?”

  “Sounds about right,” Nicole-Louise replied.

  “Th
at’s not quite a dead end,” Tackler interrupted, “The last three large transactions on his bank account were cash withdrawals made at local banks. The last withdrawal being for thirty thousand dollars.”

  “When?” Ward asked.

  “This morning,” Tackler replied.

  “Where?”

  “Kips Bay.”

  “I need to make a call,” Ward said and left the room.

  He called Centrepoint.

  “I wondered when you would bother calling in,” he answered.

  “What do you know about Sameh Ismail?” Ward asked.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No,” Centrepoint replied.

  “But he is protected, right?”

  “For good reason, yes.”

  “Which is?” Ward enquired.

  “Not something you need to know. But he’s not helping Fulken that’s for sure,” Centrepoint stated.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because Sameh Ismail is Asif Fulken.”

  “Explain the whole thing to me clearly,” Ward demanded.

  “It’s pretty simple. The CIA got him on board two years ago. His intel led to the capture of at least six live cells that were operating in both America and the U.K,” Centrepoint replied.

  “And in return we gave him?”

  “Full immunity from any prosecution, a passport and citizenship, and businesses to the tune of half a million dollars.”

  “So how did he turn half a million dollars into a business that owns about six properties?” Ward asked.

  “There is some confusion there, or rather a lack of specifics. He got the right people running them for him I guess,” The Old Man replied, sounding decidedly disinterested.

  “That’s it?” said Ward, “You gave him all of that and then just walked away?”

  “It’s never that simple, you know that”

  “Then what happened. Who lost him?”

  “He disappeared, fourteen months ago. Just one day he was there, the next day he wasn’t,” Centrepoint conceded.

  “That’s it, just like that, and that never set alarm bells off?”

  “Of course it did. His handler couldn’t find him. A guy called Gill Whymark.”

  “But then he was just erased from the records and everyone hoped he wouldn’t come back? But now he has, and all of the big boys in Washington are in a panic?” Ward said.

  “That’s about it,” he replied.

  “So now I know why they called us in. If it goes wrong, it’s nothing to do with them?”

  “That’s about it,” he repeated.

  Ward hung up the phone and walked back into the room where the others were waiting for him.

  “Everything OK?” Gilligan asked, noticing the frown on Ward’s face.

  “Sort of,” he replied. He then spent a few minutes repeating the conversation that he had just had with Centrepoint to them all.

  “Christ,” said Gilligan, “That’s really bad for the agency.”

  “We at least have a better starting point than we did before,” Nicole-Louise said without turning around.

  “How so?” asked Ward.

  “We have the cash withdrawal dates and we can hack into the bank security cameras and see who takes it out. We can also steal all the money that belongs to Sameh Ismail so he has no resources,” she said.

  “Hack into the bank and find out who withdrew it but leave the money in the accounts for now because we don’t want to let him know we are on it,” Ward replied.

  “I still can’t believe that all of this is down to our own people,” Gilligan said yet again.

  “What’s done is done,” Ward said, “What we have to do now is move forward and resolve it in the way we know best,

  We can point fingers and criticise people after,” he added.

  “This is getting difficult. Even if we know that Fulken is actually Ismail and find the guys who are supporting him, we still have no idea who is behind it,” Gilligan said.

  “I think what we now know has made all the difference in finding the people behind it too,” Ward replied.

  “How so?” Gilligan asked with raised eyebrows.

  “With regards to piecing it all together,” he said, “Our job just got a whole lot easier.”

  “How is that exactly?” Gilligan asked.

  Ward ignored the question.

  “The closest place to us on this list is in Midtown East so we should visit that first. This guy Ali Yassin,” Ward said looking at Nicole-Louise, “What do we know about him?”

  “He is an Iraqi national who has been here for twelve years. He owns an electrical shop down on East 55th Street and according to the information; the CIA had him detained at Guantanamo Bay four years ago, for two months, when a plot to blow up Madison Square Gardens was foiled,” she said with her usual efficiency.

  “They had nothing on him?”

  “No. They held him for so long because his place had traces of explosives all over it but they found no equipment that could put a bomb together and he just pleaded innocence. After the intervention of his lawyers, they had to let him go.”

  “But he is high on our list of potentials?” Gilligan interrupted.

  “Yes, he was third on the list,” Nicole-Louise replied.

  “The other two?” he asked.

  “Both dead. Ironically they blew themselves up when building bombs, so you can move him up to the top spot,” she replied without a hint of sarcasm.

  “Can you hack into the satellite feed now and see what is happening?” Ward asked.

  “Of course I can,” she tapped her keyboard for a minute and said, “Here it is.”

  All three of them walked over to her and crowded behind her, looking at the screen.

  Just off of 2nd Avenue and adjacent to a synagogue on East 55th Street, a little red dot was flashing. The area looked busy but not overly. The roads were clear. It was hard to get a defined look at the people on the street from the imagery in front of them but nothing looked out of place or suspicious. They all watched what was happening for a few minutes in silence.

  “Let’s go,” Ward said to Gilligan.

  NINETEEN

  On the drive to Midtown East, Ward’s phone rang. It was Centrepoint.

  “Yes?” he answered.

  “I have set an appointment for you with Martin Walker at 8.30pm tonight,” The Old Man said.

  “Where?”

  “USBC have offices on 6th Avenue. He will be expecting you.”

  Ward hung up the phone.

  “Problem?” Gilligan asked.

  “We have an appointment with a guy at USBC on 6th Avenue,” Ward said.

  Gilligan nodded.

  “That works out well for us, we won’t be far away, and by the time we have cut across from Midtown East and seen him we will be done for the day,” he added.

  Gilligan nodded again.

  They continued the drive and Ward studied the photo of Ali Yassin that Nicole-Louise had given him with an intensity that unnerved Gilligan, and he got the feeling that Ward was psyching himself up for the kill, like his eyes were fixed on Yassin’s, but he said nothing. They reached 2nd Avenue and parked the car.

  “What number?” Gilligan asked.

  “310,” Ward replied.

  Gilligan crossed the road without prompting and walked opposite Ward at a steady pace.

  They reached number 310. It was a twelve story building built out of brown brick. It was a newish building and the bottom floor housed a few shops; ‘Eclectic Electrics’ being the one to the far right, and the one they were interested in. Ward walked past and stopped just past the Conservative Synagogue. Gilligan crossed the road and joined him.

  “How do you want to play this one?” he asked.

  “I want to start putting real pressure on them,” Ward replied, “I think time is running out.”

  “I’ll follow your lead then, Chief,” Gilligan said, gesturing with
his hand for Ward to lead the way.

  They walked back towards the shop and entered.

  The inside was typical of an electrical shop. The shelves were laid out in neat symmetry, like looking down on blocks of buildings with a satellite. They were all stacked neatly and everything was in a logical order. Plug fittings through to cables, light switches through to lights, and there were small signs defining each area such as Lighting, Bathroom and Commercial.

  The floor was covered with a clean, grey carpet that made the place look cared for.

  There were three employees in the shop. They all looked like Iraqi nationals as Ward expected. People were inclined to support their own when setting up business in a new country, and they were all looking very busy, picking items up and re-positioning them on the shelves.

  There were two customers in the shop, both construction workers by the look of it, one being served by three other guys behind the counter, and the other looking at refrigerator elements, completely confused, judging by the way that he was scratching his head and rubbing his chin.

  All of the guys behind the counter looked like they didn’t belong there. They were all big, each over six feet and muscular looking, a fact emphasised by the cut off, red tee shirts emblazoned with ‘Eclectic Electrics’ that they wore. Judging by the way the guy in the middle seemed to be holding a more prominent position, with the two other guys giving him at least three feet of space on either side, he was the main man and they were the lieutenants. But none of the people in the shop were Ali Yassin.

  Ward approached the counter just as the first contractor finished paying for his goods and left the shop. The guy in the middle eyed him suspiciously. Ward held eye contact with him.

  “Hello, Sir, how can I help?” the guy to the right of the main man asked in clear English.

  “I’m looking for some specialist equipment,” Ward replied.

  As soon as the two lieutenants picked up on his British accent, and after taking a long look at Gilligan, their body language completely changed. They all seemed to breath in, arch their shoulders back, and attempt to show him how big they were.

  The guy in the middle did not break eye contact with Ward

  “We have lots of that here, Sir. What is it that you are specifically looking for?” the guy on the left asked.